STRAWBERRIES, CREAM CHEESE AND LITTLE BIT OF BLISS

I spent the weekend in Provence which was beautiful. Lovely place, lovely people, lovely food, lovely wine.  Perfect combination of ingredients.

I ate cheese. I do not eat cheese as it smells like mouldy socks and I have never been partial to eating mouldy socks.     But Claudine Vigier the master fromager there (the big cheese), made it sound so sexy (roll the cream around your mouth with your tongue very very slowly until it melts into your mouth).    

I stayed at Le Crillon Le Brave, @crillonlebrave about two hour's drive from Marseilles, depending on if you are French or English driving.  Owned by one of the former directors of Soho House, its more than Babington in France.   Although its more than one building, its also more than a hotel, or holiday village, or resort. I don't know what they should call it, perhaps just Crillon Le Brave.    Or Le Brave, as its taken over 26 years to get to this level and the nearby Pope's Palace in Avignon (hours drive away) only took twenty.

GM Sebastien who is as efficient as he is handsome, and his team are all very good looking and very efficient which really says it all (about me and them both).   Benoit Liebus, the sommelier, also made his description of wine tasting into something better than Fifty Shades.   "Wine and food is like a man meeting a woman.   A part they may be tasteless, but together they may taste amazing'   I may have lost or gained something in translation there but I've got it on tape.     Also don't eat egg/choose egg on the menu with wine. The wine will always taste of egg.   I didn't know that.  I do now.

Visited the strawberry festival in Carpentras where the fruit is the size of plums, and everything is strawberry. People dress as strawberries, sell the plants, millions in boxes, cup cakes, drinks, as long as its strawberry, it works.

Visited the antiques market in L'isle sur la Sorgue which is enthralling and lunched at Le Jardin du Quai @jardinduquai
 where the food and wine do a match.com of flavour.

Would recommend the break to anyone who wants a treat. Don't take children if you have them. It is wasted on them and Le Crillon has loads of stone steps up and down and they are bound to fall over.    Take someone worth loving.  Not saying your children aren't (they are, more than anyone or anything else, unconditionally) but this is grown up time.

PERFECT DOWN UNDER, AND NO CHOICE AT THE POLLS

Writing about Australia and have forgotten how stunning the country is - well, in the places I've visited.    My favourite is Adelaide and the surrounding wine region of the Barossa, then Brisbane and Gold Coast and then probably Sydney, although I've seen little of the rest, which I hope to do in the next few years.   I loved Adelaide.  Its as though its taken the best of everything and added something more.   And the Outback is haunting, chill down the spine but in a good way.   Walkabout hinted at the magic but you have to go yourself. There's now loads of glamping opportunities but I went (1997) when there were few and ostrich hadn't yet hit Tesco counters.

Just done report on working mothers and how the media portrays us.   They use guilt rhetoric to make us feel guilty about not spending enough time with our children (it doesn't matter - there is studies both for and against), they create a them and us culture with stay at home mums - that doesn't exist, but for some reason they want to exist; stimulate the anxiety to create a perfect work life balance that they see as a group thing rather than an individual thing (media doesn't think in terms of people being unique, just being demographics), and they create an ideal mother type that also doesn't exist.  The Telegraph talks at you, the Guardian talks to you, the Daily Mail talks about you (like the bitch in the playground), and the Express is just pleased you want to listen to them talking at all.   Didn't look at the Times. They just don't pay on time.

And I got my poll card.    I've recently written about the suffragette movement and how they suffered so women could get the vote.  Its a pity we can't do the same to get better people (and I mean that in every sense) to vote for.    'We' did not choose them.  That is what 'we' were offered.    Its a bit like going into a supermarket and there is only stuff there you don't want and know will either a) kill you b) make you fat c) give you spots.   So with those options you go for b) or c) both all of them are crap.

Milliband looks gormless and his party fucked up.  Blair keeps returning like the plague, puppet and paid by the bankers to bang on about how if we leave the EU our financial sector won't be paid as bigger bonuses as they were used to.  Every time I look at Cameron and Boris I think Riot club and no matter how much Cameron's wife plays happy families and makes them look as though they are one of us, I don't know who are they are, but they are not one of us.   He looks like a smug constipated hamster, although I admit I've never seen one but if I did, it would look like David Cameron.

So I don't know who to vote for. They are all liars or greedy or both.   The good ones never make it to the top (as in they have integrity, values which aren't linked to money, can't be bought, don't have something that the law, church, banks, CEOs or any other head of establishment, can blackmail them with), so we are just left with the social climbers who have used every dirty trick in the book to make it onto our screens to shout vote for me.

I want to vote but I don't want any of the ones on offer.

seven little piggies and a lovely break in Kent.

I visited a wonderful bed and breakfast called Hayne Barn House.   Literally just off the M20, five mins from the Channel Tunnel stop off, its an excellent base to stay before you go on either the train (Ashford International Station is close) or take the car.   It usually does weddings, there are only three bedrooms, but its one of those places that is cosy, stunning gardens, lovely even in and particularly in the rain, although we arrived when the sun was shining.   I took Tom to give him a break from revision, just for the evening and went to a restaurant called Silkwood in Saltwood where the b and b is based.    Its a gem, not hidden now because I'm going to talk about it anywhere I can. Host is Jean Paulo (Florence) and chef is (forgotten his name) but from Chicago. The food is excellent, as in sublime and the wines are from Kent as well as all over the world, but well chosen.  Cocktails excellent and I had a Kentish spring cocktail (vodka, hop syrup, Kentish champagne) wonderful and I don't drink.  Fish superb, everything perfect.  Perfect perfect perfect.  Well not perfect, but just right.

And then I turned on the TV to watch the 'debate'.   The Welsh woman irritated me every time she spoke.   The Scottish woman spoke sense especially when she talked about university charges "you got your university education for free all of you, and it is shameful you are making this generation paying for theirs"  You go girl.     Point is, every time I hear the Scottish twang I think Gordon Brown.  And I'm not sure she likes the English, not just the English Parliament.   Just a feeling.

Miliband very bright man, but absolutely no charisma. Nothing.   Clegg in invidious position both having to attack and defend. The best orator on the bench (he gets a lot of practice on LBC) but Cameron is the better politician.   Appears completely plausible but totally inauthentic.    Watch The Riot Club. That's what he's made of.    You get the face you deserve and he looks as though everyone around him are either wasting his time or smell.

Farage banged on about immigration as though stopping immigration would stop cancer, and bring about World Peace.    However, he spoke what a lot of people think.   And only some of them are bigots.  And he was right. The rest of the bench were liars. And that is where they all fall down.    I looked at them, and thought one was a good speaker, one looked slimy, one I was worried she would forget her facts (Green party woman), one came out with some sound points but thought she would stab us in the back if she ever got in, and the other one may have had a point, but I didn't like the sound of her voice - and I didn't believe any of them could either deliver what they promised or were speaking the truth.

None of them are credible.   None of them.   OK, one of them. The woman invigilating. But its easy to ask the questions. Its delivering the answers thats the difficult bit.

Mind you, good there were more women.  

TV, SUICIDE AND SUFFRAGETTES

Arsenal just needed one more goal.  I know its only a game but it was so close and if ever there was a  match they lost it was that one.   They lost beating the smallest principality in the world two love, or two nil.  Tom was fuming and so was I. It wasn't so close. They didn't win.  You think with all their money they could have afforded a better side, each player earning bank account number salaries.   Too many near misses, almost there -  but it doesn't matter how well they played, they lost.   In yoga I talked about not competing with yourself, or judging yourself, or others; just having compassion and acceptance for yourself, which I'm sure is the exact same thing Wenger is saying to his team right now - not.

Then a programme on suicide which was very well produced.  And I suppose is the antithesis of having acceptance and compassion for yourself.    How do you start or begin to touch upon a subject which is riddled with guilt, denial, anger, betrayal, in fact every word that wasn't mentioned in the programme.  Shock was mentioned.  No one seemed to realise that there was a good chance that someone who was depressed would consider suicide.   Selfish it may be but when the black dog looms I am told it is all pervading and even in my psychology, which is barely skimming the surface of such matters, when there are so many things real or imagined - and the imagined becomes real - pushing you over the edge, relationships or lack of them, finance or lack of it, dreams or lack of them - its an option.    The woman talking and interviewing talked about the importance of talking, but perhaps the importance of listening and observing to alleviate the 'shock' should also be qualities we should nurture.   And the talking we tend to do as a culture is about stuff that so does not matter - like the weather, or I suppose Arsenal losing to Monaco.

And lastly, the last in the series on the suffragette movement. I didn't see the first two but will have a look on iplayer. I interviewed Barbara Castle, when a documentary was produced in 1994 on the anniversary and she had written her autobiography. She put in it to me 'never let it be a man's world,; having told me I shouldn't toughen up like other journalists and be sensitive and strong and basically feminine without being a pushover.    I'm not anti male, in fact I really like and have deeply loved some of them, but the programme concluded that considering what those suffragettes endured we have achieved very little - as a gender, politically, in industry, financially and we don't help our own. And that men still have their old boy network and block women at every turn.    I have, in general, not found that.   I think its' more to do with the person than the gender.  Yes, there's a type who will always condescend and patronise and block and politic but they do so to both genders and its their stuff and insecurity.  I have always gone my own way, and viewed system and authority as smoothing some one else's path and palm, although not necessarily mine.  

I taught yoga again today and was told by some people who came they thought I was the best teacher they'd ever had, which is a wonderful thing to say, isn't it?   And I went up to kiss my son good night.   Which was the best bit of the day.

sexy spring

Forget Cameron, Clarkson and just smile at Spring.   It is sexy. 

SPRING

That exquisite scent of nature's orgasm

Aroused from a deep sleep

Shrouded in winter's sober blanket of

dark enclosed comfort

Breezes whisper like a hair's breathe

As the delicate petal sheets unfold

And peel back, layer by layer

the bud

With graceful knowing ease

And aching colour plumps up the shoots as they burst

into life, pushing up and out and through and

into light

The pinks, and reds, and purples

ripen in the cool-kissed sunshine

Twisting and bending and arching back into crescending shape

Nature's ecstatic wake up call

As it explodes into a screaming smile

And sighs bliss.

cameron, farage, clarkson, and brightman, welcome to the world of non news

I am revising for my sports psychology exam next week. Three hours of writing by hand and I've been doing lots of yoga to clear the mind, which has been brilliant.   And its Spring and thats wonderful.   Its my favourite season, then Autumn, then Winter, Summer last.   Especially after last summer.   And I have not turned on the TV or read the news.   And then I turned it on.   Singer Sarah Brightman is going into space. Is this news?  Or irony because she sang Starship Trooper. I think the space travel is happening because there's a asteroid heading our way and they don't want to tell anyone because there would be chaos and we would burn all the politicians and bankers, not pay taxes and run a muck.   So they've got those who can pay to go up into space and perhaps connect with aliens from another planet - although looking at the ones they are sending up there - we're not exactly sending the best of our bunch - just the richest, most self obsessed and well connected.  

Then there was more Farage bashing because the other parties pay their PRs more than he does and he seems to be apologising for everyone. But at least he speaks up for himself which is more you can say for the others.   Cameron at least he letting down his guard.   He looks more like a cabbage patch doll everyday squirrelling nuts into his cheeks.

He is not a man for the people, he thinks he is a man above the people. As do his friends (did he know Jimmy Saville as well?  everyone who is anyone seemed to know Jimmy Saville).

And now he stands up for his friend Jeremy Clarkson who had a hissy fit because he didn't have a hot meal waiting for him at the end of a hard day's filming.   I read all the other things he's allegedly done wrong and laughed. They are funny and ridiculous and yes we are all becoming terribly PC, so helpfully these pompous twerps can lead the way and allow the average Joe to throw a punch the next time they are served cold meat in a hotel after a hard day's work.  JC is a spoilt brat and we're allowing him to be a spoilt brat.  Just like Cameron, we vote for these pompous people, helping to blow up their balloons by watching them on TV and voting them into Parliament. Well not me.  But allegedly most of us.   Well actually not most of us because a lot of us don't vote. And even then it was a hung Parliament.   Any way, all of the news on the news at the moment is non news, which obviously means there is much more important stuff to be told.  When a guy selling cars on TV gets top coverage you know the world has gone mad.    Any way back to the revision...

fifty shades of grey and new pix

Well, I've changed the pix on my Facebook and Twitter pages. I know some people do that all the time,  but I don't.  I'm now no longer in the field and now wearing a hat.   And in child's pose/balasana which is a lovely yoga posture.  Its kind and kind is harder to take than the more strident postures that evoke courage and discipline, strength or stamina.   Essentially its one where you listen to your breathe and are at peace, but stretching your spine at the same time.  You are still and in that stillness everything flushes through you  emotions, thoughts, breathe whoosh.    Its an interesting posture for many reasons.  I sometimes see people cry when they are in this posture as so many other postures are 'heart openers', and you're never long enough in downward dog to get away with the tears.

Any way its in the book THE A TO ZEN OF YOGA which is out in April.  

I went to see fifty shades last night.   The book is better than the film.   I've met Christian Grey, or wannabe Christina Grey (i.e. no helicopter or imagination - just the need to control). Little boy lost playing the I can't help myself to women who are natural nurturers and can't give enough to someone who is essentially a black hole.   I am told there are a lot of people who are into S&M (they also probably like M&S).   Middle classes who look so straight on the outside.    Pity sex is so often used as a weapon these days.