Spoons

Spoons, and cutlery in general, are a necessary evil. I appreciate the need to use them in public, but table manners are only a concession to other peoples' sensibilities; a way of making oneself pleasant to be around. I don't want to watch somebody chew with their mouth open, and they don't want to watch me eat with my fingers. At home, however, with nobody else around, they're welcome to chomp away as messily as they like, and I will almost always choose to forgo cutlery. Obviously this doesn't work with every foodstuff. A tub of ice cream requires a spoon. So does anything too runny to pick up digitally but not runny enough to drink straight from the bowl. But generally I think food just seems to taste better when eaten with the fingers. Not wanting to sound like too much of a knob, but I think it gives you more of a connection with what you're eating. It also, admittedly, sometimes gives you burnt fingers, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Breathing

Sometimes when I'm concentrating on something (usually writing or attempting to make numbers add up properly, since there's very little else I bother to concentrate on) I start to get a bit dizzy. Then I realise that I'm unwittingly holding my breath. I sometimes wonder if this unconscious respirational suspension could ever lead to actual unconsciousness, or if I will always become aware of it in time to remind myself to start working those lungs again. Either way, isn't breathing supposed to be an automatic thing? How can one just 'forget' to breathe?

Inspiration dearth

I expressed concern on Facebook regarding my current lack of inspiration for writing topics, and received two responses:

J: Spoons.
M: Breathing.

Thanks guys. Thanks a lot. Still, I'm not one to shy away from a challenge. Actually that's a lie. I almost always shy away from challenges. Not on this occasion though. I shall not be beaten!

Dark thoughts

Is it strange to be 26 years old and still scared of the dark? It makes perfect sense to me. After all, anything you could possibly be scared of could conceivably be there in the dark. It's like Schrodinger's cat. Until you open the box the cat is both dead and alive, because it's impossible to know which. Well until you turn the light on, everything that frightens you is right there. At night every window has the potential to suddenly frame a creepy face staring in at me. The space under the bed is populated with spiders and indefinable creatures ready to clutch at my ankles. Indistinct figures stand over me as I lie there, just waiting for me to close my eyes. Luckily for me, the time-honoured technique of pulling the covers right over your head is a very effective one. After all.....if you can't see it, it doesn't exist.....right? Modelling myself on an ostrich may not be the most effective lifestyle choice, but I still wish I could apply it to life as a whole. If I never had to worry about anything that wasn't right in front of my face, my stress levels would be much more manageable.

I hate public transport!

After last week's face punching debacle this is probably not a big deal, but I could have done without it all the same. Today the man sitting opposite me on the tube decided to tell me "You know.....you'd be quite pretty if you lost some weight". What makes people think it's acceptable to comment negatively on a complete stranger's physical appearance? At least it wasn't as bad as the time a man watched me do my make-up on the Northern line and then said "I don't know why you're bothering. You're fucking ugly anyway". There must be something about me that inspires meanness in the general public. I was pretty proud of myself for my self possession on this occasion though. Instead of gaping in disbelief as usual, or bursting into tears, my response was a scornful "How sweet. You wouldn't."

Things that make me smile No.72

On a cheerier note from the last post; on Saturday I came downstairs all gussied up for an evening out. One of the babies looked at me and declared 'Ardie Megs look perdy'. I was naturally delighted, and she got so much attention for it that she decided to try out the same line on me on Sunday morning. Unfortunately it was slightly less believable at that point in time, when I'd just wandered blearily into the room in my dressing gown, with panda eyes and bed hair.

I can't think of a punchy title

On Wednesday evening, while I was on the train home, the man standing next to me started to have some sort of claustrophobic panic attack. Unfortunately, this manifested itself as him screaming at everyone to let him off the train and then, because I was between him and the door of the still moving train, taking a swing at me. The train was sufficiently packed that he wasn't able to put a lot of power into it, but he caught me square on the cheekbone. Annoyingly, given how painful it was and how distressing I found the experience, I only have the faintest of bruises and a strange red mark beside my eye. If I have to be punched in the face by a complete stranger on public transport, I should at least get a proper bruise out of it to add drama to the telling of the story.

The man ran off when we pulled into the station a split second afterwards, and it didn't seem to occur to any of us at the time to call the police. Of course lots of people are now instructing me to do so, but I don't want to. He seemed more scared than angry, and I imgine will be wary of rush-hour trains for a good long while. If only this were not also the case with me. I have no option but to travel during rush hour, and find myself getting anxious now when I do so. I keep scanning the faces of my fellow passengers to see if any of them are about to lose it. This leaves me standing there, fidgeting, eyes darting around suspiciously, meaning that the only one on the train who looks like a crazy person............is me.

Shades of Molly

Last night one of the babies grabbed my hand and declared "Ardie Megs paint fingers like Molly". Naturally I was confused. Molly painted her fingernails? Impressive, given her lack of opposable thumbs. And then I realised what the baby meant. Auntie Megs has indeed inadvertently painted her fingernails the colour of the cat. That child is too smart for her own good.

Wakey wakey

It's been over a week since I had a proper night's sleep. I lie awake for ages and then, when I do finally drop off, I keep waking up again. My whole night is made up of a series of fitful dozes and disturbing dreams. Rather annoyingly, I'm starting to suspect that it's worry about not being able to sleep that's preventing me sleeping. Vicious circle anyone?

Diddly dee dee

There was a girl on the tube this morning who was clearly struggling to stay awake and failing. In order to stop herself dozing off, she decided it would be a good idea to set her mobile phone alarm to go off every minute or so. Loudly. It worked....for her. Every blast of the alarm brought her jerking out of her doze, but it only took about three minutes before I and, by the looks of them, everyone else in the carriage wanted to seize that phone and drop it down The Gap. And that's the polite version. I was strongly tempted to find out her destination and tell her I'd wake her when we got there.......and then 'forget'.

Things that make me smile no.71

I have a friend who gets mildly frustrated when people tell her she has beautiful eyes, which they do a lot because she really does. But it's such an obvious comment that it begins to seem a little trite. Tell her she has great eyebrows on the other hand, and she'll melt. There's something quite nice about odd compliments, because they feel more true somehow. After all, 'You have great eyebrows' would be a pretty lame line to butter someone up with.

Today I was told I have lovely calf muscles. Slightly unusual, yes, but no less pleasing for it. And while I did my usual ungracious mumble of 'Oh, it must be from hauling my bulk around for all these years' (I really should learn to take a compliment), I was actually rather chuffed!

Democracy

If you were able to choose between three buttons to press in order to express a reaction to my blog posts, what would you want those buttons to be?

Actually, I don't know why I'm saying 'if'. You are able to choose. Do so.

Lists

You may have noticed that I've added a new book list for the new year. You may not. I don't imagine that anyone is particularly interested in what I've been reading, but I wanted to keep a record of it, and if I wrote it down somewhere else I'd only lose it. I confess to being slightly disappointed in myself for only reading 58 books in a year. That's barely more than one a week. At the risk of sounding like I'm writing my own school report.......must try harder!

While I'm doing a bit of an assessment of my acheivements, I thought I'd go back to my '101 things to do before I die' list, which I posted in November 2009, and see if I'd completed any of my goals in the year or so since then. These are the ones I've managed:

34. Learn to knit - Sort of. I can't do anything fancy, but technically I can knit.
40. Get a degree - Woohoo! Worryingly the next two items on the list are to get a masters degree and to get a doctorate. Maybe I'll give it a few years.
83. Be kissed under mistletoe - Another technicality. No romance, just the decision last Christmas of a drunk friend to kiss every single person at the party under mistletoe while his girlfriend looked on in fond bemusement. It's an expression she wears a lot around him.


That's it. Three. Still, I'd already ticked off five between writing and posting the list, so that only leaves 93 to go. At the rate of three items a year, I should be done by the time I'm 57.

Happy 2011

This time last year, I took this blog public. Well, technically it was always public, but if one writes about a tree falling in a blog post and nobody reads it, does a bear still shit in the woods? Philosophy is everywhere, so think on. Anyway, it was a year ago to the day that I alerted people to the existence of this series of meandering ramblings on the subject of my life. I didn't exactly hold a parade; merely started posting links on facebook whenever I wrote something, so that those of my friends who had nothing better to do could read about my doings, my cats and my unfailing ability to attract old people and weirdos on public transport.

Since then, I've gained a few regulars. These are the people who tell me that they check every day for new posts. They may even have me bookmarked. Oddly, this list includes my mother (Hi Mum), who sometimes sends me an email or a text if she feels it's been too long since I wrote anything. While I was there for Christmas she kept checking to see if I'd written anything while she wasn't looking, and at one point I wondered if I was going to be sent to my room with my dinner withheld until I'd produced something.

Despite the occasional nagging, I get a lot of pleasure from this blog so, whether you're a friend, a family member or a stranger, whether you read regularly or have just swung by for a visit, thank you for joining me. Here's a little preview of this year's writings:

Coming up on 'A Little Nutmeg Adds Flavour'........possibly.........

......your heroine's trusty companion, Molly, moves on from pigeons and presents her owner with a small, decapitated rhinocerous. There is much discussion on whether she got it through the cat flap without assistance, or whether she had outside help. Stephen Fry joins the debate, proposing the theory that Molly designed, built and utilised a shrink ray to adjust the size of the rhino pre and post cat flap.......

.........Fry is correct. Unfortunately Molly resents her secret being uncovered and shrinks him to a mote before destroying her ray gun. The courts blame her owner for her actions and the pair are forced to go on the run......

.......your heroine changes her name and Molly's and moves into a swanky new pad. It proves to be less swanky than initially thought, and as soon as she's left alone there, all the doors fall off......

.......attempts to fill the doorless doorways with bead curtains lead to the owner of the local pound shop becoming the richest man in London. He takes over the world and turns out to be a political, social and economic genius. Earth becomes a peaceful, productive society under the rule of a beneficent leader......

........The End.