Holy grail of the soap addict

When it comes to soaps, I get very excitable. As returning readers will know, one of my biggest gripes about entering the working world is missing out on Neighbours. When the news came out that Five would be buying the show from the BBC, I was high on rumours that there would be an omnibus. Try as I might, I couldn't find any confirmation about it and resigned myself to the fact that there would be no change, other than the channel number and addition of commercial.

Imagine my delight, when channel surfing I came across the holy grail, THE OMNIBUS! I almost fell off the bed with joy, much to the amusement of my boyfriend. For the first time in almost two years, I got to watch several chronological episodes without the inconvenience of being riddled with flu.

See? I told you, Neighbours is like crack and I've fallen off the wagon in spectacular style. Bang go my saturday afternoons unless I can figure out my ancient VCR or suddenly afford Sky+. And we all know that neither of those are going to happen any time soon.

LFW in technicolour

Right. I have procrastinated enough. I had planned to post every day last week but I clearly didn't owing to a number of reasons including a new placement and general exhaustion. I wrote a long post on the Monday but never got round to finishing and posting it.

It's a long story, ending in a parking ticket, so you can imagine it's not quite of the love filled nature. Sometime soon I'll post the enormous ranting blog. In the meantime, please entertain yourselves with the videos below from the Fashion Week Frontier. More photos to follow when I get a chance to edit, the one at the top of this post is my favourite - the photographers setting up for PPQ.

PPQ:



Eley Kishimoto:

LFW - day one

The fashion circus has rolled into London and what better reason can there be for running back and forth across London all day in ridiculously high shoes for six days. It all kicked off this morning at the BFC tent with Paul Costelloe, which amazingly, I ended up in the front row for. I'm not entirely sure how I swung it but hey, front row is front row.

Annoyingly, my camera decided that this was the perfect opportunity to pack up and cease working, meaning that my photos are somewhat limited today. I will charge and be prepared for tomorrow. Anyway, back to the show - I really liked the first half - lots of nipped in waists, contrasting textures and cute feminine silhouettes. The second half was disappointing; the fabrics looked cheap and the final dress, a shiny cream brocade strapless dress that was short at the front and long at the back, made the model look like she was wrapped in a duvet. I'll add images to illustrate my point at a later date when they're posted online.

Next up, with time to kill (since I had no ticket for Jean-Pierre Braganza) I hit the exhibition stands to look around and check out the smaller brands, accessories and jewellery. Lots of lovely things but with no camera, it means I'll have to go back tomorrow to click away for my records.

After browsing the stands and a quick coffee, I went to see the Caroline Charles show. The cool thing about the show was that they had a live band playing to accompany the models. Unfortunately, it's not great when the music is the highlight of a show. Then again, maybe it's just me - the clothes weren't to my taste; they were a bit too velvety and sparkly, very much for the Sloane Ranger market. If you factor in the small cute girls that accompanied the models, it was definitely one for the Yummy Mummy market.

Below is the only usable photo I managed to take today:




I found it odd that both shows finished with a bridal themed dress. Last season, none of the shows I went to (at least, in my memory) featured wedding dresses. With today's offerings, I would've preferred it if that had remained the case. I was meant to head to more this afternoon but the effort of having to get up at 8am on a Sunday morning has incapacitated me and I want to be fresh for tomorrow.

Neighbours' new home

Two posts in one day? Surely not! I've just seen the promo for Neighbours moving to Channel 5 and that's big enough news to me to post twice in one day, as those of you who know of my love of the show will understand. It starts on Five on the 11th of February and I'm hoping that all of those rumours of it being moved to a later slot (and maybe even an omnibus) are true. Yes, I know I'm a sad obsessive but I'm okay with that. So, here's the promo:

Tales from the kitchen

The other night, panicking and trying to find the Garam Masala powder as I cooked a curry, I came across some interesting things in my kitchen. Well, not really interesting per say, more weird and slightly gross.

First up, the siamese triplet grape:



Digging through the spice draw, I came across several things that had gone off. This is a fairly typical in our household. Once every two years or so we purge a different cupboard or set of drawers in the kitchen, propelled by one of my mother's manic cleaning episodes. This wasn't an organised purge; more one brought of necessity as I desperately needed to season the curry. As I tossed items out of the drawer in search of the one I wanted, I came across two very old tins of curry powder, as you'll be able to see in the photos below:



Yes, your eyes do not deceive you, they really are dated May 1996 and October 1995.



Worrying, no? However, once all of the items had been photographed and archived for your viewing pleasure, you will be happy to know that they were all destroyed; the spices went in the bin and the grape was eaten. While it was triple the size of a standard grape, it was disappointingly not tripley tasty. Alas.