Starry starry night....

So....it's January, it's cold and damp and miserable and the world is now so awful we're all staying in. But help is at hand because Broadchurch is back (ITV 9pm Monday). Just when I'd gotten over getting over the demise of 'Missing'...... although marvellously distressing to watch, frankly the ending was wanting....... Olivia I-love-her Colman has returned and not only has she brought all our old favourites back with her, but Charlotte Rampling too!!

The face of Nars, the love interest in 'The Night Porter', Charlotte-bloody-Rampling, so sexy her name has become a verb..... and now we can all rample, prime time on Monday nights.....

Top tip: don't give up anything in January, especially not alcohol with all those Christmas drinks left over.... the sloe vodka maybe done but with only February to look forward to it's now all about that bottle of essential brandy that didn't make the pudding!!

And so that was Christmas........

.....the tree went up....

and now it's down. The chocolates are all gone and there's just a few Turkish Delight left...... and a little bit of homemade sloe vodka....

....another year over and a new one just begun. Now it's all about the soup. Happy new year!!

Top tip: go see 'Birdman', a cheeky matinee is especially good at blowing away the January blues....

When life gives you lemons.....

... I normally like to lie in a darkened room for an undetermined period of time. Or at least loll on the sofa watching back to back episodes of Friends (it still diverts my attention after all these years.....) drinking martinis, eating chocolate, enjoying the misery. Yes.... fortune vomits on my eiderdown once more..... to quote Blackadder. My friends don't want me to wallow, they say: get back in the saddle,  you show them, what do they know anyway. They tell me stories of their on failures, their friends' failures, famous failures. It's all good stuff. The thing is the older you get the harder it is to get back in the saddle and show them. When you're a kid you fall over all the time, I fall over I'm going to need a new hip.

But hey, life's too short so I've counted my blessings and when the going gets tough ....... I get out the paint brushes. It's time to leave what the Americans call, the pity party.

Fortunately, under my sink seems to be a secret portal into B&Q and all the paint and brushes and, yes, sugar soap, I needed was on hand. I mixed a few colours .... 4 years at art college not wasted..... and today I painted my sittingroom pink.

And rewarded myself with cherries and a slab of Beauvale, a delicious, creamy cheese made by those Stilton chaps, Cropwell Bishop. Gorgeous.

 Top tip: think pink!!

Lazing on a sunny afternoon.....

Last weekend I went to a music festival in a meadow in Crouch End in north London....

 and a park in Camberwell in south London.

Who needs to live in the countryside?

When did it become the norm for cars, vans bikes etc to drive straight over Zebra Crossings while you are actually still crossing?

Top tip: look left, look right and run for your life........

Bunny, bunny, bunny......

I have a confession, I have a new guilty pleasure......

I'm addicted to MaltEaster bunnies. I was on one a week now it's almost one a day. If you haven't tried one yet approach with caution.....

Top tip: always start with the ears.