I’m off to the New Islington Urban Folk Festival next week.  Judging from last year’s photos it promises to be a grand event with music, art, theatre, film, food, drink and dance.

Here are some pics from last year.

This year’s events include Sketch City gets Arty, Yarn Bombing, Knitting Circle, Pimp my Barge and Knot Crazy.

It takes place on Saturday 6th September between 2 and 8 pm at Old Mill Street, New Islington, Manchester.

For more information Visit the NIF Facebook Group or go to www.newislington.co.uk.

More next week . . . .

It’s been a few weeks since my last post and I’ve been itching to catch up. I logged into the blog this morning, clicked on ‘Write’ and . . . nothing. Couldn’t think of a thing to say. Chewing my pen (I really need to stop doing this - especially when I’m typing and don’t even need a pen) I thought surely I must have done something worth mentioning. More pen chewing and ruler tapping - I must be a nightmare to work with - and nothing. It seems that the last few weeks have slipped by almost unnoticed in a blur of 12-hour working days, take-away dinners and taped episodes of Big Brother.

The other day someone asked me what it was like to be my own boss and have no-one to answer to. I told them that there was no such thing. You’re always answerable to someone. In my case I answer directly to the clients and therefore have lots of bosses. I also don’t get to choose my working hours. I have to be up when the clients are up and work lot more besides. Generally I’m in the office at 7 o’clock and sometimes don’t leave until 8 or 9 at night. Weekends are luxuries.

And what happens when I’m ill? Well there’s no sitting with the duvet watching morning television, I can tell you. Fortunately (and touch wood) I don’t pick up many bugs. However, on the odd occasion when I’ve had a cold, Flu, food poisoning, that rotten virus going round before Christmas last year and a dislocated shoulder, you can generally find me in the office, in front of the computer screen, working.

And if I had the chance would I go back to a 9 to 5 job (if such a thing still exists)? Too bloody right. No, I’m joking. Despite the hours and waking up in the middle of the night convinced I haven’t sent what turns out later to be a fictional email, I like my job. I like the excitement of new ideas and new projects. I like working with a whole range of people, from large fashion retailers, to the guy who writes novels and publishes them on his website (my favourite client). And most of all I love turning the lights off at the end of the day and looking round our tiny office and thinking, this is ours.

Aha, I did find something to write about after all.

We’ve got an allotment. Yep. I’m still not quite sure how I feel about this. My husband comes from a long line of gardeners and can trace his roots back to agricultural workers in the 19th century. His father and his father before him were both market gardeners and this seems to have rubbed off on him. I on the other hand have never grown a thing. I can’t even keep a house plant alive. Once I tried to grow an apple tree from a pip but it never took.

In addition to the land, we’re now the proud owners of a wheel barrow, various gardening tools and implements, propagators, seed compost, fibre pots and a whole coffee table full of books. There are new words too, like chitting, earlies, second earlies, main crop and dibber. And other less pleasant things like the muck pile, 10 foot long brambles and grubs.

The first sight of the allotment was a bit of a shock. In my mind’s eye I’d thought of a small plot of land with neat rows of beds and shed in the corner (and well secretly of ‘The Secret Garden’). Instead we were presented with this.

As you can see we have some way to go.

I’ve been meaning to add a post about our weekend in Whitby. If you’ve never been it really is a beautiful part of the world - wild and unspoiled coast lines, narrow streets and ginnels, a busy fishing port and a ruined abbey. In fact, I wonder why The Famous Five never visited?

Anyway, here are some pics.

We stayed in a beautiful sea view apartment in a complex called Metropole Towers.

Metropole Towers started life as a hotel back in the early 1900s and has period features in abundance - grand corridors and stairways, ornate mirrors and vintage door bells.

The sea, the sea!

There are lots of back alleys like this. It reminds me a little bit of Hampstead but with beaches and less Prada.

It was a lovely weekend with lashings of sea and sunshine and not a smuggler or wrecker in site.

After a few weeks of calm in a spotlessly clean house the wheels have come off and we’ve gone over to the dark side. I did next to nothing this weekend. While this is a bit of a luxury- weekends are usually spent working - things have descended into chaos.

Saturday was spent with a sore head and nausea from the previous evening’s shenanigans. I wouldn’t mind but we didn’t even go out. Just a ‘few’ drinks while watching old Friends episodes. And yesterday we had all sorts of plans. I had a written list which said:- clean the house and sort out the back room. But instead we sat around all day watching DVDs and eating sweets.

The upshot is that today I’m now back on a diet and have given up alcohol. Again. I also had to get up at 4.50 to give me time to do my hair and still make it to work by 7.00. I was only slightly hindered by Tori who sprayed the settee twice. I then sprayed him (with water, I should add) and poor old Blossom got caught in the crossfire. Valuable minutes were spent consoling her and apologising profusely.

And just to put the top hat on it we started the day with a bit of a row, where I ended up slamming out of the house and coming to work on my own. If I get up at 4.50 in the morning I refuse to be late for work. Lord Levy, however, does not share this philosophy and spent 12 minutes (I timed him) on the toilet whilst playing cards on his mobile phone.

So, there you have it. Not a great start to the week.

We arrived home last night a little later than usual. We’d found another puncture in the back tyre (the third in the last few weeks) and therefore had to walk to the supermarket. Normally I enjoy this walk. We cut through a back entry which runs between the back gardens of two rows of houses and on a number of occasions we’ve heard . . . a pig. Yes, really. There is a pig in Levenshulme. And once we heard a duck. We’ve never actually seen them as the walls are too high but we’ve heard them.

Alas though last night the pig and the duck remained illusive, no doubt tucked up out of the downpour. We however got soaked.

When we finally made it back we settled down for a quiet night in with wine (for me) and beer (for him) and watched some DVDs and a bit of telly. We were both laughing about how all the adverts were geared towards DIY, gardening and finding a new settee when the new Marks and Spencer advert came on. It’s set to the unexpected tune of ‘I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper’ and I must say that I was totally bewildered. Apparently, when women meet up with their ‘gal pals’ they meet at a lighthouse. Activities include frolicking in the grounds whilst sporting long stripy socks and waving an umbrella over one’s head. And also, doing handstands in a short skirt to reveal your bikini bottoms. Oh, and there are props! Watering cans, tennis rackets and flippers feature widely.

I expect I missed the memo on this one. Or perhaps more likely I’ve been shunned from the sisterhood for my slovenly cleaning practices and total lack of interest in shopping. The clothes were pretty though.

The advert is currently on the home page of the M&S website.

 We’re off to Whitby for the weekend to get some sea air!

Last night we went to visit my in-laws. We spent a pleasant evening with my husband’s mum, dad and nan, drinking tea and chatting and then headed back home. On the way back we’d just reached Salford and the car started to judder. I was about to start cursing the mechanics who fixed the car last week but it turned out to be ‘just a flat’. This wasn’t the best news as far as I was concerned. It was freezing cold, we were in the middle of Salford and I had a bag of Mini Eggs waiting for me at home.

I mentioned that we’d have to phone a breakdown service - secretly I was hoping for the Knights of the Road - do you remember the RAC marketing campaign? But no, my very own knight sprang out of the car into action. He was only briefly interrupted by the four large containers of bulbs in the boot. So there I stood in the middle of Salford with four pots of tulips while Lord Levy changed the wheel.

We were up and running again in no time, the heater turned up full blast, me all laughing and impressed and him all nonchalant and ‘I have done this before you know’. When we got home we shared the Mini Eggs.

It’s been one of the those weeks. Things seem somehow slightly misaligned. Lord Levy has been away on business trips and so the house has been very quiet. And also very light as I have to sleep with the landing light on. Tori, after the Cadillac of booster injections has somehow managed to catch a cold and is feeling very sorry for himself.

And me? Well, I’m working through my writing course and finding it a bit of a struggle. The course itself is interesting. There are lots of great tips and advice from established writers, the content is easy to digest and the example passages are enjoyable. I’ve worked through everything meticulously, have had lots of ideas and inspiration but when it comes to writing them down - nothing. The words don’t come. In fact I can’t even think of how to round off this post.

We went to see Cloverfield on Sunday. I didn’t know much about it in advance, just that it’s got good reviews. In fact on IMDB it gets a whopping 7.9 out of 10.

I however, did not enjoy the film. The main problem was the use of hand held cameras all the way through. I thought that this worked well in ‘The Blair Witch Project’ but in this film it made me really nauseous. And it wasn’t just down to the bumper bag of Skittle I consumed during the trailers.

That was enough to ruin it for me. But that aside, I couldn’t work out what the monster was doing in New York. I mean for something as big a sky scraper you’d think the Americans would’ve seen it coming. What with their early warning defense systems and all. But maybe I missed something as I looked away to avoid the rainbow of fruit flavours making an encore.