Gosh! Remember yesterday I was blathering on about my lights being fixed in the bathroom? Well, excitedly, I drove home like I’d spilt acid in my lap just to get home and try them out – and they’re great! Perhaps a bit too bright – I tried to read Bill Bryson in the bath but the top of the book started smoking after ten minutes. I could open a Stand ‘n’ Tan, although I don’t want old orange women with necks like crinkle-cut crisps stubbing out their rollies on my nice carpet. Still, at least I can see where I’ve dropped the soap after I’ve been singing ‘Just Call Me Angel In The Morning’ into it to get Paul out of bed.

Anyway, I’m a terrible person – I have a new enemy, and he’s a Big Issue seller.. He’s not the same tramp who hustled me for a fiver a few months ago, but instead he’s a Big Issue seller and I find him absolutely revolting. I know that makes me an awful person with a lack of compassion but I can’t help it – humans take an instant dislike to each other sometimes. Anyway, I see him whenever I’m mincing to Marks and Spencers in Newcastle – he stands in the middle of the path with his magazines and annoying face and jabs you with the magazine, all the while saying the same thing over and over in a voice that cuts me like a knife – BIG ISSUE PLEASE. Except it’s BAAAAG ISSHOOO PLEEEURGHASE. He doesn’t say the words, he throttles the fucking life out of them. When he’s not smoking and thrusting a magazine at you, he’s coughing up big old balls of phlegm and spitting them on the pavement, second only to seeing people smoke near babies, is something I loathe. And the noises! He doesn’t so much bring up his phlegm as fucking mine it. I know I should be sympathetic but as I said, I’m dubious of his intent and let’s not pretend we are all holier than thou, anyway.

Anyway, my new phleghnemy aside, I gave into considerable temptation today. Well yesterday, but I couldn’t post yesterday as some people from work read the blog and I didn’t want to give away the surprise. Part of my job at work is to think of events and ideas that’ll make everyone else happy, and it was my idea to buy everyone a £1 mix-up. Because everyone loves sweeties, right? So, I picked up £165 worth of pic-n-mix and had to spend an afternoon decanting them into colourful little bags and adding even more sweets from the leftover bit of budget. I’m sorry, being surrounded by that many sweets, I couldn’t help myself and the diet was forgotten – to be honest, everyone ought to be grateful they didn’t find me rolling around on the floor covered in jazzies and cola cubes, laughing hysterically from all the sugar. This week’s diet aim has switched to MAINTAIN, as opposed to LOSE. Don’t they look pretty, though?

I know what you’re thinking, what a glamourous office! I know – every day it feels like I’m walking into Prada. No just jesting – I was having to hide in a back room to keep the secret. Anyway, the sweets were dispatched to everyone today and I can write this day off for bad. It’s going to happen, after all, and at least I didn’t completely derail and order a Dominos pizza, which was totally due to my self-control and not because I’d left my wallet at work. Honest guv. See, this is what we had for our evening meal…Ploughman’s Lunch!

Paul made the scotch eggs by boiling an egg and wrapping it in the meat (well, sawdust and sage) of a Linda McCartney rosemary and red onion sausage. Cook in the oven and honest, it’ll be just like a real scotch egg, only not at all. Still tastes nice! Potato salad was new potatoes, fat free fromage frais, mustard and spring onion. Cheese is your normal HEA amount with some pickled onions, ham was syn-free from Tesco (I took the crust off after the picture) and then salad for the superfree. A lovely ‘picky’ tea. The syns come from the pickle – 1 syn per level tbsp, but you could leave that off if you were being Captain Fussytits.

Enjoy, have a good Valentines tomorrow…

J