Walk on by.......

As I've now learnt that one needs to exercise 6...yes 6....times a week in middle age, if one is to remain fit and fabulous, I'm now attempting two yoga classes a week and have taken up walking. Living in London, or I'm sure any city, this is very easy. I don't have a car and I live close to tubes and buses and shops and stuff. I can walk to two cinemas, a theatre, a swimming pool, Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsburys, M&S, an art gallery, my yoga class, the bank and Ottolenghi's in under 15 minutes so I know I can always knock off the half hour minimum recommended but now, any journey I reckon I can walk within half an hour or so of home I'm walking. Weather permitting. And all ready I can see the benefits. And it's easy, just open the front door and put one foot in front of the other..........bingo!

However, in the country, walking is much harder. You can't just go for a walk. A walk is a carefully constructed exercise involving time, planning and kit. For starters you have to drive to the walk which must involve a view and/or monument, preferably both, and can be half an hour or more in a car. You must have a minimum of 3 adults, 2 children, 1 dog, Wellingtons, hats, suncream and a cagoule. You need snacks and bottles of water and a backpack to carry the snacks and bottles of water. You must preferably walk in sun-stroke-inducing heat, pouring rain or bitterly cold winds. If you can get pouring rain and bitterly cold it's best to then walk a coastal hill path for the full experience. Immediately after completing the walk you must go to either a pub (if in sun-stroke-inducing heat) or a homemade cafe (pouring rain and/or bitterly cold wind) and either drink cold beer by the pint and eat an entire block of cheddar normally used to feed a family of four for a week by yourself (the pub) or drink large mugs of sweet hot chocolate and eat flapjack by the pound (the cafe) and talk about the walk.

'What a view?'

'Wasn't it?'

'Yes wasn't it....would be...... if it weren't raining.'

'Must have walked for an hour.'

'Two at least.'

'Did one for two and a half last week.'

'Did you?'

'Nearly three.'

'And the children love it.'

'They do. So good for them.'

'Absolutely, have to carry them most of the way of course, but they'll sleep well to night.'

'Oh yes ...... all that air.'

'Oh the air and that view......'

I went for a walk to Shoreditch to get my haircut. By myself. No kit. Thirty five brisk minutes. I saw an old man through a window with his feet in a bowl of water watching TV, a tall black guy wearing a giant hat on top of his giant hair leading a tiny dog, and a young man in a van drive into and then over a set of traffic lights on the Hackney Road............. it's the simple things in life....

Top tip: If you haven't seen it yet, get to a cinema near you for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and see Gary Oldman leading an utterly brilliant cast being brilliant ......fabulous on every level.

Seen it all before.........

There comes a time when you reach a certain age, I believe, that everyone looks familiar. I'm always seeing people I recognise, people who look like someone I went to school or college with except they look as they looked then, which of course they wouldn't now......perhaps, I wonder, are they the son or daughter of my old memory?And I don't think I'm alone. A few weeks ago a friend of mine could be seen waving violently at someone, convinced he was someone she knew, except he was Bob Geldof. Which of course on one level she did know........but not on his level.

Which leads me into the celebrity sitings. I used to have a boyfriend who, apart from being a terrible man, was very funny. We would play the look-who-it-is game all the time, turning to one another to point out such look-a-likes as Michael Palin, Richard Dreyfus or Sue Pollard, at the check-out, cash-point or bus stop. But this week, on Monday, I was so convinced I saw Larry David, the writer, comedian and actor, coming out of a house in my street I actually followed him. He was wearing the unmistakable leeeesure wear of wealthy Americans: a polo shirt, long shorts and loafers; he strolled in a relaxed Larry-lollop, his bold pate fringed by grey, shining in the morning sun. I walked behind him but as he turned into the garage I was gripped by the need to see him ..... full-frontal. He really did look like Larry David. Like a scene from Seinfeld, I became George, peering in through the window as he stood in line to pay for his milk and paper. It wasn't Larry David. I stepped back and as I did i knocked the paper stand and in an effort to stop it from toppling over was narrowly missed by a car looking for petrol who swerved to miss a second car. It may not have been Larry David but his spirit was with us.

Top tip: Waitrose are doing a deal on the Lindt Excellence Touch of Sea Salt dark chocolate.....I'm up to two bars a day.....

Viva la difference........

The Autumn light in late September glows in south west France, picking out the orange, pink, red and plumb of flowers still in bloom. Fat figs hang heavy, striped and fit to burst. Amber coloured, quince-jellied drips blob the kitchen table, coffee-marked mugs and the French crumbs of broken bread finish breakfast. Outside, the hum and buzz of insects are warming to the late morning heat.

I read a book. I make more coffee. I read a magazine. I drink more coffee.

Red, white and chequered with quails eggs, cheeses ripe and firm, tomatoes rich and deep, bread from which a whole meal can be made, potted shrimps: pink-brown and buttery; lunch on the terrace is shaded by plump, black grapes that hang low over the view of fields freshly harvested. The silence broken only by the squawking of force-fed geese and rutting-bulls or the the whine of le facteur's moped, buzzing through the twisted lanes to deliver a fine new pair of Crocs with a fancy-Nubuck-finish, going-out Crocs.

Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose..........

Top tip: keep your mind agile and alert..... learn a new language.

Girl on a bicycle.........

In the spirit of keeping young and beautiful….it is after all my duty to be beautiful ……. and because according to Jill Shaw Rudddock's The Second Half of Your Life , apparently one yoga class a week just doesn’t cut it and I should be exercising six times a week, I've started walking to work. And then I tried a Boris-bike, as they are known in London.

Now, I am not a natural cyclist. Not even close. I don’t have the best sense of balance and I’m scared of my fellow road users. However, I am now working only 25 minutes walk away from home and it’s all down hill and so, I reasoned, why not give it a go, at least on the way there. And so I cycled to work. I say cycled, more like free-wheeled.

First of all I had to find a bike bay near home. There are two, the nearest is small and, it appears, always empty. The other is much bigger but is almost half way to work. Still, it’s a start. Then there is the business of purchasing your ride. They don’t make it easy for the casual user. There is a lot to read and agree to and buttons to press on the touch screen. It costs £1 to hire your bike during a single 24 hour period and if you complete your journey in less than half an hour there is no further payment. Finally, a release code is issued, valid for 10 minutes, which needs to be punched into a pad on the bike’s stand. Fearful of failing to complete all the instructions in time, I finally yanked the bike free and ran over my own foot before discovering the saddle was stuck at the lowest level. Being taller rather than shorter, I was forced to ride the bike with my knees up round my ears, as if in training for the can-can.

The next day I picked out a more suitable bike, the saddle extended to the highest position, before starting the payment process. Armed with the code I released the bike and attempted to mount but this time it was too high and again the adjustable screw was fixed solid. I wobbled on tippy-toe into the traffic and held my breath for the brief journey.

Undefeated, I tried again the next day. This time I selected a bike and checked the height of the saddle first, making sure it would need no adjustments. I punched in the code and, like Goldilocks and the three bikes, it was just right. However, I was wearing a skirt that was pencil in design and not really suitable as it turned out for such sport and so I had to hoike it up, thigh high, in order to pedal. I also broke all my own rules. I’m always forever telling friends to wear a helmet and a high vis-vest or a reflective sash, but failed to myself. I think these bikes are a good idea but I think need to be better prepared.

Top-tip: a cycling helmet in city traffic makes a lot of sense.... and could be a fashion aid for a bad hair day......

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day???

Well hopefully not if you live in England......... a bit of a damp squib? Dull? Unreliable? Even my tomatoes...my first grown and of which I had such high hopes, such ambitions: the salads, sauces, soups....resolutely won't go red.

As we wave good-bye to August and the sticky fingers of lollies licked too slowly, strawberry-stained mouths and sand-between-our-toes...or not......and tip-toe out of the rock-pools, hang-up our shrimping nets once more, and step away from the 99s, there is still the hope, a desperate, clinging, collective wish...... it could be an Indian summer. Nothing, incidentally to do with India who enjoy their summer in the same months as we do, albeit a good deal warmer. No, the hope of hot'n'sunny September days hangs heavy in the air and I imagine that is why I've been invited to Regent's Park open-air theatre tonight and also to a party-in-a-garden and a BBQ too. We are taking a picnic and a good deal of wine and blankets and wet-weather-kit-just-in case.....

And just in case the sun doesn't shine through September I'm off to France for a few days where there will be a higher chance of less rain and a guarantee of free-flowing pink wine and I shall walk and talk and eat outside before coming in for the winter.

Last night I had an extraordinary dream about an ex-boyfriend....very vivid and quite disturbing.....where I apparently expressed thoughts and feelings quite untrue of me and more akin to him.....what does it all mean I wonder? Don't eat toasted cheese for supper perhaps?

Top tip: whether rain or sun, go see The Gaurd, hilarious and Brendan Gleeson is sublime.