Hmmm. Didn’t make that run.

Instead I applied some fake tan.

It’s a bit streaky but I have it on good authority that vertical stripes are very slimming.

Who has been watching the Olympics? I have and I’m loving every minute of it.

My favourite events are the rowing, swimming and diving, gymnastics and the horsey stuff. I also find the female weight lifting highly amusing. All those popping neck veins and thighs like too much sausage meat stuffed into a pop sock. Endlessly entertaining.

So there I am, sat on the sofa, eating last night’s leftovers and chuffing on a ciggie, and I’ve begun to question my lazy knacker ways. There’s nowt like a wake-up call than all those Olympians hurling and flinging themselves around and showing off miles of muscle definition.

So later, I am going to go for a run.

Probably.

Wales. What a jewel of a principality this pocket of infinite rolling green is. Of course, the reason for it’s bountiful lushness is the near-constant pissing rain, but you can’t have it all. Anyway, I digress…

My parents are building a house in Powys, which I believe is Welsh for ‘the middle of fucking nowhere’. They plan to decamp there permanently as soon as the doors are on. I don’t blame them. Their other house is in Kent, a county so overpopulated with pikeys and fat bastards I’m surprised the council haven’t built temporary floating houses to spill out into the Channel. One can only hope that the day this happens, the anchors come unstuck and the dross can float off in the direction of France. Sort that, Sarkozy.

Anyway, I digress… again.

The German and I are headed to Powys for the weekend because we’re going to a festival there. It’s a small community affair, granted, but I love all that. It’s something you just don’t get in the smoke. Everyone’s too busy avoiding a knife attack to worry about polite human interaction.

There’s always a generous helping of village gossip to keep me scandalised for weeks and the booze flows. Oh, how it flows. Never mind the Irish: bless my daffodils, the Welsh can drink. Last time I was up there the dogs needed letting out the morning after a particularly heavy duty session. It was nearly 9am but I was still wazzered from the previous night, so the local farmers were treated to the eye-watering sight of Ms Hsh-Hush staggering around outside in naught but a teeny weeny towel and a massive pair of wellies.

I am all class.

So wish I and the liver luck and have a good one yourselves. Stories to follow, I’m sure.

Behold. The results…

Chinese cupping is kooky shit, but it irons out all the aches, leaving you with a zingy, energized feeling and the appetite of a trojan horse.

They do it here if you fancy a go. (If you think you’re hard enough.)

I’m preternaturally excited.

My friend The Blonde is one of the dearest and most wonderful and bestest women ever in the world. She is marrying Mr Macclesfield next August and I am to be one of her bridesmaids. Hop, skip, etc.

I’ve never been one before. I was asked once, when I was about 10, but the couple split acrimoniously before I’d even had my second dress fitting. I’m not sad though: the silly cow was going to dress me in swathes of peach taffeta. I call that a lucky escape from certain sartorial death.

Given this near brush with style disaster, I’m wary of weddings and all who sail in them. Particularly when you consider some of the billowing, sea-worthy creations some women cram themselves into.

So it’s with great relief that I learn that The Blonde plans to a) dress herself in something gorgeous and slinky and b) us bridesmaids are to wear whatever we like and just carry a posey.

Not a slither of peach taffeta in sight.

Tomorrow at 4pm I am visiting an alternative health emporium in south London (for the benefit of a certain free newspaper) to sample the delights of Chinese cupping.

Rather than wear out my fingers on the keyboard attempting to explain to you the consequences of this most mystic and ancient of arts, I think in this instance a picture paints a thousand words.

Honestly. The things I do to keep a roof over my head.

Mind you, despite looking like an American Hot for the best part of a week, I’m actually very much looking forward to trying this out. After all it’s not often one gets paid to be detoxed.

The only blot on my relaxation landscape is a rather fetching backless maxi dress I had planned on wearing to a wedding the weekend after next. The bastard marks had better fade, otherwise it’s going to take a trowel-load of body make up and/or an Outfit Plan B to rectify the mess.

Certainly the bride won’t thank me for stealing her thunder with the ‘beaten by a salami’ look.

Following on from yesterday’s post, who the fuck would have thought terminal velocity would invert the human mammary?

Not I and yet the evidence is plain to see.

Enjoy.

A good friend of mine is a freelance features writer for the glossies. She navigates the extreme bitching and narcissism that are rife in women’s mag publishing unscathed and with admirable aplomb.

No easy task and so I say hats off to her. Which is ironic given that her next assignment is three days at a nudist resort.

Cue lunchtime hilarity as the following topics were aired:

1) Appropriate topiary.

2) Artful use of tit tape in the absence of one’s bra.

3) What not to wear in the event of rain.

4) Wanger watch: keep the eye contact!

5) ‘Flaps’.

She is a braver lady than I.

I used to think that the most boring thing on the planet would be to settle down; have early nights; a husband who loves you and mows the lawn and washes the car; two or three sprogs; mess and toys and a washing machine always going…

But now I’m beginning to think that the normal family - with the kids and the car and the lawn that needs mowing and the washing machine always going - are actually the most extraordinary thing.

Creating and protecting a home where boisterous love and the clitter clatter of noise take precedence: now that is far from a dull and pointless pursuit.

Funny how your tastes change, eh?

Still not heard back about ‘the job’. The one that’s going to change my life and be the best thing *ever*.

I nailed the meeting, I got two glowing references and I delivered a shit hot copy test, if I do say so myself.

So now the men in suits are cogitating me. They’re chewing me over like a piece of cud. Sizing me up. Do I fit?

Every time I get a new email, my stomach does mad flips and my heart threatens to make a sudden appearance through my chest.

Please, please, please, please let them love me and give me the job. Because for the first time in my life I know this is a position that I’m going to not just like, but I think I’ll be really good at it.

And that has never happened before.