Month: August 2009

Kicking back (is Lily Allen the new Bowie?)

Ah, sweet days off. Done loads of jobs today, all of them rewarding, a few of them fun. I trimmed my box hedge around the grassy knoll. Apparently that’s the last trim I can give it this year as it has to have time for any new growth to toughen off before the first frosts. It doesn’t look that much different, a bit tidier, but the main thing is in trimming the top branches it will make the growth below fill out. It’s so nearly there now. This time next year I will have to go around with my spirit level and level it all off (it strikes me now, too late, that is how I should have gone at it in the first place!). Also I trimmed all the grass with the same shears as the box. I had one of those strimmer jobbies but I couldn’t get the hang of it. I was chopping out lumps of earth and butchering plants left right and centre. So I sweat and it takes ages, but the majority of my plants survive. As today was actually summery I stripped all the covers off the sofa and gave them a wash, and did the bedding. Yes I really am that sad. I get bored very easily and even jobs that aren’t fun, once done, can be fulfilling. If nothing else they save Wendy having to do them and that’s got to count for something. Not that she showed any signs of actually doing them herself mind, but in principle she might one day have considered doing them. I did the shopping and got a new ‘phone this morning. Obviously the devious postman seized on that window of opportunity to claim he’d been around with a parcel. Left a note saying I can collect it from the main office in town in twenty one hours! How big is his walk? (Round, in non-posty talk) No wonder these posties are all minted if they are out for twenty one hours a day! Damn the Royal Mail! My new ‘phone has a camera! No film in it mind, to borrow from the excruciating Rob Brydon in Gavin and Stacey. I had some mad idea that that was what I needed to make my life complete, apparently not. It’s just another bloody mobile and you get a thousand texts pestering you about all the things you should be doing to be down with the kids. I don’t even know any gullible schoolgirls! (Topical joke, don’t put me on the register!) I’ve been on 2-10 this week so today was my first chance to go to TKD, bloody hell what a lesson! It was so hard that at the end, when we were doing spinning back kicks my pony- tail was so soaked in sweat it was whipping me in the face and spraying sweat everywhere. Unpleasant for all concerned. Good lesson though, showed me what I need to concentrate on (they have a name for the […]

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Over myself

Cancel last, as the command went from the artillery. Turns out that feeling of malaise and ennui has gone again, as it did the next day the last time. Which leads me to suspect it may actually be nothing more than a dread of going back to work. This is strange, as although I don’t wake up and leap out of bed shouting "whoopee, it’s time for work!", I certainly don’t (consciously) dread it. I said it was probably nothing, being all brave and stoical, turns out it was nothing and I was being a mard-arse. Less than laudable. Moving on, head hung low in shame, I forgot to mention yesterday that whilst practising my head kicks I had yet another super idea. I am so full of them (or it!). I had the brush propped up to make sure I was kicking horizontally at the right height, but I still couldn’t be sure I was doing the technique right, as it happens too quick to watch and do at the same time. My cunning idea then was to film it. O.K., not quite the master-stroke of genius that I may have previously implied, but a good idea none-the-less. That way I could transfer it to the computer and play it at a slower speed to observe the kick. So there I was, in just my sweat pants (whatever they are called) doing these kicks. There was a triple whammy of badness though; I had positioned the camera on the top of the cooker facing across the kitchen (to get the height right) but that had it pointing toward the sunny window, so it was a really dark picture, my kick is wrong in a way I can’t put my finger on until I get better footage, and, worst of all, I looked like a flabby, sweaty, un-cool porker! That was not my self-image. Words like ‘buff’, ‘toned’, or ‘ripped’ did not cross my mind, for fear of being run over by the herd of words like ‘bloater’, ‘porker’, ‘fat-boy’ and ‘lard-arse’, presumably. ‘Diet, chunky’ were the thoughts that quickly followed. However I still had my banana in cereal before I went to work, a cooked breakfast at work, then a pack of biscuits when I got home. And I mean a pack. A whole pack. They are so dunky-licious. Quick dunk in your brew, soft, sweat mouthful, then quickly on to the next. I eat them that fast that I don’t have chance to get full before I’ve eaten the lot. That was excessive, a whole pack, but I can eat half a pack when I’m not even hungry, just as something nice to have. I have no beer or other drugs to reward me for a hard days toil, so I have a nice biccy or several. Then Wendy went and spoiled it all by finding how many calories there are in a pack. 1,150! One thousand, one  hundred and fifty calories. A whole day’s calories in a […]

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