Congrats on friend's baby Lou - must have been awful carrying that around in this heat!!


Yesterday was stinking hot at work. Like moving through treacle I did not do as much as I could have done. I cannot work in this heat!

OMG - it must have been AWFUL giving birth in this weather.

Its very hot here but there is a light breeze which is making it bearable. I've got my exercise class this afternoon - I think I'll go along because they are trying to build up the class so that they get additional funding and they've got to hit a participant target for 12 weeks in a row before they'll be considered.

BBQ tonight - I've been marinating chicken breasts in a spicy yoghurt mixture and went a bit heavy handed with the turmeric so they are flourescent (sp??) yellow.

Hello everyone, my sister's boyfriend's sister is having a baby at the moment too (try saying that fast 3 times in a row). I can't imagine having a baby in this heat!

Hope everyone has been having a good weekend. I went shopping for a dress to wear to my sister's graduation on Saturday and I bought a size 12! (Ok so it is a baggy dress and I've had to buy a jacket in a much larger size, but still, a size 12!)

Yesterday I spent the day lying in the sun trying to get my legs to go brown. My shoulders, face and arms are often exposed to the sun so they are quite brown (well not really, but brown for me), but I always keep my legs covered. What is freakishly wierd though, is that after sitting in my garden in a bikini (!), my face, shoulders and arms are all burnt, and my legs are still a glowing white. WTF, how does that happen?

My legs are glow-white like that, too - which is why I use that gradual instant tan stuff on them. Its not ideal but its better than going out with brown arms/shoulders/face and pure white legs.

Sarahann - just say it is Homer chicken (Homer Simpson!).

Well done Pach on the size 12!!!

It actually tasted okay - turmeric doesn't seem to add any particular flavour. It just tasted like a slightly sweet chicken tikka. Yum!

My aerobics class was unbelieveable today. I have never, EVER been so hot in my entire life. I got through two litres of water in a 90 minute class. I thought one of the golden oldies was going to go to the great workout class in the sky when she just laid down and started panting. Scary!

The chavs next door had another very loud marital disagreement this afternoon and Mr Chav stropped off at max spead on his motorbike and hasn't come back yet. No doubt he will turn up again at - probably in the small hours of tomorrow morning - and then they will probably have another argument. I truely do not NOT understand people who wash their dirty laundry in public.

My dad's decided to come over and stay on Friday night. Gah, there will be no way to hide the pitiful state of my attempts at gardening. I wish he'd give me more notice... He'll only be here til Saturday (when I go to stay with my parents for 10 days), so he probably won't even be able to rescue the situation in the time he has available.

He's going to hate his food next week, my mum emailed me and asked me to bring some recipes with me as she far prefers my food to the stuff she normally eats at home, but dad's very much a meat and no veg man so I'm not sure that vegetarianism will go down quite so well with him! I've scanned in a couple of recipes and sent them over this evening so that mum can go shopping in advance of me getting there, I've tried to make sure I haven't chosen anything with ingredients that are too exotic as their local shop is a bit lacking sometimes and she hates going to the big hypermarket. Fingers crossed the recipes will go down well! I guess that means there's no excuse for eating rubbish though... (although we'll probably eat out a fair bit so dad can order a nice big chunk of meat).

Sarah Ann, your neighbours sound horrible...we've only got one neighbour right next door as we live on a corner plot, but they manage to annoy me daily.

They have this HUGE rottweiler and whenever I am outside, and it's out, it flings itself at our wall, I can see his head and half his body at full jump, he barks and barks and then my dogs retaliate...it's very annoying to say the least, at least the actual humans don't yell though, they're very slobby though, they don't look after their garden, have loads of weeds and apparently don't have a clue how to use thier lawn mower...I swear it's that house though, we've had four sets of neighbours in there and they've all been a tad strange....I think when we move to Mass. I'll be checking out the neighbours before we move into our next house....

Hope you're allenjoying the hot swealtering weather you're forecast, drink plenty of water, I've been on to my Mum about that, she said she's been awfully uncomfortable of a night time trying to sleep the past few nights, bless her....thank God for A/C I say....that truly is a wonderful thing over here....we have the same temps daily as wimbledon court. Those poor tennis players, I know I couldn't run about in this heat, I'm a lazy moo and get in the pool and float around on the lilo....ok, time for bed....AZ time.

I've just been out for a 4.4 mile run. I really didn't want to get out there this morning, but I'm kind of glad I did. At least I've got it over with, but one of my toes is a bit painful with a blister and I don't enjoy running on it much. I'm looking forward to letting my feet heal for a bit next week!

Ooooooooh Hoooooooooo! Mr Chav didn't come home - maybe he's gone back to his ex. We had a very quiet evening - bliss! Chris, its only the neighbours to my right which are awful - the other side are lovely. We've been told that when our our chav neighbours moved in they had a very pretty garden but within a week they had had it concreted over and the concrete is now all cracking with weeds growing through. It is now a 'yard' in the British sense - with a caravan plonked right in the middle of it where Mr Chav's many kids from his previous relationships sleep in at the weekends on a rotating basis.

Now.... what I DON'T understand is how one of his many children from 'a previous relationship' is a year younger than the child these two have had together.

I was up and out walking this morning at 4.45! It was lovely - quite a cool breeze and all the bunnies, foxes and deer were out feeding so it gave the dogs something to chase (they could never catch them). I thought I'd hurt my back yesterday - all I did was sneeze when I felt an almight great big TWANG in my back but it seems okay today - only a little twinge every now and then.

My neighbours are a very strange bunch too. On one side we have the now well behaved, but previously very rude neighbours who swore at us when we moved in. Opposite, I do not even know what they look like. I have never met or seen them. I don't think they ever come out of their house! The other side are a very nice man who works for Williams, and his very difficult and moody wife and her kids. But the women behind me are the strangest. I think that they are probably witches, they have a lot of late night bonfires (by late I mean between midnight and 2am!) and are basically a very wierd couple of people. What is funny, is that when I was tiny we lived in a housing estate that had several council houses and flats which was known as as a so called "bad area", but we had much more normal and polite neighbours than we do in the "well off" pretty village lane we live in now!

Sarah, turmuric is supposed to be very good for you. They have found a link between turmuric and a reduced incidence of Altzhiemers and Dementia. People who have diets that are high in turmuric such as the Indians, have a much lower incidence of those sorts of diseases.

Morning all!

This heat is horrible and I'm supposed to be doing a 5k run this evening. I think it's going to be more of a walk as the race starts at 6.45 and I doubt the temperature will have dropped that much.

I feel sorry for all those pregnant ladies out there at the moment, especially those using public transport - the tube was horribly sticky this morning and I'm lucky enough to only need to travel 4 stops.

Why did they swear when you moved in? Did you dare to say Hello or something??!!


They may be druid types. There were some next to my Brother's lodgings in New Cross who were pagan/druid types and lit bonfires often.

I have to laugh about those strange neighbours cos when Ma and Pa moved into their house they found out the man next door was rarely there. He has obviously been broken into by kids often and there is barbed wire everywhere and there was a housefire. His son keeps coming over to do things in the deteriorating house but the man is not living there now. The other side I think they split up and he is only there sometimes but you never see her or the kids now. What have my parents been doing???!! Mum is not very mobile so she can't be misbehaving!! My Dad is too shy to be in their face, so it is not that. I do love to tease them tho'!!

Why Mr Next door (in fact both sides) don’t put the houses up for sale I dunno - mind you "your" neighbours could move in!!!!!!

Apart from the Chavs the rest of the people in this road are fine - mostly very quiet and I'm very happy living here. If we ever move it will be because we want to live within easy walking distance of a beach.

When I lived in London I used to live next door to a practising white Witch - she was really nice but some of her friends were a little strange.

My back is getting a bit worse now - silly me, I did an abs workout and I think I did one crunch too many - I got stuck on the floor and it took me ages to get upright!

I don't actually understand why they swore at us, it was so bizarre. We have a shared driveway, and they would tear out of their garage and across the front of our house, swearing and sticking their fingers up at us. We have never really understood what their problem was. Now they just behave normally!

I think Chris is right though, sometimes the house can just attract wierd people, so if your Mr Next doors moved, you could get worse ones! The house on one side of us (the most expensive house in the lane at £600K+) has had 4 different owners in 7 years, all of which have been strange to downright rude. The current lot (Williams man and difficult wife) have lots of cars and lawnmowers stored in the front garden, a particularly lovely "feature" for the garden.