WHY ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE STILL IN THE SHOPS?

Just came back from shopping in Bromley! The place is heaving! I do not understand why people have left it so late to do their shopping. At this stage they should have bought all their presents, wrapped them up and stashed them safely under the Christmas tree leaving the way clear for me to do my late shopping in peace and quiet!

I feel almost as tired as after my stint as a 'body' during my daughter's fitness trainer exam. She passed but I still bear the scars from the event. It was the cross-trainer that nearly made the wheels come off. I hate the thing. I knew I was in trouble when my offspring blithely announced that we would be doing TEN MINUTES on the machine. At three minutes I began drafting in my head how I would announce that I was dying and had to come off. At five minutes dearest daughter says "Keep it up! We've only got five minutes to go." We, WE! I was the only one on the cross-trainer with arms and legs flailing in all directions, lungs bursting, eyes popping out of my head and envisaging the examiner's reaction when I collapsed off the back of the machine. Luckily for me she cut the exercise short and asked us to move on to the next piece of equipment. I managed to stay conscious and smiling but it was a huge effort.

Just spoke to the printers. The books are still not ready but I am hopeful I will get something by the end of the week. Problem seems to be that I drew the illustrations in Powerpoint using a mouse. Yes, I know it is unorthodox but when I started in January I intended to give my drawings to an illustrator to make a proper job of it. As it turned out, the illustrator felt my efforts were good enough. However, I have no patience and got tired of having to redraw the characters every time I wanted to change a leg or a whisker or a tail. I had (and still have) no idea of how to use a package like Illustrator so I trained myself to draw in Powerpoint using a mouse - that way it was easy to amend or recolour the drawings. The printer is not impressed though. Apparently the colours are difficult to maintain during the printing process as they are in RGB. I guess I will have to have a rethink for the next set of books.

I am off to Croydon now to buy some curtains. Christmas just isn't Christmas without new curtains. Hope the shopping centre will be reasonably quiet otherwise I might have to do my crazed shopper impression a few days early!

Mary