An hour and a half I'll never get back

Yesterday after some fresh air and a visit from the sister girl Mr Jones and I settled down to watch Arsenal vs Chelsea. Mr Jones was born and bred in Highbury and is therefore a bona fide gooner - I am a mere bystander. Mr Jones was asleep after 10 minutes. I spent the first 15 minutes being impressed by the skillful passing, then I got bored due to the lack of action and took to pondering:

1 Why Arsene Wenger feels the need to dress in a duvet? Who can have any respect for a man who wears such a hideous puffer jacket? Warm it might be, but with your salary Mr Wenger surely a cashmere coat and some silk thermals would be more appropriate? But then I suppose taste is inherited, not earnt - just look at the Beckhams.

2 There should be a law against people over the age of 21 chewing gum. Gum is disgusting at any age - but if you're an ageing football coach you should most certainly not be chanking it on television for all to see. Try a mint - I like M&S Curiously Strong Mints - which freshen your breath without rendering you incapable of polite conversation.

3 If I owned a football club I would provide each player with a tissue and suggest they tuck it in the waist band of their shorts for use during matches. This would do away with the unnecessary and totally offensive spitting and nose clearing onto the ground that seems to be rife amongst sporting types.

4 Just what conditioner does Mr Rosicky use on that hair of his? Even in the pouring rain it still looked touchably soft.

Why I didn't change the channel is beyond me, what a waste of 90 minutes, I could have been watching the food channel and living vicariously through people who are able to eat food other than build up shakes and keep it down.

Sick leave

The rash has gone and the sickness has returned - in full scale horror proportions. Luckily given my current slovenly nature I hadn't gotten around to empty the bedroom bin so I dug out the discarded anti-sickness tablets at 1am on Thursday morning in the hopes of retaining at least some of my innards.

The doctor looked at me with a "bugger - I thought we'd fixed you" expression when I presented myself in his surgery for what must be the fiftieth time in the last month. He threatened hospital, I said I'd take the tablets and risk Mick making a come back. He signed me off work for two weeks. Some might rejoice at this break - I live in fear that I might actually start to enjoy watching Bargain Hunt and Homes Under The Hammer. Oh the horror.

Today Mummy is coming to be my nurse and save me from daytime tv hell. Mr Jones returns tonight - hurrah! Baby Jones better be growing big and strong in there for all this trouble.

The Honeymoon - Zanzibar

At last the final installment of the honeymoon stories - Zanzibar. It was lovely - but I wouldn't go again because the journey to get there was hellish.

Picture the scene - a Kenyan Airways flight, some unearthly hour post midnight, Mr Jones has the window seat and I have half of the one in the middle - the other half is being occupied by a huge Kenyan man who spent four hours using my hip bone as a arm rest and tutting every time I tried to wriggle free. I was unable to sleep thanks to the chap in the seat behind me - another large person who seemed to need to use my headrest and hair to hoist himself up in his chair every five minutes. Mr Jones felt sick.

I hoped for relief when we reached Nairobi airport - but know. Nairobia airport is twinned with hell. For three hours we sat in an airless room, packed with people, with nothing to drink and no loo. There were no announcements or boards to tell you when your flight would be leaving - just a man wandering about with a clipboard and a marker pen.

Mr Jones committed a cardinal sin according to the Mrs Jones book of holiday survival. He made eye contact with a very stroppy Irish girl and her Mancunian husband. We spent the next 30 minutes being partially involved in a domestic as she ranted about the fact that they were flying to Tanzania via Nairobi and Zanzibar because her dumbass husband had some imaginary issue with British Airways and had forced them to fly Kenyan the whole way. I smiled weakly in encouragement and scowled at Mr Jones for getting us involved.

Finally out "flight" was called and we made our way onto the tarmac towards what resembled an airfix kit waiting to transport us to Zanzibar. I very nearly kissed the runway when we landed. Next came the handing over of $100 -- $50 each for simply passing through the airport. We were informed that it would cost us another $30 to leave. You wouldn't mind if you thought the cash was going somewhere useful - but step outside the airport and it's all mud huts and wagons pulled by oxen.

The journey to the hotel took an hour. We drove through stone town and marvelled at the markets and the people in their brightly coloured clothes laughing and talking. The traffic was made up carts pulled by donkeys and oxen, people riding two or three on a push bike, weaving all over the road, and rickety old trucks and minibuses packed with people - and of course the obligatory tourist taxis.


We went through a gated compound off the dusty road, away for the mud huts and into complete luxury - which grated at our consciences a bit. But the tourist industry is providing young people on the island with great job opportunities - as the staff were always telling us. They wanted to learn English so they could work in hotels all over the world and travel and see lots of places, so we felt less guilty.

We spent the week lying on sun lounger, drinking cocktails, eating, gazing at the view and paddling in the sea. We went out on a boat one day to see the dolphins and the local fishman who took us out thought we were odd when we wouldn't get in the water and swim with them. Mr Jones and I don't swim - especially in dark choppy waters filled with wild animals - no matter how friendly.


I indulged in some spa treatments offered by a woman who became known at the Thai tortress for her punishing massages. I was walked on (yes with feet and her entired body weight), poked and scrubbed within an inch of my life - but despite the torture I was very relaxed.

The knots in my shoulders returned on the hellish journey home which involved another lengthy stretch in Nairobi airport. I very nearly kissed the air steward when we got on the BA flight to London and we were definitely pleased to be home.

Come Dine With Me - Episode Three - Dinner with Mr Swift

Another saturday - another dinner party. This time it was the turn of Mr Swift. It was a drunken night (a whole lot of gin topped off with some champagne and a lot of toaster one-up-manship)in May when Mr Swift and I got a bit competitive about cooking and planned this whole come dine with me thing. Mr Swift's menu did not disappoint. I went for homestyle stodge to earn points for comfort eating satisfaction. Mr Swift went for restaurant style glamour and got all Gary Rhodes and Marcus Waring with the presentation - most impressive.

We started with tea smoked beetroot with marscapone cheese and walnut crackers (I had to forgo the crackers just in case the walnuts caused a Mick Jagger revival). Next came a pig feast - pressed belly pork (oooh the crackling) and a tender loin of pork with roasted apples and lovely savoy cabbage (I kept down greens - hurrah). Mr Swift got a touch stressed about his slightly undercooked Boulangere Potatoes - but we didn't mind. The grand finale was a concoction of cream, white chocolate, shortbread and raspberries - which was so tempting that I decided to risk extending the life of the rash and eat the raspberries. Well worth it - it was delicious and so far no more rash.

The boys again washed it all down with copious amounts of wine and beer - but thankfully Mr Jones didn't get ill like last time. The final three dinner parties take place in the New Year - they have a lot to live up to.

Not so pretty

Thankfully I am not too vain. The Mick Jagger look is still going strong and has been accessorised this morning with a very hot and unsightly rash all over my face.

The doctor says "it's some kind of allergy" - Really? How terribly clever of you! And I have antihistamines to take to try and alleviate it. I am now not allowed to eat red fruits or nuts - which could be the possible cause. Apologies to anyone I terrified in Stamford this morning - it really isn't a pretty sight.

The very, very good news is that in the presence of the facial horrors the sickness appears to be abating. And shocking as it may seem I would actually choose the red pizza face over the vomitting any day - so therein lies the silver lining.

Early this morning I asked Baby Jones if these kind of afflictions are going to continue throughout the whole nine months. A voice from the other side of the bed said: "No mummy - I'm going to be a pain in your ass for the next 20 years!"

Introducing....

...Baby Jones!

You may have noticed that I've been a bit quiet of late - that's because when you have a HUGE secret it's a struggle to write about anything else. But now - as you can see - the secret's out and Mr Jones and I are having a baby. We are rather excited.

My silence has also been thanks to the fact that I have spent most of the past five weeks kneeling on the floor of various lavatories and struggling to keep down anything other than baked beans, fish fingers and (I can hardly stand to type this) - Smash! Baby Jones, it seems, is not a fan of anything healthy and is clearly from the turkey twizzler school of eating. Water, fruit, vegetables have all been rejected for a staple of beans and junk.

There have been anti-sickness tablets and much talk of drips and hospitals (thankfully avoided). Mr Jones has had a baptism of fire into married life and has had to become cook, cleaner, nurse and chief hair-holder-backer. Bless him.

As a person not always blessed with emotional stability I am pleased to report that so far I haven't had any mental meltdowns. Although I did burst into tears in the centre of Stamford because a Gospel Choir were singing and it sounded lovely - hmm!

Yesterday my lips decided to swell to enormous proportions - a reaction to the anti-sickness drugs - so I now resemble Mick Jagger - nice - and the tablets have had to stop. So do leave a clear path between me and the nearest loo.

But other than that all is well. Baby Jones is 4.5cm long and very wriggly, from certain angles he/she looks like a frog - bless.

Normal blogging service will now return. I promise to try not to bore you to tears.

Come dine with me - episode two - Dinner with Mr Medd

Mr Medd is into sports - it's kind of an addiction. So on Saturday we all had to arrive dressed in our favourite sporting attire. I cheated and wore my gym kit having decided that the sight of me in my jodphurs and the pervading smell of horse from my boots might put people off eating. Plus if you wander the streets of Stamford (yes even Stamford) on a Saturday night carrying a riding crop people look at you suggestively. Mr Jones wore his football kit, Mr Medd was a hockey player, Mr Swift a golfer and Mrs Swift a yogini. Mrs Medd joined me as a gym bunny.

I had to skip the starter - which was butternut squash soup. My most dedicated readers will remember that twas butternut squash soup that was the source of the norovirus that had me hurling for days in February. I still can't touch the stuff. But I can report that the croutons were lovely.

Our main course was Mr Oliver's Broccoli and Cauliflower Cannelloni and salad - all very lovely and veggie. But the piece de resistance was the pudding. A homemade key lime pie - quite the triumph - I do love anything with a digestive biscuit base - yum.

Post meal we settled in the sitting room which had been decorated with old sports memoribillia. Points for effort. The girls then quickly demonstrated their superior sporting knowledge by beating the boys in a game of "guess that sports person". Although it could be argued that we had an unfair advantage given that we hadn't been tempted by Mr Medd's poisonous mixture of lucozade and vodka. Mr Jones was so tempted that he spent the next morning hunched over the toilet.

A good time was had by all - and we'd like to thank Mr Medd for his hospitality.