VW Expo

We spent a great day last Sunday at the Kent Hop Farm browsing amongst some of the coolest VW cars and campers I've seen! We've not long acquired a VW Transporter Autosleeper (high-top) Type 25 - not quite so cool as a "Splitty" - see the photo above, if you've got £27000 to spare, or, in grey next to it, a "Bay" (the surfer dude type camper with the cute curved winscreen), these are also now getting very expensive.

We also drooled over a vaste range of beetles - both "original" and "custom"- which brought back memories of my beloved Bright Blue Beetle - the first and only car ( so far) I've ever paid for with a loan! I loved its comfort, its luxurious thick white seats and its super efficient heater that melted a tape deck and a vinyl LP I left in the rear footwell - aaaah! Those were the days!

We chose comfort and practicality over "cool" in the form of our "wedgie" - the third generation of campers with the flat screeen - we wanted to use our van to holiday with - not just cruise about in- must be an age thing! But we have joined the Sussex VW Owners Club and my husband has taken part in a cruise with our wedgie! Pity I was out with some girfriends that evening!

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (BBC2)

Hope you didn't miss BBC 2's Summer Exhibition (broadcast on the last 3 evenings) hosted by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. An unusual insight into the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition - which is open to to all to submit a work of art, be it a painting, print or sculpture, and have a chance at it being "hung" and sold. Over 9000 submissions were judged and only about one in eight is accepted. The programme followed Vic Reeves as he had one of his paintings accepted and also several other talented, but unlucky artists who didn't get their work accepted. Well, I thought they were talented anyway and, seeing as the great and the good "experts" at the Royal Academy accepted and displayed one artist's plinth and not the work of art it should have supported, it would seem that talent (and art) is certainly in the eye of the beholder!

However, the whole arty shenanigins was brought back down to earth with a bump when we were treated to advice of a more fiscal nature from financial guru, Alvin Hall as he accompanied three "amateur" buyers to help them choose a work of art as an investment.

An interesting watch, and, as I can't be the only one not to have known about the Summer Exhibition before, I would say that there will be a great many more than 9000 artists submitting next year! Let's hope the BBC will now cover the Summer Exhibition every year.

Find out more www.bbc.co.uk/arts/summerexhibition/

More Strawberries

I’ve eaten strawberries again today as part of my 6 meal a day diet – about 100grams of strawberries topped with 100gms of fat free fromage frais and a teaspoon of runny honey is only about 94 calories!

My Diet Tip of Today is - keep eating. I don’t go more than 2 ½ hours without eating. If you starve yourself until you can hear your stomach growling – two things will happen: your metabolism will slow up in a reaction to what seems like a famine situation and/or you will probably overeat at (or before) the next meal. Of course if you eat often on your diet everything you eat has to be very low in calories. This happily sorts out the healthy eating part of my diet – there probably can’t be any very low calorie foods that are considered unhealthy – can there? Someone will probably prove me wrong there – but it could be interesting!

Summer Dieting

I'm on that diet again. The one where I hope to fit in to those clothes in time for my holiday! NO CHANCE! It's easier now that I've finished work for the summer - and there's strawberries to eat. Yes! I'm just about to eat a big bowl full, topped with a huge blob of fromage frais (fat free of course) and dripped with honey. I'll let you know the calories when I've worked it out! This is my 4th meal of the day on my self-imposed 6 meal-a-day-diet. Breakfast was only an apple, a fat-free yoghourt and a cup of tea - but that's just me being lazy - I can think of other options - just as long as each meal is under 200 calories. Boring? Well, sometimes - but not when the weight comes off - 1lb last week - but I did go out for a couple of meals and - ooops! - one of my late evening meals was a chocolate biscuit and a glass of red wine! More willpower needed here!

Willpower is also needed to get going on the exercise - 10,000 steps a day is, I read somewhere, supposed to be the answer to all our diet and health problems - well, I try, often. My pedometer keeps falling off - I nearly lost it down the toilet once - but I've got a system - I walk as much as possible all day - then in the evening- if it doesn't show at least 4 miles - I then go out for a long walk. It worked last year and I lost just under a stone - well, 12lbs actually - and managed to keep most of it off all winter. So, if I do the same every year, I may be at my target weight of somewhere under 10 stone in about 3 years - that's too long to wait for my BMI to get down under 25.

Now I'm going to get stuck in to those strawberries...