The big countdown to my 50th birthday begins today. It is my birthday on Monday 27th February. So I want you all to raise a glass at 8pm and wish me a Happy Birthday!

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.

Love Phil xxx

:D

I have been chosen by the company I work for to go to London next week to be photographed and to have my mug in the local press and no doubt the back of any buses that course through Nottingham. This is for a recruitment drive and the company wanted 'real people' to be the faces of the company as opposed to models.

Ce soir l'air est plein du bruit discordant et ce soir la voix coulissante séduit dans le passage d'enfantin à laconique. Est-ce que c'est est l'extrémité, lui le commencement?

Who would call their dog Cromarty and why? the British of course and 'why not?' Even odder sounding names have a strange sense of comfort to the Brits. Being an island race as we are we love to be comforted by thr reassuring tones of the Shipping Forecast or as the poet Sean street called it 'the cold poetry of information'.

So, sit back, relax with your evening cocoa and batten down the hatches. Switch your mental radio on and enjoy the soothing sounds of:

Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, fisher, dogger, german Bight, westerly or south westerly three or four, increasing five in north later. Rain later. Good becoming moderate, occasionally poor. Faroes, fair isle, Cromarty, Forties, forth. Northerly backing westerly three or four, increasing six later. Showers. Good.

I am really enjoying working with the Lace Market Theatre on their production of Anna Karenina which is showing in April. The part of Levin is a wonderfully stretching and complex part as he goes through so many mood swings in the play and is a really well rounded difident character. I get turned down by the lovely sweet Kitty, a much younger woman I attempt to propose to; then in deep rejection go and sulk for months: the peasants who work my land are a pain in the bum: the lazy bailif even worse. My counterpart in the play (Anna Karenina) goes completely against my character's moral code by befriending the handsome and utterly charming Count Vronsky - alright she becomes his red hot lover and she is married with a child! On top of this people keep getting run over by steam trains, a race horse called Frou Frou falls over on stage and has to be shot (no real race horses are hurt in the acting )and I have over 60 pages of lines to learn, have to stick my head in a bucket of freezing cold water and then have to sing in Russian! However, I get to marry Kitty in the end, not without a few domestics en route as well as go through a religious transformation. All in an evenings work for no pay and hopefully a lot of fun and wild applause.

Have a look at this site it is very funny. I have been reading their book whilst enjoying a nice cup of tea and a sit down :

www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/

What are your favourite biscuits?