Houskeeping, but not in a real house thankfully

Bonjour mes saucissons bien-aimés and I do apologise for the poor level of pretty much everything round here presently - is the black thing in the dishwasher filter in fact a roach, or merely a teabag? Why is the entire house covered in a fine layer of icing sugar? Are my internet providers malevolent or merely incompetent? Why do my sinuses still feel like they are soaked in amaretto? What can we possibly do to combat the invading army of pant spiders? Is Heroes merely "Pokémon for grown ups"? * Why have I used 'merely' twice in one paragraph making myself sound like a ball of pretentious twattery? Who knows. Certainly not me.

Lack of the internets has pushed me variously this weekend to Matilda's (lovely - pasteis de nata and her new Nespresso fancy schmancy babykilling coffee machine), to Dominique and Olivier's (cat hair and Fruitella) and quite quite mad. I am sorry, but it seems that however much I beat the CFO over the head with pointy things, he cannot quite get it to work. I am having my feet gnawed to death by Iggy the homicidal tom cat as I write, so I must be brief. I'll confine myself to some village fête housekeeping.

First, the divine Antonia who is quite the funniest thing to ever roll around in horrible thigh shrinking footwear has given her verdict on the Soft Stuff. However, since she insisted on awarding the prize to the wrestling tortoises, I have had to ignore her. Instead I am awarding prizes as follows:

Third prize goes to ...

Bob the Builder! Well done Paris Girl. Let it never be said that we discriminate against those missing extremities on these pages. Even really trite, moralising, envirodullards who talk to heavy machinery and take advantage of their staff are welcome.

Second prize goes to Eddie Cantor! Antonia gave him extra marks for having no genitals. Which seems fair, until you start thinking, late at night when you should be sleeping but instead you are grinding your teeth and convulsing gently (that sounds rude. It wasn't rude.), presumably Bob has no genitals either? I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT, because that would be just, really really nasty.

First prize goes to ...... the Mohair Monster! And you all know what that means. Peevish wins ultimate super duper Village Fête champion Best in Show type person of 2009 and we must cover her in prizes and treats and small pats on the head. Peevish, you are horribly talented at this outsider craft business. Let's just remind ourselves:





"Those eyebrows" comments Antonia, and I am sure we can all agree.

I think that draws fête proceedings to a close for this year. I'm sure we can organise some kind of new seasonal badness soon. I can hardly wait.

Ok, the cat is really starting to hurt now. Maybe he can smell tortoise on me? I dread to think.

* A smidgeon of context for this one. The CFO made that observation this weekend. I invited him to expand on his theory and he said "Look, that one [Elle? Is that it?] is Pikachu, she fires electricity out of her fingers". I could not fault his logic.