Feedback Friday :: Zest

bulk :: 15st 0
walnuts :: 0.5kg
chocolate bars :: 0.5kg

On Wednesday afternoon I went to the gym. It was a beautiful day. On the way home from the gym – on a whim – I popped into a health food store and purchased one jar of Malt Extract, one jar of 240 Cod Liver Oil Capsules, a large tub of 90% Soya Protein Powder, a packet of Dried Apricots, a packet of Chopped Dates and a sack of Walnut Halves.

Then, moments later, on an entirely separate, slightly chubbier whim, I popped into a non-health food store. In Lidl I purchased one large jar of Rollmop Herrings, one packet of Tuscan Style Norwegian Salmon With Tarragon and Horseradish Sauce, one packet of Smoked and Peppered Mackerel Fillets, one Iceberg Lettuce, one bunch of Asparagus, one packet of Cherry Tomatoes, one packet of Gorgonzola (Piccante), one large wedge of Parmesan, six Medium Eggs (Free Range Organic) and a packet of Wholemeal Rye Crispbread. Oh, and a jar of Mayonnaise (Light).

I have one of the healthiest larders in London. Mayonnaise and cheese permitting. I’ve also been going to the gym fairly regularly. What I need to start doing now is a bit of swimming. And so I shall. The Spring is invigorating. I hear foxes squeaking as I type. I feel zesty.

As for everything else, I have nothing to report. I have been working, which is a fairly dull topic of conversation at the best of times. I’ve been doing rewrites, and they’re pretty much done.

So that’s good.

Oh, and the other day I bought a scanner, which for some reason I keep referring to as a fax. One day soon I will connect it up and scan something.

In the meantime, have a smashing weekend. I’m doing bugger all. What are you up to?

Spring Clean

On Saturday night I cleaned the house. Or at least I made a start. In the end it proved too large a job for one evening, and frankly speaking, too painful a job. I kept finding things which belonged to Morag, and before I knew what had hit me, I was crying like a baby. More specifically, a baby that’s been left for a whole month in an unchanged nappy, gathering soil. I spent a lot of Saturday crying. I’m a big girl’s blouse, I know.

I texted Morag too. I couldn’t help it. I just wanted her to know that I missed her. It’s not that I want to get back with her. I don’t. We’re not right for each other. And that’s that. But I miss her. And I feel terribly lonely without her.

When she didn’t reply to my text, I sent her an email. She wrote back on Sunday. It was a nice email. It felt like we might manage to be friends. One day. Somehow it felt like closure. Like it’s time to stop moping and move on.

So I’m posting this poem now, to get it out of the way. I wrote it some time over the last few weeks. It’s not very good, I’m afraid. This is because I am not a poet. It’s called Stockholm Syndrome. Here it is here:

Since you saw fit to declare our love dead,
I’m free to be wilfully, shamelessly me.
Away from the shame of the shake of your head,
I’m free to be all I suppose I must be.

I'm free to perform my ablutions with vigour,
Whilst loudly declaring with nose, throat and bowels.
I am free to flick floss flotsam onto the mirror,
And dry my clean penis on fluffy face towels.

Should I desire I am free to spit phlegm
Into the tall kitchen bin or the sink,
I’m free to mock Marquez but like Eminem,
And not have to hear yet again what you think.

I’m free to make tea with the milk poured in first,
Then go to bed late and with booze on my breath.
I’m free to drink juice from the carton when thirsty,
And free to make dubious jokes about death.

I’m free to embarrass and say what I’m feeling,
Free to feel furious, free to vent spleen.
I’m free to reveal what I feel needs revealing,
And not give a fuck about keeping it clean.

So here I am free to be me unberated,
Living my life how I like, free from dread.
But freedom for me is a tad overrated,
Since you saw fit to declare our love dead.

No, I know. It’s rather adolescent. I’m sorry.

It’s out now though. It’s done. Dusted and done. Time to move on.

Now I must get on with the rewrites for the book. Then I must get back to the grind and find some more work, because I am skint. And in the meantime I must stop sending drunken emails about moles and tortoises to virtual strangers, because I’m really not doing myself any favours.

And that’s that.

Oh, one more thing. This:



...is from Ange's salt cellar:



So now you know.

Onwards!

Feedback Wednesday :: March

bulk :: 15st 2
booze :: not much at all, considering
painkillers :: just a handful
joints :: zero
healthy meals :: zero
films :: 5
visits to the dentist :: 1
days till deadline :: -5
panic level :: 2
whinge level :: 1
spring fever fervour :: 6

Before this month began, I vowed to myself that I would do a minimum of 15 minutes ball work every single day. Pilates Ball work, that is. ‘March,’ I declared, with all the wide-eyed earnestness of a man with a fresh start between his teeth, ‘is Abs Month!’

The first day was a doddle, because I didn’t really do it very well. The second day however, I did it very well indeed. An invigorating combination of punishing ball-work, some rather pelvis-heavy disco-dancing, and press-ups, all offered to Mr Motivator, the patron saint of Home-Exercise, to the accompaniment of the new Lemon Jelly DVD I got for two or three pounds in Fopp in Cambridge Circus. I love Fopp. I’m giving Fopp free advertising.

On the third day I woke up wearing a girdle of pain which simultaneously reassured me I had stumbled upon the right exercises, and also convinced me to take a day off. I’m back on it today however, and looking forward to throwing myself a beating a little later on.

Another little thing that popped into my addled hive this monthabouts was the idea of starting a daily photo website and calling it, let’s say, In the Details or some such. I’m just playing with the idea at the moment, not really sure where I’m going. I like details though, that’s what it comes down to. But is that enough on which to base a new blog? Why, of course it is. And the devil really is in the details, I’m convinced of that. So I decided whilst I ponder and thrash, that I’d post a picture here, every day in March.

I started yesterday, disguising it as a passing fancy, and your responses both heartened and amused. If there were a prize, it would go to daisyfae because, even though both of her answers – ‘…an egg in a porcelain egg rest. Or the granite nipple of David….’ - were wrong, both brought a low, lexicogenous hum to my lymph.

Oh, and nil points to Lennie Nash, who snatches the Russell Brand award for unnecessarily inappropriate remarks direct from Carol Thatcher’s grasping, toxicankerous mitts.

It was actually my gorgeous new mouse for my gorgeous new computer where I now spend every waking hour.

Today’s pic is down below.

How exciting.

So what with the stomach, and the photos, and all the other quotidian guff stuff, I shall be posting a lot over the coming few weeks.

In fact, I think it’s safe to say :: March is Quotidian Guff Month, where the byword is quantity, not quality.

In other news, I handed in the manuscript on Friday. Now, as I await verdicts and edits and last-minute panics, I am free. Free, I tell you, for the first time – to this extent - in my entire life!

Although the first instalment of the advance has already been swapped for a proper computer and used to eradicate the first third of an agonizing tax bill, I have paid the rent for the next month and I should be able to last till the second instalment.

So I have a bit of time. I’ve got a couple of weeks worth of things to watch and read, so I’m going to do that. And some pottering about online, offline and in my lady’s chamber.

(I have no lady, but if I did, rest assured, I would be pottering in her chamber right now.)

Now, where the hell is my jazz oregano?

Here is today’s image. First one to get is, gets it…



Any thoughts?

Feedback Saturday :: Thaw

It’s beautiful outside. The bricks and trees and sheds of the back gardens onto which my kitchen study stares are awash with the cold fire of the late day sun. I see bright orange chimney pots. I see wet trainers on window sills. Colourful clouds are breaking apart and atop the stark, expectant, profoundly aching soil, the last of the remarkable snow is inching into oblivion. It’s almost dry now, but for a while back there the roof of the garden shed was like that scene in Bambi. You know the one, drip, drip, drop …



I know it’s not April yet, not by a long chalk, not by a chalk so long that it more closely resembles an ostentatious cane, but Spring is definitely somewhere close at hand, I feel it. I can sense it stirring. Even the poinsettia has started to squeeze through a few new leaves.

Ah, yes. Spring is in the post.

All we need to do is see out the winter. This disconcertingly chilly winter, not without its discontent.

Ah, yes.

Adopt generic Richard the Third voice and bellow out that I, yes I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature, deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world scarce half made up… Fie. Fee fie foe fum. Let me not think on’t.

So, on Monday evening I was denounced, cruelly but I fear, appropriately, in the comments section by one calling himself Wellington. Sweet, stout-hearted Wellington, of the brave, snow-spattered sole.

Drop generic Richard the Third voice. Stop bellowing. Point, nay, jab finger.

Bloody hell fire, Stanley, you snivelling sack of shit. What the hecking blazes is wrong with you? "My cock hurts, my bum hurts, my tooth is broken, I've got a tickly cough, I'm not losing enough weight...."

Jesus H. Get a bloody grip, will you? Please.

Obviously, I'm (sort of) doing the old 'cruel to be kind' thing here. But seriously, I've never known anyone to whinge the way you do. Not even close.

Initially this hit me hard - like a giant conker in the gullet - and I repudiated it. But when I’d had time to think, and dry my tear-swamped bib, I thought, you know what? He’s right. He’s only gone and hit the nail on the head.

So I said, ‘Fuck it!’ and I grabbed Morag and dragged her out of her comfy armchair and outside into the vicious snow. I’ve made it sound aggressive. It wasn’t aggressive. We went for a walk. That might be a less emotive way of phrasing it. We went for a walk. In the snow. At my behest. I was determined to make the best of it. And I don’t say that in a grudging way. I was determined to open myself up to the alleged joys of snow.

When I was a kid, I was cruelly persecuted by juvenile snowballers. I’m not whining, honest. I’m just saying. I’ve suffered. You know? Once some little fucker - I think it was that buck-toothed psychotic little parasite Liam McDonald - packed a fat stone inside a snowball and split my head open with it. Ever since then snow has freaked me out. I’m still afraid of little kids when I’m out in the snow. I butch it out as best I can but the fear is still there. They can smell it.

It’s not the snowballs themselves that frighten me now, it’s my reaction to them. I’m afraid I’ll get it wrong because I’m a bit wound up by thinking too much about it. I’m afraid I’ll either laugh it off in a really fake way, a way so obviously fake that it’ll light the tiny touch-paper that sets off a bloody great cluster bomb of antagonism in the souls of my assailants; or else I’ll attempt to join in, I’ll make my own snowballs and fight back, a good-natured battle will ensue with shrieks of joy and delight all round, then one of those little bastards will get a little too feisty, pushing snow hard into my face and suddenly, in a cold white flash, it’ll all come flooding back. I’ll have a complete cleaning woman moment, all my backed-up rage for the unavenged attack of Liam McDonald suddenly coursing through my mental arms, quite out of control, pinning this helpless child to the crunchy cold snow and stuffing handfuls of the stuff down the back of his coat. Then his parents appear from nowhere and before I can even breathe straight, I’m on page 4 of the News of the World. SNOW PAEDO STOMPED TO DEATH BY MOB.

I know it’s probably not that likely in the harsh cold light of reality, but it’s still a risk. And besides that, I just don’t like snow. Not in the city at least. But heavens, give me a countryside snowscape and I’ll dance through it like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Nureyev. On ice.

So, bearing all that in mind, we went to the nearest park, which lies roughly ten minutes from our house.

And you know what? You know what, Wellington?

It was really lovely.

We crunched and creaked over virgin snow, trusting ourselves wholly to the solid presence of the ground beneath, and not entertaining, not even for a minute, the idea that there might not be any.

I took some photos of some of snow sculptures. People had been having a whale of a time. I wished I had joined them. Instead I took photographs.

But I can’t find the cable to attach them to the internet. Damn it. Oh well, the internet will have to cope without a few more pictures of snow.

But believe me, there’ll be no more whining from me.

Now I’m thawing out some frozen beef and awaiting the return of Morag so that we might feast on cooked meat and together read from Chris Moyles’ remarkable second book.

Here’s to a fully thawed weekend.