When I got on my train to work yesterday morning there were two unoccupied seats next to one another, underneath one of which was a black rucksack. There was nobody standing close enough to the rucksack to indicate that it was theirs, and with some nervousness I sat down on the seat next to the one with the rucksack on it. In the event of it ( Read more... )

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Well, it's the final of Lovely of the Year 2007, and for once I'm going to get the contest finished before Christmas, not that there's ever been one before, or will there be again. We started with 40 contestants, and a further eight or however many it was sought to qualify via the Wild Card Playoff, except I cancelled it to save time. Now, only ( Read more... )

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There were a lot of one-sided contests in the last round of Lovely of the Year, the only tension being provided in the matches between John Smeaton and George Clooney - which Clooney lost by a mere four votes, leaving wardytron as the main eyecandy among the remaining contestants, right ladies? Ladies? Anyone? No? - and between Charlie Brooker and ( Read more... )

We're now, at long sodding last, into Round 2 of Lovely of the Year 2007. 40 contestants slugged it out over 80 groups, with only 16 progressing. Despite repeated claims to the contrary, they're not joined in the second round by any highest-scoring runners up, because I couldn't be bothered counting the votes and it would only mean more ( Read more... )

Tesco are good, aren't they. In my delivery order last night, instead of the "carefully selected large succulent sweet prawns, caught in the Gulf of St Lawrence and Eastern Coast of Canada" that I'd asked for, they sent me a big bag of McCain Crinkle Cut Oven Chips, and a packet of Bernard Matthews Golden Turkey Drummers. I wonder if they might ( Read more... )

I had to go into Richmond on Saturday to buy some things for a dinner I was making for publicansdecoy and obsessive_katy. I made puff pastry tarts with vine tomatoes and rocket & cashew pesto, followed by poached smoked haddock on a bed of wholegrain mustard mash and drizzled with caper butter. I overcooked the tarts slightly but cleverly made up for it by undercooking the ( Read more... )

With a sense of mounting horror I realised yesterday how many more rounds of Lovely of the Year there needed to be before I finish work this year on Wednesday 19th December - this one plus one final round in the first stage plus four quarter-finals plus two semi-finals plus the final. Then I realised I could just change the format, and make the ( Read more... )

After the neck and neck thrills of Round 5, it is with another despondent groan of "Oh for f#ck's sake, how much more of this is there?" that you will no doubt be anticipating the thrilling prospect of Round 6 of Lovely of the Year. But don't scroll impatiently past this entry just yet! This could be the strongest group of contestants yet! Or ( Read more... )