Tom's talents!

I know this is quite old now, but check it out. I know I'm biased, but hes great!

Tom Lillywhite Video

Kudos for magazines!

Over the last two days we have had lectures which, for once, were championing magazines. Most of the 3-part diploma so far has been so geared towards the newspaper and broadcast elements that it was frankly surprising to hear someone bigging up us lot. We are so often assumed to be the fluffy ones! The thing is, expressing opinion, using a mixture of serious and lighter techniques, covering entertainment rather than news subjects and understanding a visual medium does not make us fluffy. It just makes magazines a different but equally necessary medium. Despite the tedious and often irrelevant questions posed by some of our broadcast students to our lecturer Nicholas Brett, of BBC Worldwide today (most of whom need to read up on the difference between commercial and public service, by the way) I thought he did a great job of defending the business that we are entering, and its longevity. Good on him.

I want...

I want to be the New Urban Gardener. I don't know why, I just have this strange obsession with urban allotments...

I also want this Karen Millen mini dress, possibly the most gorgeous dress I've seen this autumn. Can't afford it though. Damn.

Reminiscing...

Devon at the weekend is the most amazing place. No, seriously! I went back to Exeter this weekend and went to Beer on the Saturday. Beer is this tiny little working fishing village, all quaint pubs, pebble beach and cliffs. On the drive we took a 'slight' (ha!) detour through Woodberry and East Budliegh because Tom had been there on delivery and thought it was cute. And cute it certainly was. You seriously wouldn't think such places still existed. They look like they are straight out of pre-war England. The house he had delivered to actually backed onto the village green by the memorial, and had a brook which was postively babbling. Enid Blyton would have been proud if any of the famous five had ended up anywhere near as nice as this.

For someone who pretends most of the time that she wishes to be some kind of urbanite, I'm really quite a country girl at heart. I got quite excited when a gate opened at the side of the road and a herd of cows came out. I squealed and jumped in my seat as Tom complained about them holding us up. Bloody Londoner.

In East Budliegh, I was choked by this old man selling hand-tied bunches of his own dahlias beside the road. His old jacket looked bedraggled and as Tom sped on by I was overcome by a patronising urge to go back and buy all his flowers, but I had a sneaking suspicion he would have his regulars. Growing up in the country side you get to know how country people tick. At my Saturday job in my 'formative' years we practically adopted an old man named Jack. He had sat on his stool with his raincoat on, tea with two sugars and his walking frame beside him day in, day out. He had sat there for years before I got there, and four years after I've left, I was pleasantly reassured recently to find on 'phoning the shop that he was still there. He answered the 'phone, and his deafness was as alive and kicking as he was. I had a feeling this man would be the same: an East Budleigh institution. And it made me very happy to know wherever you go in the country, the real country will always be the same.