Here's a couple of fun sites I've found - for over 18s only obviously. One's a very friendly message board www.girlforspanking.co.uk/forum the other has a free game trial: www.houseofkink.co.uk lots of fun and both genuine sites which won't land you with lots of spam.

Made an abortive (due to Jewsons closing at lunchtime on a Saturday) attempt to make the vegetable garden today. As our garden is on a bit of a slope, the idea was to flatten out a piece about 2 metres by three and a half and hold the soil back with decking planks. We'll have to do it next week and get the timber from Jewsons in the week. I'm looking forward to having the vegetable plot, nowhere near as big as the allotment I used to have (and I have my name down with the council for another), but probably about as much as I can manage at the moment. (The allotment waiting list is so long you just put your name down on the off chance that when one finallly turns up your circumstances mean you can work it.) Full time work plus full time husband and mother tending (I'm sure kids would be easier) mean I have very little time. However, hopefully I will end up growing peas (adore them raw straight off the plant), shallots (husband likes to pickle them), tomatoes and courgettes (use them by the megatonne) parsnips (easy, keep for ages in the soil), beetroot (yuk! but husband likes it) beans and herbs. Have got seeds for broad beans, useful because you can plant them in November and they produce fresh veg in about March when nothing else is up and your running out of the winter stuff. Thought I was going to have to get cloches for them and them found a sort that can be planted outside in November as seeds and don't need cloches - might get some anyway because always useful for early beans, and now we've moved to a house with a garden we have a shed and can store all that stuff.

Anyway due to the abortive nature of today's vegetable plot building I ended up taking Mum into town to Marks and Sparks for a new skirt and trouser suit. Tried out the new Shopmobility here, good drop off outside and I can put the car in the carpark for free as shopmob validate your ticket. Anyhow, stopped for the usual cuppa in the Milkmaid near the Cathedral and met a couple who live in our road. the guy commented on the clayey nature of the soil, it is, and it stains too, rusty red stains on your clothes, never encountered soil that does that before - even in this bit of Devon where it's all brick red.

The cornet playing is coming along both better and slower than I hoped - my brain seems to have grasped, in an unconscious way, which harmonic each note is made on (so A to E which is the same fingering, different harmonic is done by the lip) but staying on control of producing the notes in tune without splitting for more than half a tune before I get tired is taking longer than I hoped. Husband seems to have decided that playing a footie matches this year is out. (Sorry I've taken a real leaf out of Belle Du Jour's book by referring to him as 'Husband' - d'you think she's for real?, I think shes a writer - after all I'm not bad at putting thoughts on paper but she's in a different league when it comes to enjoyable writing.)

What I intended to post up today was my idea for Flat Fashion. It's not an idea that I have time to take forward myself and I've gone through phases of thinking about writing out the idea and selling it to a fashion house (probably not a good enough idea) selling it on Ebay to a fashon student desperate for a project (that might work) or just putting it on here and letting anyone who wants to run with it. As I've said before, the net is a big free for all, so lets throw out ideas into the fertile seas out there and see what evolves. So will have to work on Flat Fashion in the next few days - tell all your fashion student mates.

The following short column is one I wrote for the Exeter Flying Post (Issue 283, December 2004). It followed a week of heavily reported celebrity deaths which resulted in my husband commenting 'Who's going to die today?'

Who died today?
It’s been a bit of a time for people dying – John Peel, Bill Nicholson, Emlyn Hughes, Yasser Arafat – a friend asked me sadly ‘who’s going to die today?’

So I looked it up

In the UK – 9 people will die on the roads. (Department of Transport)
In the UK – 245 people will die from cold – hypothermia and increased susceptibility to viruses (annual UK excess death rate during the winter months extrapolated over four winter months)
In the world – 3,000 people will die from malaria – easily preventable by the provision of treated mosquito nets on beds (World Health Organisation)
In the world – 4,657 people will die from unsafe drinking water – many of these deaths avoidable through oral rehydration therapy at approx. $2 per dose (World Health Organisation)
In the world – 5,942 people will die from diseases easily prevented by vaccines (ie: diptheria, polio, measles) (World Health Organisation)
In the world – 22,000 children will die from malnutrition (The Lancet)

Tomorrow the same numbers will die again . . . and the next day . . . and the next . . .

The Make Poverty History Campaign adverts did it much better later in 2005 with their celebrities snapping their fingers every three seconds to bring home the fact that someone dies of poverty every three seconds. Sometimes I stand still and snap my fingers every three seconds just to remind myself.

By the way - that's 25 preventable deaths in the time it took you to read this.

Young Hearts Run Free - The Real Story of the 1970s by Dave Haslam. An excellent and (for those of us old enough to remember it) nostagic read. It brings back the energy of those bad old days of strikes, fights and social deprivation and remembers the great music spawned as a reaction to it all. At the end of the book Haslam notes today's cleaner cities, high consumer culture, shopping centres, service industries and historical 'theme parks' in place of factories, shipyards and warehouses. He suggests that the energy generated in the dispossessed in those days has dissipated. Now we 'all' have mobile phones and homes like something out of 'Changing Rooms', now we all consume rather than create, now the West is concerned with appearance rather than substance. It's true that the events of the 1970s and 1980s gave rise to particularly musical creativity - not only in punk, and in the 1980s to comedy and performance and now its all become rather mainstream - punk songs used to sell consumer goods. That age also gave rise to new freedoms, dress as you wish and find your own style, do your own thing, embrace your own sexuality etc.

So where's the creativity now? It's on the net, that staggering free-for-all. A new generation of writers on blogs, filmmakers on youtube, artists, musicians, commentators, campaigners and personalities on Facebook and Bebo, small businesses on Ebay, academics on Wikipedia. OK there's abuses - there is always a way to abuse something. (Arguably the net didn't generate more paedophiles or bullies it just makes them more visible and easier to catch.) The net too has increased people's freedoms to meet like minded people and feel less alone (the BDSM/spanking community, for one, has thrived on the net and probably become a safer place for it). Yes, people make (sometimes lots of) money on the net, again, nothing new - look what punk did for Richard Branson and environmentalism for Anita Roddick. Not to mention the bizarre phenomenon of gamers making real word money selling attributes from games like Second Life et al. The net has the advantage of requiring less specific talents, though as always, in the end perseverance, application and talent will out.

The net may be a very different place in 20 years, it may be more regulated and controlled, the world could have changed in ways we cannot foresee, we may be looking back sadly (as Haslam does to the energy of the 70s) to an unpredictable internet that was dynamic and open to all, when there was always something new on the net. If there's a lesson to be learned its that times always change and nothing stays the same for ever. Make the most of the net of today - it's our punk rock.

What's with the 'Big Yellow' ad for storage space? Why would anyone want to convince people to hold onto more junk (OK, yeah, money). How much stuff do you have in your house that you just don't need any more, no matter how much you think you do. Well now, not only can you fill up every cupboard, spare corner, garage and attic, you can hire storage space by the month. Holding onto stuff makes you feel bunged up and ill. Try looking honestly, really honestly at every, every, object in your house and deciding whether you really need it. Getting rid of masses of stuff is so incredibly liberating - why d'ya think they invented Ebay.

. . . which seems an odd thing to choose to do when you've just had your 43rd birthday, but hey. The truth is I wanted to play football songs on European tours - football tours that is, not music ones. Anyway, gave it a proper try tonight, do have some memories from playing in a brass band (except I played the drums, only had the odd go on a flugelhorn), but, amazingly it went quite well - once I'd sorted out where I was on the scale with the open notes. (I don't have perfect pitch, far from it, so I used an oboe - which I can play - to aurally orientate myself}. Practised for about three quarters of an hour before my lip got numb and endangered my lager imbibing abilities. Suppose I'd better try and practice every day now (to have any hope of being even vaguely proficient in the few weeks left}.