If you find yourself inclined to roll pastry and without a rolling-pin, I must say that a pudding wine bottle does just as well. It was that or a leek. That is all.
It’s been so long since my last run, I don’t know what’s become of the trainer shoelace I used to hold my trousers up when I couldn’t find my belt. Ill-health and the recent inclement weather provided a glorious spell when it was perfectly permissible not to rise at silly o’clock and don running kit. Now though, it’s mostly thawed and I’m going to have to jump — oh so reluctantly — back on the bandwagon.
Fortunately, I have a running buddy, who with any luck I shall feel guilty enough about not to let down. If it were up to me alone, I’m not sure I’d have the resolve. At least not at this time of year. The trouble is, when you fall off the waggon, you know you are looking at least two weeks of torture before you regain your “form.” (This is I concede a grossly over-inflated term for my running talents.)
But I mustn’t lose site of the real reason I put myself through this: cake. Running is just a means to an end: scandalous quantities of yummy things that I want to eat in vast quantities and must thus offset with some sort of energy output. So, here’s to cake. And finding that shoelace.
My left knee is not made for stealth. It’s something I notice when creeping about houses at night-time (pottering long after I ought to have gone to bed, not burglaring – though, given the current state of my finances it may yet come to that.) The clicking in my knee seems conspicuously loud after midnight, as though it were chiding me for my inability to take myself of to bed at a reasonable time.
For someone who spends every minute after the torture of getting out of bed in the morning longing to sink back into the feathery embrace of a duvet, I am quite, quite hopeless at getting to bed early. Last night I had such good intentions. Having battled through the day with a considerable hangover (apparently after 28 years I still don’t know how much wine is too much wine) I had visions of an early night, with a hottie bottie and a book. Instead, at ten-to-one I was battling my computer, attempting to achieve something that could easily have waited until the morning.
I recently read that a tendency towards night-owlish-ness has been linked to genius. This made me feel a little better. Although it has also been cited as a contributory factor in obesity, heart disease and all sorts of other much less exulted things than whizzy intellect. And given that my genius probably ought to have presented itself by now, it seems likely I will merely experience the booby prize side of nocturnal busyness. (The fact that I’m currently in very grave danger of tipping the scale into hitherto uncharted territory increases the likelihood of this being so. And as one of my knees is already completely shot, this can’t be a good thing.)
I really, really, really have been neglecting this blog thingy of late. I’d like to say this is because I have spent the last two months in the giddy, first love phase of a new relationship. Not so, alas. I did however dip an oh-so-tentative toe into the world of online dating. I think I can best sum up the experience thus: arg.
It’s like an awful cyberspace version of a school disco. First you’re worried that no-one will want to talk to you. Then when they do, you wish they hadn’t. You’re told you are an 85% match for someone based on all sorts of extremely broad criteria, such as having been to school and liking to eat any kind of food. A cursory glance at their profile meanwhile indicates they are top-to-toe covered in tattoos and like a girl with multiple body piercings…
Then there’s the fact that apparently no-one in cyber-romance-land can spell, or punctuate. (No doubt, now that I’ve said this, I will fall foul of Muphry’s law.) Honestly though, why can’t people use their/there correctly and put apostrophes in where they ought to be and not where they oughtn’t?
I’m told that lots of people have found love through internet dating. I honestly don’t know how. I find the whole process incredibly unromantic. Perhaps they just settle for something approximating it so as not to have to endure any more online shenanigans. The trouble, I suppose, is that you have to be really lucky for the internet gods to deliver a literate person with whom you actually have chemistry. And in the vain hope of finding that, you must endure the attentions of an awful lot of middle-aged perverts and borderline sociopaths.
It’s remarkable how quickly a nice man and his nice dog can become a creep and his dog about whom judgment is reserved. Walking recently through a pleasant part of north London I spied a man sitting on a bench, his dog at his feet. I was listening to something cheerful-making on my iPod, and generally disposed to think well of the world. The sun was shining, the trees were green and leafy in the way that trees ought to be, and these two were lending a London-a la-Richard-Curtis air to the scene. Then, all was ruined.
As I passed, the man muttered to his dog, “look at the legs on that.” And in an instant he ceased to be an amiable-looking, grey-haired dog lover and became a middle-aged creep with a dubious canine sidekick. I’m really not sure what the requisite response to a lascivious stage whisper is. It’s never flattering. And it makes me wonder whether I ought to box up all my leg showcasing clothes and shroud myself in baggy layers. Then of course I resent the fact that I should have to tailor my wardrobe to guard against the attentions of pervy men. So I decide that this is not the way; but the thought crosses my mind — who am I dressing for? I admit to myself that I do want some men to notice my legs, and wonder if I am a hypocrite. Then I return once more to the shroud line of thinking, and so it continues: on and on. By the time I arrive at my destination I’m furious at the man on the bench and his hell hound because I don’t like having my walks sullied by all this circular dialogue when I’m perfectly content day dreaming and feeling all bouyant about the world.
I’m told that five cats is the critical mass for madness and spinsterdom. I don’t currently have any cats, which one might take to be a good sign. Although, given the almost relentless rejection that characterises my romantic life I do wonder sometimes whether I ought not to yield to the inevitable and procure myself a litter of spinster-makers.
There are two things standing in my way: cats make me sneezy (and my eyes itch); and I’m just not sure I want to be that much of a cliché. Also, it seems to me that cats are a very bad sort of thing to channel your energies into if you’re used to unrequited love — they are, really, just more of the same. I’ve never met an unconditionally loving cat.
I had a most excellent cat growing up; and I was devoted to her, but quite aware that her attachment to me was capricious at best. Except in her old age, when she became my ally, and vented her disregard for humankind on my sister (once her favourite). She would lie in wait on the kitchen counter, and bunt my sister with her paw whenever she came within striking reach.
Of the many reasons to loathe Facebook — mildly pervy messages from people whose friendship requests you ought to have denied; endless invitations to add some ludicrous application or other — perhaps the greatest, is being emailed the latest comment in some fatuous exchange about a decade-or-more old photo that some old, old acquaintance has tagged you in.
These are inevitably littered with lols and gr8ts and emoticons. Why is it that people imagine you are unable to identify irony unless it is flagged for you with some awful, winking, smiley face? The added insult is of course that the people who so liberally bandy about lols and c. are usually the cringiest, boom-boom joke-makers around. It is a rare event if a comment followed by a lol makes me do anything other than groan or bash my head against my desk.
I think emoticons are almost worse though. They smack of perennial perkiness. They are the hieroglyphic embodiment of the sort of relentless cheerfulness that leads people to believe they are genuinely being helpful when they tell you “every cloud has a silver lining” when you’ve just missed out on your dream job, or been unceremoniously dumped.
I could never love a person who uses too many exclamation marks. Not so long ago a friend of a friend attempted to orchestrate a meeting between a friend of her friend, and me. I’m still not sure why, given that we live in different cities and neither of us two pawns were particular friends of the matchmaker-aspirant. It made me feel rather like a specimen in an experiment: sample A – single girl. The whole venture was doomed from the start, as I was pining hopelessly after someone else; but not wishing to get into that with the would-be match-maker, I replied that ‘yes I was single,’ when asked, and ‘sure why not’ when the meeting this chap idea was floated. (Besides anything else, I hadn’t wanted to appear rude by implying that this friend couldn’t possibly know someone I’d like.)
I’d envisaged some mildly excruciating encounter in a pub, cheer-led by our respective friends, followed by mumblings about a lack of chemistry. Instead – oh the horror – we were sent an introductory email with blurbs about each of us and encouraged to correspond before the proposed meeting. Sample B – single man, was described as a ‘real party man’ and a passionate Tory, which is of course why you should never agree to be set-up by someone who barely knows you. My close friends know that a true-blue and I are likely not made for any sort of bliss, connubial or otherwise…
As I wrestled with how best to extricate myself from this situation an email arrived. It began a little bit like this. ‘Hey India! Nice to meet you!!’ In nine lines, there were seven exclamation marks. I knew it could never be love.
Holidays, house-moving, wedding going and familial turmoil have conspired of late to make me quite the hopeless blogger. (Perhaps though, for the very few of you who actually appear to read this blog, this may have been a glorious respite from reminiscences about awful underpants and ranting about the orangeness of the general populace.)
I’m not sure that any of the above require further explanation: we all know holidays are splendid, house-moving is ghastly, and weddings are too, too lovely. As for the familial turmoil, open the first Aga saga you can lay your hands on, take out any references to horses, and assume that everything else you read has just happened. No really. I jest not.
Well, now that I have made my excuses, it’s off to Bedfordshire. But I promise to batter out some trifling anecdote or other soonest.
I was recently reminded of the awful grey underpants we were expected to wear underneath our games skirts at school. Most people elected not to wear these dubious garments, sporting non-regulation black cycling shorts in their place. The games teachers largely turned a blind eye to this mild form of rebellion. Unless of course they hated you. Such was my lot with our wicked rounders teacher.
When I was about 15 or so we were warming up ahead of a match against the girls’ team at a nearby co-ed school. The boys at this school always lined up along the pitch in order to gawp at the legs on show. It was a very gusty day and our skirts were mostly airborne. The wicked rounders teacher caught sight of my black cycling shorts (along with ten other pairs which she chose to overlook) and ordered me to remove them at once. I duly stripped and for the next humiliating hour-and-a-half the roughly 30 adolescent male spectators were treated to regular flashes of my flowery M & S briefs, with shot elastic. They had, like most of my pants been bought for me to grow in to when I was about 11; and at the age of 15 I was still unable to persuade my mother that perhaps they were due for replacement.
Probably they were one of my least offensive pairs. My underwear drawer was stuffed, throughout my school career with grey, holey pants that were deemed ‘perfectly fine’ at the end of every holiday when I mentioned hopefully that the one thing I could use before the start of the new term was some new pants. My younger sister who was much cooler than me, and better at getting what she wanted occasionally took pity on me and cast a non-mortifying pair or two my way. (She was the one I informed when I wanted a bikini for the summer holidays, knowing that she would be much better at persuading my mother that this sort of swimwear absolutely was necessary for someone of my age.) I always did better on the bra front because my friends (and sister) who actually grew breasts before their mid twenties used to field me the ones they had outgrown.
It was not until I was going out with my first boyfriend that I finally rid myself of the last of the tatty pants. By then I had acquired some more respectable ones, but I couldn’t face the guilt of throwing out ‘perfectly good clothing’ and so kept them stuffed in the back of my drawer. One day, when running low on clean everything, I delved into the back of the drawer and pulled out a fairly disgraceful-looking pair of formerly pink pants. My boyfriend was horrified.
