Saima Says

I'm still meeting people I haven't seen since last year and having to say Happy New Year to them. It feels nice actually, kind of like extending the festivities if you will.

One of the first things people ask is whether I had a good break over Christmas and New Year's and if I have any resolutions for 2010.

Yes, I had a lovely long break. I had time off between Christmas and New Year's and those ten days for the price of three felt great. We went to my parents' house for Christmas dinner and my sister-in-law's for Boxing Day. We avoided the sales though, sales are for suckers.

The period after Christmas was rampacked with events as two of our friends got married. Not to each other. Between the dholki nights, mandhis (yes, MANdhi) and wedding receptions we were exhausted by the time we had to get back to work.

So New Year's resolutions? I'm hoping 2010 is going to be a great year for us. As I enter my 30s (yikes, that sounds awfully grown up) one of my priorities is my health. I've already started eating right and exercising more frequently and it feels great. Of course I will have some cake come January 28th :)

I knew it would be quite a grumpsome day when I was awoken five minutes before my alarm went off. I hate that. I work on my own schedule dammit.

I got up anyway and once breakfasted and ready we made our way to Bedford for my sister's graduation. Unfortunately, I had to get back to work for meetings so we only had time to get photos taken and didn't actually get to see her go up on stage and collect her degree. It was her second degree however and I was there for the first so I guess a 50% strike rate isn't too bad.

I said to Sol I'd drive home so he could get a bit of kip before his long drive to Brighton later on. He was wearing his eye mask and I'm pretty sure many people thought I was kidnapping him or something from the weird looks we got. Though how they thought I overpowered a six foot massive bloke is a conversation for another time.

Two hours it took us to get home from Bedford to London! Traffic was mad and all those loathsome average speed cameras were dotted along the roads, jeering at me, "You can't drive fast, nah nah nah nah nah nah!" Bastards. To make it worse, I was feeling sleepy. I'm pretty sure it was that extra five minutes I was deprived of this morning that did it. I had to resort to listening to cheesy pop in hopes of keeping awake and not crashing the car. Though if I did plough into something I'd hope it'd be one of those average speed cameras and that would recompense as some sort of sick silver lining.

When we did get back I was straight to work for back to back meetings until about 8pm. In most of the meetings we talked about the unpopular changes we're going through right now and I got a general feeling that none of us knew our arses from our elbows.

Before jumping onto the cross trainer for my daily exercise, I popped the chicken Sol had marinated last night into the oven. We have a Tupperware box full of dry chappati flour for when we make roti that normally lives in the grill above the oven. I checked to see if it was in there before putting the oven on of course but couldn't see it so assumed it had been moved. I assumed wrong. When I went back into the kitchen after half an hour, I smelled something weird...burning plastic? Shit, the damn box was hiding at the back of the grill and now was melted all over the bottom and back of it; an annoying obstacle between me and that delicious chicken. I tried my best to remove it without getting burned and was somewhat successful.

When I finally had the chicken it was really nice and I didn't even need any Nando's sauce with it. All's well that ends well.

No matter how many iterations of these sketches I see, I always find them funny.

So you know that palaver every Eid where you don't know what day it will be and you feel like a right tit explaining to your boss why you might have to take Monday off but then again you might not? Well this Eid that worked out well for me.

Eid may have been on Sunday or Monday so I booked the Monday off work anyway. It ended up being Eid on Sunday so we drove down to Brighton that night and spent all of Monday cycling around the most bike friendly place I've been to. (By "we" I mean me and husband, Sol. By the way, have you met Sol? Say hi everyone.) I'm not sure how many miles we ended up cycling but according to my bum, it was quite a lot. This was also our first time cycling on roads, with other much scarier vehicles so hooray for us. Plus, just days before Sol had surprised me with a basket for my bike and this was great for carting around my camera.

I've been to Brighton many times before (see Flickr sets from 2005 and 2006) but each time I visit I enjoy it as much as the last, if not more.

Lowlights: There weren't many. Only that the hotel we stayed at on Sunday night stank like a pet store. Take note Travelodge Brighton Seafront. Also, I guess I could count seeing an old man's junk as a lowlight but it served us right for sitting on the border of a nudist beach.

Highlights: The Lanes are a great place to explore but of course navigating a bike around the tight corners isn't really ideal. We chained ours up and explored the area, stopping off for lunch at Henny's in Brighton Square and then buying some amazing cupcakes from Angel Food Bakery. They were the best cupcakes I've ever had (even if they were a bit squished by the time we ate them) and I've recently been to Magnolia in New York so that's saying something.

In the olden days (2005) we would have at some stage popped into a random fish restaurant for dinner and then moaned about the sub-standard service and food. But this is 2009! So we Googled the best fish restaurant on the BlackBerry and then cycled over to Bankers for fish and chips with mushy peas and tartare sauce. It was well worth the Googling I tell ya. We also happened upon Octopus stores, the same chain as Pylones that I had seen in New York except this one was much cheaper than the one over there. I ended up buying these bad boys.

By the time the sun set, we had purposefully made our way to the old burnt out pier as I thought it would set the scene perfectly for some good pictures. I wasn't disappointed and took a bagillion photos as the sun set rather rapidly. We grabbed some fresh hot doughnuts and then made our way home. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

Today we went to see the recording of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross that will be airing tomorrow. Not only was the line-up great, contained my two favourite things on telly (comedy and cooking) but it was also fun watching how these shows are filmed. The compere was pretty funny too and kept us entertained throughout the whole process. The only downside was being told off in front of three hundred people for trying to take a picture. I wasn't even taking a picture of the set, just the hundred and fifteen (yes, I counted them) heavy duty lights on the ceiling. Harrumph.

The show is filmed at BBC Television Centre on Wood Lane. You know, the one they showed at the end of some episodes of Blue Peter? That place. We got there mega early as the friend who kindly gave us the tickets told us the queue can get long and as they give out more tickets than there are seats there can sometimes be a chance of not getting in. We joined the queue at 4.45pm and gave our two spare tickets to a couple who were originally there for Ready Steady Cook. The woman said on the way there she was saying how she really wanted to see the Jonathan Ross show and now they had tickets. I told her she should have wished for a million pounds.

There was much waiting around as the filming didn't start until 6.45pm but when everything kicked off it was worth the wait. The first guest was Jamie Oliver, talking about his new programme Jamie's American Road Trip. As with anything he does, he was very passionate about his experience over there and he certainly sold me the idea of this show. I'll be watching out for it on Channel 4. Then he cooked bollocks. Literally, bull's balls.

The next guest was 23-year old cricketer Stuart Broad, fresh from the Ashes victory. I didn't know who he was but he came across as a lovely young man. Did you know it's called the Ashes because the trophy is a little urn with Ashes in it? Someone at work told me that and then looked at me a little funny when I asked if the ashes were of the founder of cricket. Apparently this is not the case.

The piece de resistance for me was the appearance of Ricky Gervais. He's one of my favourites, just favourite people in terms of everything he does. And he was on fire tonight but then you wouldn't expect anything less. He talked about his new movie The Invention of Lying which we've been long anticipating and is out October 2nd.

Oh, at the end Mika performed and that's all I've got to say about the matter. Except that they made us dance to it. Bastards.

Catch the show tomorrow at 10.35pm on BBC1. Hopefully you won't see me in the audience.

We were on the flight to Edinburgh when we first heard all about the controversy surrounding Richard Herring's show Hitler Moustache from our friend. Apparently, a writer for The Guardian claimed Richard Herring hates Pakistanis and labelled him a big ol' racist. I hadn't read the article at this point or Richard's right of reply but was pretty certain that the show must have been taken out of context. "Let's get t-shirts for the show that say "Pakistanis love Richard Herring!" I said and that was that.

We never got time to make the t-shirts so turned up to the show without them. (At this point I should mention that we were wearing other clothes.) My husband bumped into Richard when we got to the venue and told him "Pakis love Richard!" making him laugh and then they had a big old man hug. I told him off for using the word "Pakis" not because I find it offensive in that context but because it can sometimes make others feel uncomfortable. I once induced a collective gasp when I used it in front of colleagues and I was merely quoting a scene from The Office.

So, the show itself: fantastic. You'd have to be an amoeba to think it was in any way racist, in fact quite the opposite. Richard challenges racism and the ideas racists hold, revealing them to be ridiculous. Comedy is such a powerful format for delivering that kind of message, much more effective than me saying, "Racism's bad, mmkay?"

Late 'n' Live is exactly what it says on the tin; it's three live comedy acts, one music act and it starts at 1am. You have to be pretty well regarded to get a slot at this event so we knew the comedy would be of high quality and it was. Okay, so the compere, John Bishop (shortlised for if.comedy Edinburgh Comedy Award) made a joke about Muslims and then asked if there were any "Mussys" in the audience. But I raised my hand so whatever.

Jamie Kilstein - Loved the letter to the US Army

Kevin Bridges - Hilarious and naturally funny. This guy could say anything and it would be funny. Shortlisted for Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer.

Axes of Awesome - Their four chord song is one of the best things ever.

The whole evening was even more hilarious because some couple kept rowing and the woman would storm out followed by the man. That's just pure comedy fodder.

Guess what? We were late to this show too! And Lewis said to us as we walked in, "I'm warning you! I'm a pro-American Jew boy!" The whole crowd laughed and it pissed me off a little, I must admit. It didn't detract from the rest of the show though, really very funny. It was a free show too so can't complain.

We did run into Lewis later on that evening. Twice. We ended up chatting to him for quite some time and I told him his comment earlier on had annoyed me. He explained though that he makes fun of EVERYONE, no matter who they are and that it's all done in jest. There's a big debate about racism in comedy at the moment (I will be writing more about that when I talk about the Richard Herring show) but I'm of the opinion that it's not comedians using it as an excuse to be offensive, more to make us think. Also, Lewis said I was "too pretty to go see the Chippendales" so I guess I'll have to forgive him. I'm so easily won over.

Anyway, do go and see Lewis Schaffer in Edinburgh this week if you can or when he's back in London.

Today we planned a trip to Southend-on-Sea but then this happened:

We made the most of the FOUR hour wait by taking in the sunshine and scenery (there was a horse) and shouting back at the arsehole drivers who felt the need to jeer at us as they drove by. There was also some singing involved (Bohemian Rhapsody). We didn't make it to the seaside but sometimes you don't need to get to the seaside.

The first show we saw at the Ed Fringe this year was Isma Almas. We were late and she said "The Asians are late, typical!" And that was the high point of the whole act. She has some good ideas talking about growing up in Britain with Asian parents but I just didn't think it was that funny. Early days yet, I'm hoping that she'll improve with experience. **