All The Small Things



It's the little things that have made me smile this week.....

Like getting an email from Annoying Demanding Client asking that we do a new risk assessment as there's concern their product may cause "anxiety", "confusional state" or "insomnia". Errrr.... I experience all those things daily when working with their personalities... don't think it's anything to do with their product!

Or finding out that one week on my New Healthy Lifestyle, and I've dropped 1.5 pounds (0.6 kg)... a small start, but little by little I will do it.

Every little helps! Helps ruin your reputation if you're a celebrity chef caught shoplifting cheese and wine at the self-service checkout of your local Tesco....like poor old Antony Worrall Thompson. He's been having a stressful time lately.... no excuse for nicking the nibbles, mate!



For the benefit of non-UK readers, Tesco is a supermarket giant, with the logo "Every little helps!"


Speaking of small things, there's an old adage in show business about never working with children or animals. Fair enough, photographing small people does come with its own set of challenges... none so strange though as having to worry about inadvertently capturing a naked man in the background of your children's clothing advert shoot.....

Oh-la-la! Imagine this on a billboard....

Anything making you smile this week?

Just Nat Turns 3

Three years on, and astonishingly, I'm still regularly knocking out this complete drivel highly intellectual, thought-provoking prose, as well as the odd photo or two.

I've racked up 372 posts, had around 10,000 views of my blog and received over 2,000 comments. A huge thank you to my fabulous readers! I hope that you will stick around in 2012, as I have quite a few things in store....

Most excitingly, I plan to travel as much as possible. So far, I am booked to go to Lille (North France) for a weekend break later this month, then there's the biggie of 2012 - the fortnight in Vietnam and Cambodia in April, plus a short break in Dubrovnik (Croatia) in June... to take advantage of the Diamond Jubilee weekend. Yes, she's giving us a holiday... 'cause she can!

God save our gracious Queen! Thanks for our 4-day weeeekend! God save our Queen!


Wonder if that counts as treason? If not and I'm still a free woman in October, there are plans afoot for a trip to New England and Canada to coincide with the autumn (sorry, I mean Fall!) foliage. We shall see...

This year I am determined to shift some weight by making some permanent lifestyle changes.... such a New Year cliche, right? Never fear, faithful readers, I will not be boring you with nonstop, tedious calorie-counting tales, but I may be sharing some new low-fat-but-still-easy-and-delicious recipes. 

Otherwise, expect the usual, completely random nonsense that a year in the life of Nat brings....

Hang in there dear readers.... there's loads more still to come!

Notes From Nat...



Dear Howling Gale (that’s been blowing almost incessantly for the past three days and keeping me awake at night, rattling every window pane and threatening to lift our roof tiles)


Enough already!

That is all.

.........

Dear Nat’s Mouth

You and I have had a bit of a stormy relationship over the past 37 years... well, you started the whole thing by giving me so much grief on the Teeth Front! Firstly, I’m told I was a horrendous teether, really struggling to cut those first teeth as wee Nat. Then you thought it would be hilarious to set my teeth up with a massive overbite/Bugs Bunny lookalike that took no less than four years of painful orthodontic treatment to rectify. Just when I got that all sorted out, you decided to mess things up again by giving me 9 wisdom teeth. Normal people just get 4... some very lucky people get none. Did you have to be so generous? Two lots of extractions and possibly a third operation lined up for the very near future.... the novelty of this hyperdentia thing is wearing a little thin.

And another thing... what’s with the regular plagues of mouth ulcers and infections? Like that time back in July 2005 when I couldn’t talk, let alone eat for 3 days. To be fair, perhaps it was Nat’s Immunity kicking in... I had just had a whole load of jabs in preparation for the Caribbean trip. Or maybe it was all down to stress – just the day after those jabs, I spent two hours fretting that my hubby was possibly on the Northern line tube that got blown up by some criminally insane suicide bomber? Luckily though, as he’d missed his first train to London that morning, he arrived late at Kings’ Cross to find all hell had broken loose and the mobile phone lines were jammed... but he was safe! Whatever the case may be, could you please make a pact with Nat’s Immunity so that we don’t have a repeat of Ulcergate when I have to play pin cushion at the Travel Clinic later today for all manner of jabs to ward off potential nasty diseases in Vietnam and Cambodia?

Much appreciated!

.........



Dear Boxercise Instructor (aka Drill Sergeant #1) and Aikido Sensei (aka Drill Sergeant #2)

Go easy on me please... it’s been a while since I did some serious exercise, and there has been a lot of stuffing of my face in-between. I may be slightly heavier footed than back in 2011...



Yours


Nat

You'll Go Ape... For My Banana Muffins!

Yeah, yeah...we're all on new year diets, etc etc...but these easy peasy banana muffins don't count, do they? After all, they're one of your recommended 5-A-Day fruit and veg!

What you need

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup sour cream (or crème fraiche or plain yoghurt if you prefer)
1 tsp. vanilla essence
4 ripe bananas (mashed)
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

What you do

Preheat oven to 180C/350F.

Beat sugar and butter in large bowl until light, then beat in eggs until smooth.

Add flour and soda, alternately with sour cream/yoghurt.

Add vanilla, bananas and nuts. Mix.

Divide batter among 12 paper lined muffin cups.

Bake at 180C/350F for 25 to 30 minutes.

Et voila!

Exercises For The Mind...

A new year dawns... time to get active again after all the sloth-like behaviour during the holidays!

Let's start with a little workout for the grey matter...

You may not see it at first, but the white spaces read the word optical, the blue landscape reads the word illusion.

Look again!

Can you see why this painting is called an optical illusion?

.............

This one is quite tricky!

The word TEACH reflects as LEARN.

.............

You probably read the word ME in brown, but... when you look through ME you will see YOU!

Do you need to look again?

..........

Look at the spinning woman and if she is turning right your right side of your brain is working.

If she is turning left your left side of your brain is working.

If she turns both ways for you then you have a 160 or better IQ.

[For me she turns right, but if I look away and read something then look back, she’s turning left. Somehow I doubt I have an IQ of 160!]

..........

Count every ' F ' in the following text: 

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE

SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI 

FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH

THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS... 

(SEE BELOW)

HOW MANY? 

WRONG, THERE ARE 6 -- no joke. 

READ IT AGAIN!

Really, go back and try to find the 6 F's before you scroll down.

The reasoning behind is further down. 

The brain cannot process 'OF'.

Incredible or what? Go back and look again!! 

..........

Happy 2012!

This year, I just have one resolution... to worry less and laugh more.

May 2012 bring you all much happiness!

Happy New Year!

10 Things I Learnt This Christmas...

1. Christmas is definitely way more magical when you’re a child…. the excitement on my little nieces’ faces when they were tearing open their presents under the tree was quite something to behold.

2. Christmas presents are far more sophisticated these days than when I was a child… way back then, the only “blackberry” we had heard of was a fruit typically found with apples in pies!

3. Garden furniture is very handy for indoor use when you have a load of Christmas visitors to fit around the dinner table.

4. My culinary skills are definitely improving, even if I say so myself… I made a very tasty lamb stew for Christmas Eve supper, a full roast beef dinner (with roast potatoes, glazed carrots, green beans, mini Yorkshire puddings, and port and red onion gravy) for Christmas Day, and then fall-off-the-bone tender roast chickens with a medley of roasted vegetables for Boxing Day. And nothing got burnt… well, apart from those leftover Yorkies that I was trying to warm up under the grill!

5. I also make a mean Christmas cake… perhaps it was all that rum but it certainly went down well, especially with a hefty slice of “Double Gloucestershire” cheese on the side.

6. My Christmas trifle, on the other hand, needs some re-mastering… a tad on the bland side!

7. My usually tee-totaler mom becomes extremely chatty after three glasses of champagne!

8. ‘Love Actually’ is still my all-time favourite “Christmas” movie, but the novelty of ‘Merry Madagascar’ and ‘Shrek The Halls’ is wearing a little thin… not so much for my nieces though!

9. I’ll never tire of cheesy Christmas lights…. which is lucky, since my neighbours hold an annual “We have the cheesiest festive decorations” contest!

10. Someone clearly lacking in common sense and good taste has decided to can Satan’s green balls….I discovered this horror on a trip to the supermarket....

Effectively farts in a can.. or at least in the making!