Inaugural 2007 post

Happy New Year!

I crawled out of bed at noon today after a very late night. I had a little party where I stuffed my guests full of an ungodly amount of food. Then we walked up to Ally Pally (the second highest point in London) for midnight and watched all the fireworks across the city as we drank champagne. Then back to my place for more Cava and pomegranate juice cocktails – because I am old enough to drink alcohol! Anyway, I hope that however you celebrated New Year's Eve, you had a good time and that 2007 brings you everything you want from health and happiness too foxy boys and styling frocks.

As promised this is an excerpt from Let's Get Lost that didn't make it into the final version.



And Rob really had been the best of a truly bad bunch. At least he'd hit puberty. We'd drunk these two super-sized bottles of cider quickly enough to qualify for the world record before Rob had dragged me off in the direction of the hut behind the Crown Bowling Green. He'd fancied himself quite the raconteur and regaled me with all these stories about how he could break into a car in five seconds and steal the stereo and the sub woofers, whatever the hell they were, before anyone realised. He was quite the charming conversationalist.

"People are real twats," he'd sniffed. "Most of the time they leave the doors unlocked."

"You don't say."

"Yeah. I've never really talked to a posh bird before."

I arched one of my eyebrows. "And how's it working out for you?"

"Dunno," he'd said, after a minute's thought. "So you gonna let me feel you up then?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I'd caught a flash of pink and I knew Nancy was in the vicinity already to report back. "C'mon, then," I'd sighed. "You can kiss me if you like."

After Rob had thoroughly rinsed my mouth out with his tongue for a good few minutes while I carefully manoeuvred him out of the line of fire, I'd had enough. Then he'd mauled my tits like he was trying to tune in one of those purloined car stereos and I'd had more than I could stand.

I'd gently extricated myself from his octopus-like embrace and firmly removed the paw that was clamped around my left buttock.

"What did you do that for?" Rob had asked, trying to worm his leg between mine while I thrust my head back to evade any more spit.

"Don't get me wrong, this has been real and stuff but I have to go," I'd said very pleasantly given the extreme mauling I'd just suffered. "Maybe I'll see you around."

He'd reached for me again as I'd adroitly side-stepped out of the path of his questing hands. "You're tight, you know that," he'd told me furiously.

"Gosh, thanks awfully for enlightening me." He didn't seem to be getting the message that I'd rather have my skin removed from my body with a rusty potato peeler than kiss him again. He'd kept lurching towards me with his lips puckered and Jesus, those hands… They should have had a government health warning tattooed across the knuckles.

"You know you want to," he'd cajoled, grabbing my wrists and it's so annoying that even the weediest boy can overpower me. But even weedy boys don't have nails as sharp as mine or know how to use them.

He gave a girly squeak when I dug them into the back of his hands and finally let me go. "Sorry about that," I'd chirped. "Did I mention that I was a Mormon?"

And then I turned and ran while he was still scrolling through the empty files where his brain should be to understand what I was saying.