I've got a crush on you...

I admit it. I have had some weird celebrity crushes in the past. Whatever, I'll hold my head up high proud that I do not like the same people everyone else likes. David Beckham? no thanks. Daniel Craig? silly swimming trunks. Morten Harket? I prefer Mags... you get the picture.

So, here for you are some of my most embarrassing celebrity (although the term can be used losely...) crushes. In no particular order:

1 - Adam Woodyatt - yes that is Ian Beale from Eastenders. Circa '87 if you will.

2 - Spider from Corrie.

3 - Peter Barlow from Corrie.

4 - Peter Duncan of Duncan Dares/Blue Peter fame.

5 - Danny from NKOTB. What can I say I favoured the underdog.

6 - Rick Astley.

7 - Currently it's Super Hans from Peep Show.

8 - I think I took quite a shine to Roy Castle he of Record Breakers...? maybe not, the mind plays tricks...

9 - Sanjay from Eastenders. Soaps seemed to be a hotbed of hunks (?) in my early teens...

10 - Dieter Brummer in Home & Away, actually that's not embarrassing he was lush. Oh heck, I maybe quite liked Clive from Neighbours...

So there we have it...

Oh c'mon, stand up and be counted, what were yours?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Love it or hate it, you can’t avoid it now that Christmas is just around the corner! So it seems timely that I should blog about Christmas but what with the writing of cards, the tedium of wrapping presents (for the record mine look like Stevie Wonder did them aided by Ray Charles), food shopping and the endless round of nights out and festive meals I ain’t got the time… instead you’ll have to make do with a sort of stream of consciousness affair of random Christmas memories, traditions and thoughts. So get comfortable and pour yourself a large Bailey’s while you’re at it grab a handful of Quality Street – you’re worth it…

I do enjoy a walk on Christmas Day, something the other half can’t seem to comprehend. Even if we just had an amble round the block we always went for a walk on Christmas Day to “walk off the lunch” – well probably a few sprouts or a carrot. One year Dad made us look for reindeer prints from Rudolf. We looked very hard…

My Sister and I were not allowed to get up on Christmas Day until we had heard the heating kick in and the boiler firing up. As soon as one of us heard it we would wake the other ‘I think I heard it?!’ we would then go and take our stockings to Mum & Dad’s room to open them up. One memorable year they were on camp beds in the cupboard under the stairs due to a full-house that year of both sets of grandparents. My Sister had a terrible sweet tooth even then so most years she kicked off Christmas Day by devouring a fair bit of chocolate and then felt sick. She never learnt. (It was almost most definitely her then who couldn’t wait to eat the chocolates off the tree so ate some then stuffed the wrappers back into other wrappers to make fake decorations as not to get found out…)

As we weren’t that well off when I was a kid Mum would quite often make us presents which we were always delighted with. I still have the little bean filled rabbit toy, modelled on Miffy, named Snowball. She’s lost most of her mouth and she could do with a good wash but I still treasure her. But the best present by far were the ‘bedsits’ Mum had made for our dolls out of a large cardboard box. These had featured on Blue Peter and Mum stayed up at night to make them long after we went to bed. A bag of off cuts from Laura Ashley were employed for the soft furnishings. A large decorative postage stamp made a good painting and matchboxes were magically turned into chests of drawers with the aid of some wood-effect sticky backed plastic and paper fasteners. The only thing that took the shine off these presents were when family friends, The Heads, used to pop round in the evening for drinks and nibbles and their two children would dismiss our unique crafted gifts by pissing all over them (not literally) with tales of their new Star Wars toys, Casio keyboards, BMXs etc. We never wanted for much to be honest as long as I got my new packet of felt tip pens I was a reasonably happy bunny.

We were allowed a cheeky Babycham and lemonade on Christmas Day at lunch. At New Year we were allowed a Snowball. I bought both of these concoctions for my 80s party earlier this year and the latter was rendered disgusting…actually let’s say abominable… the abominable snowball? See what I did there? The Babycham was passable and I have a fair bit left so it seems the right thing to do this year to quaff it on Christmas Day.

I have never seen The Queen’s Speech. Never have, hopefully never will.

I have only ever once gone out on the lash on Christmas Eve and even then had to be back home and tucked up in bed before midnight. Too many friends have stories of getting so wasted and spoiling the big day. It’s never appealed. I’ve had a few messy 23rds of December, but that’s acceptable. These days my Christmas Eve tradition is to go home as soon as I can from work watch Love Actually, do some baking and usually exchange presents with my friend accompanied by some mulled wine. The idea of going on a complete bender just doesn’t seem right.

My favourite Christmas song is ‘Christmas Wrapping’ by The Waitresses. ‘Stop the Cavalry’ is passable too. There haven’t been any really good Christmas songs for ages!

Pick N Mix teas were a feature of childhood Christmases. Yes, ok, that’s leftovers to you and me. Calling them that made them more palatable. As you can imagine it was the cold cuts of meat with salads, bread and butter and of course…pickles! I loved pickled onions as a child and still do. Since I’ve left home I have bought pickled onions, red cabbage, beetroot and piccalilli every Christmas because in my mind they are synonymous with Christmas. Often they are still skulking in the back of the ‘fridge come Easter. Despite my fondness for dried fruit I am not a huge fan of Christmas cake or the dry and dreaded Stollen. I prefer chocolates or a good Yule log if it’s going. Quality Street is my preference, especially the green triangles. I had to fight my Granddad for these as a child but now… they’re all MINE. And whoever invented the giant green triangles…well give that person a medal! Alongside birthdays and the summer holiday Christmas was also the time of year we were allowed fizzy drinks. There was Coke and lemonade but also limeade, cherryade (ugh!) and my favourite, cream soda. I had some of this on holiday recently (ok as a mixer with vodka) and it’s still good stuff.

Having a Mum who was also an infant school teacher was not always a good thing. Whilst my peers discussed their morning advent calendar finds in the playground; my advent calendar was never a shocker due to the fact that Mum had made my sister and I a calendar from old Christmas cards which was wheeled out annually. Thus what was behind the door every day was no great surprise. I got my first commercial, chocolate advent calendar at the age of 19. The other Christmas stalwart was the pasta Madonna. I am almost ‘LOL’ as I type this. Imagine, a figurine of the Virgin Mary made entirely of different types of pasta. No, not something dreamt up by Dali but made by my Mum. You have to try and use your imagination here. It was sprayed silver. I wonder where it is? I wonder if you can get a low-carb version these days.

The school Christmas disco was a much hyped up event which always left me feeling as deflated as the balloons that decorated the school hall. My friend Susan and I would plot for literally weeks about what we were going to wear (if I say ‘body’ you know what era we’re talking about…) and scoured the little chemist by the big Sainsbury’s for all sorts of amazing make up we were going to plaster on. At the age of 34 I still can’t master liquid eyeliner. The reason for this is that we both usually had an object of desire in mind that we were going to try and win over at said event. It always backfired. Most of this time we actually fancied the same boy and were inconsolable when he chose to dance with neither one of us one year at the disco. Many years we sat on the sidelines waiting to be asked to dance, like the wallflowers in Grease, and it never happened. We both say to this day that the opening bars of Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody” are quite depressing as they signified the end of the disco and not being asked to dance…again…!

I haven’t eaten meat since I was 14, save the odd drunken pork scratching or misjudged item at a buffet. My family were vegetarian too so Mum used to go to town on a vegetarian option. This usually involved blood, sweat and tears on her part and wrangling with sheets of filo pastry after a fair few sherries. I remember the festive cracker which was essentially a nut roast topped with cheese and spinach and…pastry. And something dubbed ‘The Martin Platt’ again a concoction of nuts and vegetables and…pastry; this time in a plait formation. Mmmm yum… these days I am just happy with a plate of vegetables to be honest as long as there are sprouts.

I'd love to hear your traditions and rituals...?

Book worm and proud of it...

No-one ever asks you what was the first book you bought? It’s always records (am really showing my age here) but seldom books. Of course I can’t actually remember the first book I bought. But books have always been around. I was extremely lucky to be surrounded by books from a young age. My parents are incredibly intelligent and well-educated people and my Mum in particular has always been an avid reader. Dad reads a bit more since retirement and in any case we’re not sure he is eligible to get books from the library as there’s the small matter of the unreturned Reggie Perrin book he has had since 1984…*

Books have always been an enormous part of my life and have now become my bread and butter as I have worked for a number of different publishers and a bookshop since I left University. Ergo I now proudly boast an enormous collection of books, many of which I didn’t have to pay for or got hefty discounts on.

I remember as a child lying in bed looking at the shelves of my parents’ books which were kept in my room (I’m guessing every other bookshelf in the house was hemorrhaging books so they had to use mine) and making up plots for the ‘grown up’ books that I was yet to discover: The Diary of Samuel Pepys (his surname pronounced ‘peppies’ in my mind), Lord of the Rings (I decided that was written by J.R.Tokking?), that Shakespeare book looks a bit big, not sure I’ll bother with that one. I decided to learn Latin from the weighty tome on my shelf. I think I learnt the word ‘via’ and that was as far as it went.

As a child I devoured books, they were my drug I couldn’t get enough. Every Saturday I was taken to the town library to get my fix. I think I was allowed four or five books which I had usually read by Sunday afternoon. Then there was the long stretch, my cold turkey, until the following Saturday when I could get some more. Astrid Lindgren’s Bullerby Children, Orlando the marmalade cat and Brambly Hedge were among my favourites. I never ‘got’ Dr Seuss and remembering being hugely disappointed one weekend when I’d squandered my school library choice of only one book on the dreary ‘Horton hears a whoo’.

At infant school as part of our varied and taxing timetable we had activities. This meant you could go and play in the sandpit or water trough or, if the weather was inclement, indoor play such as playing in the Wendy house. I saw all this as boring and pointless. I never played Mummies and Daddies in the Wendy house. Instead, I used my leisure time to either read more books in the library or to write my own! Yes, as a precocious six year old I harangued my teacher (Mrs Bridge) into giving me my own special exercise book so I could write my own book. The chronicles of the ‘Cat Family’ eventually spanned three separate exercise books. They’re still knocking around somewhere. Maybe I’ll send them to a publisher.

Junior school bought new excitement with the Wise Owl book club. A system where you could purchase stickers for 10p and save them up in a special card to exchange for a shiny new book. This was also the era my peers and I discovered Judy Blume and I used to sneak some of the more adult themed titles from my sister’s shelf.

Other favourites I remember from childhood were: The Munch Bunch and The Garden Gang series, Mr Men (Mum hated us reading these), Beatrix Potter, Russell Hoban’s ‘Frances’ books, The Mog books, The Giant Jam Sandwich, Flossie Teacake, Grimble, The Fib, Goodnight Mister Tom. Ann of Green Gables bored me and I abhorred Enid Blyton.

Secondary School English lessons were uninspiring as we waded through books I had usually read many years before. I also didn’t see the value in reading out loud to the class. Sorry can’t be arsed. Out of school I traded my pocket money for books I did want to read. Even if it was the Sweet Valley Twins series.

English was always my best subject at school so it was inevitable that my University degree would be in English Literature. Towards the end of my degree I started to mentally compile a list of books I could read ‘for fun’ once the degree was finished. This ended up being a huge amount of chick lit to rest my addled brain tempered with a fair bit of Irvine Welsh. I also discovered Jonathan Coe and rediscovered Ian McEwan. Had a brief flirtation with Martin Amis and a soft spot for Lisa Jewell. I rarely make time to read ‘the classics’ anymore.

I can’t just have one favourite book of all time so my joint favourites are The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Attwood and The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi. Recent favourites have included Room, The Post Birthday World, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Time Traveller’s Wife, Louise Wener’s Different For Girls, One Day, The Emperor’s Children, What I Loved... I tactically avoid the latest blockbusters and you can jolly well keep Harry Potter. And I still haven’t finished Shantaram after carrying it round about 8 different countries.

I also own an enormous amount of cookery books, a.k.a food porn. I can count on one hand the number of dishes I have actually made from these books but I do enjoy thumbing through them for inspiration. Or, usually just looking at the pictures when I am on a diet and feeling hungry. Nigella’s Domestic Goddess one is especially good for this purpose.

I am now the member of a book group which is good as it is challenging me to read outside of what I usually pick. The first book was crime/thriller which I have always emphatically steered away from.

E-books scare the bejesus out of me. It took me long enough to get a DVD player. I know they are the way forward but they are just not for me. No thank you. I’d probably still be using an abacus in lieu of a calculator and two yoghurt pots and some string rather than a mobile phone if I could get away with it.

I'd love to know what books have inspired, influenced and moved you?

(* I realise this anecdote would be so much better if it was an unreturned George Orwell book…)