Sharon Feinstein

The other night I had dinner with someone I hadn’t seen since we were 13, and don’t start asking how many years ago that was because you won’t get an answer.

I barely know him now but we shared a huge life-lasting experience together, with a big group of kids all coming back from camp- a train crash in the middle of the Kalahari desert.

It happened in that vast primitive landscape, the wide open African plains of scrubland,  scarlet skies and migrating animals in the distance.

That’s what I remember, the hazy heat coming off the horizon, and being afraid that bushmen I’d seen pictures of, standing on one leg, carrying spears, would suddenly appear.

The amazing thing, as Peter and I talked, was our completely different memories. He remembered looking for his cigarettes, worrying about how many he had left, and sliding out the window.

I remember chaos, twisted metal and steam coming out of the wreckage.Also those giant rock formations that jut out of the land and take different shapes like a mirage, especially when you’re in shock.

I know we were all alone without our families and that went pretty deep.

But I kept trying to get Peter to remember more and he couldn’t, he felt guilty that he couldn’t get beyond his cigarettes. And I can’t get beyond that landscape and steam and that one of us, who was a twin, died because he’d gone to the toilet while all the rest of us remained asleep.

It was a fateful journey, as with the the Air France flight, where some passengers missed the plane because they got to the airport late and had to go back to their hotel, annoyed and disgruntled, and others who fought to get seats and managed, happily, they thought, until a few hours later their time was up.

I’ve never done a campaign before and now I realise how much blood sweat and tears it involves. Contrary to my sunny optimism, the money is not exactly flowing in. It’s barely trickling. It’s currently a mere fraction of what we need to send James Bond to the paradise isle of Tobago and acquire the footage of what’s going on there, in all its brutality.
So who out there wants to change the course of this campaign and save leatherback turtles ? If so, it involves the small issue of donations, the bigger the better. Most welcome would be an animal-friendly, wealthy celebrity who would be honoured with all the accompanying publicity, and who could go to bed at night knowing the future of leatherback turtles was more secure than before. Isn’t that something worth doing ?
You can now download posters of the turtle campaign from my website if you go to the fourth page on the turtle site. You could put the posters in a prominent place and reach out to colleagues. Still banging on today, I like Macca’s Meat Free Monday idea and think we should all support, ditch the meat, and fish for that matter, in favour of his preferred meal of chargrilled asparagus and lemon tart – sounds tasty enough for me. If we can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s livestock even a little, let’s all try.
Livestock emissions, shockingly enough, are far more serious contributors to global warming than transport. Belching from cows emits vast amounts of methane, which has 21 times the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. And huge areas of the Amazon rainforest are being cut down to make way for cattle ranches and grow soy for feed. Time for us to stop just thinking of ourselves and our own little world every day and do something concrete – turtles, Meat Free Mondays, no blue fin tuna, or any tuna for that matter. You can do it. Let’s all try

Kylie has been grooming her sister, Danni, for the next series of X Factor so that she isn’t completely outshone by the nation’s darling, Cheryl Cole. I hear Kylie has put her best people on to helping Dannii so that she will show the kind of ease and effortless confidence that Cheryl exudes and that has made her into the darling of British viewers.
The sisters have always been close but Kylie has become fiercely protective of Dannii as she struggles to compete with Cheryl Cole’s huge popularity. She is already feeling diminished and put down by the huge discrepancy between their wages,  Cheryl reportedly getting1.2 million to Dannii’s meagre 450, 000. How meagre is that, mind you, one asks oneself ! After a lot of soul searching I’ll agree to trade my day job for hers- she does the turtle campaign, blog, and those lucsious showbiz stories, you all love to read, and I try my hand at being ultra sugary, smiley and gushing, at the same time as going on the mother of all diets. Ok and I’ll also agree to do lots of abs and obliques and come up with a toned stomach, sunken cheeks, and if I really have to, a tattoo across my thigh and stomach. Ugh! However, if it’s part of that 450,000 remit I guess I’ll just bite the harsh bullet.
I don’t even watch X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent, or Big Brother, or any of these dumbed down, personality based, cult shows. Give me a good documentary, something I can learn from, or a Midsomer Murder and I’m far more in tune. Now that doesnt mean you all have to tune out and stop reading the blog, you know. See you tomorrow

The square I live in is full of murder.  In fact there’ve been two serious murders in the last few weeks and a lot of  constables walking around with truncheons. The first one took place just before the war and was so complicated they had to call in that world famous Belgian detective chubby chap, Monsieur Poirot. They also had to bring him all that lovely silverware, starched tablecloth and haute cuisine French food  to be able to think properly about the perpetrator of the crime.The second, more modern brutality has had  the handsome Matthew MacFadyen and Maxine Peake of Criminal Justice swarming all over it. And the film vans, catering, sound guys and techies of all sizes and description parking their big white vans end to end and stomping about with walkie talkies.I hope these films turn out to be watchable because their entourage and equipment have certainly swallowed up the residents’ parking places.It is rather fun, though, to know that all that blood and evidence is unfolding  on either side of my house, and no need to worry because  none of it is real. One is Agatha Christie’s, The Clocks, and the other is the latest series of Criminal Justice. BBC and ITV at opposite ends of the lovely Islington square I live in. Can’t wait to see it all on the box. That’s me  looking rather evil and waving in the background in the murder scene. But don’t tell David Suchet or he might be confused.

Last night I laughed more than I have for ages with Mikey from Liverpool telling me stories that could be straight out of a Victoria Wood sketch.
He described how his mum’s best friend,  Gladys, dropped dead out of the blue, while all her friends were on holiday in Bulgaria.
This  just wouldn’t do, so they put her in a fridge for two weeks, storage so to speak, until the girls had had a great holiday, and were ready to come home and face the body.
Can’t interrupt a good knees up in Bulgaria on an all-in package with the sun shining and Pinor Noir flowing.
No,  Gladys had to wait and wait she did, in the freezer, until the girls got home, did their hair and make up and went to pay their respects at the family home, while Gladys was laid out and dolled up, with full hair and make-up.
She’ll be buried on Mad Monday. Now that’s a thing. Liverpudlians, and that includes Stephen Gerrard’s family, the Paul McCartney’s and the Cilla Black clan, take time out on a Monday.
The week’s just started, I grant you that, but we all admit it has to be broken into gently and in Liverpool they do just that.
Come 1pm on Monday and work is over, the glad rags are out and everyone is at the pub.
Revellers move from pub to pub listening to their favourite live bands, drinking ale and having a laugh. And Gladys was buried on a Mad Monday because that’s the way she would have liked it. Guns blazing and music blaring.
Mikey told me the whole thing over 2 bottles of wine and the rest, and we laughed till the tears were streaming down our faces. I haven’t mentioned that he lost his own father just a few weeks ago and is dealing with all the gut wrenching grief that losing a parent brings. The shock of having no father anymore on this entire planet, ones own mortality, all the memories of when you were growing up and turned to your dad. Mikey has all that to deal with but last night he coped with it by laughing all night and you know what, that’s not a bad remedy. It’s a long rocky journey and he took a few steps last night.