I've taken a fancy to a TV show this past week, watching multiple episodes, and its called Clean it and Fix it . It revolves around three people, the TV show hosts, who spend a day in the house of people from families to flatmates, who are struggling with cleaning and clutter and organisation, and in that day they target several spots, come up with affordable solutions and transform the problem areas. I like a lot of things about it. That the things they do are affordable (eg buying a flatpack shelving unit and upcycling old things) and for the most part, it involves a lot of elbow grease that is do-able from most of us. (Unlike the TV shows where a zillion people with a zillion dollars worth of power tools transform a house with apparent limitless budgets.) The cleaning aspect of the programme is the one that intrigues me, and the tips the cleaner uses. The other day, Maxine soaked cotton wool in bleach and stuffed it into cracks and left it to work. Amazing.  I should add an impo...

 I watched The Wedding Date the other day, and loved it. Starring Debra Messing as Kat, and Dermot Mulroney as Nick, Kat hires a male escort to be her date at her sister's wedding in London. Her ex boyfriend who dumped her without reason will be there, and she is determined to show Jeffrey just what he's missed. However, the gorgeous Nick is more than a male escort. He's more like a therapist in a way (which is what Kat, who is a therapist , tells people he is.) Debra Messing is so funny, Dermot is so cool, and I also just loved Kat's stepfather, played by Paul Egan, one of my favourite English actors.  He was in a fabulous sitcom called Ever Decreasing Circles back in the 1980s. The Wedding Date is a great rom-com, and I'm kind of shocked I've never seen it before being so partial to a good romcom with a dishy hero. (I've watched it more than once these past few weeks, too!)  ~ Maddie

Here's another excerpt from Gabardi Three, aka Alberto and Charlotte's story, aka the book that has no title. At least, not yet. This is the last scene in chapter one, very much a proof draft so excuse any typos etc. CHARLOTTE APPLETON STARED at the divorce papers in her hand and was shocked to find just how unsettling it felt. Not upsetting. The marriage had lasted eight years and the last year had been so distant it had been no surprise that she and Kane didn’t have a chance of making it to the ten-year-mark. But it had been a whole decade of her life. A whole decade she had devoted to the man and now it was all over. There were barely any remnants of the marriage in her mind, either, because she had been doing her best to get rid of those. She slotted the papers into the bedside drawer where she kept such things. Things such as the paperwork from that last horrible year of her mother’s life. What a devil of a time to not only lose her mother but to lose her marriag...

I've been decluttering lately, massively decluttering.  I read in one of the (many) decluttering books I borrowed from the library, that the idea is not to find more places to store things, but to get rid of the stuff that doesn't have storage, and make do. And if you can't make do? Out she goes. I did brutally throw some stuff in the rubbish I figured no-one else would want either, but there is also a huge box of books and Cds and Dvds to give to the local charity shop, that I think some people would like to have. Some of the CDs were my late mum's, and our tastes weren't exactly the same. Mum loved jazz, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Billy Holiday and so on, but I'm not so keen. Although there were a few of her CDs I played, and just adored. Acker Bilk, for one. I love that CD but funnily, I never heard Mum play it, at least while I was around. So the house is looking a bit more ordered, and for the fun of it, cat picture below. She's a cutie, that one.