i can't stop listening to the new King's of Leon single (showing my age there. I mean track, download or whatever it is the youth of today say). i like it so much it makes me a bit tingly! i was listening to it at the gym today as i cycled manically (torn my hamstring so no running for 2 weeks, which is, of course, my idea of torture) and i found myself wishing that i was having the kind of affair that would inspire someone to write a song like that about me!
Hot as a fever, Rattling bones
I could just taste it, Taste it
Oh we're still the greatest
Your sex is on fire.
i was at the gym despite having a torn hamstring and despite having quite possibly the worst hangover of the year. yesterday we went out for lunch to celebrate the birthday of one of my team. she is 19 years younger than me. i can't quite believe that i work with someone almost two decades my junior and i'm not a primary school teacher! we went to her choice of restaurant. American-themed chain, you know the one, i won't name it for fear of libel.
suffice to say that when i ordered my hamburger, and asked for it medium well, our waiter raised his artfully shaved and pierced eyebrow and informed me that 'all our hamburgers are served well'. bless. but how wrong he was. while my hamburger did indeed come well-done (or as well done as you can get for a frozen hamburger like the ones they sell down Beejam) i wouldn't say we were served very well at all by lovely little Ricky (or the Rickster as i'm sure his mates call him). Now, i don't know whether the Rickster has another job that he combines with waiting tables (as in, does them both at the same time, running between the two) or whether he kept on popping off to auditions to be in a boy band between courses but all i can say is that our lunch lasted nearly three hours. and not because we'd gone for a tasting menu or a leisurely 'let's drink the place dry we're on expenses' lunch. nope, our lunch lasted so long simply because Ricky vanished the minute he'd finished serving us first our, 'oh my god, this is so insipid i almost admire the barman' cocktails, then our 'when the microwave pings, remove burgers and serve to customer. remember to smile' main courses and on to our second bottle of wine.
anyway, we then went on for frozen margaritas and then home for g&ts and wine.
let's just say today is a little challenging
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
going for gold
Unless you’ve been in a coma or the Big Brother house lately, you’ve probably noticed that we are doing rather well in the Olympic games. It’s all medal medal medal, siliver gold silver.
Which reminds me of a sporting triumph I enjoyed myself once.
Now, when you are fat, bespectacled, camp as Christmas and sport- and ballphobic as I was as a youngster, moments of sporting glory are very few and far between.
So picture the scene. It is the trials for sports day and I have been selected to try for… the egg and spoon race!
So, I line up, spoon in hand and egg on floor before me. The whistle goes. I bend to pick up the egg and it is as if it wants to be on that spoon. I scoop it up and am off, running (ok, walking slightly faster than normal, free arm flapping around, heels kicking up, egg-carrying arm rigid, probably flapping about the possibility of the egg falling off the spoon, or worse, my hair getting messed up) toward the finishing post while the other competitors are all repeatedly dropping their eggs on the floor and having to pick them up again. It is as if my egg is now stuck to my spoon.
When sportsmen talk about just going into slow motion or flow motion during an outstanding race I really get it, because for a few moments back then when I was 11, I did just that. And I came first by a very long way. It was as if me and my egg were carried along by some higher power. The patron saint of fat children was smiling on me that day.
Shame he’d gone on holiday the following week when the race proper happened. Poised at the starting line, ready to repeat my success and get my very first medal (‘fly Steven, fly’ said the voice in my head. ‘see the egg, be the egg’) the whistle goes off and guess what – I can’t even get the egg on the spoon. I am still struggling to pick it up off the floor when every other bugger has finished the race.
Which reminds me of a sporting triumph I enjoyed myself once.
Now, when you are fat, bespectacled, camp as Christmas and sport- and ballphobic as I was as a youngster, moments of sporting glory are very few and far between.
So picture the scene. It is the trials for sports day and I have been selected to try for… the egg and spoon race!
So, I line up, spoon in hand and egg on floor before me. The whistle goes. I bend to pick up the egg and it is as if it wants to be on that spoon. I scoop it up and am off, running (ok, walking slightly faster than normal, free arm flapping around, heels kicking up, egg-carrying arm rigid, probably flapping about the possibility of the egg falling off the spoon, or worse, my hair getting messed up) toward the finishing post while the other competitors are all repeatedly dropping their eggs on the floor and having to pick them up again. It is as if my egg is now stuck to my spoon.
When sportsmen talk about just going into slow motion or flow motion during an outstanding race I really get it, because for a few moments back then when I was 11, I did just that. And I came first by a very long way. It was as if me and my egg were carried along by some higher power. The patron saint of fat children was smiling on me that day.
Shame he’d gone on holiday the following week when the race proper happened. Poised at the starting line, ready to repeat my success and get my very first medal (‘fly Steven, fly’ said the voice in my head. ‘see the egg, be the egg’) the whistle goes off and guess what – I can’t even get the egg on the spoon. I am still struggling to pick it up off the floor when every other bugger has finished the race.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
fortune favours the shed painters
Yesterday for lunch my mate Tim had fish and chips for lunch. even though, he noted 'it's batter. which is bad'. not to mention the chips. anyway, so fish and chips for lunch it was. i had a marginally more healthy salmon burger and no chips. this followed a rather toastalicious breakfast on the patio and came before a cream tea and a bottle of fizz and big bag of crisps on the beach. it was like a Christmas day in summer. we'd originally planned to go camping but rain stopped tent pegs so we went for a day out instead, which was basically the food equivalent of a pub crawl (a grub crawl!) - breakfast, drive. lunch, drive. Beth Chatto's garden, cream tea, drive. beach, bottle of fizz and crisps, drive home. local wine bar. local Chinese restaurant.
In the Chinese restaurant none of us could decide what to have (by this time it really was more greed than need). I had Sechuan chicken: nice sauce, dubious meat. Someone else had good chop suey while another had tofu. Tim, after much menu studying decided on sweet and sour chicken: 'I need something light after that battered lunch' he decided.
Now if the description of sweet and sour chicken had included the words 'deep fried' and 'batter' i suspect tim may have changed his order, but of course it did not so it yet more deep frydom.
at the end of the meal we were given fortune cookies.
mine declared that 'from the chosen few you are the one'!
which is reassuring.
not sure which 'one' i am but it's nice to feel special.
today, on the advice of my gardener friend Veronica, i started to paint our shed black.
now, i had hoped that this would take me about an hour - i had done all the prepping last weekend, scrubbing, dusting down, psyching myself up etc but no. if on the tin of paint it had said 'will spread on really patchily whilst dripping all over the decking. blisters on fingers guaranteed and absolutely no more that 3 coats needed' i suspect i may have found another way to spend my sunday afternoon...
i now have to wait until next weekend for the next coat. the shed, btw, looks brilliant from the house, it's only once you get up close that the patchiness becomes apparent. as sister Tracy put it 'it looks like a tourist attraction in Great Yarmouth'.
no, i didn't get it either
In the Chinese restaurant none of us could decide what to have (by this time it really was more greed than need). I had Sechuan chicken: nice sauce, dubious meat. Someone else had good chop suey while another had tofu. Tim, after much menu studying decided on sweet and sour chicken: 'I need something light after that battered lunch' he decided.
Now if the description of sweet and sour chicken had included the words 'deep fried' and 'batter' i suspect tim may have changed his order, but of course it did not so it yet more deep frydom.
at the end of the meal we were given fortune cookies.
mine declared that 'from the chosen few you are the one'!
which is reassuring.
not sure which 'one' i am but it's nice to feel special.
today, on the advice of my gardener friend Veronica, i started to paint our shed black.
now, i had hoped that this would take me about an hour - i had done all the prepping last weekend, scrubbing, dusting down, psyching myself up etc but no. if on the tin of paint it had said 'will spread on really patchily whilst dripping all over the decking. blisters on fingers guaranteed and absolutely no more that 3 coats needed' i suspect i may have found another way to spend my sunday afternoon...
i now have to wait until next weekend for the next coat. the shed, btw, looks brilliant from the house, it's only once you get up close that the patchiness becomes apparent. as sister Tracy put it 'it looks like a tourist attraction in Great Yarmouth'.
no, i didn't get it either
Monday, August 11, 2008
in a toilet far far away
Today I am having a specky four eyes day. I normally wear contact lenses but a few years ago the whites of my eyes started turning pink. When I went to the opticians about it, my eyeman told me that it was because my eyes couldn’t breathe properly and that if I kept wearing my lenses for 17 hours at a time, as was my inclination, he’d stop prescribing me them. He also told me I had fatty deposits on my eyes. Love him!
So, now, I put my lenses in first thing to go to the gym. Running in glasses is a no no. Who wants to look like a fish on a running machine!
Then when I get to work I take my lenses out and put my specs on.
So, today, I am bespectacled (but Look*, no pink eye!). I just went for a pee. Where the light above my head reflected through the lenses of my glass it through reflections onto the floor that made it look exactly like I had CP30 eyes. How crazy is that!
And on the subject of crazy when I was in Barcelona recently (see earlier posts) I came across what must be the only Mexican restaurant in the whole world that didn’t do margaritas!
Me: ‘Do you do Margaritas?’ (in Spanish, natch)
Them: ‘No, but we’ve got 7 tequilas’
* I really wanted to write Look with an eyeball in each of the os but couldn’t!)
So, now, I put my lenses in first thing to go to the gym. Running in glasses is a no no. Who wants to look like a fish on a running machine!
Then when I get to work I take my lenses out and put my specs on.
So, today, I am bespectacled (but Look*, no pink eye!). I just went for a pee. Where the light above my head reflected through the lenses of my glass it through reflections onto the floor that made it look exactly like I had CP30 eyes. How crazy is that!
And on the subject of crazy when I was in Barcelona recently (see earlier posts) I came across what must be the only Mexican restaurant in the whole world that didn’t do margaritas!
Me: ‘Do you do Margaritas?’ (in Spanish, natch)
Them: ‘No, but we’ve got 7 tequilas’
* I really wanted to write Look with an eyeball in each of the os but couldn’t!)
Friday, August 8, 2008
long time no me!
when a man is tired of blogging, he is… on holiday of course.
so, just back from a week fighting them (off) on the beaches.
if they weren't trying to sell us coconut (which, btw, i saw them washing in the same place where people washed off their feet - right next to the portaloo) it was sarongs. do i look like the kind of person who would lay on (or worse, wear!) a sarong.
then of course, there was mobile Vision Express, each outdoing each other in the cheap and nastiness stakes. Finally there were the warm can men - beer, coke, diet coke. you name it. they had it. warm.
so, on the beach a booming economy.
leave the sunny shore though and it's a different matter. the credit crunch is biting hard.
how did we know?
snacks. or lack of.
a post-beach ritual of the Short holidays is a G&T at Bar Maripili, AKA the lesbian bar. each year we are greeted like 'faamly' and don't even have to order our G&T, it just magically appears alongside a lovely little plate of mixed nuts and pretzel bites, which, after a hard day's frazzling really hit the spot. NOT ANYMORE! this year, no matter how hard i looked (under the table, under the chairs, under the beermats) i couldn't find a crumb.
And it's not just the bars. the cafes are equally strapped. where once you would find a lovely little biscuit to go with your cafe con leche of a morning you now get, well, NADA actually. unless you're the kind of person who counts a spoon as added-value. which i certainly don't.
And I'm sure you're wondering about my tan.
As you know, i try and keep my non-surgical-procedured face out of the sun but even i catch a few rays while i am away.
the result? two rather orange cheeks.
my face is now so sensitive to the sun that i get a blotchy tan.
for a couple of days i looked like an extra from an 80s new romantic pop video.
orange! rosy i could cope with. deep beige at a push but orange! i looked like i'd been attacked by an 80s teenager with a blusher brush.
so, just back from a week fighting them (off) on the beaches.
if they weren't trying to sell us coconut (which, btw, i saw them washing in the same place where people washed off their feet - right next to the portaloo) it was sarongs. do i look like the kind of person who would lay on (or worse, wear!) a sarong.
then of course, there was mobile Vision Express, each outdoing each other in the cheap and nastiness stakes. Finally there were the warm can men - beer, coke, diet coke. you name it. they had it. warm.
so, on the beach a booming economy.
leave the sunny shore though and it's a different matter. the credit crunch is biting hard.
how did we know?
snacks. or lack of.
a post-beach ritual of the Short holidays is a G&T at Bar Maripili, AKA the lesbian bar. each year we are greeted like 'faamly' and don't even have to order our G&T, it just magically appears alongside a lovely little plate of mixed nuts and pretzel bites, which, after a hard day's frazzling really hit the spot. NOT ANYMORE! this year, no matter how hard i looked (under the table, under the chairs, under the beermats) i couldn't find a crumb.
And it's not just the bars. the cafes are equally strapped. where once you would find a lovely little biscuit to go with your cafe con leche of a morning you now get, well, NADA actually. unless you're the kind of person who counts a spoon as added-value. which i certainly don't.
And I'm sure you're wondering about my tan.
As you know, i try and keep my non-surgical-procedured face out of the sun but even i catch a few rays while i am away.
the result? two rather orange cheeks.
my face is now so sensitive to the sun that i get a blotchy tan.
for a couple of days i looked like an extra from an 80s new romantic pop video.
orange! rosy i could cope with. deep beige at a push but orange! i looked like i'd been attacked by an 80s teenager with a blusher brush.
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