Purity In One Easy Step

At least that is pretty much what it promised on the bottle. I've been using Philosophy's Purity cleanser. It promises 4 steps in 1 which for a lazy bones like me is pretty good.

I met my best friend for CD buying (www.frank-turner.com) and then we had a ridiculously expensive beer for her and G&T for me (£8.10) in Soho. We followed this with dinner at Satsuma on Wardour Street where we had very tasty beef and an alarmingly drinkable New Zealand white (I wanted the one that was described as 'racy' but couldn't quite screw my courage to the sticking place!) before decending on our old favourite matchbar.

We, by which I mean best friend and I, have been going to matchbar since we were impecunious students ten years ago. At the time £6 a cocktail seemed like a veritable inheritance and for the price of your granny at £7.50 you could have a hong kong fuey which was the 4 white spirits, chartreuse, midori, a splash of lemonade and a surefire way to happiness. In fact, we spent long enough in there that the chief of the floor/head man Faizal used to see us walking in, clear a table and arrange for our usual. I've never been able to work out whether this says more about us or the bar.

Anyway, over years, via several attractive, sometimes gay barmen matchbar has become a bit of an afterwork hangout. It still does great cocktails, uses fab booze and makes you feel like a trendy. No mean feat for a bar which is expanding faster than a pregnant J-Lo.

Nowadays a HKF (reloaded) will set you back a tenner but is still fun. Tonight we had cummulatively a dark and stormy, a Southside No 2, a shared Nicola six punch which is a giant laughable cocktail full of strawberries and cucumber and upsettingly tasty given its sleezy look before rounding off with a Pink Lady and an Ol' fashioned.

Clearly this kind of indulgance requires a sloughing of the evening upon return to home. Which I would have done if someone, whom I shall not name, had no virtually emptied the last of MY bottle of cleanser. How am I supposed to cultivate a face like a baby's butt now?

I ask you....

It Never Happens To The Waltons

Night Jim bob, Night Mary Jane...

I remember the Waltons, where seemingly 20 people lived in a house that you where close enough to everyone to say good night to. More importantly you wanted to say good night to them.

I'm currently living with my sister. She's nice. We are toying with the idea of buying a house together to avoid the financial death defying feat of having a single person mortgage. The main obstable to this is not, as one might think, the skyrocketing cost of homes for 'young professionals' like us, or if you are of a more suspicious nature, the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. The main issue is we don't really get on very well.

We get on best during the month's she is away on business. We talk on the phone. I tidy up, changes the beds etc. Currently, here all the time we are falling out a lot.

I'm actually in trouble right at this very minute, as I type, for failing to return a call within 80 mins of receiving it. Almost unforgiveable you might agree*.

Crucially though we are trying. Mostly each other's patience but somewhere in there there is a kernal of family love. My concern is that we are the sibling equivalent of those seeds that need a massive, destructive forest fire to rage before they bloom!




*if you are occasionally anally retentive, control loving trainee auditor.