DINNER
Chicken Curry with whole Chicken Legs, skin an' all
Basmati Rice with Cardomom Seeds
Side Salad of Own Cucumber and Red Onion

Mr A came up with 'this kitten's a bit of a minx', which led neatly into the name Minnie, as in Minnie the Minx (The Beano). It suits her down to the ground as she is lively and mischevious, leaping around playing with anything dangling. So, Minnie it is.

My speedo on the new car is now working again. Strange, it may stop working again, but for now I'm grateful to know when I'm over the speed limit, just in case.....I've stuck my austrian crystal pyramid on the top of the dashboard with bluetack and also got the radio working. It cost £15 plus VAT, so just over £17 for the code. It's great to be driving with radio 4 on. Yeh, I'm a really cool chick these days - not!

Had a singing rehearsal monday night as we are going into the studio in a few weeks. There's one song that we failed to nail last time in the studio, so thought we'd work on it. It has a Salsa rythmn with each of us singing different parts. Well, we've revamped it by changing a couple of the parts that myself and Anna weren't happy with. It's getting really good now but will need at least a couple more nights of practice before it's ready for recording. We have a gig at a museum end of this month. The museums and art galleries are the best paying venues, no quibbling about our fee. Nice!

Reading Jonathan Kellerman, Private Eyes a fairly recent book with his main character Alex Delaware, the sleuthing psychologist. Just finished the new Patricia Cornwall book with her forensic pathologist detective, Kay Skapetta (or something like that). A bit disappointing, and not up to the previous standard she'd set with this series of books. It was too patchy, jumping scenes without linking them so that you'd read something and not know what it relates to. Shame, as her earlier books were really well written, this one though wasn't that good.

Finally, I got a letter from my insurers telling me that they would offer £200 for my vandalised car! As I have to pay £100 excess, that would mean that they would send me the princely sum of £100 to buy a replacement car of the same make and mileage. My insurance premium is more than £100, so that offer stinks! I rang them to have a good old moan about their meaness. The woman said that if I could find adverts showing a similar car for sale at a higher price then they would reconsider their offer. Thing is, my car had done about 120,000 miles but I'd just had new valves put in the engine so it was running really well. Mechanically it was sound, even for a 1993 model. They say they are going by the list price of a comparable car. I think they are being really mean. So I'll have to trawl ebay and the papers and find another Polo to show them. I reckon realistically it should be around £400-£500. It was insured at £600. How can they offer less than I pay in premiums! I think I'll change my insurers after this cos they have really peed me off......