KT Dodge

Archive for August, 2007

I was in Malaysia at the time when Diana had her crash and with the time difference saw all the news reports just after it happened. I remember feeling really shocked.

Now I’m not sure if I believe in ‘premonitions’ but we decided to go and visit Kensington Palace (that is two friends and my mum) to read the tributes and see the flowers. My mum is a big Diana fan. Anyhow the night before we went there, I dreamt that I met Prince William and gave him comforting words.

Now on the day we spent quite a while reading tributes and lost track of the time and when we looked round we could see ’security’ clearing everyone away except us four and a couple of other people and in walked Prince Charles, William and Harry!! I came face to face with William and could not say anything shocked again!!! How weird was that though……

I found the following article amusing and quite true in parts about the spiralling costs of weddings nowadays. We had our wedding in the US and therefore, unfortunately were ‘one of those couples’ that invited friends and family at their own cost to join us there!!! But, we found that many of our friends who truly wanted to be with us just took two weeks holiday and made it their yearly full length holiday. They said it was really good because it gave them a core weekend to work around.

However, it is so easy to let costs for a wedding spiral out of control as you get carried away on giving yourself, your family and guests ‘a special day’. He’s right, one of the best weddings I ever went to was in a registery office, then to the park for champagne whilst the pictures were being taken and then to a local pub for ‘brunch’ and singing. Her dress was from Oxfam and we all sung as she entered into the registery office ..duh duh du du, duh duh du du… and it was great.

Before I got wed I was warned by other married couples that their circle of friends changed as their idea of ‘having fun’ changed. Of course, I didn’t believe them as I’ve had a lot of my friends for many years, in fact, I was the single one when most of them were in relationships albeit not married. But they were right, It is so strange how friends react when you get married. Suddenly a major bunch of my girlfriends have stopped contacting me as they think I’m now ‘unavailable’. Now I may have to ask myself were they true friends in the beginning? Perhaps not, who knows they obviously think that marriage equates to ‘boring’. However, me and my hubby think it equates to ‘twice as much fun’.

How does somebody not notice a great big snake in a cockpit before they take off. Apparently in the US a 3 to 6 ft snake was licking a pilots foot - urgh! I know that if I see a spider it makes me panic a wee bit but a big ruddy snake - it’s just lucky I’m not a pilot!

I was delighted to hear the news that Channel 4 have finally decided to axe ‘Big Brother’. They have milked this reality show for far too long now. For me, it’s always been like watching ’self obsessed fame hungry’ paint dry, well boring.

I’ve just read this post about another catastrophy that happened in a flagship NHS hospital. It just brought back to me the awful time I spent in Guys and St Thomas’s when I broke my ankle. The severe lack of care was frightening. When are they going to sort this out?

Well, well, well it seems that Samantha Cameron, the Tory Leaders wife has told a magazine that she secretly would like to dress like Gwen Stefani. Go for it Samantha - Cameron might get more votes. I wonder what Gordon Brown’s missus secretly wants to look like? Britney Spears?

I am not surprised that a recent report has said that since 1997 1.8 million Britons have emigrated to other countries, primarily Spain and Australia. This marks the biggest mass exodus of Britons for a century according to the report in the Telegraph.
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I don’t blame anybody for wanting to live elsewhere. The quality of life in Britain has declined, with all the silent ‘taxes’ that we are now asked to pay, congestion charging, permit parking, speed cameras, lack of housing, overcrowding .. the list is endless. It seems sometimes that this government is here to ‘punish’ us not help us.

When other countries offer a better quality of life and you have skills which are not being rewarded in this country, of course it makes sense to be brave and make that move abroad.

Apparently a study has been done by Dr Bill Sellers at Manchester University to see how nimble/fast Dinosaurs could run. Surprisingly the fastest could run almost 40MPH nearly as fast as an electric car. Apparently dinosaurs could run faster than all modern atheletes including David Beckham. However, the temptation to chase Posh would be non-existent, let’s face it she’s all skin and bone .. not much meat there!

Are watch collectors only men? My brother, Perry Benson, is a keen collector of watches and enjoys reading all kinds of watch articles so that he has all the latest information and details on the newest and best watches around. He probably has at least 50 different watches which I hasten to add he does not wear all at once. In fact many of them do not even work as they came from a market place in the Far East many moons ago. But his fascination with watches whether real or not continues to this day. In fact, he even has watch tools to mend them with when they go wrong. He is not the only bloke I know that has a watch obsession.

I also have at least two other male friends who collect watches. One of them purely for investment reasons as he purchases limited edition ‘Swatch’ Watches. I don’t really know any women who are so obsessed with watches – so I wonder if this is purely a male passtime? Probably because its an easy and recognisable way to show people that you have taste. Its subtle yet shows personality. My husband prefers watch fobs, even one with a compass in it, but then again he is rather eccentric in his tastes.