Alice Beer

Lyme is the next big thing

You heard it here first!  Just spent five family days in Lyme Regis …. fossilling, ice creams on the Cobb, kite flying and skimming pebbles.   Have been visiting Lyme for the last ten years and AT LAST there is somewhere gorgeous to eat.  Mark Hix (of The Oyster and Chop House and The Albemarle) has opened a small, Hamptonesque fish restaurant over looking the sea and the crazy golf in Lyme Bay.   Meal started well with a delicious apple cider aperitif which if I had been eating cockles would have warmed them right up!    Mackerel and beetroot and fat fat chips YUMMY!     Hopefully Mark will do a bit of a Rick Stein and open up a few more places (we dont want the total Padstow monopoly) - But Lyme is a beautiful place and this will give it a little chi chi pick me up.

Sunny Lyme

mindless fools on bikes

Today I got knocked over by a cyclist as I crossed a busy road at a pedestrian crossing while the green man was lit and the traffic had a red light.   Of course he didnt stop….. and I was too shocked to react until he was off in the distance with barely a backwards glance.  My leg is cut and grazed but not badly…….. but had one of my children been at my side and stepped six inches ahead of me, the force would have certainly hospitalised them.    I have a bike and I think London should be full of them.  It is a great mode of transport for exercise and environment………  But every single day I see cyclists ignoring red lights zebra crossings and one way signs…..  Every day I see a constant stream of cyclists surging across the pedestrian crossing outside Charing Cross hospital….. obvlivious of the bewildered people they leave in their wake!    I shall curtail my rant…… but I am going to stop typing and do two things.  1.  Ask Boris what he’s going to do about it (nothing if David Cameron is anything to go by) .  2.  Place a bet with the bookie on someone being killed by a cyclist in London within the next 6 months.

David Cameron inspires online cycling game

“just taking”

Why is it those “please sponsor me” emails just keep on clonking into my inbox.  Do I have one of those charitable faces?  Not anymore I dont…. having discovered how it works:

Duncan James has school mothers flushing!

Closet Kareoke queen and beautiful “mum-at-school-gates” had a fantastic party to celebrate her 40th last night.   Every woman in the room fell in love with her husband for the way he had put together the most glorious bash…….. lush lounge location with cool cocktails and canapes, loving retrospective footage and a declaration of adoration and birthday wishes sent the school mummies into a swoon for this doting man who had pulled out his finger and all the stops for his wife!!!!!!  That is until the surprise entertainment arrived!!!!!  Big mistake Jim!  From the moment Duncan James walked onto the stage, working the room with a few winks on the way……. there was a flurry of pre-menopausal flushes.   The boy/man should be packaged for Christmas.  This handsome hunk who just happens to have a very lovely voice was a total pro….. he didnt just sing his song and dash for the door on a Saturday night as others might….. He lingered just long enough for the mothers to swoon and paid the birthday girl plenty of attention until she giggled like a fourteen year old.  Bet she felt forty next morning though!

Vote with your feet

While the big banks are a weeping and a wailing…… I am waiting for the impact of this global meltdown to my own back yard……  And it will happen soon…. restaurants and shops are going to have to be leaner and keaner than ever to survive.   I can lay down a few little local predictions…..  last week we booked a table at The Cabin on Dawes Road (dont know why the husband did as it looks very uninviting).  We turned up 25 minutes late which was silly of us on a Friday night and we knew there was always a risk in a busy restaurant that we would lose our table.  However we werent prepared for the snarling manager who greeted us with much tutting and looking at the watch and shrugging of shoulders.   We did what any customer should do and turned on our heels ……. I just hope as we waived goodbye that he registered how hungry we were, how thirsty for good wines and how keen to find a regular place to eat on our doorstep.     The manager of Loco Locale certainly seemed happy when when we signed our bill and left full of his fantastic steaks and very best wines.  We will definitely be going back there!!!!

vixen violinists

Went to the official launch of Escala last night.  These were the five long legged violinists who recently made it big time through a reality show….. they have slightly all merged into one for me… although I know they weren’t ice skating!   Tiffany, Natasha, Claudia etc etc have been plucked from their boarding school gates, passed  through the hands of countless make up and make over people and emerged weilding some rather fearsome electric violins…. to make money.  The music is uplifting and stirring and is perfect for grandma for Christmas……. but I find watching them slightly bizarre.   They have obviously been choreographed by the best Simon Cowell’s money can buy - and they perform their moves well….. but who the hell can do a half decent dance with their chin stuck to a violin.   They just all look like they have been sleeping in a draft or emerged from the whiplash injury clinic.   

I dont mean to be cruel and the girls will have the last laugh as they bank their millions….. and who can complain when your event goody bag contains the latest Sony MP3 player!

Get back to the gym

Working title of new book …..  aimed at the millions who suffer from back pain and are scared stiff that the gym is going to make it worse.

Have done a week and a half on the Power Plate  - and my back loves it!!!!  Going to go the the Power Plate Accademy next week for instruction - I think there is something in it for spines! 

“write” to reply

It really bugs me that on Amazon you can review a book and say whatever the hell you like or dislike about it….. make up any sort of tosh and ping it appears right underneath the book on its sale page.  

 I emailed Amazon to tell them that the claims that I was staffed up to the eyeballs when I had my babies are simply untrue….. which of course effects the authority I have as the author of a book on how to bring up twins.   Amazing that an internet company does not have a policy to respond to emails!!!!!

I am now going to set up some email addresses and see if I can enter some reviews on Amazon!  

Pushy parent!

Had girls in the school pool for swimming club by 9.15 on Sunday morning……by 10am P was crying to come out….. I swore I wouldnt do this kind of thing to them.   I have got sucked into the London School system.

Made huge batch of very pink fairy cakes to make it up to them…. and took a silent pledge to reassess the schedule and take out all elements of “push” and insert much more “chill”

So not snoring at The Goring

You could never call The Goring Hotel in St James…. the most hyped and happening place in London at the moment.  It’s not exactly a daily or even nocturnal hang out for the paps….  so how come on a chilly Thursday evening in September; Baroness Thatcher, Honor Blackman, Paul O’Grady, Marie Helvin and others are to be found in the Goring garden sharing a hog roast?  !!!!  There were a lot of naughty people out to have fun……. Nicholas Grace pinching bottoms, Issy Van Randwick spreading titilating gossip, the hot and handsome band Blake making the villagers hearts a flutter….. Lovely Brian Turner was on top form …. and we had a little bitch about one of his colleagues who used to be delightful but is now too grand to wipe his own arse.  Poor Richard Kay (Mail diarist) and his two  sleuths knew their was mischief in the air and hung around to the bitter end - I dread to think what they will come up with…..      I was a good girl and left sober with my pot of jam goody bag.    Definitely going again next year!