... are possibly not the stars of the most nutritious breakfast known to man but, with a large coffee chaser, they are going to have to do.

Post Bloscars night revels and let's say I'm feeling a tad fragile. One too many celebratory g&ts possibly...

But can I say a huge thank you to our event organisers - the gorgeous boys - who threw a glittering gala event the like of which I have never experienced before.

Can I also thank my escorts for the evening - Jack and Uskie - who kept me hugely entertained in between proceedings.

Jack - I will see Twilight Zone world one day, Uskie - never have I enjoyed chatting about gin more.

Thank you, thank you for a lovely evening, one and all!

Right - now onward into battle... Where's my coffee mug?

Has anyone noticed their pageviews going through the ceiling recently, or should I be worried?

Having had a deck at my stats, the number of pageviews for my blog this Sunday was way through the thousand mark.

Now that is not normal. That's ten times and more beyond normal.

So I thought I'd just see what might have caught anyone's interest. What was i twittering on about on Sunday? Now call me lacksidasical (and what a great blog name that would have been, now I think about it) but surely in this day and age mentioning Martin McGuinness and Sinn Fein in the same paragraph is hardly of interest to the authorities.

But just in case it is and MI5 and sundry agencies have been skimming my blog can I just point out Tinker, Insomnia and IPod really are just sad obsessions - not codewords.

Anyone else noticed wierd stats, or is it just me...?

So the world shook, shimmied, rocked and rolled last night up here in the North and where was I? London.

Now I know it's a bid odd, enjoying a good earthquake, but travelling about in Central and South America I've been in a few. The way the world shifts about horizontally is very odd. Feels weird, like hurtling over hump-back bridges in a car.

Over there, you are generally encouraged to stand in a doorway and not, not, not run outside. They have their electricity running above the street like old telephone lines here. You don't really want to be carting about with a crowd of hysterical people when one of those comes down.

Nibs says he sat up in bed and thought he might have been going bonkers. The house seemed to quiver from the roof down, he says, but we seem to have been lucky - everything's still in tact.

Anyway, I had a very nice time in London, thank you. Nice work seminar/debate thing. Nice drinks in Farrington. Nice reel around The British Museum this afternoon before catching the train home. And nice weather... but no earthquakes!

Why is it women seem to be so hell bent on destroying themselves just now?

The weekend papers were full of our binge drinking exploits.

And it seems drink is what we turn to in our twenties after spending our teenage years abusing our bodies with eating disorders.

If life is so great why are women so unhappy with the reality of it?

Of are we just being picked on by a hectoring, male-dominated media?

Either way, I think I feel a 'modern life is rubbish' rant coming on....

I'm up to my ears in socio-economic research questions planning this weekend so I've not been up to much. Unless you count hours on the UK Gov Stats website trying to get to grips with the new classification system. So yeah, not much.

The only event of note was a random radio programme we listened to on Saturday which reminded me how rubbish British broadcast interviewing techniques have become.

I've no idea exactly where this radio station was, I'm guessing Dublin. It's called Radio 1 and it's got adverts but it's so not the BBC - the adverts aren't the biggest give away.

On this show they interviewed Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein politician and deputy first minister of Northern Ireland. The format went like this:
Interviewer asks questions
Martin McGuinness answers the questions... without being interrupted.

It was a revelation. The questions were pretty searching. Martin McGuinness answered openly, comprehensively and articulately:

* Without some journalist with delusions of celebrity status chucking in their two-penneth worth half way through every answer;

* Without a stream of meaningly soundbites and party-issue key messages strung together to make some meaningless waffle;

* Without all that irritating pantomime which does nothing to further what should be the media's role in the democratic process - getting us answers to questions that matter.

I'd forgotten what it was like, an interview like that. I'm not saying this programme was some beacon of truth and enlightenment. I'm just saying it was nice to sit down and eat my porridge and listen to someone being interviewed calmly, allowed to answer at length and no shouting.

And I also picked up a fab phrase from the follow-up phone in show where some lady rings up bemoaning the fact 'the economy is going down the glen'. How picturesque.

I've seen some crazy things in Bolton as I've walked through the town centre on my way to and from M&S at dinner time.

There was the time I saw three pensioners having a fist fight on a zebra crossing. That was bonkers.

Today a woman on a motorbike pulled up as I walked past the magistrates' court in Le Mans Crescent and burst into tears. Sobbing. Loudly.

You can't leave a lady crying can you, so I tottered up and asked her if she was all right.

'I'm lost,' she sobbed. 'I keep going round and round and round and I need to find Wigan and Leigh Schoo-ell but I can't find it and it's in Atherton and I'm lost and now I've lost my friend..' Tears are pouring down her little face which is all squished by the helmet and that, combined with her make-up and the face you pull when you cry, is making her look very odd.

'Oh dear,' I say. 'I'm not from Bolton, I don't know where you need to go. Would you like a tissue?'

She sniffs and says no thank you and she'll be all right. I do think she should take a tissue but she's adamant. Just then another motorbike rounds the crescent and pulls up on the other side of the road.

'Is that your friend?' I say. She sniffs and nods. 'You'll be all right,' I say and give her arm a little squeeze.

I hope she found it and isn't still circling the town centre, stopping to sob and fill up with petrol. Bolton does have a crazy road system.

From the country that gave us the deep-fried pizza and it's fellow culinary classic, the deep-fried Mars bar...

Anyone in the slighted bit surprised the Scots excel at this?

I've been tagged again and now I understand what the rules are I'm having another go at it. Indulge me, it's nearly bedtime!

Tagged by Squeaky

a. list seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself
b. tag seven people to do the same
c. do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it"

1. All my joints bend backwards to some extent, which I think is called hyper-extension, but it means I'm ridiculously flexible.
2. I used to be really into chinese kick-boxing and was up to my blue belt.
3. I've been to central and south america and I love both, very much.
4. I adore very, very, very dry martinis.
5. People confide in me a lot. I know a lot of secrets and some of them are so dark they're black!
6. I quite enjoy plucking my eyebrows.
7. I'm very good at chess and I once made a boy cry beating him (at chess!)

I tag:
pompadour
mumshere
not-herneschase
litstudent
fentyke
mycorneroftheworld
sheilamoist

Deana24 is... bored with Facebook.

What's the latest favourite waste of time on the block, folks?

It started last week.

Early mornings, gazing out the bus window into the dark. There she was, illuminated on every other bus shelter. Wrapped in some sort of straight jacket with a bloke who looks like a bouncer, but I'm guessing is her man. Pouting. Defiant. Looking more than a bit like the lights were on but someone had left the building without shutting the doors.

Then I realised Kerry Katona hadn't just been to Iceland a lot, she was pregnant. Thumbing through the Guardian guide I realised she had some sort of programme on tele I'm never going to see, but she doesn't look well, does she? Or is it me?

Then I read Julie Birchill's storming article about women's magazines online this evening and i thought: 'You know, bit bonkers or not, she's clearly doing all right and I'd rather see her strapped to some ned on every bus side in Britain than Nicole Kidman fannying about on a Paris rooftop implausably declaring "I just love to dance".'

At least Kerry looks like she's human. But do look after yourself, eh sweetheart? And eat some fruit occasionally, Kerry, there's a good girl.

Over bacon sandwiches this morning my friend's teenage daughter informed me that as a woman over the age of 35 I have more chance of being killed by a terrorist than I do of getting married.

You can go right off people's children, just like that, I find.

... For an evening of seeing my great girlie chum Katie and her lovely husband and their gorgeous, gorgeous daughters.

As a treat for you all here's Liverpool's finest band, Shack and their finest song Miles Apart.

Enjoy!

Has anyone else noticed this gang of people who are suddenly 'carefully crafting' half the food in the deli these days?

According to Wikipedia Artisans are workers who are especially skilled in making something, such as baskets, tattoos, leather goods, tools, jewellery pottery, or clothes.

So what are they doing roasting coffee? The packet I found in the cupboard this morning informs me it contains 'artisan roasted' coffee. I presume it doesn't mean it's got roasted artisans in it for added flavour.

Poor artisans. Used to make lovely things. Now they are reduced to working in some vast shed cooking coffee beans. It's a poor do, Britain in the twenty-first century. It really is.

At last. I've polished off the last of the limoncello.

His Nibs is at his mum's this weekend so I'm 'home alone' tonight and yes, that deafening noise you hear in the background is Shack singing Miles Apart.(I would put a link through to youtube for you but the vid skips around like there's no tomorrow and no one should get frustrated by such sublime, swooping lyricism).

I've just enjoyed a fine tea of pasta with an anchovy, courgette, red onion and cream sauce and for pudding - the last of the limoncello. It's Italian, shut up! Well I say the last, half a large martini glass to be fair - and that's more than a couple of fingers, I guess.

That bottle came back from Verona, oh two years ago, and it's been knocking about the fridge ever since. Making friends with bottles of gin that have come and gone... wondering why no one looked twice at it. Poor Limoncello wallflower.

Yet sitting out in Verona's main square cafe, listening to Duran Duran sing Hungry Like the Wolf from an outdoor concert in the nearby coliseum, it tasted like nectar.

Back in Blighty. Tastes like alcoholic lemony sugar-goo.

Why is it local alcoholic drinks just don't travel like they should? What's lurking on your drinks cabinet?

Ah St Valentine's Day, patron saint of the gift card industry, with Mother's Day quietly waiting in the wings.

But it seems this February 14 is also the tenth birthday of The Angel of the North.
Loved since the day its great towering hulk was riveted to the Newcastle skyline, this piece of public art is here to stay for sure.

Anthony Gormley says the Angel of the North 'bears witness to the hundreds and thousands of colliery workers who had spent the last 300 years mining coal beneath the surface'.

The Angel has something to say to more than just Geordies. People from Liverpool and Birmingham arrive in droves to see the towering sculpture in all its monumental splendour, according to that Guardian article.

How great that we have a piece of public art that speaks to people across the country.

Considerably worth more to this country than gift cards and fluffy toys with red nylon hearts sewn to their stomachs.

Let's rename this Angel of the North Day. Anyone with me?

You all know how I love running.

Seems Ronnie O'Sullivan loves running too and all that stuff I have been prattling on about, how it makes you feel fantastic and shiny, there's some professor who says it as well.

So I am right. An academic says it so it must be true!

Though aren't you amazed anyone as handsome and talented as Ronnie O'Sullivan could possible suffer from low self esteem. Just goes to show, doesn't it.

So you're feeling down, get those trainers on and move! You know it makes sense.

'Ooh, I woke up at 2.30 and thought it was five o'clock, then I couldn't get back to sleep,' said his Nibs this morning.

I'd just awoken from a dream where I was very noisily cleaning my teeth, but it turned out what I could hear was someone scraping their windscreen in the street outside.

'I had to get up and make some toast. i was so restless. It's horrible isn't it?' said his Nibs snuggling up to my shoulder and giving me a little hug.

'Yes it is,' I said, trying to sound sympathetic while inwardly thinking 'and try it five nights a week for a couple of months and see how horrible that is'.

But do you know, I slept rather well. And I did the night before too.

And I don't know whether it's all this lovely sunlight or I've shaken off the bug and his Nibs has caught it but I think I almost know what it is to be more than semi-conscious on a Wednesday morning.

Now that is a first for 2008.

I was "tagged" by our great film reviewer, The FlimFlamFilm Man and now I've grasped what I'm supposed to do, I think...

I do this and then tag seven more people and they should do it and tag others, etc, for a jolly long chain of "Seven Facts", from what I can gather. FlimFlam, sweetheart, were there ever questions? I'm working from your answers... here goes!

1) Reality TV? I don't really watch TV (except Torchwood because it's so bad it's fab - esp, the very naughty Captain Jack)so reality tv is something that tortures/absorbs others and passes me by.

2) Fave smell? My favourite smell is Anglomania by Vivienne Westwood and roses from my garden on a warm summer day.

3) Cat or Dog? I'm completely a cat person. Adore them. The best cat in the world is called Tiger and he lives with my friend Jane.

4) Alpha Male? (!!) I am completely fine with most alpha male tasks but prefer an alpha male to do them for me, leaving me time to play.

5) Fave bands? Some of my favourite bands include Teenage Fan Club, Muse, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Underworld, Pink Floyd, Shack, Nick Cave & Badseeds, early Human League and i love Julian Cope.

6) Self improvement fan? I'm not interested in improving myself, 'improving' implies it's a chore or something a bit spartan and puritanical. But I am interested in acquiring new skills, having a go and learning as much about everything as I can. Do your best, open your mind, be kind.

7) God or athiest? Oh, I'm a believer.

I tag:

EllieGant
hannahfur
bunnybunbunbun
lindow
grumpybloke
jembajr
munzy

You would have thought so the way some people behave on public transport.

So there I am, swinging my foot about absent-mindedly to Cowgirls on Bolton railway station platform. I'm a bit late home due to a minor carry-on at work but I'm not narky or anything.

Amazingly, even though it's supposed to have gone, the 17.12 to Buxton appears from nowhere and I'm just thinking my train mojo is on fire, when SHE barges in front of me.

I mean right in front of me.

Now we all know the bus-train etiquette. Buses, it's every man for himself, you just run at them, throw yourelf at them, flash your permit and grab a seat while those with something as silly as money queue and sort themselves out.

Trains are different. Trains you form an orderly huddle round the door, let passengers off and then file on - nicely.

Not this little madam, she pushes in front of me, grabs a seat by the window half way down the carriage and then plonks her plastic bag down in the other seat.

What do I do? Walk up to her and ask could she please move her bag so I might sit down. Then sit down and continue to smile as she thrusts plastic bag under seat, which appears to contain a very jaggy lunch box, and then slams down the arm rest.

I then flick my Ipod to Dont Fear the Reaper and listen to it, grinning widely!

Let's play nicely out there, and if we can't play nicely let's just out polite the idiots!

While lolling in the bath earlier this evening, my tummy stuffed with sausages, red onion gravy and a fabulous mashed potato oozing butter, it gave me great pleasure to recall my mother would be furious.

'You must not have a bath on a full stomach,' she used to shout at the back of my head as a teenage me floated round the house oblivious to the noise she made. I can't remember what was supposed to happen to me if i did(because I was floating around being oblivious, obviously) but it certainly doesn't seem to be doing me any harm today.

I'm pretty sure she had declared swimming on a full stomach led to instant death and so me and my brother spent many a summer afternoon looking longingly at the breaking waves along Bigbury Beach waiting for the moment she would judge our lunches had sufficiently 'gone down'.

Then there were all the other don'ts:
* don't swallow apple pips, they grow in your stomach,
* don't swallow chewing gum, it will get mangled in your stomach/kill you,
* do eat your crusts or your hair won't curl.

I am sure there are a hundred more...

It's an old joke:

Q: How did George Michael get covered in chocolate?
A: He was careless with his wispa

But it appears losing a bar of chocolate down the back of the sofa leads to the sweet sound of money being made five years down the line.

Would you Adam and Eve it?

It's a Big Day for us in Manchester today.

Every club has its history and its tragedy but as a one-time big United fan I'm hoping today will see us all, City or United supporter, behave with honour and respect and love for our home and a game that gives us all so much.

Many moons ago, when you still stood up at matches, I spent every other Saturday afternoon in the Stretford Paddock screaming with joy everytime Norman Whiteside ploughed up that field, impervious to fouling. Being swept about in a sea of cheering men, united in feeling is a glorious thing. But it wasn't all glory in those days. These were the Ron Atkinson years. It wasn't easy.

And then things got better and I fell in love with the Erica Cantona-Ryan Giggs partnership and would cheerfully twitter on about the 'physical poetry of a midfield pass'.

My passion for the game has waned over the years, although I watched Aston Villa completely outclass Newcastle yesterday lunchtime over a couple of pints of Marston's pedigree in the Station in Didsbury and had a fine time. (Kevin Keegan in that tracksuit - hilarious!)

But I care enough to have my fingers crossed the derby today passes without incident and we are all allowed the opportunity to pay our respects to beautiful, talented men who died in such tragic circumstances.

Bounced down the river this morning in complete Fotherington-Thomas style: 'Hello clouds, hello sky'!

Here in God's blessed country the sun is shining, the sky is rippled with jet stream, the grass is pushing itself up - all is glorious!

Running shorts weather for the first time in months. Well kind of - the mists were still rising over the fields and when I ran through the woods I could feel the earth's warmth all ready for new life - either than or there's a hulking great sewer pipe down there! It was chilly round the thighs though, but 100pmh better than a couple of weeks ago.

This morning's run was hampered mildly by the four pints of guinness I sank last night - strange stitch affair going on - but I had great fun running home.

Truth be told I'm a bit knackered by mile three to four just now so I walk bits and run bits and generally have a laugh on the way home. So I'm past West Didsbury and Born Slippy appears on the ipod and I'm off, laughing to myself as I plough along as fast as I can humming 'lager, lager' to myself. It's like I'm running properly and everything and of course that makes me laugh out loud and then, as I look up, this golfer is walking along the boundary path above me, laughing at my frollocking about in the mud and I wasn't in the slightest bit bothered.

I was having all the fun, flying along.

Hurray for Spring - come on!

I did start this blog imagining I'd be wowing you all with tales of my commuting adventures, and as some of you may have noticed I've kind of strayed off the point of late.

Truth is; bus-train world is a bit dull day to day.

But something's happened of late - my bus has been rerouted for the past week. Palatine Road is having new gas mains and so it's closed to buses heading into town. Certainly before dawn anyway.

We're currently sailing round Lapwing Lane and into Didsbury and, I have noticed, picking up an entirely different class of gentleman.

Now i don't know if it's the first hint of Spring that's drawn my attention to them, but more than a smattering of our new No43 passengers are well dressed, quite tall and they smell nice! The man sitting behind me this morning was wafting something very lovely down the bus.

Roadworks always take a lot longer than you'd think, don't they? Fingers crossed!

Thank you to whichever sweetie/s nominated me for a Bloscar. I'm very touched/hugely surprised/bit embarrassed I didn't know what a Bloscar was.

I'm afraid I'm not techie enough to make a little sign on my blog that says 'vote for me' and as we know I'm largely tied up being a girlie swot on my course anyway.

But I'm more than happy to pad along as underdog which is where any arsey woman with heavily left-wing values and a loathing of snobbery expects to find herself in the 21st century.

Competitions do suggest some of us are more equal that others but I say hurrah for us all - we're all winners. We all make the effort. We all have something to say. And regardless of what the little twit who wandered past my views on Ikea last week thinks, I find us fascinating. Especially my friends.

Thank you, big kiss. You've quite made my week.

For the past six months I've been having spontaneous nose bleeds. In effect, no one punches me, it's just my right nostril pours with blood from time to time.

Sometimes when I've got out of a hot bath. Or when I get stressed. Can be a bit embarrassing in meetings as I think it's a sniffle, rub nose and promptly send blood flying. Nice, I know!

So, having just put another towel prematurely into the wash, looking like it ran into a fight, maybe I need to reconsider my first 'no way' reaction to the ENT consultant's cure.

Apparently it needs cauterizing. I have a wee blood vessel that's too close to the skin surface inside my nose and it keeps rupturing. We need to seal it off. Burn the little beggar out of existance.

Now I can guess what cauterizing entails. Something hot being rammed up my nose and burning and stuff. And it all sounds a bit too much like an Elizabeathan torture technique to me. Meet Sir Francis Wallsingham and his rack, iron maiden and cauterizing tools.

Being a complete baby about having hot, burning things rammed up my nose I said I'd think about it.

ENT man says it won't hurt but we all know what that means. Bugger all.

So, has anyone had it done? Did it hurt? Should I be a brave bunny or just carry on clutching a tissue?