A PHOENIX RISES

Dear Reader

It's a while since I blogged as I've been having what they call today 'health issues', what we in Grimsby say 'been a bit badly'. Lost the fight with the tooth last Thursday. The dentist said it was a 'rogue', so I called it Bill Sykes and had it out. RIP Bill. Unfortunately I've now been faced with a whopping bill the size of Iceland's national debt so I'm not a happy bunny. And today I was faced with a haridan of a nurse when I went for chiropody treatment for my poorly toe (is there no end to my minor ailments!), who tut tutted and had the nerve to tell me that my best shoe boots were far too high and pointy and hence bad for me. This from an insole of a woman sporting the worst pair of size 8 clumpy blue trainers I have ever seen, who clearly should be arrested by the shoe police. Well, I'm sorry but there are limits and I've reached them. I may look for some slightly wider shoe boots when I've finished handing over my pay cheque to the dentist but I'm not giving up my heels .... yet.

Apart from that it's been a good start to the week as the logo for this year's Business Awards event is ready. Hope you're liking it. As you probably (well hopefully) can guess, this year we're having a Harry Potteresque magical theme for our Awards and I wanted the logo (crest) to represent that.

At the Gala Dinner we going to split the audience into four houses and the crest shows the colours of them. We've named them Grimmydor (scarlet/gold), Scunnerin (green/silver), Humberpuff (yellow/black) and Ravenscorus (blue/bronze). Each house will have its own ghost (Nearly Headless Harry/the Corpulent Count/the Grey Banker/the Bloody Bishop) and its own animal mascot (lion/snake/badger/eagle). There is a phoenix on top of the crest which is supposed to represent business rising from the ashes of recession (I think optimism is a good thing!) and I'm hoping our Awards do spread some magic for the business community. They've had a really tough time of it. I guess I've let my imagination run riot this year but it's been a lot of fun and the graphics people at the Telegraph have really got behind the concept and I think done us proud. We've also had a lot of fun putting it all together and I guess that's what it's all about.

I've had a go at the Magnolia Easter basket challenge and hopefully will be decorating it tomorrow night, so I'll post it Wednesday. It was a bit fiddly - you could do with four hands really - if my toe wasn't badly I might have bought that into play! - but I found that if I held it together with paper clips (the basket not my toe) it made the job a bit easier. That's my top tip for anyone else out there trying it. Or even better get a mate round. As granny would say "many hands make light work". And for anyone out there who's wondering what the heck I'm going on about, take a look at the Magnolia site (link below). The design team have come up with some stunning Easter baskets. I'm just wondering what to fill mine with. Probably teeth!

http://justmagnolia.blogspot.com/