Oui oui, dear reader, I’m about to set off with Laura, in my little green bean, to Newcastle airport where we shall be leaping aboard a plane to Rhodes this evening. Back in a week and a bit, hopefully relaxed and ever so slightly bronzed =)

Another Saturday night is upon me, and here I sit clacking away on my trusty PC wearing Marks and Spencer’s finest (by which I mean my pyjamas) and hitting the comma key too often.

I’m sure you’re wondering just how I maintain my rock n’ roll lifestyle. It’s no mean feat, I assure you. I ingest large quantities of Heinz Tomato Ketchup each week, just to keep my stamina up. I also rely on jumbo-sized bottles of Citrus Fresh Head and Shoulders shampoo and conditioner*, but that’s another humiliating story all together.

Actually, this week hasn’t been too bad. I missed horse riding and Knit Happens, but did take a couple of days off work to go and see the Goo Goo Dolls, have a night out and a spot of holiday shopping with Laura in Newcastle.

I do love Newcastle so. I snapped a few photos of the bridges across the Tyne but they didn’t turn out too well. It was a pretty grim day and rained quite a bit, too. I’ve been attempting to talk Laura into looking at flats there, as I feel there must be more to life than my subuarban existence. For example, the onerous tasks I’ve been involved in recently include:

• Changing my bedding
• Exfoliating (though this is crucial holiday preparation)
• Devoting my time and dedication to merging two barely-useful cuspidated slivers of Imperial Leather soap into one semi-useful, nicely rounded Imperial Leather Lozenge, which I may decide to copyright

At first, my gentle flay-buying persuasion tactics didn’t seem to be working. However, I think Laura is starting to crack under the pressure. I get mad text messages from her when I’m at work, saying things like “2 bed apt on quayside, £700/month. Reasonable!!!!”. Hmm! I might have to see about that!

I enjoyed my third live Goo Goo Dolls experience of course, making an absolute show of myself by leaping around with boundless enthusiasm, my energetic moves powered by my freakishly strong calves. We went out for drinks in the city centre after the concert but chose to slope back to the hotel around midnight to make sure we were well rested for our Holiday Shopping Extravaganza the next day.

We got the last few bits and pieces we needed for our jaunt to Rhodes next Saturday. I’ve been hunting high and low for some nice gold-coloured shoes and finally found some in Monsoon (typical. I never manage to find bargain £12 shoes from New Look. Oh well, I suppose someone has to keep the economy going). I nabbed those, a pewter-y coloured bag from Accessorize and a dress from Monsoon Fusion. I won’t disclose what Laura bought, because I think she was planning to hide at least half of it from her mother, har har.

*There you go, Annie and Katie - I mentioned it!

• Cosmopolitan cocktails are really quite strong, and I should at least try to show ladylike restraint and not throw a second glassfull down my throat just because the first has paved the way.
• Exactly what an oxbow lake is. People (ie fools) on TV, in magazines etc are always using oxbow lakes as an example of the useless stuff we’re taught in school. I, however, was never taught just what an oxbow lake was, so I took it upon myself to find out. Look it up, you’ll be thrilled.
• No matter how sunny the morning has been, clouds will inevitably gather from the moment I step out of my office at lunchtime. I can try to fool the sun, using cunning trickery, leaving the office 10 minutes early or 15 minutes late. It doesn’t make any difference. That sun is smart!
• In Bupa World, I would be a rather jolly orange squiggle.
• The lady in the travel agency was wrong. We have a 20kgs baggage allowance on our flight later this month, and not 15kgs. Panic over! Pack the hairdryer!

Happy sunny day to all on this merry isle =) I’ve been for a little spin in a lidless Muriel to celebrate the sunshine and warmth. Of course, that meant filling her tank with liquid diamonds petrol. There was a sign by the petrol pumps that read something along the lines of “Inform staff in case of spillage”. Frankly, the staff would know if I had spilled any petrol on the forecourt, as I would be on my hands and knees, weeping at the cost of my decadent squandering of extortionately-priced fuel.

Anyway! All has been quiet on the beSottied front as I have been having a thrilling time re-discovering the joys of bike riding. I’m tootling all over on my old boneshaker of a mountain bike all in the name of holiday-countdown fitness. Yes, I am finally thinking about the bikini!

I knitted some baby shoes for a girl I used to work with who has just gone on her maternity leave. I’m really not into babies of baby stuff (at all!) but even I have to admit that these are cute:

I made another pair, too, with green beads instead of yellow. I used the Debbie Bliss pattern Garter Stitch Baby Shoes, but altered it so that the shoes would be suitable for newborns, and also so it actually made sense. I haven’t had any problems with Debbie Bliss patterns in the past but I just couldn’t get the sole to fit into the shoe upper, no matter how I tried to fudge it, or how many times I frogged and re-knitted. I’ll have to try and work out where I stand legally, but if it’s OK for me to post the pattern I’ll get it checked, written up, and whacked onto beSottied. I’m also working on a super-secret knitting pattern I hope to submit to Knitty.com but who knows when I’ll get that done?

Righto. I’m off to slosh some factor 15 on and go for a mooch around the garden. It’ll be freckles-a-gogo!

No, not the 90s boyband (that was Boyz II Men, anyway. Not that I would know…) but the Citroën C3 Pluriel advert!

It wasn’t until I was buying Muriel that I had recollections of this ad, first broadcast here in the UK in 2003. I was actually searching for the Pluriel video which has vanished from citroën.com, (which is a shame because it had hilarious, rather porn-film-esque music playing in the background) when I came across this delight on You Tube.

The advert features a young brother and sister using magic wands to turn the Pluriel into its saloon/cabriolet/spider/pickup configurations, until she yells at him to “Grow up!” and woooo does he! I think I may have built the Nice Young Man up a bit too much in my memory over the years, as he doesn’t seem so amazingly nice now. But perhaps I hadn’t been so overly-exposed to popular culture back then!

This is the Italian version of the ad, and seems to have different scenes to the one I remember, but you get the idea. If you don’t get why I’m ranting on about a car, maybe you need to read about mon petit pois!