Who is Susan Boyle?!

The rain clouds are back over Scotland after a week of pretty impressive weather. Still suffering the remnants of a terrible cold, I am now back at work. As I look out the small office window at my side I wonder if the rain clouds are a sign of things to come? It would seem they may be as in the office this week there is a little man with sideburns wishing to time us all at our work. He is to sit and watch us work tomorrow. Sent in by the higher authorities for highly suspicious reasons, no doubt.
Ka and myself, along with Dougie and Grace, my in-laws to be, visited house for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park yesterday. This brilliant location is to be the setting of our Big Day in July so we had to give it a visit, meeting Fiona the Wedding planner again. Designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the very early 1900s, House for an Art Lover was not built and opened until the early nineties but has since became a big attraction for all Mackintosh, and architecture, admirers worldwide. A collaboration between Glasgow City Council and the city's Art School the project used all of Mackintosh's original designs that he had created alongside his artist wife Margaret MacDonald all those years ago for a German Design magazine. At the time of the competition Mackintosh's designs were too late to qualify but did not fail to impress the judges as the architect's reputation grew. It would seem even the great Charles Rennie Mackintosh missed the odd deadline.
There were no missed deadlines yesterday though as the meeting with the Wedding Planner turned out to be fairly relaxed, largely made easy by the fact we had decided upon all menus and options over a year ago. the four of us then headed over to the Merchant City and had a fantastic lunch at the Sizzlers Steakhouse. A great two course Sunday lunch for an rather impressive £6.95. Certainly nothing to sniff about. The food was great. A rather lovely medium to well done steak in peppercorn sauce. Just thinking back about it is making me hungry again. It's sitting there sizzling over my head on a that long black plate smothered in pepper sauce in a cloudy vision to romantic piano music as I write.
Good to be back at work though. Creamy Chicken John is safely back from Rome having had a wonderful time and is now advising me of the best places to eat and dine whilst over there. DVD Andy, Gareth and Stuart are winding me up as always as, in mid conversation, I confessed to not knowing who Susan Boyle is? Apparently I've spent the past week under my bed. Susan Boyle, it turns out, is the name of the wee woman who has been discovered to have an amazing singing voice. The latest example of what makes Simon Cowell so gifted - at nodding his head. I excused my ignorance, got my coat and left before realising I did not actually care I did not know the name of this funny little lady from West Lothian. Well done to her though. At the moment you've either got that Talent Show on a Saturday night or, on the opposite channel, the crazed grin of John Barrowman warbling away again so I suppose it gives the British viewing public a varied choice of singers to sit and watch before the guessing game of Casualty. If your ever in on a Saturday night, Casualty is always great for the 'how are they going to die game?'. Oops, she's left that pot of boiling water on the edge of the washing machine as she pulls the wet laundry from it's innards! What's going to happen? No! He's climbed up that ladder balanced precariously on a wet pavement to rescue his long lost son from an exploding house! Ahhh, he can't remember what that disease is called?! And so forth. This was my Saturday night in the past weekend anyway after ferrying Ka back and forth to her hairdressers and helping my Dad with some loft work. Loft work that involved finally putting the Christmas decorations away. It's almost May now and I think my mother was being driven slightly frustrated by the fact that the fibre optic Christmas tree was still propped up against a wall in the front computer room. I nearly lost a finger in the death trap of a ladder my Dad uses to get up there. I kept having visions of descending through the roof of one of the house's bedrooms in a sheet of plaster powder, insulation felt, Star Wars toys and old tv aerials. In fact, there were a few moments up in that loft that were not far beyond a possible Casualty episode themself.