Road To Nowhere

You eat your body-weight in Belgian chocolate.

You gain ten pounds.

Fazzan-bazzen-rabban... *channelling Mutley*

Damned laws of sweeties.

Right; where's my running shoes.

I am going to say this, but I don't think I can eat any more chocolate.

There. I've said it.

Or Christmas cake for that matter.

Dear God, what has the festive season done to me?!?!?!?!

I am not loving it.

It is marching too fast for me.

Several times over Christmas, mainly because I've been in my home town, I have had Time thump me on the side of the head and shout "SEE!" in my ear.

'Oh yes, the Buck and Bell, used to be a great pub, before it was referbed,' I twittered on hearing this once-great palace of pool tables and bikers was shut.
'Yes it was a great pub when you were 18 Deana... but that was 25 years ago.'

And it turns out Time has turned my home town into London commuter belt. How the hell did that happen?

I grew up in a sleepy market town 20-odd miles north of Oxford. The furthest anyone ever travelled to work was Cowley. Now there are people working in Canary Wharf who think it's great they can hop on the train and be at work in an hour and a half.

By little brother's fiance has adult children and he's got a bald spot and my mother's nearly 70.

And another year starts this week. Pah!

Horatio.

Dead?

How can this be?

Is this the Christmas spirit? Killing off my new favourite crime hero?

Hopefully his eyes were open because he was breathing.

Hmmm...

Rather than send cards to my colleagues this year I have made a donation to Shelter.

I've just filled in my details online. Really easy and quick.

And I have a nice, warm festive glow now... and I haven't even had a drink yet!

It's our 'do' today.

I am attempting to muster enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is hiding in the wardrobe and shouting 'bugger this for a game of soldiers' when not sucking its thumb and fondling a comfort blanket.

Last year I had another party to attend, ensuring an early escape. Early escape again for me this year, I think.

Anyway, I can predict I will miss nowt.

This office is relatively well behaved.

There will be excessive drinking by certain parties. There will be 'words' and I have had a strong word with myself re keeping my big mouth shut and NOT saying what I think. But I can't see any serious scandal.

Not like those parties of old.

Ah, the good old journo days. Days when morality was something to preach not practice (no changes there either, I suspect). Which partially explains the Christmas party clean-up bill once came close to exceeding the cost of the buffet and most of the damage to the curtains was caused by a member of the subs' bench using them as a launch aid onto the dance floor.

So, with nothing more than slurring to look forward to I plan to be out by 7pm.

This year I have the season finale of CSI Miami waiting for me at home.

This may be a sad reflection of my myopic loyalties and imploding social life but I don't care. Me. Horatio. That sofa. 9pm. That's final.

Two huge boxes of Thortons premium collection have landed on my desk today.

YES!!!!

Me and trusty assistant are ploughing on through truffle and creme and somehow forgeting to mention this windfall to anyone else in the team.

I have a slight stabby headache but I'm made of sterner stuff. We cannot turn back.

Dark Champagne Truffle.

Dual Layered Praline.

Caramel Divine.

For King and country, for love and life and happiness.... charge!!

I've just opened up my office email account.

404 emails in there. I have been away four working days.

About 50 will be telling me I'm over my email account size limit.

Sigh... and so it begins. Onwards!

Yes, it's happened.

After two years of only glancing at a tele - thanks to that part-time master's degree I took on, blithely imagining I could do it on the bus on the way to work in the morning - I have found myself a tv junkie. Now all that studying is over i have spare time. Spare time to lie on the sofa and do nothing.

So far it's only CSI... and maybe Num3ers... but I can't get enough.

Num3ers is only a fliration. It just amuses me that you can solve crime with maths.

But last night I watched CSI New York at 8pm and four hours later toddled off to bed, having gazed with complete fascination at CSI (two episoides) and CSI Miami.

I love them all, I just can't help it.

CSI New York is all urban and gritty, CSI is set in las Vegas so has some wild, bonkers storylines and CSI Miami has the strangely attractive Horatio, the ballistics specialist with the helium voice and a skyline permanently parked on 'brink of Armageddon'. What colour is that sky? Hazy, pinky, stormy... something looming and portentious and possibly nicked from Inspector Morse, actually. Oxfordshire... Miami...? Maybe it's my imagination.

And it's the season finale of CSI Miami tomorrow. Clashing with our office festive outing. I am very tempted to slip off early, really tempted...

I am back!

I have survived the quest.

Through hot, arid shops, down bustling, crowded streets, I have sallied forth with determination, verve and a credit card.

With patience I have queued, with a smile I have allowed dithering shoppers to pass first in aisles, with ipod switched to full volume I have drowned out mewling brats on the bus.

And now I can rest. Triumphant.

I have done my Christmas shopping.

Chums are gifted up, as are family. I have found a Bob Dylan book of poems and photos for Nibs.

And a cutesy, flattering little, black frock for me that I'll be wearing to the office 'do' on Tuesday and sundry family events over festive period.

All in all I think this Christmas thing might just be under control.

Now, a hot chocolate and a little forty-winks catnap for me, I think.

Yes, ok, I've been in the Netherlands, but where is Eurostar central? Belgium, Brussels to be precise.

And what is in Brussels? Chocopolis.

And what is in Chocopolis?

CLICK HERE

Chocopolis is a five minute stroll from Brussels Central station (Eurostar is based at Brussels South and a three-minute train ride away), set in a pretty square with handy bar restaurants if you need to sit down after picking up your swag.

I'm not going to confess how much I spent on chocolate. But let's just say my luggage seemed considerably heavier by the time I'd escaped.

Oh, and they appear to do mail order... listening Row?

If Maastricht were not enough in itself, it is a stone's throw from plenty of other interesting cities.

Take Aachen. Yeah, I know, 'where?'

Get on a No 50 bus at the train station and for 4.5 euros you can get there and back again. Takes an hour. Buses every 30 minutes. It's worth that just to go view the Dutch and German countryside.

As you belt down the road there are farms and castles and villages to gawp at. And then you get to Aachen itself.

Aachen has history in spades. More than spades. Shedloads.

It dates back to roman times but is most famous for its cathedral, built for Charlemagne in the 800s.

It is astonishing.

Gothic with the biggest capital G you ever saw, inside the cathedral towers up with columns of smooth granite and marble that seem to defy architectural probability. Only for the glory of god could such feats be achieved. The stained glass windows are colossal and mesmerising and there is a beautiful chapel to Our Lady.

Somehow Aachen's cathedral scraped through World War II without much more than a scratch, though the rest of the city was battered black and blue.

A lot of Aachen is practical and modern but around the city hall is medieval charm. And it has... a huge Christmas market.

Towering behind the stalls that pack the town hall square is a 40-foot high inflatable gingerbread man. As he sways in the near-arctic breezes (wrap up as if you were going snowboarding, it's perishing) he sets out the stall for this Christmas market's main theme.

Food. Sausages, potato cakes, fried potatoes, doughnuts, waffles, gingerbread.. all those smells fill the air. I love them all. I was giddy from just inhaling the scent of all to come.

Yes, more bratwurst was consumed. And mulled wine and somehow I managed to fit in a waffle, strolling about with hordes of French kids and the odd English tourist.

Travel broadens the mind - but also the waistline. Running shoes on tomorrow. And I might ask Santa for a bike for Christmas.

Why are you going to Maastricht?

Are you going to sign a treaty?

Err... where is it... Belgium?

Maastrict doesn't really come onto the British radar, does it? We kind of know where it is (umm.. somewhere on the continent) and we know there was a treaty signed there but that, for most of us, is that.

That is our loss; Maastricht is a city-break gem. It's actually in the Netherlands, though you can get to Germany and Belgium in a hop. Getting to Maastricht itself takes a couple of hours via Eurostar. And for those two hours you get transported to a world of relaxed European chic.

Maastricht train station is handsome in the way the Dutch are handsome people. Tall, sturdy, assured. It has everything you need and more - take five minutes to admire the stained glass windows.

I stayed at The Eden Hotel which is a five minute walk from the station. Quite a treat for an Ibis-regular like me, but it was a worth-every-penny lovely treat. As you walk into the lobby along a fancy-lighting corridor of glass, chrome and the universe laid out on a carpet (!) you know it is going to be special. The rooms are designed by people like Phillip Starck. The lift had leather-padded walls. The hallways smelled of grass and flowers. My room smelled heady and sensuous. I slept like a baby in a huge bed, nestled on down-soft pillows. I would move in tomorrow if I could.

Highlights of Maastricht at Christmas: food and drink, shopping, architecture, I'd say.

Maastricht's cobbled streets, which are frequented only by cyclists and pedestrians, are packed with cafes and restaurants. Things to try - firstly, the hot chocolate is heavenly and essential on a mizzly, chilly winter's mornings.

You just can't get better steak and chips. I had steak so tender it was like cutting butter. Dinner for two + beers was coming in at 45 euros, including tip. Yes, that's about £43 these days but I defy you to get food and beer of that quality in this country for that price. It may be less than a bargain these days, but what would you rather have? Odd cheap city breaks away or low interest rates and constant sales at home?

Maastricht also has a fair selection of Belgium's finest beers to sample. It's got its coffee houses for those who prefer to relax with something other than a Trappist beer but they are discretely located without the in-your-faceness of Amsterdam.

One downer; swerve the Irish bar. £5 for a pint of guinness and it's rubbish. Thin as Kate Moss's arm.

And so to shopping. Europe has saved itself from the death-mall culture we've been suckered into. Its town's streets are packed with small, interesting shops, specialising in everything from exotic underwear to Miffy emporiums. And Maastricht is no different. Bars and cafes are on every corner. Street food - from waffles to bratwurst - is everywhere. Its winding cobbled streets are lined with designer stores. All the big European brands are there but there are boutiques with windows showing off clothes we would never see in Britain. Intriguing explosions in gothica, for a frock fan like me it was fascinating to see these concoctions of ribbon and silk and feathers.

Maastricht is an incredibly attractive city. It has fine churches to wander round, beautiful buildings and its streets loop about in a charming maze of shops and cafes. Its town square is full of a fair just now, with a massive big-wheel, and there's ice skating. Here the fair's music is all gentle waltzes, no booming Kylie. And that's a big difference between us and the Dutch, while we go for loud, fast and frantic they are moving about their business, smiling and calm. Clever buggers.

They are also handsome. I didn't see one obese person there - and God knows they like their food and drink. They pack the bars after work, for a beer and a chat and snacks. I can only put it down to not eating rubbish, cycling everywhere and having a national psyche tuned into 'chill out, relax, be helpful, be happy'.

We have a lot to learn from our continental cousins.

Photos to follow next week.

I am back from Maastricht.

My, what a lovely, lovely place it is (more of which in later blog entry).

But first let me begin with throwing my arms about the whole Eurostar thing and giving it a huge bloody hug.

What an invention!

St Pancras is just the most calm, relaxed station I have come across in this country. It's only five minutes' walk from Euston so you really can't complain about having to trolley about. It's next door to Kings Cross.

It has a champagne bar. It has oodles of shops. It has gorgeous floors. It has style. It radiates its beauty with an airy assurance.

Check in; 30 minutes before you are setting off. So no fannying about in an airport lounge over-stuffed with twittering pensioners and squealing children while waiting an eternity for your plane to roll up.

Passport control and bag checking is how it used to be. You can take foundation and eye cream and not have one of them confiscated for tipping you over the hand luggage millilitre rule. Nothing has to be in a zip-lock bag. You can take as much water as you care to.

The trains themselves are comfy, fly like a rocket and don't tip about like those ghastly pedalo things Virgin seem to run on every trip to London I make. (I can't abide them. Like being shunted through time and space inside a drinking straw. Just how thin can you make a train before it becomes the actualization of hell?)

For some £75 I got to Leige and back (ticket on to Maastrict about four euros) in comfort and calm. You don't get that at an airport do you? And the whole journey took a couple of hours, which knocks spots off the time we spend faffing about in airports these days.

Hurray for trains, I say. (But not those bloody pedalos!)

Last night's trains home were a complete fiasco.

A signal failure at Lostock left us all stomping up and down Bolton station platform in the bitter cold and wind for 40 minutes.

Thankfully a Victoria station train,coming on a different line, tipped up at 5.30pm and 150 people crammed their way on.

By fortune of careful platform positioning and a way with getting to the front of queue (skills honed in South Amercia where orderly queuing is unheard of) I found myself sitting next to a woman on her way home to Rochdale. And so her story began.

We started off with weather chat and how she was coming from Preston and her boyfriend had got off the train at Bolton to get a connection for going down to London from Piccadilly.

I said he wouldn't be going anywhere fast as that line was at a standstill due to signaling failure. She laughed. Then she said she was going to finish with him on the train, but she thought he would cry and she couldn't be doing with that.

It turned out she'd been helping him clean one of four student houses he owned in Preston and was now on her way home. How he was loaded and ate her out of house and home but never coughed up a penny, even though she had nothing.

They'd met 11 years ago when they'd had an affair while she was escaping her violent, drunk husband. But then she'd decided to finish it, got divorced, hadn't seen him for 10 years and then decided to phone him out of the blue. He came running like a shot.

'He was all right as an affair, but I can't stand him in my house once a week now,' she said. 'He's spent £40,000 on a hair transplant and he looks like a freak.'

I said it sounded like she could do better.

And so we parted at Victoria. Her to find another train to Rochdale, me to wend my way home via M&S sale where I picked up two jumpers for £27, so was well chuffed.

I don't know why people find it necessary to tell me their life stories. It was my saving grace as a reporter. I had no killer instinct, I hated doorstepping, but I could get people to tell me how they felt abouty most things.

I have just aquaplaned my way up from the station to work this morning, sliding about on pavements with gritted teeth and steely determination not to hit the deck.

We have rain on frozen slush here.

It's lashing down.

It's horrible.

And I am all wet.

But I have hot chocolate, so all is not lost.

Melt you b**d, melt!

You are called Nick Hancock.

CLICK HERE

Nick has been caught speeding in Scotland now, but he's been stopped once or twice before... He has previously been convicted of speeding in the Sheffield area in November 2005 and January 2006 and in Stoke-on-Trent in May this year.

I was amused by his solicitor's argument that he needed a car for his television work. yeah, right. like Nick can't afford a taxi.

They Think It's All Over...? Well it is for six months, mate.

Welcome to the world of public transport, Nick.

What an idiot.

This morning I pottered into sainsbury's to buy Christmas cards, fruit and the secret of eternal youth (strangely, they didn't have the last item).

At the till I paid for said items - minus the secret of eternal youth - and glanced at my receipt.

Sainsbury's is counting the VAT reduction in with your money off in three for twos and stuff. So it looks like they're giving you an even bigger bargain.

Cheeky monkeys.

CLICK HERE

for rant reference.

I found it in the cup cupboard at 11am.

Not washed up very well either.

Woe betide Goldilocks when i catch up with her!!

If you live in Manchester you could help someone else at Christmas this year with...

Nexus café on Dale Street, Manchester, M1 1JW

they are asking people to fill a shoe box for the poor.

This Christmas the Boaz Trust will be distributing gift-filled shoeboxes to destitute asylum seekers around Greater Manchester... The café are collecting shoe boxes, but also individual items to be put in a box. Suggested contents: hats, scarves and gloves, socks, dried fruit and nuts including dates and figs, toiletries, pens and stationery, small gifts and Christmas cards. Please gift wrap the items in the box (do not seal the box) and label it 'male' or 'female'. The boxes can be placed under the Christmas tree at Nexus.

Thank you for your support.

Whether you're pro-congestion charging or not, you can't deny this is a savvy bit of marketing from the VOTE YES brigade.

CLICK HERE!

...And when Deana-bear went to make her porrige that morning her bowl was nowhere to be seen.

'Who's been eating out of my bowl?' said Deana-bear, opening all the cupboards in the office kitchen to see if someone might have (because there must be a 'q' in the month, or something) tidied up.

'It was on the draining board this morning,' said Mark-bear, eating his 52nd digestive biscuit and yet managing to retain the physique of a skelf.

'Well, it's not there now!' thundered Deana-bear, making her porrige in a lack-lustre communal bowl, which wasn't at all like her nice, white, steep-sided bowl that was her's because she chose it and bought it and did not like sharing it. At all.

At dinner time her bowl wasn't back.

And the next day it was still missing.

Deana-bear made her porrige in a not-very-nice bowl again. It just wasn't the same.

'Bowl? Bowl? I'm going to have Goldilock's head on a plate!' muttered Deana-bear.

'Grrrrr!'

The End

I've found a new exercise toy - spinning.

Basically you pedal like fury on a stationary bike to dance music. You put more resistance on the wheel to make it harder and turn it back if the resistance is killing you.

Sometimes you pedal really fast, sometimes you stand up and pedal which is like going up hill, somtimes you just try to concentrate on your muscles not exploding.

This morning there were ten of us in the gym for quarter to eight.

Two spinning novices - me and Simon from personnel - and the rest were seasoned spinners.

It was one very hot half hour though - I was bright red and dripping by the end of it.

Now it's dinner time I'm exhausted. Mind you, I've signed up for Wednesday early morning class as well!