a tale of two dressing gowns

did i ever tell you that in a previous existence i lived in Spain? of course i did.
we had a massive leaving do - i made the invitations out of my MA1 flying jacket, which i was very rarely without. it was symbolic maaaan...
as a leaving present my parents gave me Terry.
actually they gave me a towelling dressing gown, which boyfriend and I christened Terry (as in terry towelling). it was, quite simply, the 80s made garment.
an extravaganza of grey towelling with red and black go faster stripes.
Terry met with an unfortunate end – flushed down the toilet of a hellhole, i mean flat, that i was renting. don't ask me why, it just seemed like a good idea at the time.
I remembered Terry recently when at work, my publisher told a dressing-gown related anecdote.
publisher has an older brother, who, judging by some of the stories publisher tells about him, has always been a bit, erm, unstable.
one of his tricks when they were growing up involved spraying himself with hair lacquer and setting fire to himself.
he would only do this, for some reason, when he was wearing his dressing gown.
apparently publisher and family would be sitting on the sofa watching tv and he would come screaming down the stairs and into the living room wearing a flaming dressing gown.
it got to the point, she says, that they almost stopped noticing him!
my current dressing gown, thank you for asking, is navy cashmere. it has only two moth holes!

scratchie billie

'I say, do you blog?' I'm definitely going to start using that as a chat up line/ice breaker at parties.
It's actually a tough old do this blogging business – should you be funny (ha ha or peculiar), and if you usually are, can you get away with being deep and meaningful every now and again? Is it ok to whitter and rant or do you actually have to SAY something?
I'm obviously in a more sombre frame of mind today as I am using capital letters, which, as I'm sure you've already noted, do not figure much on this site.
So, a sensible, stiff-upper-case kind of day.
It's raining in London and we (the office we, rather than the royal one) are listening to Billie Holiday while trying to sort out our April issue.
Tonight I'm going for a curry and a pie. Which is a nice, waistbelt stretching combination. Actually I'm hoping to resist the curry nibbles (opening of a new posh curry house) and to eat the nimblest, if not humblest, pie possible.
Just realised that the Billie Holiday stuff I've downloaded is live and crackly.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm