On Facebook last week, one of my virtual friends wrote that she'd just been groped by a sex pest on the tube, and that it was a shitty end to a shitty day. Several of her friends had expressed their sympathy. I sat there fuming. No one ever gropes ME on the tube. Through my warped eyes, her status update said, 'A stranger found me attractive enough to risk a fine or prosecution.' Well just hang on a moment while I get out my violin and start playing something REALLY SAD to accompany your entirely unjustified self-pity.
Similar phrases:
I'm trying really hard to put on weight at the moment, but I just can't seem to do it!
I'm in love with two guys and I don't know which one to pick!
I've been invited to three parties this Saturday and I feel really bad turning two down :(
POOR YOU. I didn't feel sympathetic. I felt murderous.
Then last night, I was walking along a quiet suburban street in a fairly new pair of skinny jeans. I can wear these now because, since last November, I've lost quite a lot of weight, most of it from my lower half. I was also wearing a longish cardigan and a coat. On the street behind me, I heard a largish vehicle approaching. Then I heard it slowing down and, just as it reached me, an unmistakably black voice said, "Nice arse." My arse has long attracted the attention of black guys. Several times a year, I receive comments on it from them. Unfortunately, that is the extent of the comments I receive - nothing about my face being pretty, or any other element of my appearance of which I'm happy, and nothing from white guys. It's always black guys, it's always about my arse, and it's always about the fact that it's bigger than average. I had hoped that my recent weightloss would change this. But clearly not.
As the van drove off, I was pretty sure the driver had genuinely meant that he thought my arse looked nice. I think he had gained pleasure from its existence and had intended to pay me a compliment. But at that moment, I felt like lying down on the pavement and sobbing. His comment was proof that I had still not achieved my goal of having an arse that wasn't worth a remark. I desperately want a boring arse. And as I schlepped on towards my therapy session, I felt a brief surge of sympathy for the girl who was groped.
Still angry and hurt, I ate quesadilla and fish and chips and spinach for dinner, and drank a lot of white wine.
Later on last night, I was walking into Shepherd's Bush tube station. As I approached, I noticed a young guy dancing to the music in his head. He was good. About twenty yards away two school-age girls walked by him. "Excuse me," shouted the podgier one at the guy, "your dancing's bangin'."
"Thanks," he replied. I was now right by him.
"She's right," I said.
"Thank you, sir," he said, grinning.
"SIR?!" I wheeled round.
"I said SWEETHEART!" he said, immediately, as I broke into a smile. "I must've mumbled. Sorry."
Sir would have finished me off.
Showing posts with label Fat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fat. Show all posts
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Envy, needles, walking, fat, Egypt, patience
So like I said, I don't read other blogs very often because I feel lame and unsuccessful in comparison, and yesterday I discovered this one and I know my parents wouldn't approve but I have been laughing like a drain at her brilliant writing and it's made me think 'Meh, why do I even bother?' because there is SO much fantastic stuff out there. But then, it's fun to write. Even if she gets a gazillion readers and I get nine. And actually, I'm being a bit hard on myself, I haven't had a day with only nine readers for a long time. Years. Usually I at least get into double figures.
The fact is, this blog could definitely be a lot funnier if I decided to write only about funny stuff. But I like the mix. Life is a mix. We can't all be hilarious all the time. Well, Becky can, but she's a rare case. Besides, she has pets and a brother and sister and a mother, all of whom make regularly funny appearances. I would be much funnier if I had a pet or siblings, or a funny mother. As it is, I have a regular mother who only occasionally provides me with material. We have to play the cards we're dealt.
So, where were we? Acupuncture. It was un-fucking-believable. Its effects have faded now, but I swear, for about 36 hours, my new shoulders were a smooth river rather than their usual gnarled bit of driftwood. They don't half give you the hard sell, though, trying to get me to sign up for a course of ten and telling me I absolutely had to start coming weekly to feel the full benefits. I resisted because I am spending my money on other vital things like BOOZE and MORE CLOTHES. It doesn't hurt when they put the needles in, although it doesn't feel great. There's a little fumble, a bit like when your mum's doing the breaking-an-egg-on-your-head thing and is trying to get her nails to flick against each other to simulate the shell cracking, and then the needle goes in. It hurts 1/10, where getting your finger pricked pre-blood-donation is 4/10 and stubbing your little toe on the corner of your bed, unexpectedly first thing on a Monday morning, is an 8. And then you lie there, face down on the bed, and it's freaking weird because you know you've got twenty long needles sticking out of your back and neck, but you can't rise up and twist round to have a look because you think that any wiggle might drive the ones in your neck so far in that you might die, or maybe they'll just fall out and you'll have to lie there getting reduced benefit, so you stay completely and utterly still for thirty minutes, with a heat lamp pointed at the uncovered area, and it's freaking pleasant just lying like a beached whale and having an excuse to do so. And then she comes back in and quickly pulls out the needles and then gives you an acupressure massage, which is amazing, and then you go home and even the whole of the next day, all the muscles feel as new. For £15 on a Groupon voucher I thought it was unparalleled. For the regular price of £50, I'd never justify it unless something was seriously wrong, like I was so cramped up that I looked like a sexy hunchback. Gurgle. God it was nice.
24 hours later it was Tuesday evening and I went on a walking tour with a handsome friend round St. James' and we had a really seriously lovely evening, nattering and drinking and eating and laughing, until he decided to be a bit mental, but what was great is that Old Jane might have blamed herself and been like, 'Eeek, he's being mental, but if he thought I was amazing, he'd never risk our friendship by being mental, so clearly he thinks I am FAT and doesn't care about my opinion and so isn't bothered about coming across as a nutcase.' But on Tuesday I thought 'He is mental. I am a goddess, the little-known Goddess of Cellulite and High Priestess of Egos That Oscillate Between Over-Confidence and Crippling Insecurity. Bow down at my altar and weep, ye minions!
So after Tuesday night's mysterious shenanigans, I woke up yesterday feeling exhausted and ropey, and once I'd agreed with Emily that Erfan would take her to the restaurant instead of me last night, I then decided to use my day's fat allocation on a hangover lunch at Pret. I bought the following: a smoked salmon sandwich and a Pret Choc Bar, which, for the uninitiated, is a rectangular slice of what looks like chocolate biscuit cake, about the size of a Crunchie. I went back to my desk knowing that these heavenly items would be enjoyed and over all too soon. I swallowed them. Interested in the damage I'd just caused my weightloss intentions, I looked up the value of these items on the Weight Watchers website. The sandwich was worth nine points, the same as half a bottle of wine, and just under a third of my daily allocation of 29 points. That was a little galling. I'd definitely rather have had half a bottle of hair of the dog than a stupid sandwich. Then I checked the Choc Bar. Bear in mind that a Mars bar is eight points. The Choc Bar contained sixteen points. SIXTEEN. The total point count for my lunch was 25. I could have had a bottle of wine and a Twix for that. I'd have probably got fired for drinking that much during working hours, but at least I would have consumed some fat that made things fun, rather than fat that makes you feel guilty.
Meanwhile, Egypt is FASCINATING. Well actually, the whole Middle East is getting pretty feisty. I am following developments on Twitter and staring in awe at Jon Snow's feed, not merely because it is very interesting, but because I will never fail to find it amazing that some people are prepared to risk everything and go to these places and report on things, and yes, Jon Snow has fame and fortune and respect, but for every Jon Snow, there are hundreds of others who are taking the same risks but in a much lower-profile capacity, all doing their bit for global democracy, while I sit here eating fresh baby figs imported from South Africa and wondering whether to wear the aqua or grass-green eyeliner to the party tonight.
Yesterday afternoon, I had a gripping therapy session where I updated her on Tuesday night's weirdnesses, a couple of other ongoing sagas and my weekend in t'country. I told her how impressed I'd been with Lucy's mothering patience.
"I just could not have done it," I said, and explained how I'd have been more inclined to say 'Pull yourself together' than be endlessly supportive. My therapist was quiet for a bit and then suggested that I saw the Three Year Old Jane in Lucy's daughter, and that I had been told to pull myself together when I was being needy or unfun as a toddler. I thought that was possible. Later on, I checked with my mum, who said that it was more than possible, and was in fact extremely likely. And I think it's what I'd do in the same situation. Oh, I'd be a shit parent. Later on, the daughter had said to Lucy,
"Are we going to get out of the car when we get to the train station?"
"Yes, darling," replied Lucy.
"Will you look after me?" she asked.
"Darling, it's my job to look after you. I will always look after you, for ever and ever and ever."
The daughter sat in contented silence, swinging her be-tighted legs and silver glitter Mary-Janes from the safety of her carseat. I told this to my mum later, adding that I thought what Lucy had said had been just right, that every three year old wants to hear their parent say they'll always be there for them.
"What would you have said in her position?" asked Mum.
"I dunno. Probably something like, 'Look, I'll do my best to look after you, nutcase, but if you jump onto the tracks, you're on your own.'"
She laughed. I laughed. It's what my parents would have said to me. And look how I turned out. Shit. I should be sterilized.
The fact is, this blog could definitely be a lot funnier if I decided to write only about funny stuff. But I like the mix. Life is a mix. We can't all be hilarious all the time. Well, Becky can, but she's a rare case. Besides, she has pets and a brother and sister and a mother, all of whom make regularly funny appearances. I would be much funnier if I had a pet or siblings, or a funny mother. As it is, I have a regular mother who only occasionally provides me with material. We have to play the cards we're dealt.
So, where were we? Acupuncture. It was un-fucking-believable. Its effects have faded now, but I swear, for about 36 hours, my new shoulders were a smooth river rather than their usual gnarled bit of driftwood. They don't half give you the hard sell, though, trying to get me to sign up for a course of ten and telling me I absolutely had to start coming weekly to feel the full benefits. I resisted because I am spending my money on other vital things like BOOZE and MORE CLOTHES. It doesn't hurt when they put the needles in, although it doesn't feel great. There's a little fumble, a bit like when your mum's doing the breaking-an-egg-on-your-head thing and is trying to get her nails to flick against each other to simulate the shell cracking, and then the needle goes in. It hurts 1/10, where getting your finger pricked pre-blood-donation is 4/10 and stubbing your little toe on the corner of your bed, unexpectedly first thing on a Monday morning, is an 8. And then you lie there, face down on the bed, and it's freaking weird because you know you've got twenty long needles sticking out of your back and neck, but you can't rise up and twist round to have a look because you think that any wiggle might drive the ones in your neck so far in that you might die, or maybe they'll just fall out and you'll have to lie there getting reduced benefit, so you stay completely and utterly still for thirty minutes, with a heat lamp pointed at the uncovered area, and it's freaking pleasant just lying like a beached whale and having an excuse to do so. And then she comes back in and quickly pulls out the needles and then gives you an acupressure massage, which is amazing, and then you go home and even the whole of the next day, all the muscles feel as new. For £15 on a Groupon voucher I thought it was unparalleled. For the regular price of £50, I'd never justify it unless something was seriously wrong, like I was so cramped up that I looked like a sexy hunchback. Gurgle. God it was nice.
24 hours later it was Tuesday evening and I went on a walking tour with a handsome friend round St. James' and we had a really seriously lovely evening, nattering and drinking and eating and laughing, until he decided to be a bit mental, but what was great is that Old Jane might have blamed herself and been like, 'Eeek, he's being mental, but if he thought I was amazing, he'd never risk our friendship by being mental, so clearly he thinks I am FAT and doesn't care about my opinion and so isn't bothered about coming across as a nutcase.' But on Tuesday I thought 'He is mental. I am a goddess, the little-known Goddess of Cellulite and High Priestess of Egos That Oscillate Between Over-Confidence and Crippling Insecurity. Bow down at my altar and weep, ye minions!
So after Tuesday night's mysterious shenanigans, I woke up yesterday feeling exhausted and ropey, and once I'd agreed with Emily that Erfan would take her to the restaurant instead of me last night, I then decided to use my day's fat allocation on a hangover lunch at Pret. I bought the following: a smoked salmon sandwich and a Pret Choc Bar, which, for the uninitiated, is a rectangular slice of what looks like chocolate biscuit cake, about the size of a Crunchie. I went back to my desk knowing that these heavenly items would be enjoyed and over all too soon. I swallowed them. Interested in the damage I'd just caused my weightloss intentions, I looked up the value of these items on the Weight Watchers website. The sandwich was worth nine points, the same as half a bottle of wine, and just under a third of my daily allocation of 29 points. That was a little galling. I'd definitely rather have had half a bottle of hair of the dog than a stupid sandwich. Then I checked the Choc Bar. Bear in mind that a Mars bar is eight points. The Choc Bar contained sixteen points. SIXTEEN. The total point count for my lunch was 25. I could have had a bottle of wine and a Twix for that. I'd have probably got fired for drinking that much during working hours, but at least I would have consumed some fat that made things fun, rather than fat that makes you feel guilty.
Meanwhile, Egypt is FASCINATING. Well actually, the whole Middle East is getting pretty feisty. I am following developments on Twitter and staring in awe at Jon Snow's feed, not merely because it is very interesting, but because I will never fail to find it amazing that some people are prepared to risk everything and go to these places and report on things, and yes, Jon Snow has fame and fortune and respect, but for every Jon Snow, there are hundreds of others who are taking the same risks but in a much lower-profile capacity, all doing their bit for global democracy, while I sit here eating fresh baby figs imported from South Africa and wondering whether to wear the aqua or grass-green eyeliner to the party tonight.
Yesterday afternoon, I had a gripping therapy session where I updated her on Tuesday night's weirdnesses, a couple of other ongoing sagas and my weekend in t'country. I told her how impressed I'd been with Lucy's mothering patience.
"I just could not have done it," I said, and explained how I'd have been more inclined to say 'Pull yourself together' than be endlessly supportive. My therapist was quiet for a bit and then suggested that I saw the Three Year Old Jane in Lucy's daughter, and that I had been told to pull myself together when I was being needy or unfun as a toddler. I thought that was possible. Later on, I checked with my mum, who said that it was more than possible, and was in fact extremely likely. And I think it's what I'd do in the same situation. Oh, I'd be a shit parent. Later on, the daughter had said to Lucy,
"Are we going to get out of the car when we get to the train station?"
"Yes, darling," replied Lucy.
"Will you look after me?" she asked.
"Darling, it's my job to look after you. I will always look after you, for ever and ever and ever."
The daughter sat in contented silence, swinging her be-tighted legs and silver glitter Mary-Janes from the safety of her carseat. I told this to my mum later, adding that I thought what Lucy had said had been just right, that every three year old wants to hear their parent say they'll always be there for them.
"What would you have said in her position?" asked Mum.
"I dunno. Probably something like, 'Look, I'll do my best to look after you, nutcase, but if you jump onto the tracks, you're on your own.'"
She laughed. I laughed. It's what my parents would have said to me. And look how I turned out. Shit. I should be sterilized.
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
Climb every (artificial) mountain
So I went climbing. And of all the life lessons I've ever handed on to you, dear, dear Faithful, I cannot emphasise this one enough: girls, if you have any fat on your arse, any fat AT ALL, you must never, EVER go climbing with anyone you are trying to impress. On the scale of sexy events, I'd rate it one down from childbirth and a couple up from vomiting all over yourself in bed. I had prepared myself mentally for the issues inherent with the Bum From Below angle by wearing a long vest top which distracted the eye from most of the offensive areas. What I forgot to allow for was The Harness.
The Harness straps between and around your upper thighs, round your waist and - critically - under your buttocks, and is pulled taut, creating a selection of bulges that would make any remotely normal female look like the Michelin Man. If you, like me, are in possession of a derriere that regularly draws admiring coos from black males and lower-lip-biting, eye-widening stares of pity from girls who are not similarly afflicted, rest assured the long-top-over-tracksuit-bottoms-under-harness look is not one to adopt for Spring Summer 11. Combine it with a menstrual abdomen that looked like I'd swallowed a fridge and the look was pretty much totally terrible.
Just in case you were in any doubt, here is a before image of me from the rear:
And here is me once the harness was donned. I actually think I've been quite kind in my buttock depiction. In real life it was worse.
Now just imagine standing ten feet directly underneath that and try and fancy me. I told you. It's physically impossible. LLFF: testing potentially embarrassing things since 2006.
Vanity aside, though, the experience was a positive one. Over our ninety minute introduction class, we scaled various fake surfaces, using the coloured protusions to lift ourselves up and then enjoying the feeling of being winched back down to safety. I was a bit scared on my first go and exhausted by my eighth, but in between found it really quite satisfying although my soft sensitive girlie hands hurt a bit and my freakish size ten feet wouldn't grip some of the smaller nobbles. My gangly arms didn't last too long either, not a shock since I have the upper body strength of a T-Rex, so when the time came for the commemorative photographs to be taken, mine were shot with my trainer on a foothold approximately four inches from the ground. Gabe in Cliffhanger I am not. On the upside, it is unlikely that I'll get myself into a 127 Hours scenario any time soon, so that's something for which to be grateful. And I was in the work toilets today just thinking how lucky I am not to be one of the people in the developing world who have to use train tracks and other public ditches as latrines. Relieving myself in plain view of other people is quite high up on the Things I'd Like To Avoid Doing Ever list. PLUS the nicest plumber in Britain came this morning and fixed my washing machine. And my new phone is up and running. And I don't live in North Korea. And the hormones are on their way out for another 24 days or so. So all in all it's all good and all that.
The Harness straps between and around your upper thighs, round your waist and - critically - under your buttocks, and is pulled taut, creating a selection of bulges that would make any remotely normal female look like the Michelin Man. If you, like me, are in possession of a derriere that regularly draws admiring coos from black males and lower-lip-biting, eye-widening stares of pity from girls who are not similarly afflicted, rest assured the long-top-over-tracksuit-bottoms-under-harness look is not one to adopt for Spring Summer 11. Combine it with a menstrual abdomen that looked like I'd swallowed a fridge and the look was pretty much totally terrible.
Just in case you were in any doubt, here is a before image of me from the rear:
And here is me once the harness was donned. I actually think I've been quite kind in my buttock depiction. In real life it was worse.
Now just imagine standing ten feet directly underneath that and try and fancy me. I told you. It's physically impossible. LLFF: testing potentially embarrassing things since 2006.
Vanity aside, though, the experience was a positive one. Over our ninety minute introduction class, we scaled various fake surfaces, using the coloured protusions to lift ourselves up and then enjoying the feeling of being winched back down to safety. I was a bit scared on my first go and exhausted by my eighth, but in between found it really quite satisfying although my soft sensitive girlie hands hurt a bit and my freakish size ten feet wouldn't grip some of the smaller nobbles. My gangly arms didn't last too long either, not a shock since I have the upper body strength of a T-Rex, so when the time came for the commemorative photographs to be taken, mine were shot with my trainer on a foothold approximately four inches from the ground. Gabe in Cliffhanger I am not. On the upside, it is unlikely that I'll get myself into a 127 Hours scenario any time soon, so that's something for which to be grateful. And I was in the work toilets today just thinking how lucky I am not to be one of the people in the developing world who have to use train tracks and other public ditches as latrines. Relieving myself in plain view of other people is quite high up on the Things I'd Like To Avoid Doing Ever list. PLUS the nicest plumber in Britain came this morning and fixed my washing machine. And my new phone is up and running. And I don't live in North Korea. And the hormones are on their way out for another 24 days or so. So all in all it's all good and all that.
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Warning: continued introspection
I'm still thinking.
Feeling much better though, which is good. Or maybe it's bad, if you don't like me and want me to suffer. Everything's subjective.
I'm now wondering something that I used to wonder a lot when it came to boyfriends, and which I'm now wondering about just in terms of life. Are you ready? This is it:
How much is enough?
In relationships, sometimes boys would drive me mad. And I'd say to myself, 'Stop criticising them. You're never going to meet anyone who never annoys you - some degree of compromise is always necessary.' And then I'd think 'But how do I know whether I'm making the right amount of compromise, or whether I'm just ignoring the evidence and staying with the wrong person?' My argument was that, if you compromised on everything, you could persuade yourself that you were lucky to be with a vomit-covered tramp. So where should one draw the line? How could one know if one was being too critical, or whether one just wasn't suited to the boy in question? Eventually, in every case, we broke up, and I look back now and, without exception, it was absolutely right that we did.
And now I'm thinking about me in my life, and how much is enough. We all have flaws and character traits we don't like in ourselves. Some people are intolerant, or prejudiced, or hot-headed, or stubborn, or lazy, or prone to fat. I am several of the above - and I am also (as previously discussed) hungry for praise and recognition. I need more recognition than the average person. This is annoying, as it means I don't generally remain happy without lots of praise for very long, which makes me overly-reliant on third parties and means that doing regular things like having a normal job and normal friends isn't enough for me, and I need more stimulation and more applause, so I write about my normal life in a blog and still crave more readers.
Now, I have a choice. I can either put this need down as a failing, and try very hard to learn to be content with the norm and stop striving for further recognition, or I can just say 'Oh well, that's the way I am, I'm a show pony,' and just go with it, push myself to be recognised and grow comfortable with that part of my character - hopefully while keeping an eye on it so that it doesn't get too out of hand.
The important thing at the moment is that I start to respect myself, as I am right now.
Meh. I'm boring myself now. Anyone who's still reading, well done to you, you're made of kinder stuff than I am.
I weighed myself on Sunday. I am basically a million stone. So I took advantage of the clocks going back and the associated jetlag to get up earlier on Monday morning, do my meditation and go for a run. And then today I meditated and did yoga. And tomorrow I will run again. It is all going terribly well and I was so smug with myself that yesterday evening I bought myself a reward jumper, which I'm wearing today. My legs still look like rolled up duvets but I think that the jumper briefly distracts the viewer from my lower half. So that's also good. Unless you don't like me, in which case you should ignore my talk of my nice jumper and just focus on the bit about my legs. Also, you might enjoy finding out that yesterday evening, despite there being nothing I could think of that was wrong, I still walked through town, new jumper in hand, feeling like sobbing. It's a funny old world.
Feeling much better though, which is good. Or maybe it's bad, if you don't like me and want me to suffer. Everything's subjective.
I'm now wondering something that I used to wonder a lot when it came to boyfriends, and which I'm now wondering about just in terms of life. Are you ready? This is it:
How much is enough?
In relationships, sometimes boys would drive me mad. And I'd say to myself, 'Stop criticising them. You're never going to meet anyone who never annoys you - some degree of compromise is always necessary.' And then I'd think 'But how do I know whether I'm making the right amount of compromise, or whether I'm just ignoring the evidence and staying with the wrong person?' My argument was that, if you compromised on everything, you could persuade yourself that you were lucky to be with a vomit-covered tramp. So where should one draw the line? How could one know if one was being too critical, or whether one just wasn't suited to the boy in question? Eventually, in every case, we broke up, and I look back now and, without exception, it was absolutely right that we did.
And now I'm thinking about me in my life, and how much is enough. We all have flaws and character traits we don't like in ourselves. Some people are intolerant, or prejudiced, or hot-headed, or stubborn, or lazy, or prone to fat. I am several of the above - and I am also (as previously discussed) hungry for praise and recognition. I need more recognition than the average person. This is annoying, as it means I don't generally remain happy without lots of praise for very long, which makes me overly-reliant on third parties and means that doing regular things like having a normal job and normal friends isn't enough for me, and I need more stimulation and more applause, so I write about my normal life in a blog and still crave more readers.
Now, I have a choice. I can either put this need down as a failing, and try very hard to learn to be content with the norm and stop striving for further recognition, or I can just say 'Oh well, that's the way I am, I'm a show pony,' and just go with it, push myself to be recognised and grow comfortable with that part of my character - hopefully while keeping an eye on it so that it doesn't get too out of hand.
The important thing at the moment is that I start to respect myself, as I am right now.
Meh. I'm boring myself now. Anyone who's still reading, well done to you, you're made of kinder stuff than I am.
I weighed myself on Sunday. I am basically a million stone. So I took advantage of the clocks going back and the associated jetlag to get up earlier on Monday morning, do my meditation and go for a run. And then today I meditated and did yoga. And tomorrow I will run again. It is all going terribly well and I was so smug with myself that yesterday evening I bought myself a reward jumper, which I'm wearing today. My legs still look like rolled up duvets but I think that the jumper briefly distracts the viewer from my lower half. So that's also good. Unless you don't like me, in which case you should ignore my talk of my nice jumper and just focus on the bit about my legs. Also, you might enjoy finding out that yesterday evening, despite there being nothing I could think of that was wrong, I still walked through town, new jumper in hand, feeling like sobbing. It's a funny old world.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Blood and (greedy) guts
Next time I give blood at around 3.45 or 4pm and they tell me smilingly that I shouldn't consume alcohol for at least six hours, can someone please just pop up and, in a totally unannoying way, gently suggest that, as employees of the NATIONAL BLOOD DONATION organisation, they may actually know what they are talking about? Yesterday afternoon, as the nice South African lady passed on her regulation list of things not to do shortly after a donation, I laughed jovially and said, 'I'm afraid that won't be possible!' and she said, 'Oh well, just watch yourself as you may get drunk a little quicker than normal,' and I said, 'Hahahaha, no problem!' and then I had Em and Ses over for dinner, and sucked up glass after glass of white, thinking all along, 'That woman didn't know what she was talking about, I'm hard as nails, this isn't affecting me!' and then woke up today feeling like I had been on a three day bender with Jim Belushi.
Still, I gave blood and that's the main thing. [Cue sound of wild applause].
In other news, I slightly hate myself. Today it's because I am trying not to eat unless I'm actually hungry, and yet I just went to the vending area to get a Diet Coke as I am struggling to stay atop my posture stool, so tired and hungover do I feel after last night's reduced blood session, but obviously the idea of just drinking a Diet Coke without having anything to dilute its nasty carcinogenic metallicness is hideous, so even though I'm still pretty much full from lunch, I knew in advance that I would definitely purchase an item from the snack machine, and it was my bad luck because my first pack of two fingers of shortbread got stuck, so clearly I had to buy another one, and of course any normal person would have put the second pack in her desk drawer to eat tomorrow, but I am not normal, I am highly special and gifted and talented and disgustingly greedy, so here I am eating my third shortbread finger and lining up the fourth. Yup. There it goes. Not remotely hungry. Why would I eat it? Why? My therapist says it's because I am using food as a reward for feeling shit the rest of the time. I'd buy that, although I haven't really been feeling shit recently. Except for today, and I would have been fine if I had listened to the stupid blood donor woman.
ANYWAY. Today is Chilean miner day and that is all very exciting. That said, I should probably admit that I am completely out of the loop with it and am basically just waiting for the film to come out so that I can watch the whole thing in one handy ninety minute segment rather than following the story unfold over several weeks. Real life is so high maintenance.
Still, I gave blood and that's the main thing. [Cue sound of wild applause].
In other news, I slightly hate myself. Today it's because I am trying not to eat unless I'm actually hungry, and yet I just went to the vending area to get a Diet Coke as I am struggling to stay atop my posture stool, so tired and hungover do I feel after last night's reduced blood session, but obviously the idea of just drinking a Diet Coke without having anything to dilute its nasty carcinogenic metallicness is hideous, so even though I'm still pretty much full from lunch, I knew in advance that I would definitely purchase an item from the snack machine, and it was my bad luck because my first pack of two fingers of shortbread got stuck, so clearly I had to buy another one, and of course any normal person would have put the second pack in her desk drawer to eat tomorrow, but I am not normal, I am highly special and gifted and talented and disgustingly greedy, so here I am eating my third shortbread finger and lining up the fourth. Yup. There it goes. Not remotely hungry. Why would I eat it? Why? My therapist says it's because I am using food as a reward for feeling shit the rest of the time. I'd buy that, although I haven't really been feeling shit recently. Except for today, and I would have been fine if I had listened to the stupid blood donor woman.
ANYWAY. Today is Chilean miner day and that is all very exciting. That said, I should probably admit that I am completely out of the loop with it and am basically just waiting for the film to come out so that I can watch the whole thing in one handy ninety minute segment rather than following the story unfold over several weeks. Real life is so high maintenance.
Monday, 6 September 2010
Dick
So there's this urban myth about a girl who had a huge snake as a pet, and she loved it so much that she let it sleep in her bed, and after a while she noticed the snake wasn't eating much any more, and also that it wasn't curling up in the same way it had used to, and she went to a vet and asked him what was going on, and the vet did some research and concluded that the snake was fasting and straightening out because it was preparing to eat her. Which is fairly rank.
I don't sleep in bed with an actual snake, but the Faithful will know that there is a metaphorical snake in my life, and I haven't told you, but a couple of days ago I became aware that it might have been starting to fast and straighten out.
It was weird, because last week the snake was safely hidden away in its locked cage and munching happily on live rabbits or whatever it eats when it's not preying on me. I had the most gorgeous time on Thursday when my parents came over for dinner, and we laughed like drains and I felt exceptionally lucky. On Friday night I went to this month's Secret Cinema, which turned out to be Lawrence of Arabia, which I didn't watch, and there were stupidly long queues for food and it was really way too over-ambitious, but it was a very fun night with lovely friends and good conversation, and I went home on the train and climbed into bed with a smile on my face. And then I woke up on Saturday morning and got ready for my friend's wedding, and things got a bit disorganised all of a sudden, and I realised I was running a bit late, and I was rushing around my room putting things in my clutch bag and I discovered that my gorgeous eight month old camera was nowhere to be found. I ripped my duvet off my bed, looked among my sofa cushions, tore around my flat looking in places where it could not possibly be and, indeed, wasn't. And eventually I had to accept that I was running really late, so I found my old compact camera and ran off to the wedding, stressed and upset as I'd had far too much wine the night before and was fairly sure that I'd been idiotically unvigilant on London public transport and that I had been deservedly pickpocketed. And I clearly recalled thinking on Friday night that I was drinking more white wine than I normally do, and knowing deep down that I have been a bit sad and hormonal recently, and suddenly losing my camera was a direct punishment for being a sad, hormonal loser, and it all became a bit upsetting.
So then I went off to the wedding, and it was absolutely one of the most romantic and intimate weddings I've ever been to, the beautiful bride and adorably emotional groom facing us throughout much of the service, the hymns sung with great gusto, the congregation unendingly friendly and happy to talk to new people - it was truly wonderful. But I was feeling a bit shaky, and no one said I looked pretty, so I probably didn't, which was annoying, and I didn't know one other girl at the wedding - the only familiar faces were boys, and even then only three or four, so I was definitely going solo, which is fine, but you know, when you're feeling a bit weak and feeble, it's nice to have a wingwoman. Still, I was brave and good fun and had a few really nice chats with new girls and boys at the fantastic reception, and the meal and dancing were off the scale, the band was exceptional, but underneath it all I felt very alone, which was annoying as I was in a room full of wonderful, interesting, happy people and I so wanted to be happy in my head too, not a self-indulgent, spoiled whinger. I spoke to at least two guys who were single - I sat next to one at dinner - and both of them confused me a bit. My dinner companion was definitely a charmer, putting his arm round me early on in the meal and turning towards me, clearly cutting out the young guy sitting on his other side. And we got on well, and had feisty dinner chats, and then after the meal we danced together a bit, but then he disappeared. And there was another guy, a lovely man who had played the piano beautifully at the service, who also touched me unnecessarily on the arm a few times while we were chatting, and asked me to get him a drink at the bar while he had a cigarette, and then came in and chatted to me again, and then he too made an excuse and wandered away.
And I remembered again that it is so hard for two single people to meet and feel mutual chemistry. I am on a boyban, so I wasn't wanting anything to happen. To be perfectly honest, I don't think I would have chosen either of those guys to go on a date with, post-boyban, had either of them wanted to see me again. But it would have been nice for my ego if they had shown interest. I would dearly love to stop feeling rejected if a guy I don't like doesn't like me either, but I've been like that for as long as I can remember, and I don't see it stopping any time soon. On Saturday night, when I realised the guy from dinner was definitely not dancing with me quite as closely as he could have, I felt like he'd slapped me. I was quite upset. Even though I didn't want to kiss him at all. It's insane. I am a dick.
Later on, a third guy was very interested in me indeed, to the extent that I had to enlist a friend to help me persuade him that I didn't want his, erm, offerings. He is handsome and nice, but his drink-fuelled, sweat-drenched, testosterone-driven desire didn't feel like a compliment - more like late night, last-ditch desperation. Far from making me feel more attractive, it made me feel like I must've looked desperate myself. I'd wanted someone to want to date me, not want a one night stand with me when they've had so much alcohol they can barely see. Far from an ego boost, his attentions were actually pretty insulting. You just wouldn't do that to someone you respected. My lovely protective friend was saying, 'This is Jane, for god's sake. She is far too cool for this. You can't speak like that to her,' which was very nice of him, and the guy was saying to my friend, 'You're just jealous,' and I was saying, 'He's not jealous, because nothing is happening,' so it briefly did feel like a scene from Hollyoaks, but then I ran off to the night bus, got home a long time later, alone, looked in vain for my camera which I'd dearly hoped had been hiding all along in the folds of my sheets or under my bed, and then crawled into bed feeling crap.
Yesterday I spoke barely ten words aloud and didn't leave my flat, canceled my plans and instead just watched TV, slept, and eventually took a Melatonin and got an early night. Today I woke up feeling like the snake was certainly extremely close by, and I couldn't imagine leaving the house, let alone sitting at my desk and pretending everything was normal. Those mornings are so weird. You aren't sad, exactly. You aren't physically incapacitated. But the sheer weight of normal existence is just too much to bear. I am sure to the uninitiated it seems truly pathetic, since all that happened was I got pickpocketed and two boys didn't fancy me, and that's hardly an excuse not to go to work - surely I just need a firm and unapologetic kick up the backside? Believe me, sometimes in retrospect I think the same, but when it's happening at the time, all the strength goes out of you, and you lose the ability to think rationally or fight. All you can think is what a failure you are, what a waste of space, and the thought of being near other humans is unbearable. Even pushing the duvet back and standing up to go to the bathroom is too difficult. Bed is the only option - even if you're lying there desperate to wee.
I slept fitfully until 1pm this afternoon, a total of 13 hours, on top of 12 hours on Saturday night plus two or three hours napping during Sunday. That amount of shuteye is just odd, but when being asleep is better than being awake, it's my body's clear way of telling me I'm not happy. I am dealing with stuff - therapy, believe it or not, is going really well, but I'm only a few weeks in to this stint and I have a lot more stuff to work on. It's hard. I need to start really exercising again, but that's hard too. Clearly galivanting around on a Londike for 20 minutes a few times a week isn't adequate. I think I lost motivation when the boyban kicked in. I associate the quest for thinness with trying to attract men, and if I'm not trying to attract men, why bother exercising? I actually quite like my curves, believe it or not - and in the past few weeks have actually been feeling pretty good about my appearance. Then something like Saturday night happens, the boyban methodology goes out the window, I feel rejected by two men I didn't fancy and insulted by the attentions of another, and then I stop functioning as a normal human being for 48 hours. And then I remember why I have to exercise. Because if I don't, I go mental. Growl.
Still, I'm glad to say that it's not all bad. I eventually got up around 2pm this afternoon and shuffled to the hardware shop down the road for some DIY items. I installed new chrome dimmer switches in my bedroom and sitting room, and then moved the old white plastic dimmers to the previously undimmable switches in my spare room and hall. Then I installed a new chrome plug socket in my bedroom. I hadn't known how to do either of those jobs when I woke up this morning, but I found an instruction page on the internet, and I remembered an ex-boyfriend saying it was really easy to change switches, so I knew it couldn't be too hard. And it wasn't. It was really satisfying, especially because I got to use my headtorch. And then I berated myself for being too capable and independent, remembering that men like to look after their women and that I'm always one step ahead and that's unattractive and threatening and emasculating, and then I berated myself for giving a crap what men think, and then I berated myself for being sad, and then I berated myself again for losing my camera, and then I watched Big Brother Winners' Come Dine With Me, and then I berated myself for that too. And then I wrote this.
It's just a blip. I'll be fine in a few days. Bear with me.
I don't sleep in bed with an actual snake, but the Faithful will know that there is a metaphorical snake in my life, and I haven't told you, but a couple of days ago I became aware that it might have been starting to fast and straighten out.
It was weird, because last week the snake was safely hidden away in its locked cage and munching happily on live rabbits or whatever it eats when it's not preying on me. I had the most gorgeous time on Thursday when my parents came over for dinner, and we laughed like drains and I felt exceptionally lucky. On Friday night I went to this month's Secret Cinema, which turned out to be Lawrence of Arabia, which I didn't watch, and there were stupidly long queues for food and it was really way too over-ambitious, but it was a very fun night with lovely friends and good conversation, and I went home on the train and climbed into bed with a smile on my face. And then I woke up on Saturday morning and got ready for my friend's wedding, and things got a bit disorganised all of a sudden, and I realised I was running a bit late, and I was rushing around my room putting things in my clutch bag and I discovered that my gorgeous eight month old camera was nowhere to be found. I ripped my duvet off my bed, looked among my sofa cushions, tore around my flat looking in places where it could not possibly be and, indeed, wasn't. And eventually I had to accept that I was running really late, so I found my old compact camera and ran off to the wedding, stressed and upset as I'd had far too much wine the night before and was fairly sure that I'd been idiotically unvigilant on London public transport and that I had been deservedly pickpocketed. And I clearly recalled thinking on Friday night that I was drinking more white wine than I normally do, and knowing deep down that I have been a bit sad and hormonal recently, and suddenly losing my camera was a direct punishment for being a sad, hormonal loser, and it all became a bit upsetting.
So then I went off to the wedding, and it was absolutely one of the most romantic and intimate weddings I've ever been to, the beautiful bride and adorably emotional groom facing us throughout much of the service, the hymns sung with great gusto, the congregation unendingly friendly and happy to talk to new people - it was truly wonderful. But I was feeling a bit shaky, and no one said I looked pretty, so I probably didn't, which was annoying, and I didn't know one other girl at the wedding - the only familiar faces were boys, and even then only three or four, so I was definitely going solo, which is fine, but you know, when you're feeling a bit weak and feeble, it's nice to have a wingwoman. Still, I was brave and good fun and had a few really nice chats with new girls and boys at the fantastic reception, and the meal and dancing were off the scale, the band was exceptional, but underneath it all I felt very alone, which was annoying as I was in a room full of wonderful, interesting, happy people and I so wanted to be happy in my head too, not a self-indulgent, spoiled whinger. I spoke to at least two guys who were single - I sat next to one at dinner - and both of them confused me a bit. My dinner companion was definitely a charmer, putting his arm round me early on in the meal and turning towards me, clearly cutting out the young guy sitting on his other side. And we got on well, and had feisty dinner chats, and then after the meal we danced together a bit, but then he disappeared. And there was another guy, a lovely man who had played the piano beautifully at the service, who also touched me unnecessarily on the arm a few times while we were chatting, and asked me to get him a drink at the bar while he had a cigarette, and then came in and chatted to me again, and then he too made an excuse and wandered away.
And I remembered again that it is so hard for two single people to meet and feel mutual chemistry. I am on a boyban, so I wasn't wanting anything to happen. To be perfectly honest, I don't think I would have chosen either of those guys to go on a date with, post-boyban, had either of them wanted to see me again. But it would have been nice for my ego if they had shown interest. I would dearly love to stop feeling rejected if a guy I don't like doesn't like me either, but I've been like that for as long as I can remember, and I don't see it stopping any time soon. On Saturday night, when I realised the guy from dinner was definitely not dancing with me quite as closely as he could have, I felt like he'd slapped me. I was quite upset. Even though I didn't want to kiss him at all. It's insane. I am a dick.
Later on, a third guy was very interested in me indeed, to the extent that I had to enlist a friend to help me persuade him that I didn't want his, erm, offerings. He is handsome and nice, but his drink-fuelled, sweat-drenched, testosterone-driven desire didn't feel like a compliment - more like late night, last-ditch desperation. Far from making me feel more attractive, it made me feel like I must've looked desperate myself. I'd wanted someone to want to date me, not want a one night stand with me when they've had so much alcohol they can barely see. Far from an ego boost, his attentions were actually pretty insulting. You just wouldn't do that to someone you respected. My lovely protective friend was saying, 'This is Jane, for god's sake. She is far too cool for this. You can't speak like that to her,' which was very nice of him, and the guy was saying to my friend, 'You're just jealous,' and I was saying, 'He's not jealous, because nothing is happening,' so it briefly did feel like a scene from Hollyoaks, but then I ran off to the night bus, got home a long time later, alone, looked in vain for my camera which I'd dearly hoped had been hiding all along in the folds of my sheets or under my bed, and then crawled into bed feeling crap.
Yesterday I spoke barely ten words aloud and didn't leave my flat, canceled my plans and instead just watched TV, slept, and eventually took a Melatonin and got an early night. Today I woke up feeling like the snake was certainly extremely close by, and I couldn't imagine leaving the house, let alone sitting at my desk and pretending everything was normal. Those mornings are so weird. You aren't sad, exactly. You aren't physically incapacitated. But the sheer weight of normal existence is just too much to bear. I am sure to the uninitiated it seems truly pathetic, since all that happened was I got pickpocketed and two boys didn't fancy me, and that's hardly an excuse not to go to work - surely I just need a firm and unapologetic kick up the backside? Believe me, sometimes in retrospect I think the same, but when it's happening at the time, all the strength goes out of you, and you lose the ability to think rationally or fight. All you can think is what a failure you are, what a waste of space, and the thought of being near other humans is unbearable. Even pushing the duvet back and standing up to go to the bathroom is too difficult. Bed is the only option - even if you're lying there desperate to wee.
I slept fitfully until 1pm this afternoon, a total of 13 hours, on top of 12 hours on Saturday night plus two or three hours napping during Sunday. That amount of shuteye is just odd, but when being asleep is better than being awake, it's my body's clear way of telling me I'm not happy. I am dealing with stuff - therapy, believe it or not, is going really well, but I'm only a few weeks in to this stint and I have a lot more stuff to work on. It's hard. I need to start really exercising again, but that's hard too. Clearly galivanting around on a Londike for 20 minutes a few times a week isn't adequate. I think I lost motivation when the boyban kicked in. I associate the quest for thinness with trying to attract men, and if I'm not trying to attract men, why bother exercising? I actually quite like my curves, believe it or not - and in the past few weeks have actually been feeling pretty good about my appearance. Then something like Saturday night happens, the boyban methodology goes out the window, I feel rejected by two men I didn't fancy and insulted by the attentions of another, and then I stop functioning as a normal human being for 48 hours. And then I remember why I have to exercise. Because if I don't, I go mental. Growl.
Still, I'm glad to say that it's not all bad. I eventually got up around 2pm this afternoon and shuffled to the hardware shop down the road for some DIY items. I installed new chrome dimmer switches in my bedroom and sitting room, and then moved the old white plastic dimmers to the previously undimmable switches in my spare room and hall. Then I installed a new chrome plug socket in my bedroom. I hadn't known how to do either of those jobs when I woke up this morning, but I found an instruction page on the internet, and I remembered an ex-boyfriend saying it was really easy to change switches, so I knew it couldn't be too hard. And it wasn't. It was really satisfying, especially because I got to use my headtorch. And then I berated myself for being too capable and independent, remembering that men like to look after their women and that I'm always one step ahead and that's unattractive and threatening and emasculating, and then I berated myself for giving a crap what men think, and then I berated myself for being sad, and then I berated myself again for losing my camera, and then I watched Big Brother Winners' Come Dine With Me, and then I berated myself for that too. And then I wrote this.
It's just a blip. I'll be fine in a few days. Bear with me.
Monday, 26 July 2010
Friday, 2 July 2010
A terrible, terrible thing has happened.
As if things in my dietary existence weren't bad enough, I had a further upset a little over two hours ago. Feeling ill and full of self-pity, I went out to forage for some lunch. The terrain near my workplace is heaving with familiar options, but I had heard talk of a new place around the corner, and innocently made my way towards it today, fully unaware of the nightmare that awaited me therein.
As soon as I stepped over the threshold I knew I had committed an appalling error. The place was rammed full of heavily satisfied customers. It was sparkling clean. And the brightly lit, glass-fronted counter winched me in, displaying its wares like a vindictive peacock. In front of me was a vast selection of the most tantalising, the most inventive, the most drool-forming sandwiches I have ever seen in this or any world. In fact, to call them sandwiches would be to do them a disservice. These were beyond sandwiches. They were masterpieces of sandwich craft, the Platonic ideal sandwich, the uberwich. I felt nervous and humble in their presence, so obvious was their greatness. It was unclear whether I should buy one or bow down.
For a while, I did neither, merely standing slack-jawed in front of the display cabinet examining my options. Did I want the one with the sunblushed tomatoes, charcuterie meat, mozzarella slabs and avocado fanned out atop feather soft brioche? Or the perfectly-pink roast beef wafers rippling among a duvet of rosemary loaf? Like a rabbit in the headlights, I was unable to move, well aware that any choice would be my downfall but utterly powerless to leave. Eventually, I chose the tuna melt, reasoning that its lack of red meat made it a 'healthy option' and choosing to ignore the fat implications of the word 'melt'. The speed at which I returned to my desk must surely have counterbalanced the imminent weight gain in a small way. Unwrapping the paper bag's contents, I was well aware that I was stepping into an abyss.
The first bite was like some sort of edible joke. It far outstripped any mouthful of any lunch I have ever had in my life. The bread was ostensibly foccacia, but as foccacia should surely be - not rubbery and cakey, but thin, salty, floppy and flavoursome. And of course, there was tuna and mayonnaise and melt, but there was also tomato, small chunks of aubergine, spinach leaves and tarragon. I don't even LIKE tarragon but in this combination I was confused and delighted. It would be a lie to say that I wept, but for the five minutes that it took for me to eat that sandwich, I was as close as I've ever been to a Damascene conversion.
And now there is, of course, no going back. I can vomit up the sandwich, but I can never not have eaten it. Forever, there will be the memory, not just of the tuna melt, but of the other sandwiches on offer at that glorious place, so close by, with its friendly staff and ability to accept card payments. From this day onwards, lunch will be an eternal battle of self-will, one that I will inevitably lose (and yet win) day after day until I explode or go broke. No longer is the Breakfast Bowl in Pret my biggest temptation. Kids, we have a new enemy in town. If you are passing through the City and are in need of a coronary for any reason, I could not recommend Birley's highly enough. But if you fancy remaining at a safe weight, then stay the hell away from there. It's too late for me, but please, for the love of god, save yourselves.
As soon as I stepped over the threshold I knew I had committed an appalling error. The place was rammed full of heavily satisfied customers. It was sparkling clean. And the brightly lit, glass-fronted counter winched me in, displaying its wares like a vindictive peacock. In front of me was a vast selection of the most tantalising, the most inventive, the most drool-forming sandwiches I have ever seen in this or any world. In fact, to call them sandwiches would be to do them a disservice. These were beyond sandwiches. They were masterpieces of sandwich craft, the Platonic ideal sandwich, the uberwich. I felt nervous and humble in their presence, so obvious was their greatness. It was unclear whether I should buy one or bow down.
For a while, I did neither, merely standing slack-jawed in front of the display cabinet examining my options. Did I want the one with the sunblushed tomatoes, charcuterie meat, mozzarella slabs and avocado fanned out atop feather soft brioche? Or the perfectly-pink roast beef wafers rippling among a duvet of rosemary loaf? Like a rabbit in the headlights, I was unable to move, well aware that any choice would be my downfall but utterly powerless to leave. Eventually, I chose the tuna melt, reasoning that its lack of red meat made it a 'healthy option' and choosing to ignore the fat implications of the word 'melt'. The speed at which I returned to my desk must surely have counterbalanced the imminent weight gain in a small way. Unwrapping the paper bag's contents, I was well aware that I was stepping into an abyss.
The first bite was like some sort of edible joke. It far outstripped any mouthful of any lunch I have ever had in my life. The bread was ostensibly foccacia, but as foccacia should surely be - not rubbery and cakey, but thin, salty, floppy and flavoursome. And of course, there was tuna and mayonnaise and melt, but there was also tomato, small chunks of aubergine, spinach leaves and tarragon. I don't even LIKE tarragon but in this combination I was confused and delighted. It would be a lie to say that I wept, but for the five minutes that it took for me to eat that sandwich, I was as close as I've ever been to a Damascene conversion.
And now there is, of course, no going back. I can vomit up the sandwich, but I can never not have eaten it. Forever, there will be the memory, not just of the tuna melt, but of the other sandwiches on offer at that glorious place, so close by, with its friendly staff and ability to accept card payments. From this day onwards, lunch will be an eternal battle of self-will, one that I will inevitably lose (and yet win) day after day until I explode or go broke. No longer is the Breakfast Bowl in Pret my biggest temptation. Kids, we have a new enemy in town. If you are passing through the City and are in need of a coronary for any reason, I could not recommend Birley's highly enough. But if you fancy remaining at a safe weight, then stay the hell away from there. It's too late for me, but please, for the love of god, save yourselves.
Thursday, 1 July 2010
Becoming round again
Fascinating though I am in every possible way, my weight is so cyclical that even I have started to find the pattern massively boring. Massive being the most appropriate word. I start at Bad Weight A. I feel fat, so I exercise and eat less. My thighs tone up a bit, my bingo wings shrink, and over the course of a few months, I reach Good Weight B. Good Weight B is never as low as my original goal, Unreachable Weight C, but it's OK. I fit into some thinner jeans. I get cocky.
And then I get ill, or I go to a festival, or the snake bites, or some other event disrupts my routine, and I stop exercising. Without the threat of undoing lots of hard gym work hanging over me, I then just give up altogether and start eating normally forbidden food such as cake. And this is where the cruel part kicks in. For a blissful couple of months, I don't gain. I remain at Weight B. "This is brrrrrrrrilliant!" I think, delightedly, inwardly clapping like a seal. "I've finally done it! I've permanently altered my metabolism! I'm now one of those people who can eat Pret a Manger pizza wraps for lunch every day and never go to the gym and still remain lithe and slender like a standard lamp." For several weeks, I cruise along at Weight B in a haze of smugness, wearing skimpy clothes while knocking back Krispy Kremes with gay abandon.
But gradually, inevitably, I start to creep back towards Weight A. At first, I am in denial. "I'm not heading back to Weight A," I chuckle confidently. "That muffin top over the edge of my jeans? An optical illusion - it's my shit Ikea mirror. Fucking Swedes." Or later, "I haven't got fatter! OK, my dress is tighter - but that's because it shrunk in the wash! Yes. Even though I've washed it on the same setting a billion times, this is the one time that it's shrunk. Yup. Definitely. That's what's happened. It's all Hotpoint's fault." And then a few days or weeks later, I finally concede that I'm heading back to where I started, with 'motivation to exercise' about as high on my things to do list as 'drink Rooney's vomit' and no desire whatsoever to eat anything that isn't topped with melted cheese or mayonnaise.
No prizes for correctly identifying that I am currently reaching the nadir of Bad Weight A, tired and a bit ill after Glasto, DESPERATE to avoid the gym, unrelentingly and frantically craving deeply unhealthy food and booze from the moment I awaken to the moment I go to sleep. I'm not sure what will kickstart me onto the slope to Good Weight B, but it sure as hell better hurry up before I need to be wheeled around by a third party and have to buy two seats on aeroplanes. Hmmmm. Maybe I'll go on a gym kick as of Monday. Yes. Monday sounds plausible. And still pleasantly distant. I'm off to the vending machine.
And then I get ill, or I go to a festival, or the snake bites, or some other event disrupts my routine, and I stop exercising. Without the threat of undoing lots of hard gym work hanging over me, I then just give up altogether and start eating normally forbidden food such as cake. And this is where the cruel part kicks in. For a blissful couple of months, I don't gain. I remain at Weight B. "This is brrrrrrrrilliant!" I think, delightedly, inwardly clapping like a seal. "I've finally done it! I've permanently altered my metabolism! I'm now one of those people who can eat Pret a Manger pizza wraps for lunch every day and never go to the gym and still remain lithe and slender like a standard lamp." For several weeks, I cruise along at Weight B in a haze of smugness, wearing skimpy clothes while knocking back Krispy Kremes with gay abandon.
But gradually, inevitably, I start to creep back towards Weight A. At first, I am in denial. "I'm not heading back to Weight A," I chuckle confidently. "That muffin top over the edge of my jeans? An optical illusion - it's my shit Ikea mirror. Fucking Swedes." Or later, "I haven't got fatter! OK, my dress is tighter - but that's because it shrunk in the wash! Yes. Even though I've washed it on the same setting a billion times, this is the one time that it's shrunk. Yup. Definitely. That's what's happened. It's all Hotpoint's fault." And then a few days or weeks later, I finally concede that I'm heading back to where I started, with 'motivation to exercise' about as high on my things to do list as 'drink Rooney's vomit' and no desire whatsoever to eat anything that isn't topped with melted cheese or mayonnaise.
No prizes for correctly identifying that I am currently reaching the nadir of Bad Weight A, tired and a bit ill after Glasto, DESPERATE to avoid the gym, unrelentingly and frantically craving deeply unhealthy food and booze from the moment I awaken to the moment I go to sleep. I'm not sure what will kickstart me onto the slope to Good Weight B, but it sure as hell better hurry up before I need to be wheeled around by a third party and have to buy two seats on aeroplanes. Hmmmm. Maybe I'll go on a gym kick as of Monday. Yes. Monday sounds plausible. And still pleasantly distant. I'm off to the vending machine.
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
The naked truth
Last night at choir we were talking about hair maintenance and the effects of age. "Don't get me started," a fellow singer said, pointing firmly between her eyes, "my pubic hair starts here." I laughed a lot and then began a nineteen hour reflection on the many ways that growing older has changed my body and mind. When I was younger, I thought that people started getting noticeably old in their sixties and seventies. There were children (who were short), grown-ups (who were tall but basically the same), and old people (who had wrinkles and grey hair). The idea that I would start getting old while still in my thirties didn't cross my mind. Now that I'm here, of course, reality has hit like a netball in the face. And since revelations from others about their secret pubic monobrows make me feel better about myself, I thought I'd perform a public service and admit the dark secrets of my own moribund form.
I'll start at the top. My hair used to be lovely. Now it is drying at the ends, itches in the mornings, gets greasy when I moisturise my face and occasionally produces dandruff. This alone is enough to make me want to be sick. Then there's my face. It used to be smooth and even. Now it is spattered with large pores. I get regular spots - more every month than I had in a year as a teenager - and I have scars where I've squeezed them. There are tiny red veins visible all round my nose, which make me look like I have a permanent cold. There is hair on my upper lip. If I dye it, it appears blonde but thicker. If I wax it, I get a red rash and ingrowing hairs. If I have it threaded, I get spots. There are hairs on my neck, around the place where my Adam's apple would have been if I had been lucky enough to have been born a man. And there's a patch of skin stretching up my larynx to my chin where the pigment is strangely white. I think this is the onset of vitilligo, an incurable and ridiculously unattractive condition of the epidermis. Hooray.
Moving down, my bingo wings, which are here for life, now seem to be developing baby cellulite and, unless they are suntanned, are emetic, making the wearing of strappy sundresses ill-advised, a shame as my shoulders are basically the only part of my body that don't make me want to hurl myself into the contents of an open bottle bank. My fingernails - once strong and glossy - now peel and ridge. My back aches. My breasts, while still a fairly nice size, are covered in stretchmarks - white furrows that don't tan and thus become more obvious in summer, and when I bend over and look at them hanging down, the 'rocks in a sock' label becomes acutely recognisable. My stomach is no longer flat and the dark hairs known as a garden path on men have emerged, although I doubt they serve as such an enticing invitation to any visitor that should find himself in the vicinity. There is a weird white mark around my solar plexus where there was once a mole. My body surrounded it with a white 'halo' (official medical term) and then basically consumed the mole, so all that's left is a white, pigmentless blob. I think it's quite clever that my body got rid of something dangerous, but I wish it hadn't left a residual stain that looks like some bizarre fungal condition in the middle of my abdomen.
Lower still, and we're getting beneath the waist, into the truly nuclear zone. Beware the truth. As admitted recently, a good portion of my considerable buttocks is covered with red spots, as persistent as cockroaches and possibly less erotic. Thanks to my beloved course of laser hair removal, my bikini line is less horrendous than it might be, but unfortunately the laser was not able to remove several inches of fat and thus leave my legs in perfect order. My thighs are rippled with cellulite. I have always had it, inherited at a young age from my mother, but the older I get, the worse it becomes. It is deeply, deeply unattractive. If my legs were otherwise slim, brown or smooth, the cellulite might be able to be borne. Needless to say, my vast, white thighs resist all tanning attempts, and the hairs are dark. There are even several long ones that grow horizontally on the back of each leg in a patch around the size of an average paperback. These make me wonder whether I am actually human and not some sort of minotaur sent to confuse people.
Beneath the cellulite and the hairs are the onset of varicose veins, a blight that I have miraculously fought off thus far as my father was having operations on his when he was in his twenties. I have several patches of blue behind my knees, waiting to pop at the most inconvenient moment and ensuring that - if the girth, orange peel effect and wolverine hirsuitedness weren't enough - I will never wear hotpants.
Finally, my feet - once so long and slender, now covered in mysterious lumps and knobbles. There are several dark hairs on the neck of my big toes. I have bunions emerging, in particular on my left foot - a condition that I would consider justified had I spent my life in stilettos, worn while successfully wooing Russian oligarchs, but given my absurd shoe size, I have spent almost all my life in men's trainers and lesbian Birkenstocks and have wooed a succession of men that have been almost universally labelled Not Good Enough. My high heel use has only emerged in the past three years or so, during which time I have researched the incidence of bunions and discovered that they frequently occur even when people spend their entire life in orthopaedic flip-flops and barefoot. My mother's toes are ghastly, veering off in different directions like bizarre coral, so I think it's clear what's coming to me, in the pedal sense.
And thus we reach the end of my thorough physical examination, a study driven not by self-pity but by a selfless desire to alleviate the panics of others through the admission of my own flaws. It is a sign of my own unbelievable arrogance that I do not believe my physical appearance to be the reason for my single status - rather, I think that, when covered up, I am actually quite attractive. I know for certain that I will never pull while wearing a bikini, but it's safe to say that I've missed the boat for a starring role on Baywatch, and anything that keeps me out of the arms of Mitch Buchannan is fine with me. May the fictional god bless physical imperfections - I'd be unbearable if I was beautiful.
I'll start at the top. My hair used to be lovely. Now it is drying at the ends, itches in the mornings, gets greasy when I moisturise my face and occasionally produces dandruff. This alone is enough to make me want to be sick. Then there's my face. It used to be smooth and even. Now it is spattered with large pores. I get regular spots - more every month than I had in a year as a teenager - and I have scars where I've squeezed them. There are tiny red veins visible all round my nose, which make me look like I have a permanent cold. There is hair on my upper lip. If I dye it, it appears blonde but thicker. If I wax it, I get a red rash and ingrowing hairs. If I have it threaded, I get spots. There are hairs on my neck, around the place where my Adam's apple would have been if I had been lucky enough to have been born a man. And there's a patch of skin stretching up my larynx to my chin where the pigment is strangely white. I think this is the onset of vitilligo, an incurable and ridiculously unattractive condition of the epidermis. Hooray.
Moving down, my bingo wings, which are here for life, now seem to be developing baby cellulite and, unless they are suntanned, are emetic, making the wearing of strappy sundresses ill-advised, a shame as my shoulders are basically the only part of my body that don't make me want to hurl myself into the contents of an open bottle bank. My fingernails - once strong and glossy - now peel and ridge. My back aches. My breasts, while still a fairly nice size, are covered in stretchmarks - white furrows that don't tan and thus become more obvious in summer, and when I bend over and look at them hanging down, the 'rocks in a sock' label becomes acutely recognisable. My stomach is no longer flat and the dark hairs known as a garden path on men have emerged, although I doubt they serve as such an enticing invitation to any visitor that should find himself in the vicinity. There is a weird white mark around my solar plexus where there was once a mole. My body surrounded it with a white 'halo' (official medical term) and then basically consumed the mole, so all that's left is a white, pigmentless blob. I think it's quite clever that my body got rid of something dangerous, but I wish it hadn't left a residual stain that looks like some bizarre fungal condition in the middle of my abdomen.
Lower still, and we're getting beneath the waist, into the truly nuclear zone. Beware the truth. As admitted recently, a good portion of my considerable buttocks is covered with red spots, as persistent as cockroaches and possibly less erotic. Thanks to my beloved course of laser hair removal, my bikini line is less horrendous than it might be, but unfortunately the laser was not able to remove several inches of fat and thus leave my legs in perfect order. My thighs are rippled with cellulite. I have always had it, inherited at a young age from my mother, but the older I get, the worse it becomes. It is deeply, deeply unattractive. If my legs were otherwise slim, brown or smooth, the cellulite might be able to be borne. Needless to say, my vast, white thighs resist all tanning attempts, and the hairs are dark. There are even several long ones that grow horizontally on the back of each leg in a patch around the size of an average paperback. These make me wonder whether I am actually human and not some sort of minotaur sent to confuse people.
Beneath the cellulite and the hairs are the onset of varicose veins, a blight that I have miraculously fought off thus far as my father was having operations on his when he was in his twenties. I have several patches of blue behind my knees, waiting to pop at the most inconvenient moment and ensuring that - if the girth, orange peel effect and wolverine hirsuitedness weren't enough - I will never wear hotpants.
Finally, my feet - once so long and slender, now covered in mysterious lumps and knobbles. There are several dark hairs on the neck of my big toes. I have bunions emerging, in particular on my left foot - a condition that I would consider justified had I spent my life in stilettos, worn while successfully wooing Russian oligarchs, but given my absurd shoe size, I have spent almost all my life in men's trainers and lesbian Birkenstocks and have wooed a succession of men that have been almost universally labelled Not Good Enough. My high heel use has only emerged in the past three years or so, during which time I have researched the incidence of bunions and discovered that they frequently occur even when people spend their entire life in orthopaedic flip-flops and barefoot. My mother's toes are ghastly, veering off in different directions like bizarre coral, so I think it's clear what's coming to me, in the pedal sense.
And thus we reach the end of my thorough physical examination, a study driven not by self-pity but by a selfless desire to alleviate the panics of others through the admission of my own flaws. It is a sign of my own unbelievable arrogance that I do not believe my physical appearance to be the reason for my single status - rather, I think that, when covered up, I am actually quite attractive. I know for certain that I will never pull while wearing a bikini, but it's safe to say that I've missed the boat for a starring role on Baywatch, and anything that keeps me out of the arms of Mitch Buchannan is fine with me. May the fictional god bless physical imperfections - I'd be unbearable if I was beautiful.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Six days in April
Rage. I've done it again: left writing my blog for so long that I am now overwhelmed with information and feel as though I should split it up under subheadings. Maybe I will.
Cocksuckgate
Last Thursday morning I phoned my mother just before I got to the airport, to say goodbye and reassure her that I had not yet died, an almost-daily ritual for which she seems to be grateful.
"Oh, Jane, I'm glad you called," she said, solemnly. "I was just about to email you." She sounded close to tears.
"What's wrong?" I asked in a high-pitched voice that indicated my panic.
"Your... your blog, Jane..." she said. I wasn't much the wiser.
"What about it?"
"Dad and I... we're both... shocked."
"What about?"
"I can hardly say it... You used the word..." (I tried to scan my memory of what the offensive item could possibly be) "...cocksucker."
I roared with laughter.
"So?!" I asked. Mum was not reassured.
"It's awful, Jane," she said. "So vulgar. So... unfeminine."
"Really? Worse than fucking?" I asked.
"Oh god, yes," she said, emphatically. "So much worse than fucking."
I told her that I believe this is a generational difference, but she seemed so gobsmacked by my labelling the volcanic ash as something that fellates that I felt it necessary to do a straw poll on arriving in France. I asked around twenty people in their early thirties, none of whom felt that a cocksucking volcano is any worse than a fucking volcano. Of course, we all agreed that fucking and cocksucking are both vulgar and unfeminine, so mother, you are indeed correct on that point. But for any of my mother's friends, or indeed any others, who read this blog and feel that she has failed in her parenting duties as a result of my free use of profanities, I apologise. Only the good bits of me are a reflection of her, i.e. my skin that tans, my love of birds and my US citizenship. Everything else is my dad's fault.
France
So I went to France for Emily's wedding and it was one of those cominglings of beautiful people and beautiful surroundings and beautiful emotions and beautiful food that made me simultaneously joyous and painfully and continually aware that, of the youth contingent, and as a fairly normal size 14 gal, I was the fattest female there by about nine stone. I kid you not. I genuinely reckon I could have got three of the other wedding guests into each leg of my jeans. There were literally miles of smooth, slim, tanned thighs on show, and the men's eyes were, naturally, out on stalks. I could have collected the drool and irrigated southern Africa for a month.
To distract myself, I forwent my wheat ban and ate baguette, and I sunbathed and met tiny ponies. It was all going rather well until I got dressed up on Saturday afternoon for the wedding, and had one of those rare moments when I looked in the mirror and thought I had managed to make myself look momentarily bearable. To celebrate, I asked Kate to take some photographs of me outside for posterity. She snapped away for a minute or so and said she'd got some good ones. I retrieved my camera and looked at the screen. In the (approx.) six minutes since I'd put on my make-up in the bathroom mirror, the circumference of my face appeared to have inflated by around an inch. I briefly became convinced that I was the victim of a cruel pre-wedding allergic reaction but then I double-checked with Kate, who assured me that the photo was, in fact, normal and that I was looking at a picture of What I Look Like. This could not be true. Desperate for a second opinion, I showed Christianne the mutant image and was sorely disappointed at her distinct lack of horrified gasps or attempts to shield my eyes from the appalling aberration. On the contrary: it appeared that the grotesque image before me was not only fairly representative but actually flattering. Shortly afterwards, we got in the car and drove to the wedding, the other three girls chattering happily as I tried to come to terms with the realisation that I look utterly, utterly different to what I thought and that my fictional version was much prettier.
Of course, the weekend was not all about me. We had a fantastic few days in and around Mirmande, made all the more precious as the volcano had done its best to keep us away, and I made new friends and passionately loved my old ones. The bride was stunning, the groom's speech was excellent, the venue was magical, I didn't fall over on the dancefloor, the lunch the day afterwards was dreamy, my skirt didn't blow up in the wind and reveal my pants, the band were crush-worthy and best of all, I managed to get a mild tan which, as Kate continually stated, will "set us up" for the summer. Here's hoping.
Election 2010
What is weird is that I have voted. I posted it yesterday. Fortunately I haven't yet regretted my decision although I'm not denying that might happen between now and 6th May. I almost regretted my entire existence last night, however, when Sara, Rog, Grania and I sat through the most excruciating event ever at the Union Chapel. Instigate Debate was meant to be a cutting edge two-fingers-up at the mass media approaches to politics; the NME called it "the most important underground movement," which, if true, is enough to finish me off once and for all.
Invited speakers were Dame Vivienne Westwood; Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman; ex-Labour MP and current Green candidate, Peter Tatchell; ex-Mayoral candidate and LibDem hotshot, Simon Hughes; and Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt. Music was to be from the Magic Numbers, Shlomo and Rose Elinor Dougall, and we were promised comedy from The Amazing Tommy and the Weeks.
In reality, Dame Viv didn't turn up and nor did Jeremy Hunt - in their place we got the Tory candidate for Putney, a dumpy young thickie who tried admirably to compete with Tatchell, Harman and Hughes and got absolutely nowhere. The Magic Numbers turned out to be one-of-the-Magic-Numbers, which is a bit different, while Tommy and the Weeks were about as Amazing as a pavement. The host, John O'Sullivan, was a self-satisfied, shambolic, patronising blunderbus who encouraged the audience to ask questions and then ignored what they said and asked his own. He sneered at an intern who passed him a note during the evening, consistently called 'his hero' Peter Tatchell 'Thatchell', and introduced beatboxer Shlomo as 'one of the best rappers in the world'. The evening had an absurdly obvious LibDem bias which shat all over any concept that we were watching a genuine 'debate' and I was fully embarrassed to witness the politicians going through such a risible two hours. It was an unmitigated disaster. On the upside, Shlomo was great, but watching him work his magic in front of a stifled smattering of uptight politicos sitting in church pews was painful. £5 I would rather have spent on something useful, like Compeed or stamps. Meh. You win some, you lose some.
Right. Must go hang out my whites wash.
Cocksuckgate
Last Thursday morning I phoned my mother just before I got to the airport, to say goodbye and reassure her that I had not yet died, an almost-daily ritual for which she seems to be grateful.
"Oh, Jane, I'm glad you called," she said, solemnly. "I was just about to email you." She sounded close to tears.
"What's wrong?" I asked in a high-pitched voice that indicated my panic.
"Your... your blog, Jane..." she said. I wasn't much the wiser.
"What about it?"
"Dad and I... we're both... shocked."
"What about?"
"I can hardly say it... You used the word..." (I tried to scan my memory of what the offensive item could possibly be) "...cocksucker."
I roared with laughter.
"So?!" I asked. Mum was not reassured.
"It's awful, Jane," she said. "So vulgar. So... unfeminine."
"Really? Worse than fucking?" I asked.
"Oh god, yes," she said, emphatically. "So much worse than fucking."
I told her that I believe this is a generational difference, but she seemed so gobsmacked by my labelling the volcanic ash as something that fellates that I felt it necessary to do a straw poll on arriving in France. I asked around twenty people in their early thirties, none of whom felt that a cocksucking volcano is any worse than a fucking volcano. Of course, we all agreed that fucking and cocksucking are both vulgar and unfeminine, so mother, you are indeed correct on that point. But for any of my mother's friends, or indeed any others, who read this blog and feel that she has failed in her parenting duties as a result of my free use of profanities, I apologise. Only the good bits of me are a reflection of her, i.e. my skin that tans, my love of birds and my US citizenship. Everything else is my dad's fault.
France
So I went to France for Emily's wedding and it was one of those cominglings of beautiful people and beautiful surroundings and beautiful emotions and beautiful food that made me simultaneously joyous and painfully and continually aware that, of the youth contingent, and as a fairly normal size 14 gal, I was the fattest female there by about nine stone. I kid you not. I genuinely reckon I could have got three of the other wedding guests into each leg of my jeans. There were literally miles of smooth, slim, tanned thighs on show, and the men's eyes were, naturally, out on stalks. I could have collected the drool and irrigated southern Africa for a month.
To distract myself, I forwent my wheat ban and ate baguette, and I sunbathed and met tiny ponies. It was all going rather well until I got dressed up on Saturday afternoon for the wedding, and had one of those rare moments when I looked in the mirror and thought I had managed to make myself look momentarily bearable. To celebrate, I asked Kate to take some photographs of me outside for posterity. She snapped away for a minute or so and said she'd got some good ones. I retrieved my camera and looked at the screen. In the (approx.) six minutes since I'd put on my make-up in the bathroom mirror, the circumference of my face appeared to have inflated by around an inch. I briefly became convinced that I was the victim of a cruel pre-wedding allergic reaction but then I double-checked with Kate, who assured me that the photo was, in fact, normal and that I was looking at a picture of What I Look Like. This could not be true. Desperate for a second opinion, I showed Christianne the mutant image and was sorely disappointed at her distinct lack of horrified gasps or attempts to shield my eyes from the appalling aberration. On the contrary: it appeared that the grotesque image before me was not only fairly representative but actually flattering. Shortly afterwards, we got in the car and drove to the wedding, the other three girls chattering happily as I tried to come to terms with the realisation that I look utterly, utterly different to what I thought and that my fictional version was much prettier.
Of course, the weekend was not all about me. We had a fantastic few days in and around Mirmande, made all the more precious as the volcano had done its best to keep us away, and I made new friends and passionately loved my old ones. The bride was stunning, the groom's speech was excellent, the venue was magical, I didn't fall over on the dancefloor, the lunch the day afterwards was dreamy, my skirt didn't blow up in the wind and reveal my pants, the band were crush-worthy and best of all, I managed to get a mild tan which, as Kate continually stated, will "set us up" for the summer. Here's hoping.
Election 2010
What is weird is that I have voted. I posted it yesterday. Fortunately I haven't yet regretted my decision although I'm not denying that might happen between now and 6th May. I almost regretted my entire existence last night, however, when Sara, Rog, Grania and I sat through the most excruciating event ever at the Union Chapel. Instigate Debate was meant to be a cutting edge two-fingers-up at the mass media approaches to politics; the NME called it "the most important underground movement," which, if true, is enough to finish me off once and for all.
Invited speakers were Dame Vivienne Westwood; Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman; ex-Labour MP and current Green candidate, Peter Tatchell; ex-Mayoral candidate and LibDem hotshot, Simon Hughes; and Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt. Music was to be from the Magic Numbers, Shlomo and Rose Elinor Dougall, and we were promised comedy from The Amazing Tommy and the Weeks.
In reality, Dame Viv didn't turn up and nor did Jeremy Hunt - in their place we got the Tory candidate for Putney, a dumpy young thickie who tried admirably to compete with Tatchell, Harman and Hughes and got absolutely nowhere. The Magic Numbers turned out to be one-of-the-Magic-Numbers, which is a bit different, while Tommy and the Weeks were about as Amazing as a pavement. The host, John O'Sullivan, was a self-satisfied, shambolic, patronising blunderbus who encouraged the audience to ask questions and then ignored what they said and asked his own. He sneered at an intern who passed him a note during the evening, consistently called 'his hero' Peter Tatchell 'Thatchell', and introduced beatboxer Shlomo as 'one of the best rappers in the world'. The evening had an absurdly obvious LibDem bias which shat all over any concept that we were watching a genuine 'debate' and I was fully embarrassed to witness the politicians going through such a risible two hours. It was an unmitigated disaster. On the upside, Shlomo was great, but watching him work his magic in front of a stifled smattering of uptight politicos sitting in church pews was painful. £5 I would rather have spent on something useful, like Compeed or stamps. Meh. You win some, you lose some.
Right. Must go hang out my whites wash.
Friday, 6 November 2009
Social Hurl
You know things are desperate when the first thing you Google of a morning is 'Burger King'.
Last night was interesting. Kate and her brother had a party in their 12th floor flat to watch the various fireworks displays around London. It was extremely, violently fun. I had a lot to eat and a lot to drink. Then I went to the bathroom and was extremely, violently sick. I mean violently. I haven't been sick from alcohol misuse for 11 years. But my god, I made up for lost time. I was so sick that I saw food that I last ate in July. Tears and sweat streamed down my face. It was awful. To add insult to injury, while I was vomiting, I remembered that someone once told me that bulimics have to vomit within 45 minutes of eating otherwise the fat in the food is already being stored by their body, and I'd eaten way more than 45 minutes previously, so I wasn't even avoiding weightgain. Livid.
There was not a chance that I could go back into the party to say goodbye. I turned right out of the bathroom, grabbed my bag, left the flat and soon found myself on the Embankment near Lots Road. I remember thinking that my footwear was unsuitable, so changed out of my boots into my trainers. Then I lurched off in the direction of my flat. I couldn't even remotely walk in a straight line. I was staggering, hair everywhere, still sweating, still wondering if I might be sick again, desperate to get home but uncertain whether getting in to a moving vehicle was sensible. I jolted east for god knows how long, spitting occasionally (yup), and eventually realised that I was really quite far from home. So finally I got in a cab. £4.20 later I had to ask him to let me out as the sickness was imminent. I stumbled the rest of the way home, a good couple of miles, made it to my bathroom, and then was sick again.
I woke up this morning at 09.31, precisely 31 minutes after I should have been seated at my desk. I texted my boss and told him I'd forgotten to set my alarm (true) and then rushed to work, although I had to get off the tube at Borough for a rest from the swaying carriage, which was taking my nausea levels from 'dangerous' to 'red alert'.
I had a Coke at 10am, which helped, and a gargantuan McDonald's at 12, which was fantastic. I feel much better now but despite drinking a litre of water, a can of coke and then a large coke with my McDonald's and a chocolate milkshake, I haven't had a wee since 09:32, which gives me some indication of quite how worryingly dehydrated I am. I still feel somewhat weak and feeble, and am perhaps over-emotional, given that I saw the headline 'Which minature animals make good pets?' on the Guardian website and was so excited by the concept alone, I welled up. I would question the idea that there is anyone alive who wants a Pygmy goat more than I do.
I certainly did have too much to drink last night, but, I'm afraid to admit, no more than normal, and I was wondering if my reaction was disproportionate, until I found out that someone else at the party was sick too, having drunk a lot less than I did. I now am convinced that we both had a reaction to something we ate. Sure, I was drunk, drunk enough to think it was acceptable to take back the slab of Hotel Chocolat deliciousness that I'd given to Kate, but I wasn't that drunk. I am never sick. This was odd. Anyway, the good news is that I had a really fun time at the party, from what I can remember (Kate kindly texted me today saying that I had been on 'brilliant form'), and I have £12.50-worth of chocolate in my fridge. I'm slightly surprised I wasn't arrested on the way home, but other than that, it was a splendid night.
Last night was interesting. Kate and her brother had a party in their 12th floor flat to watch the various fireworks displays around London. It was extremely, violently fun. I had a lot to eat and a lot to drink. Then I went to the bathroom and was extremely, violently sick. I mean violently. I haven't been sick from alcohol misuse for 11 years. But my god, I made up for lost time. I was so sick that I saw food that I last ate in July. Tears and sweat streamed down my face. It was awful. To add insult to injury, while I was vomiting, I remembered that someone once told me that bulimics have to vomit within 45 minutes of eating otherwise the fat in the food is already being stored by their body, and I'd eaten way more than 45 minutes previously, so I wasn't even avoiding weightgain. Livid.
There was not a chance that I could go back into the party to say goodbye. I turned right out of the bathroom, grabbed my bag, left the flat and soon found myself on the Embankment near Lots Road. I remember thinking that my footwear was unsuitable, so changed out of my boots into my trainers. Then I lurched off in the direction of my flat. I couldn't even remotely walk in a straight line. I was staggering, hair everywhere, still sweating, still wondering if I might be sick again, desperate to get home but uncertain whether getting in to a moving vehicle was sensible. I jolted east for god knows how long, spitting occasionally (yup), and eventually realised that I was really quite far from home. So finally I got in a cab. £4.20 later I had to ask him to let me out as the sickness was imminent. I stumbled the rest of the way home, a good couple of miles, made it to my bathroom, and then was sick again.
I woke up this morning at 09.31, precisely 31 minutes after I should have been seated at my desk. I texted my boss and told him I'd forgotten to set my alarm (true) and then rushed to work, although I had to get off the tube at Borough for a rest from the swaying carriage, which was taking my nausea levels from 'dangerous' to 'red alert'.
I had a Coke at 10am, which helped, and a gargantuan McDonald's at 12, which was fantastic. I feel much better now but despite drinking a litre of water, a can of coke and then a large coke with my McDonald's and a chocolate milkshake, I haven't had a wee since 09:32, which gives me some indication of quite how worryingly dehydrated I am. I still feel somewhat weak and feeble, and am perhaps over-emotional, given that I saw the headline 'Which minature animals make good pets?' on the Guardian website and was so excited by the concept alone, I welled up. I would question the idea that there is anyone alive who wants a Pygmy goat more than I do.
I certainly did have too much to drink last night, but, I'm afraid to admit, no more than normal, and I was wondering if my reaction was disproportionate, until I found out that someone else at the party was sick too, having drunk a lot less than I did. I now am convinced that we both had a reaction to something we ate. Sure, I was drunk, drunk enough to think it was acceptable to take back the slab of Hotel Chocolat deliciousness that I'd given to Kate, but I wasn't that drunk. I am never sick. This was odd. Anyway, the good news is that I had a really fun time at the party, from what I can remember (Kate kindly texted me today saying that I had been on 'brilliant form'), and I have £12.50-worth of chocolate in my fridge. I'm slightly surprised I wasn't arrested on the way home, but other than that, it was a splendid night.
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
Rage
A couple of weeks ago, I received a notification that I had been tagged in someone else's photo on Facebook. The guy is in my choir and he'd been on our tour to the south of France, so I thought maybe there were some hilarious new pics of us online, cavorting around in hotel car parks and/or straightening unwilling people's very curly hair. Excitedly, I clicked the link in my email to view the photo. Seconds later, the Facebook window opened and there, in front of me, was this:
And I was tagged. As were two other girls from choir.
To say I went fucking ballistic is a gargantuan understatement. Obviously, from the outside, I did nothing. A tear may have pricked my eye. But in my head, I was sitting astride an H-bomb aimed at his house and whooping as I went down.
Now. I may or may not be fat. I happen to think I am not. In comparison to some people, I am a bit larger; I am definitely thinner than others. However, although I am not fat, I will freely admit that I am not 'thin'. No one would point at me and go, 'God, look at that thin girl.' The other two girls weigh less than I do. But even so, and I hope that neither of them would mind me saying this, they are probably not those foal-like girls who can gorge on pizza and beer for three weeks and not gain a gram either.
So what mind-bending drugs had this boy ingested to think that tagging the three of us on this photos was a good idea? To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single person alive in the Western Hemisphere who is not aware that it is absolutely, categorically UNACCEPTABLE to hint, to insinuate, to even BREATHE the idea that a girl is fat. OK, maybe, just maybe, it might be OK to call a girl fat when the girl in question is a) your best friend and b) so laughably skinny that to suggest that she is porky would be both ironic and hilarious. But, as I have made abundantly clear, and as is no doubt obvious to the 'wacky' individual who posted this picture and tagged our names to it, none of the three of us are in the category one might call 'laughably skinny'. And the guy certainly does not know us well enough to make a risky gag like that. He's eight years younger than me, approximately. What could he get out of this? It wasn't in a run of 'paintings that look amusingly absolutely nothing like people I vaguely know'. This was one lone painting in a series of otherwise completely run-of-the-mill, smug-rich-person-touring-South-America photographs. Just goes to show that you can have the most expensive education in the world and still be emotional pondlife. And yes, it'll be awkward if he's read this the next time I see him. But I am still gobsmacked at his lunacy and I had to vent. What. A. Dick.
Friday, 22 May 2009
And the beat goes on...
Yesterday, shortly before 11am, I wrote the following paragraph:
I just read the headline in the Guardian, which reads "Cabinet ministers press Gordon Brown for radical shake-up of politics: Elected upper house and caps on party donations on modernisers' agenda". And, with the whining voice of a six year old complaining about having to go to bed early, I said to myself, out loud, sitting at my desk, on my own, in my glass box office, "But I don't want an elected upper house."
I was going to edit it, by the way. It is unfinished. Regardless, I was going to follow it by a written down (and obviously hilarious) version of my internal dialogue concerning the House of Lords. But then Laura came into my office and we were chatting about Weight Watchers, and then at about 11:20, Eva phoned and told me she had a spare ticket to the Ivor Novello awards in the Grosvenor Park Hotel, and that I was welcome to the ticket if I could be on Park Lane in forty minutes. My lovely boss gave me the afternoon off, I hot-footed it to Bank and across town on the Central line, did my make-up en route (apologies Mum and all others who hate public make-up application: I am of your number but sometimes needs must), found applying my newish Laura Mercier eyeliner with fine brush onto inner upper eyelid somewhere around Chancery Lane fairly complicated, and was obviously livid to be wearing relatively subdued work clothes to an event where there would be dressed up people, but excited all the same. And then there we were, heading into the Grand Ballroom, just as we did the last time I went to the Ivors, when I was approx. sixteen and the highlight of my day was when Tony Mortimer asked me for a light. Now no one is allowed to smoke inside and Tony Mortimer is probably in his forties with seven kids by nine different women.
But that's not the only thing that's changed. To my utter relief, I'd heard of almost everyone who was nominated for an award, including Elbow (yay!), The Ting Tings (yay!) and Duffy (yawn). But what shocked me was that after the event, given the opportunity of returning back to Eva's house to watch Aladdin with her two toddling kids or staying out with the others to drink more booze and hang out with famous people, I unhesitatingly chose the former. Something dramatic has shifted within me and I'm afraid that, once again, the answer is clear. I am old.
Shortly after Jafar's henchmen had sent Aladdin to the bottom of the sea with a ball and chain around his leg, I reluctantly stood up and took the tube back to Russell Square for week four of the politics course, where we discussed the law, and when, if ever, it is appropriate to act outside it. Having consumed disappointingly large quantities of delicious food and wine at lunch, I was unable to resist the platters of charcuterie, bread, olives and chocolate biscuits that were laid out for our mid-evening break, and when Laura and I totted up my Weight Watchers points this morning, a rough estimate puts my score at an impressive 54, approximately 2.5 times my actual daily allowance. Hmmm. Not doing so well. Trying to think of the beach and the bikini horror but it appears to be particularly difficult when I am having fun. If only I could have a more miserable life, I would clearly be much thinner. Sigh. It's so unfair.
And after all that, I am still not sure about an elected upper house, even though it is clearly undemocratic. I need to work on that. And I'm still working on my theory of immigration. So much to do, so much to do. A bientot.
I just read the headline in the Guardian, which reads "Cabinet ministers press Gordon Brown for radical shake-up of politics: Elected upper house and caps on party donations on modernisers' agenda". And, with the whining voice of a six year old complaining about having to go to bed early, I said to myself, out loud, sitting at my desk, on my own, in my glass box office, "But I don't want an elected upper house."
I was going to edit it, by the way. It is unfinished. Regardless, I was going to follow it by a written down (and obviously hilarious) version of my internal dialogue concerning the House of Lords. But then Laura came into my office and we were chatting about Weight Watchers, and then at about 11:20, Eva phoned and told me she had a spare ticket to the Ivor Novello awards in the Grosvenor Park Hotel, and that I was welcome to the ticket if I could be on Park Lane in forty minutes. My lovely boss gave me the afternoon off, I hot-footed it to Bank and across town on the Central line, did my make-up en route (apologies Mum and all others who hate public make-up application: I am of your number but sometimes needs must), found applying my newish Laura Mercier eyeliner with fine brush onto inner upper eyelid somewhere around Chancery Lane fairly complicated, and was obviously livid to be wearing relatively subdued work clothes to an event where there would be dressed up people, but excited all the same. And then there we were, heading into the Grand Ballroom, just as we did the last time I went to the Ivors, when I was approx. sixteen and the highlight of my day was when Tony Mortimer asked me for a light. Now no one is allowed to smoke inside and Tony Mortimer is probably in his forties with seven kids by nine different women.
But that's not the only thing that's changed. To my utter relief, I'd heard of almost everyone who was nominated for an award, including Elbow (yay!), The Ting Tings (yay!) and Duffy (yawn). But what shocked me was that after the event, given the opportunity of returning back to Eva's house to watch Aladdin with her two toddling kids or staying out with the others to drink more booze and hang out with famous people, I unhesitatingly chose the former. Something dramatic has shifted within me and I'm afraid that, once again, the answer is clear. I am old.
Shortly after Jafar's henchmen had sent Aladdin to the bottom of the sea with a ball and chain around his leg, I reluctantly stood up and took the tube back to Russell Square for week four of the politics course, where we discussed the law, and when, if ever, it is appropriate to act outside it. Having consumed disappointingly large quantities of delicious food and wine at lunch, I was unable to resist the platters of charcuterie, bread, olives and chocolate biscuits that were laid out for our mid-evening break, and when Laura and I totted up my Weight Watchers points this morning, a rough estimate puts my score at an impressive 54, approximately 2.5 times my actual daily allowance. Hmmm. Not doing so well. Trying to think of the beach and the bikini horror but it appears to be particularly difficult when I am having fun. If only I could have a more miserable life, I would clearly be much thinner. Sigh. It's so unfair.
And after all that, I am still not sure about an elected upper house, even though it is clearly undemocratic. I need to work on that. And I'm still working on my theory of immigration. So much to do, so much to do. A bientot.
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
OMG
One snack pack of Nairn's oat cakes = 15 points. Bear in mind that I would regularly eat one snack pack with a good dollop of homemade smoked mackerel pate (approx. 12 points per serving). That's 27 points (six over what I am allowed in an entire day) for what I thought was a healthy lunch. Hmmm.
Tuesday melange
After a busy weekend, I woke up startlingly early on Monday morning. I tentatively opened one eye and was thrilled that my digital clock read 06:50 - another hour of snoozing before I needed to sit upright. A short doze later, I reawoke feeling strangely refreshed and knew something was amiss. I opened my eyes, and saw that my clock now read 08:29. My alarm had decided that it was going to sleep in, and didn't go off. And I don't know how I did it, but I made it into the office by 09:03, 34 minutes from bed to desk, unshowered and with bed remaining unmade, but teeth brushed, clothes donned, make-up applied, hair tidied and choir folder remembered. I briefly felt like a B-grade superhero.
Friday night I went to see L'Elisir d'amore at Covent Garden with Arabee. I'd never seen a comic opera before, and I really enjoyed it from our £8 standing tickets. I don't know if it was due to the opera being less well-known or the credit crunch, but there were large swathes of empty red velvet in the stalls and lower circles, and the boxes were almost all empty. All the cheap seats were rammed, however, so I think it says more about the financial climate than the popularity of Donizetti. We had a good ol' natter in the interval and over wine in a pub beforehand, and all in all it was a delicious evening. Saturday was down to Tooting with Em for bargain threading (Feroza is ditched) and then dinner with Kate at the delicious and very funky Village East in Bermondsey - will definitely be returning - and finally on to Shunt. It pains me to admit it, and apologies to anyone to whom I've lied and said I've been there loads, but this is the first time I've gone to this self-consciously cool underground lair beneath London Bridge train station. I've intended to visit for years, but this was the first time that good intentions and willing third parties combined simultaneously, and Kate and I set off for the gloom of the arches with excitement. It was every bit as random and cool as I'd hoped, although the clientele was definitely in their mid-twenties, on average, and it was a little unexpected to find that the guys we'd been chatting to were still at university and aged 23. I don't know if they were unusually mature, or if the loud music meant I couldn't hear how idiotic they really were. Still, it was a brilliant night, involving white wine, fancy dress, throwing plastic balls at the head of ska band guitarists and pretending to be usherettes in a screenless cinema.
Since then I've spent time with two members of my extended US relations, had a day at work, gone to the gym, bought some scales in Boots, gone to choir, been reluctantly gobsmacked by Tim's impromptu magic display at the pub afterwards, woken up on time this morning, weighed myself, and enjoyed another half day at work. The scales and the weighing are on account of my decision, post last Friday, to try Weight Watchers for a few weeks. And the past 36 hours since I began, under Laura's beady eye, to count calories and calculate point allowances, have been shocking. My quantities weren't too bad, I knew that - but it appears that my main dietary treats, including smoked mackerel, halloumi and Pret's yoghurt with berries and granola, healthy though they sometimes are, are also so high in points that it is a miracle I haven't been recruited by Sumo UK for their summer extravaganza. One medium mackerel fillet, a staple part of my lunchtime diet, counts as 10 points, the same as a Big Mac. I am allowed 21 points in an entire day. A 40g block of halloumi, the size of a small matchbox, is 3.5 points, which sounds OK, until you realise that the average halloumi salad probably contains around 150-200g of grilled cheese. Oh. That may explain why I haven't lost quite so much weight as I expected in the past six weeks since I went on my pre-holiday diet.
Don't get me wrong. I am not crying into my Ryvita, feeling like a social outcast. I am generally a happy lass, and I do believe that I'm attractive and healthy as I am. But there's no denying that I'd like to shift a wee bit of weight before I have to prance about in my bikini in just under three weeks - so this seems like a fun thing to do between now and then. Call me odd, but so far, I'm enjoying it.
I went on this website last week to try and firm up my allegiances in advance of the European elections in June. On many issues I was confident that I had a fair bit of information in my filing cabinets, and I felt confident that I was clicking the right buttons. But on a few topics, namely EU integration and immigration, I felt pathetically ill-informed. I know what my gut tells me about these topics, but if there's anything my three weeks of politics course have taught me, it's that your instinct is all well and good, but if you aren't able to see or explain how these proposals can be practically implemented, then you're just a fantasist, which is nice for you and fun escapism, but really doesn't help the situation much. I'm now waiting for this book to arrive from Amazon; I saw the author speak a year or two ago and he was impressive and really quite fanciable. For some insane reason, due in part to the fact that I was feeling a bit needy having had a sweetly romantic but unsaucy dream about some total stranger on Sunday night, I ended up stalking him online yesterday and sent him an email asking him out for a drink. This morning, I received his reply saying that he was in New Zealand, which, as far as excuses go, is pretty solid. I almost imploded with cringe, deleted the email and have resolved to think no more on't.
Friday night I went to see L'Elisir d'amore at Covent Garden with Arabee. I'd never seen a comic opera before, and I really enjoyed it from our £8 standing tickets. I don't know if it was due to the opera being less well-known or the credit crunch, but there were large swathes of empty red velvet in the stalls and lower circles, and the boxes were almost all empty. All the cheap seats were rammed, however, so I think it says more about the financial climate than the popularity of Donizetti. We had a good ol' natter in the interval and over wine in a pub beforehand, and all in all it was a delicious evening. Saturday was down to Tooting with Em for bargain threading (Feroza is ditched) and then dinner with Kate at the delicious and very funky Village East in Bermondsey - will definitely be returning - and finally on to Shunt. It pains me to admit it, and apologies to anyone to whom I've lied and said I've been there loads, but this is the first time I've gone to this self-consciously cool underground lair beneath London Bridge train station. I've intended to visit for years, but this was the first time that good intentions and willing third parties combined simultaneously, and Kate and I set off for the gloom of the arches with excitement. It was every bit as random and cool as I'd hoped, although the clientele was definitely in their mid-twenties, on average, and it was a little unexpected to find that the guys we'd been chatting to were still at university and aged 23. I don't know if they were unusually mature, or if the loud music meant I couldn't hear how idiotic they really were. Still, it was a brilliant night, involving white wine, fancy dress, throwing plastic balls at the head of ska band guitarists and pretending to be usherettes in a screenless cinema.
Since then I've spent time with two members of my extended US relations, had a day at work, gone to the gym, bought some scales in Boots, gone to choir, been reluctantly gobsmacked by Tim's impromptu magic display at the pub afterwards, woken up on time this morning, weighed myself, and enjoyed another half day at work. The scales and the weighing are on account of my decision, post last Friday, to try Weight Watchers for a few weeks. And the past 36 hours since I began, under Laura's beady eye, to count calories and calculate point allowances, have been shocking. My quantities weren't too bad, I knew that - but it appears that my main dietary treats, including smoked mackerel, halloumi and Pret's yoghurt with berries and granola, healthy though they sometimes are, are also so high in points that it is a miracle I haven't been recruited by Sumo UK for their summer extravaganza. One medium mackerel fillet, a staple part of my lunchtime diet, counts as 10 points, the same as a Big Mac. I am allowed 21 points in an entire day. A 40g block of halloumi, the size of a small matchbox, is 3.5 points, which sounds OK, until you realise that the average halloumi salad probably contains around 150-200g of grilled cheese. Oh. That may explain why I haven't lost quite so much weight as I expected in the past six weeks since I went on my pre-holiday diet.
Don't get me wrong. I am not crying into my Ryvita, feeling like a social outcast. I am generally a happy lass, and I do believe that I'm attractive and healthy as I am. But there's no denying that I'd like to shift a wee bit of weight before I have to prance about in my bikini in just under three weeks - so this seems like a fun thing to do between now and then. Call me odd, but so far, I'm enjoying it.
I went on this website last week to try and firm up my allegiances in advance of the European elections in June. On many issues I was confident that I had a fair bit of information in my filing cabinets, and I felt confident that I was clicking the right buttons. But on a few topics, namely EU integration and immigration, I felt pathetically ill-informed. I know what my gut tells me about these topics, but if there's anything my three weeks of politics course have taught me, it's that your instinct is all well and good, but if you aren't able to see or explain how these proposals can be practically implemented, then you're just a fantasist, which is nice for you and fun escapism, but really doesn't help the situation much. I'm now waiting for this book to arrive from Amazon; I saw the author speak a year or two ago and he was impressive and really quite fanciable. For some insane reason, due in part to the fact that I was feeling a bit needy having had a sweetly romantic but unsaucy dream about some total stranger on Sunday night, I ended up stalking him online yesterday and sent him an email asking him out for a drink. This morning, I received his reply saying that he was in New Zealand, which, as far as excuses go, is pretty solid. I almost imploded with cringe, deleted the email and have resolved to think no more on't.
Friday, 15 May 2009
Erratum
I know said earlier today that I am not fat. I stand by that. However, I am definitely fatter than I thought. Approximately two months ago, I had to go to the doctor, and she weighed me. I asked her not to tell me how much the scales read as I don't like getting too obsessive about pounds and kilograms, prefering instead to go by whether my jeans fit or not. But then when she later went out of the room to get something, I looked at her notes and found the result. Faithful, to say I got a shock is an understatement. It was as if I'd switched on my toaster, my hairdryer, and my microwave, held them all simultaneously and jumped into a bath of petrol. I wasn't happy.
Since then, I have been on somewhat of a diet and exercise regime, and I have, of late, been feeling a little fleeter of foot. So after a session in the basement gym a short while ago, I thought I'd get on the scales by the door and see how much I'd lost. Guess what? I was exactly the fucking same.
Immediately, a flood of (female?) excuses for this clear abberation swirled into my mind:
Since then, I have been on somewhat of a diet and exercise regime, and I have, of late, been feeling a little fleeter of foot. So after a session in the basement gym a short while ago, I thought I'd get on the scales by the door and see how much I'd lost. Guess what? I was exactly the fucking same.
Immediately, a flood of (female?) excuses for this clear abberation swirled into my mind:
- The scales in the doctor's are different to the ones in the gym
- Muscle weighs more than fat
- My trainers weigh more than the no-shoes I was wearing at the doctor's
- My trainers may weigh several kilos
- My sweaty post-gym clothes are heavier than normal clothes
- I may be at a different stage in my hormonal cycle than I was before
- My lunch was still digesting
- My hair is a good inch longer now
- My brain may weigh more as I have acquired two months' more knowledge
However, the sad truth remains, that give or take a kilo, in two months of reduced alcohol, no chocolate, no crisps, no wheat, and increased exercise, I have changed not a jot. Sympathy welcome.
Weighty issues
So the MPs expense claims fiasco is still making me chortle. I know it shouldn't, I know it's outrageous, but it's just so ingrained in their culture. I was reading today that when Gordon Brown became an MP in the early 1980s, their annual salary was a risible £15,000. Expenses claims were how they survived. Now their annual salary is £65k, but over time, they've all colluded in wiggling the system in their favour and the unavoidable, laughable sense that they've all been simultaneously busted is slightly gleeful. I do want it to change, don't get me wrong - I think it's a serious issue - but the idea that our tax money has gone on the following surely raises a smile:
Nick Harvey (Lib Dem) - £30 per month for Sky Sports subscription
Julia Goldsworthy (Lib Dem) - £1,200 for a rocking chair
Alan Duncan (Tory) - £598 for lawnmower repairs
Oliver Letwin (Tory) - £2000 for repairs to pipe under his tennis court
David Miliband (Lab) - £145.96 for a pushchair
Margaret Beckett (Lab) - £600 for a hanging basket
Andy Burnham (Lab) - £19.99 for a dressing gown
John Prescott (Lab) - £112.52 for repairs to a toilet seat
Andy's £19.99 dressing gown was particularly poignant - I feel sorry for him that he didn't splash out a little more and go for something a bit nicer. But the one that made me feel saddest was John Prescott's repair work. How broken could it have been, for goodness' sake?! And how much did the seat cost in the first place, that it was preferable to spend over £100 repairing it rather than replacing it? The correlation that will inevitably be made between the size of Mr Prescott's derriere and the cost of the damage was what made me wince. One of the worst memories of my life happened about ten years ago, when I weighed... quite a lot. I was in Miami to do an interview with some tiny American popstrel, and we'd gone up to the rooftop garden of our unbelievably swanky hotel to take some photos on the beautiful wooden loungers by the pool. It was a stunning, warm spring day, the weather totally different to the cold rain we'd been having back in London. I was already feeling self-conscious as I was probably about five times the size of the starlet, painfully white and uncomfortable in my summer clothes that hadn't been worn since the previous year. But then, as I tried to relax on one of the poolside wooden stools, I felt an unmistakable crunch occur beneath my oversized buttocks, and seconds later, I was on the floor, the seat of the stool in two pieces on the decking beside me. Of course, I laughed. There was no other possible response. But I remember being furious that it had happened. I was convinced that the stool had been on its way out, and it just seemed so typical and so unfair that it had been The Fat Girl who had been the one to tip it over the edge.
These days I'm no longer fat, thankfully, but I still find weight a fairly constant concern. I'm currently preparing myself for ten days on the beach at the beginning of June and gearing up for that initial reveal of myself in a bikini, surrounded by people who are already bronzed: a moment of unparalleled awkwardness. I'm doing my best to eat less and exercise more in the run-up to the event, but even when I'm not working too hard at it all, there's that fairly constant stab of envy as I see one naturally slim person after another eating pizza or doughnuts or biscuits without thinking. I just envy that ability to eat without analysis - to grab lunch in McDonalds or guiltlessly order a Fiorentina for dinner and have no guilt or repurcussions. As Eva's mum always said, 'They'll turn to fat,' but they will have had decades of carefree munching and they don't know how lucky they are.
But back to politics (and away from any discussion about buttocks, whether they're mine or John Prescott's)... I had class three of my six-week politics course last night. The topic was inequality and it was fascinating. I found myself agreeing with Napoleon rather than Marx - equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome - so my dad's fears that he's 'bred a red' can be calmed a little. But I still fear that, expenses scandal included, no matter how many scandalous truths are revealed about our governing system, the vast majority of people won't engage with politics because they simply don't believe that their vote will make any difference. The parties are too similar, the representatives are self-interested and the democratic machine is fundamentally flawed. How can we change this? I don't know. I am sure that some sort of parliamentary reform is vital, probably involving proportional representation, but even then, the extant political parties don't seem to reflect the national interests. And, worryingly, as I read in today's Guardian, the media won't change this: "What aspect of the restoration of trust in politics would be in the media's interest? The answer is no part of it at all." They are loving this scandal, they love discontentment, they love demonstrations that turn into riots. Good news is no news. In a country where the media, more than anything else, shapes public opinion, that's a fairly depressing state of affairs. And I can't even smother my sorrows by comfort eating. Bah.
Nick Harvey (Lib Dem) - £30 per month for Sky Sports subscription
Julia Goldsworthy (Lib Dem) - £1,200 for a rocking chair
Alan Duncan (Tory) - £598 for lawnmower repairs
Oliver Letwin (Tory) - £2000 for repairs to pipe under his tennis court
David Miliband (Lab) - £145.96 for a pushchair
Margaret Beckett (Lab) - £600 for a hanging basket
Andy Burnham (Lab) - £19.99 for a dressing gown
John Prescott (Lab) - £112.52 for repairs to a toilet seat
Andy's £19.99 dressing gown was particularly poignant - I feel sorry for him that he didn't splash out a little more and go for something a bit nicer. But the one that made me feel saddest was John Prescott's repair work. How broken could it have been, for goodness' sake?! And how much did the seat cost in the first place, that it was preferable to spend over £100 repairing it rather than replacing it? The correlation that will inevitably be made between the size of Mr Prescott's derriere and the cost of the damage was what made me wince. One of the worst memories of my life happened about ten years ago, when I weighed... quite a lot. I was in Miami to do an interview with some tiny American popstrel, and we'd gone up to the rooftop garden of our unbelievably swanky hotel to take some photos on the beautiful wooden loungers by the pool. It was a stunning, warm spring day, the weather totally different to the cold rain we'd been having back in London. I was already feeling self-conscious as I was probably about five times the size of the starlet, painfully white and uncomfortable in my summer clothes that hadn't been worn since the previous year. But then, as I tried to relax on one of the poolside wooden stools, I felt an unmistakable crunch occur beneath my oversized buttocks, and seconds later, I was on the floor, the seat of the stool in two pieces on the decking beside me. Of course, I laughed. There was no other possible response. But I remember being furious that it had happened. I was convinced that the stool had been on its way out, and it just seemed so typical and so unfair that it had been The Fat Girl who had been the one to tip it over the edge.
These days I'm no longer fat, thankfully, but I still find weight a fairly constant concern. I'm currently preparing myself for ten days on the beach at the beginning of June and gearing up for that initial reveal of myself in a bikini, surrounded by people who are already bronzed: a moment of unparalleled awkwardness. I'm doing my best to eat less and exercise more in the run-up to the event, but even when I'm not working too hard at it all, there's that fairly constant stab of envy as I see one naturally slim person after another eating pizza or doughnuts or biscuits without thinking. I just envy that ability to eat without analysis - to grab lunch in McDonalds or guiltlessly order a Fiorentina for dinner and have no guilt or repurcussions. As Eva's mum always said, 'They'll turn to fat,' but they will have had decades of carefree munching and they don't know how lucky they are.
But back to politics (and away from any discussion about buttocks, whether they're mine or John Prescott's)... I had class three of my six-week politics course last night. The topic was inequality and it was fascinating. I found myself agreeing with Napoleon rather than Marx - equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome - so my dad's fears that he's 'bred a red' can be calmed a little. But I still fear that, expenses scandal included, no matter how many scandalous truths are revealed about our governing system, the vast majority of people won't engage with politics because they simply don't believe that their vote will make any difference. The parties are too similar, the representatives are self-interested and the democratic machine is fundamentally flawed. How can we change this? I don't know. I am sure that some sort of parliamentary reform is vital, probably involving proportional representation, but even then, the extant political parties don't seem to reflect the national interests. And, worryingly, as I read in today's Guardian, the media won't change this: "What aspect of the restoration of trust in politics would be in the media's interest? The answer is no part of it at all." They are loving this scandal, they love discontentment, they love demonstrations that turn into riots. Good news is no news. In a country where the media, more than anything else, shapes public opinion, that's a fairly depressing state of affairs. And I can't even smother my sorrows by comfort eating. Bah.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
He Is Risen
Allegedly.
Fact or fiction, I still celebrated Jesus' death and resurrection with gusto and managed not to spend too much time moping about lack of minibreak to Prague / walking in Lake District / similar boast-worthy activity. I went to see Charlie on Thursday evening, where we were joined by Tracey and celebrated the latter's birthday with a lot of wine. I giggled until I was nearly sick, especially when the Conversation Starter coasters that Charlie had supplied asked us which celeb we would most want to date, and I couldn't think of anyone, so then we expanded it to 'Celeb, living or dead', and I said Paul Newman circa Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, and Trace said Jim Morrisson, and Charlie said Tom Selleck in Three Men And A Little Lady.
Then I had a very rude dream about Alistair Campbell which was mighty confusing, especially because I was playing hard to get and it appeared to be working. God he loved me. It was very fun. Friday was lovely - we went and had lunch by the sea and pretended it was warmer than it was. Then I had a delicious dinner with Nick on Friday eve, another delicious (if I do say so myself) dinner with Kate on Saturday, a delicious lunch with my parents on Sunday and a good ol' self-obsessed natter with Ses yesterday as we walked along Regent's Canal and had a nice crisp bottle of white in a pub in Primrose Hill. Can't complain, really. Although obviously I can. But I won't.
My joy for today is that I finally plucked up the courage to speak to the Halifax about my impending mortgage renegotiation, and it turns out that a) the amount won't leap nearly as much as I was fearing and b) I don't have to renegotiate again for another 4-5 years after this, so things should settle down. Feel a lot less stressed now. Meanwhile I have bored my Faithful to tears. Let me think of something I can tell you to cheer you up. Ummm. After ten days of dieting, I can already pull my work trousers down over my hips without undoing the button. Now THAT is satisfying. But possibly not interesting. Hmmm ......quite a lot of time passes..... Seriously, I've been sitting here with this window open for 20 mins trying to think of something to type and I can't. I'm afraid I am spent. More when it happens (to me). You'll read it here first.
Fact or fiction, I still celebrated Jesus' death and resurrection with gusto and managed not to spend too much time moping about lack of minibreak to Prague / walking in Lake District / similar boast-worthy activity. I went to see Charlie on Thursday evening, where we were joined by Tracey and celebrated the latter's birthday with a lot of wine. I giggled until I was nearly sick, especially when the Conversation Starter coasters that Charlie had supplied asked us which celeb we would most want to date, and I couldn't think of anyone, so then we expanded it to 'Celeb, living or dead', and I said Paul Newman circa Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, and Trace said Jim Morrisson, and Charlie said Tom Selleck in Three Men And A Little Lady.
Then I had a very rude dream about Alistair Campbell which was mighty confusing, especially because I was playing hard to get and it appeared to be working. God he loved me. It was very fun. Friday was lovely - we went and had lunch by the sea and pretended it was warmer than it was. Then I had a delicious dinner with Nick on Friday eve, another delicious (if I do say so myself) dinner with Kate on Saturday, a delicious lunch with my parents on Sunday and a good ol' self-obsessed natter with Ses yesterday as we walked along Regent's Canal and had a nice crisp bottle of white in a pub in Primrose Hill. Can't complain, really. Although obviously I can. But I won't.
My joy for today is that I finally plucked up the courage to speak to the Halifax about my impending mortgage renegotiation, and it turns out that a) the amount won't leap nearly as much as I was fearing and b) I don't have to renegotiate again for another 4-5 years after this, so things should settle down. Feel a lot less stressed now. Meanwhile I have bored my Faithful to tears. Let me think of something I can tell you to cheer you up. Ummm. After ten days of dieting, I can already pull my work trousers down over my hips without undoing the button. Now THAT is satisfying. But possibly not interesting. Hmmm ......quite a lot of time passes..... Seriously, I've been sitting here with this window open for 20 mins trying to think of something to type and I can't. I'm afraid I am spent. More when it happens (to me). You'll read it here first.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Lost looking for meaning
I think it's probably completely normal to be a bit up and down. In fact, I know it is. But things do feel rather out of control at the moment. Which is zero fun. What was particularly perturbing was seeing several photos of me, taken at close range by a girl sitting directly on my left at a party last Friday night, where I appear to have no discernable jawline. My face is straight from my cheek to my neck, giving me the appearance of a few standard facial features (eyes, nose, mouth etc.) stuck on one massive jowl. A pasty Ms Potatohead, if you will. Then again, things could be worse: at least I don't have to worry about the economy. I was reading a gripping article this morning about the massive figures that are being bandied around, and found out that while a million seconds is the equivalent of 11.5 days, a trillion seconds would take us back 31,709 years to the time of the hunter-gatherers. I had no idea. I mean, why would I? But still. Puts things in perspective a bit.
Talking of ridiculous figures, I was struck by this application form for the East India Club on St. James' Square, which instructs the candidate to agree that, should the Club close while he is a member, he will "contribute to the assets of the Company... a sum not exceeding 12 and a half pence." Quite extraordinary. Rest assured that, even if the club would accept women as members, I am not currently considering applying. Should this change I will alert you.
What else can I tell you? My lip is still numb but sometimes it tingles. I am taking this as a good sign. My chin is still dead to me. Weep. I love my new hairbrush. St Tropez everyday bronzing moisturiser might be quite good. If the woman who sits near my office door cackles like that again I will throw my stapler at her head. The previous sentence constitutes an official written warning and any violent acts I carry out on her from this point on should be considered legally justified. I turned my heating off prematurely last week: it's back on now. The book club book is brilliant and exceptionally humbling. I would have lain down and died on day one. I'm now on the second section, which concerns logotherapy, and have been underlining frantically on the tube. I have discovered that I live firmly within an existentialist vacuum. Which is not good. Not sure how to clamber out. Does one climb out of a vacuum? Or merely pass through? God I'm tired. Hopefully I'll turn a couple more pages and nice Dr. Frankl will reveal my personalised way to meaning, although I don't think that's quite how it works. Sigh. I'm off to the gym shortly. I ran on Monday to the new Prodigy album and I think that the feisty BPM must have made me up my pace as I cut about four minutes off my normal time. Songs aren't much cop in the most part, sadly. I tell you who is good, though, and that's Pete(r) Doherty - his new solo album is great. And I heard the most heartbreaking song from Paul Weller's new album when I was in a shop in Spitalfields yesterday. Must remember to try and find that on iTunes.
Right, that's enough rambling for one Wednesday. I'm off to see babies this evening so must conserve my energy. Laters.
Talking of ridiculous figures, I was struck by this application form for the East India Club on St. James' Square, which instructs the candidate to agree that, should the Club close while he is a member, he will "contribute to the assets of the Company... a sum not exceeding 12 and a half pence." Quite extraordinary. Rest assured that, even if the club would accept women as members, I am not currently considering applying. Should this change I will alert you.What else can I tell you? My lip is still numb but sometimes it tingles. I am taking this as a good sign. My chin is still dead to me. Weep. I love my new hairbrush. St Tropez everyday bronzing moisturiser might be quite good. If the woman who sits near my office door cackles like that again I will throw my stapler at her head. The previous sentence constitutes an official written warning and any violent acts I carry out on her from this point on should be considered legally justified. I turned my heating off prematurely last week: it's back on now. The book club book is brilliant and exceptionally humbling. I would have lain down and died on day one. I'm now on the second section, which concerns logotherapy, and have been underlining frantically on the tube. I have discovered that I live firmly within an existentialist vacuum. Which is not good. Not sure how to clamber out. Does one climb out of a vacuum? Or merely pass through? God I'm tired. Hopefully I'll turn a couple more pages and nice Dr. Frankl will reveal my personalised way to meaning, although I don't think that's quite how it works. Sigh. I'm off to the gym shortly. I ran on Monday to the new Prodigy album and I think that the feisty BPM must have made me up my pace as I cut about four minutes off my normal time. Songs aren't much cop in the most part, sadly. I tell you who is good, though, and that's Pete(r) Doherty - his new solo album is great. And I heard the most heartbreaking song from Paul Weller's new album when I was in a shop in Spitalfields yesterday. Must remember to try and find that on iTunes.
Right, that's enough rambling for one Wednesday. I'm off to see babies this evening so must conserve my energy. Laters.
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