In my day, all this were fields

A training course - and a train - took me back to Leeds, where I spent many happy hours as a teenager browsing for cerise, batwinged items in Clockhouse at C&A. 

Things are not the same. Clockhouse is long gone. The cellar steakhouse - the height of class for a dad-and-daughter meal out in the 1980s, where you could watch people's feet go past and pretend you were in the Cheers bar - has closed.

The sewing shop has turned into something completely terrifying.

Reaching the theatre venue, however, was more comforting. A very long time ago I had a first date there, to see Reece Dinsdale in The Revenger's Tragedy.

(Where I grew up, men who took you to the theatre were few and far between. The only choice open to me was to have his children.)

Strangely, a couple of months ago Mr Coffee went to someone's office for a meeting; on the wall was the poster for the very production we'd seen. 

Larkin's almost-instinct was right. What will survive of us is love. Not steakhouses, not sewing, but love. And, of course, Reece Dinsdale.

Things I failed to photograph

I took some photographs this weekend, but there were many I just couldn't get.

Lemon cake with syllabub and blueberries, made for girlfriends on Friday night. Too delicious. Owp.

A selection of things I managed to restrain myself from buying at the Lakeland Limited shop in Windermere. But oh. oh.

A friend's garden, filled with the children my children grew up with, the friends with whom I've watched them grow, and laughter.

How very happy I was this weekend. Impossible to photograph.

Robert Downey Junior made me ill

Did you wonder where I was? We went to the cinema to see Iron Man 2, and I came home and was violently sick.

To be fair, it probably wasn't Downey Jr's fault. It was either a bug, or the sight of poor Mickey Rourke, who looks as if he's been caught in a series of horrific fires.

After two days on the sofa sipping tea and watching old episodes of Frasier, I was feeling well enough to face the world.

And then I read Kate's blog about proposals to change reporting laws regarding rape and started feeling violently sick again.

The feminist in me demands justice. The convalescent in me calls for cake. Time to decide - what kind of a woman am I?

In your face, Spring

The other day we went to the beach to play and have ice-creams. We ended up huddled round mugs of cocoa in a warm cafe.

Let's admit it. It's freezing. It might be May, it might look sunny, but the wind is biting cold. The last few mornings I have worn gloves on the walk to work.

So, a change of plan. We decided to work with what we had.

Yin and Yang

So. David Cameron is our new Prime Minister. It would be an understatement to say I'm not happy about that.

However, last night I had a very, very nice dream about Pierce Brosnan.

So for one night at least, the Universe was in balance.

Today we all get to feel like Wolfie

 Citizen Smith, copyright of the BBC