Last night I found myself in a ludicrously inaccessible cocktail bar, just down the road from my house. I was playing tour guide and trying to convince a couple of friends of mine that West Hampstead would be a really sensible place to move to. I'd never noticed that outside this bar was a big sign saying "4 to 8pm - 2for1 on beer and all cocktails". Which is very lax as it's not like me to fail to notice somewhere offering up cheap booze. Maybe I'd just noticed the three scarily steep steeps at the door and failed to notice their promotional material (just think how much extra business they could drum up if they only put in a ramp?)

As one of the friends I was with last night I've known to fight with other people about which one gets to help me, therefore show off who's the butchest; we decided to check out the cheap cocktails (I know ethically I shouldn't support inaccessible business. But I also shouldn't pay full price for cocktails when there's an alternative, right?). She definitely picked the nicest with her choice of West Hampstead Iced Tea.

Quite surprisingly I managed to survive the descent down the steep staircase with an appalling handrail to get to the toilet - and I didn't even wind up in an ambulance! Despite the fact that their external advertising failed to catch my eye, they seem to do most of their promotion internally anyway - most specifically, blown up exerpts from Time Out stuck on the back of the bog doors. Why? You're already in the bar... what's the fucking point of preaching to the converted?

From there we went for dinner. We ate in a restaurant I've mentioned in my blog before - the yummy Italian restaurant in West Hampstead with the The Best Toilet Graffitti In The World... Ever! I'd talked about the graffitti so much that my friends couldn't wait to go to the toilet to have a read. (I know, my life is very dull. I don't have much interesting to say.) I was the first one to go - and horror of horrors! They'd put a new toilet door on since the last time I went in there! It would appear that some establishment's don't share the same view on toilet door advertising as (s)wanky cocktail bars. Which is a shame as the toilet door in the restaurant served as something of a feedback book with comments like "The best pizza and pasta in London"

Another odd form of advertising I've noticed this week is actually quite alarming. You see, the entrance to my house is quite slippery, especially as at the moment there's the autumnal decomposition of leaves going on right outside me front door. If the shiny tiles and slippery leaves weren't enough of a recipe for a 999 call, there has been for the last few days a moist flyer laying on the step, in a prime position to be slipped over on. And what is the flyer advertising? 'Northwest Physiotherapy'. Perhaps if business is so slow that they need to recruit so proactively, I'll give them a miss.

Another advertising based observation I've made in the last few days is that health food shops really don't seem to tap in to the word of mouth format to the extent that they could. After all, people always seem to want to talk about vitamin supplements. Or at least they do as soon as they realise that the person they're talking to has an impairment that affects their bones.

"But can't you just take calcium tablets?"

"What for? I have Osteogenesis Imperfecta. Calcium would do me no good whatsoever."

"OK, well, isn't Vitamin C involved in making collagen? Can't you take loads of that?"

"It's not that my body produces too little collagen, my body just doesn't make it properly."

"Well can't you get collagen injections then?"

"Only if I want to look like Leslie Ash. And I don't think I need that, do you? After all, the slightly creepy guy that rammed a bit of metal through my bottom lip felt the need to point out (while he had my lip squished in a clamp) that 'oh, your lips are so beautiful... so big and soft'."

The latest one I've been told I should take is Glucosamine. Apparently it lubes up your joints. Like I need that, seeing as how all my joints that haven't been smashed are already hyperlax.

And then another issue on that is, how am I supposed to explain the Glucosamine to my completely shattered, no longer functional left ankle joint?

I'll now leave you with that mental image of me talking to my own foot.