BOGOF

Yes folks, it's a bargain, it's Buy One Get One Free time!

I normally only do one entry a week but when I wrote the previous entry I was tired and missed a lot, so this week you're getting two for your money.

I forgot to say, on Wednesday we went to the Birmingham Food College for dinner. This is where the students get to hone their future catering skills on you.

We went with my best friend from school and her husband, plus her best friend and husband from when she joined the police.

I first met this friend 20 years ago at my Best Friend's Wedding (sounds like a good title for a film!) For the first year or two I think I was a bit jealous of her relationship with  my Best Friend, after all, I saw her first! But a year or two later and I do mean a year or two later, as we only used to meet up once a year at Best Friend's Christmas Party, we started to develop a relationship of our own.

Eighteen years on, and although we only meet once or twice a year, she is one of the people I love most in the world. She is beautiful, complex, sometimes bordering on rude and arrogant, hilariously funny and is suffering from a rare and cruel disease that has already given her cancer several times and has in recent years robbed her of her sight.

We all collude in her blindness, I will greet her loudly, so that she can identify me from several feet away, she will then walk towards my voice, knowing I have given her the all clear to walk towards me, we hug and I lead her to a safe place to talk. No one would know she has entered the room not really having a clue as to her surroundings and all that onlookers have seen is a beautiful, confident woman enter the room, who has been greeted by a friend. And yet she doesn't try to hide it, she will tell anyone about her condition, she just doesn't want to be judged by it and have unwelcome pity because of it.

We had a wonderful meal the food was splendid, the conversation was loud and racuous and if we go again I think we may have to book under another name.

A cause of annoyance this week is why,WHY, is it when we have just changed to a shower that is run off the gas heated hot water system, have gas prices tripled? We could have had one of these showers years ago and have been luxuriating in the gallons of cheap hot water cascading over our bodies. But no, we have to wait until the biggest hike is gas prices ever to change our shower from electric to gas.

It was the same with our endowment mortgage policies. Everyone was having their policies mature with several thousand of pounds left over to pocket and spend on some fun. What happens the minute we join the club! Our first matures next April with a £2,000 shortfall. So no nice little trip to the Carribean on the surplus for us!

If there is a boat to be missed, then I can guarantee we have a ticket for it!!

Went to see another friend last night who has a crazy, stalker boyfriend. They have split up again for a while. I cannot understand what she is doing with him, it is a real worry to me. Here is one incident. You judge whether you would want to be with this man, or not.

She had gone into town for the evening. As they had fallen out again he was stalking her. He got thrown out of a bar she was in and he was being agressive and nasty.

She went home in the early hours of the morning (her daughter was staying with Dad for the weekend). About half an hour after getting in, she went to bed and then thought she would ring nutty boyfriend and warn him not to come round causing a scene again, as she had had enough and would call the police if he did.

She dialled his mobile and then froze, as she heard it ringing in her daughter's bedroom. He had broken in before she got home and was hiding in there, waiting.... for what?

She is normally, intelligent and sensible, what do you say to a woman that keeps taking this lunatic back, just because he cries and says he loves her. I despair!

That'll do for now, I will catch up again at the weekend.