Sat 3rd March

Not much knitting to speak of but I did have a rather wonderful day yesterday largely due to these.

Pooch now refers to me as 'DangerByrne'. I was surprised, as I am sure some of you will be, to realise that the skating prowess I enjoyed at the age of 8 has withered somewhat in the intervening 20 years. I therefore skate with all the elegance of a newborn giraffe and make very similar noises while doing so. But skate I did. Oh yes. It took me about an hour to get approx 400m in Hyde Park yesterday as I had to keep stopping to enjoy the scenery. Meantime all these bright young things kept zipping past me. Most of them turned to skate backwards at the point where they actually took over so as to better observe my ungainly progress and snigger into their retro kitsch skater snoods. The buggers. However, I am determined to persevere as it gets me out of breath so must therefore be good for me and I don't totally hate it.

While staggering along I had the chance to enjoy a bit of Hyde Park at its spring time best. Allow me to present some nature candy...

It did all bring home to me people's love of exhibitionism (says she with a blog, zine and podcast). For instance look closely at this photo.

In the centre of the bandstand was a guy with a skipping rope. He kept stopping every few skips to adjust his clothes and check his hair.

I ended up walking round London for about 3 hours pretending to be a tourist and whipping out my camera at unsuitable locations to take pictures that could be called either edgy or crap depending on your nature.

Now when I say no knitting to speak of I am of course lying because with SkipNorth coming up I have been thinking of nothing else. My stash has been duly spread across the whole flat with this being the master bedroom at about 10am yesterday.

Ahhhhh, wool wool wool. In fact I am selling a fair lump of it as I had a brutal reconciliation session yesterday plus I need to amke space for the acquisitions next weekend. If you are interested in tonnes of 99p bargains click here. (Ignore the PS2 games - those are Pooch's contribution to the electricity bill - or bid extravagantly if they are your kind of thing.)

Pooch has now departed for a better place (The Lake District) and should arrive in KendalMintCake in an hour or two. His absence gives me the opportunity to reflect on my life BP (before pooch) because at some point I used to do my own food shopping and my own cooking. Now what did I cook? Pooch talks laughingly of millet and cuttle fish but I distinctly remember buying things that could only be described as 'value'. I'm talking those sausages that are made of 'pork products' and cooking chocolate and jars of cooking sauces, or tins even, and dried pasta (although Pooch has come round to dried pasta after Heston told him it was OK to use it). It did make me think that actually I prefer the cheap stuff. Let us take yesterday as an example - I could have bought some luxury chocolate to have as my sat night treat yesterday but instead I went to the sweet shop in piccadilly and bought pick'n'mix. Now leaving aside the fact this stuff has been open to elements for 8 years or more and has been manhandled by every german teenager in site I just can't get enough of those vermicelli covered rum balls that have never seen a hint of rum, or probaby of chocolate. Show me a sweet shop and I head straight for the white chocolate skulls and mice that don't so much melt in the mouth as dissolve into mush. Ooooo, cheap sweets. Yum yum yum. Which reminds me of a Frank Zappa song called 'Cheap Thrills' which went, if my memory serves me correctly.....(ahem)

Cheap Thrills
In the the back of my car
Cheap Thrills
How fine they are

Now there was a man. Let us not forget his position on muffins - a force to be reckoned with.

So anyway, skater Byrne signing off. As a parting shot here I am trying to be a hoody although my gargantuan middle aged thighs are giving me away somewhat.