Buy FitFlops at the best price and save your legs

The great thing about the new must have footwear, FitFlops, is that you're giving yourself great legs and a better behind, the more you wear them. Now that their range includes stylish sandals for summer, comfy indoor clogs, including the coziest shearling lined clog, and fabulous boots, I am planning to wear them year round. Go get a great deal at an amazing price on all of them here now. 

The British makers of the Fit Flop say, that by wearing FitFlop boots, clogs, smeakers or sandals you 'get a workout while you walk'™

FitFlop footwear is biomechanically engineered to help tone and tighten your leg muscles while you walk in them. Studies at the Centre for Human Performance at London's South Bank University show that normal walking in FitFlop sandals* can :

• help increase leg and bottom muscle activity (up to 30%). (so you feel less ache in your hips and knees)
• absorb more shock than a normal shoe (up to 22%)
• help realign ground force reaction closer to your joints.

* When compared to a control shoe. 

Case studies were performed on Microwobbleboard
technology over a forty-eight month period by Dr David Cook, 
Senior Lecturer in Biomechanics, and Darren James 
at the Centre for Human Performance at 
London South Bank University.    

The Happy Bubble in London!

FUN NEWS! On January 17th Actionaid is creating a pop-up "Happy Place" in central London! It'll be full of wonderful, happy things like smoothies, porridge, cupcakes, fresh grass, soothing sounds, comfort food, free massages, etc... all inside giant "Happy Bubbles"! And... they'll be broadcasting Notes from the Universe on giant screens! Why? To help end poverty, together! How? Increased awareness! Made possible by friends in the media spreading the word! When? January 17th, 7am - 7pm Where? City center! Finsbury Avenue Square, Broadgate (Liverpool Street tube station). Cost? FREE! Click here for more information or check it out on Facebook!

The song 'Mamma Africa' was recorded for Actionaid and
your download supports them.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and other charming English gossip

It is a joy to read a book (by Helen Simonson) that reflects some of the realities of English life as she is lived now - full of foibles, bitchiness, racial and religious squabbles - as well as old fashioned courtship. And strangely, class plays a secondary role. In Major Pettigrew's Last Stand neither staunch traditionalist Major Pettigrew nor his new found friend, Mrs Ali, widow and village shopkeeper, are hidebound by the past.

They embody and maintain a dignified respect for history, family and education, without being stuffy, while almost everyone around them resorts to money grubbing tactics and cheap showy strategems in the hope of raising money or pursuing their own ends.

However the book remains ever witty, delightful and charming in the face of modern and tragic challenges to maintaining one's dignity and equanimity. This is a love story in the English tradition, affectionate even to the buffoonery in our midst and gently mocking even of our esteemed and beloved heroes.

 Major Pettigrew's Last Stand:  is in the kindle edition here. For Amazon UK see below.

Rye has been a centre of literary focus for centuries but if this book evokes another particular era and works it is those of the master of gossip, E.F. Benson. The Mapp and Lucia series are wickedly arch, full of delicious snobbery and nosiness. Wonderfully, Helen Simonson has captured that very English wit in her modern tale of Sussex village life, slightly tart with a predilection for the gentle put down. 

E.F Benson's characters were portrayed to perfection in the TV series by Geraldine McEwan and Nigel Hawthorne, in serious one-upmanship competition with Prunella Scales.

Such coverage of village life and goings on has been central to English publishing since Jane Austen. It is extraordinary how we rediscover Jane or her successors and make stars of the actors who portray her heroes. Like other British women my age, I am still a fan of Colin Firth more for his role as Mr Darcy in the BBC classic series of Pride and Prejudice than for anything else he has ventured, Hollywood awards notwithstanding. I was glued to the TV for Pride and Prejudice night over the holidays. Can there be anyone who hasn't seen the series? If so, reserve a couple of evenings at home with the DVD player to watch the whole run or, even better, curl up on a Sunday evening and watch weekly to extend the enjoyment as long as possible.