Exercise

I am in a slight mood. My wii called me fat the other day. Well actually first it bombarded me with mocking comments along the lines of 'Oh hello, not seen you for a while. It's important to take your fitness seriously." Then when it got over that it encouraged me to step on to the wii fit board. When I stepped on it let out an 'ouch'. Then it recognised me. Obviously everytime I get on the wii I want it to say 'You can't possibly be the same person, you weigh half as much!". It did recognise me, then it called me overweight, which yes is an improvement on obese (which I was) but I wanted the little wii mi to walking around in a pair of comedically large computer generated trousers not look no different to how I was before. So yes I've decided to start exercising. This is for many reasons. One being that I want to eat lots of Easter Eggs (yep I've still got some left, smuggy smug smug). Two being that it's spring/summer/monsoon season so I am more inclined to leave the house. Three being that I recently went to Iceland and spent time walking and swimming and remembered that I actually like it. Fourth being that one of my chums has become a pilates teacher and given that I work days and she works nights if I ever want to see her I need to attend her class. Oh look here's a link to her site here. Book in with her. She's very good For some reason I can not put a link in. Google claire toone pilates. That's her. Book. So my first class is tonight. Hopefully I won't break. I am also intending to go swimming again. I like swimming and am reasonably good at it. I used to be able to swim a mile in about half an hour or so (doubt I can now) so it's the one form of exercise I can be confident of not dying during. Apart from walking it's the only form of physical movement I can reasonably pull off. Running leads to falling over and not being able to breath within a few minutes. Tennis and general athletics I do not have the co-ordination or technique (this being hammered home to me during 5 long years of PE lessons), trampolining - fear of collapsing the trampoline, football, rugby, hockey, netball, squash - no idea of the rules despite being forced to play them at school. However, annoyingly the outdoor pool near me has closed down. Which distresses me. I do not like swimming indoors. It's too hot, too echoey, too chlorinated and you are unable to get properly dry. Outdoor is simply more fun. So I am going to attempt to go to Hampstead ponds. The lake holds no fear for me. Getting there does. I have no sense of direction and can't read a map. On my holiday I avoided all the sights of Rejykavik and instead wandered around a council estate. Which was lovely in it's own way. It's own way being not at all. So let's get energised. Let's Pilate.

Tracks of my life

This Friday I am going on local radio. Like most people whenever I hear my voice played back to me I go in to shock and wonder how anyone ever manages to have a conversation with me as I sound like a droning, high pitched, sqwarky lunatic. A bit like Mr Punch but more annoying. I also hate public speaking of any kind so this should go really well. My last and only experience of radio was on a training course where we had to pretend to work in a radio station, I got to read the travel news. I instantly forgot the names of any roads so all accidents and hold ups happened on the M25. Played back it sounded like Mr Punch had had a stroke and could only communicate by squarking 'M25, bad' repeatedly.

However, I am also going to inflict upon the listeners sixteen of my favourite songs so they may loathe me for reasons other than my voice. I am recording 'Tracks of my life'. Where I chose 16 songs and talk about their role in my life. At first I thought this would be an easy task. Then I started going through i-tunes and trying to select tracks. Also trying to select tracks that actually have a role in my life rather than 'I like it'. Now there are songs that I adore but which are not the greatest songs in the world. I generally like them for one line. For example 'Wicheta Lineman'. I don't like the first couple of verses, all the rabid exposition 'I am a lineman for the county' etc. But I do love, deeply the line 'And I need you more than I want you, and I want you for all time.' The question is - can I inflict three minutes of rubbish on people for the beauty of that one line? The answer is, I may have to as a lot of the songs I really love have gratuitous swearing in them and I can't play that on the radio.
Certain songs are easy. Waltz no 2 by Elliot Smith. One of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard and stands up to repeated listenings. Other songs - great memories - crap songs. Should I include 'I don't know much' by Linda Rondstat and Arran Neville simply because my brother and I found it funny to sing it like Kermit the Frog?
I have put a long short list together. Plan is to revue it nearer the time and whittle it down. See how long my nerve holds out and whether I can bring myself to put 'My Brother' by Terry Scott out there.

For F***s Sake

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2122302/National-Cleavage-Day-Holly-Willoughbys-cleavage-named-Britains-favourite-Wonderbra-poll.html

National cleavage day today apparently.

I look forward to national cocks out day soon.

Thank you for the days

My grasp on science is shaky at best. Never my strong point and when concepts get too hard for me I am quite happy to say ‘Ah well I don’t get it but I’m glad someone does’ and then stop thinking about it. I am fine with the fact that I don’t know about many, many things. I don’t understand how planes stay in the air, I don’t know why enormous boats float, I don’t know why people would want a bird as a pet but these things happen and they will not stop simply because I don’t understand why. So I may be very wrong when I make the claim that time is relative. Is that what E=MC2 is all about?

However it is whizzing by. Work is frantic. I had quite an in-depth conversation this morning with a colleague where we discussed the kids tv programme ‘Out of this world’ where she could pause time. Both of us were quite keen on this. Then we realised that we could have achieved something in the time we had spent talking about outdated sitcoms of the 80s. Time is speeding by. Not helped by the random weather generator that is the climate at the moment. It’s like a two year old with a remote control is picking the weather: Hot! Cold! Snow! Heatwave! Minus 6 at night but 23 degrees by lunch!

Now obviously, time is going at exactly the same speed as always. It’s merely my perception of it. Sitting through Avatar at the cinema took approximately nine and a half years. The time between my head hitting the pillow and waking up the next morning is about six and a half seconds. My nephew turns six at the weekend. I swear he was born a couple of weeks ago. However if I think of other things that happened six years ago it may as well be a lifetime ago. A very badly dressed life time ago.

I have no problem with ageing, I have nothing else to do and I wouldn’t be a teenager again if you paid me. However I do have quite a lot of things to do. (this appears to have something to do with the end of financial year – again something I have no concept of), therefore I intend to put Avatar on to slow down time to a crawl and then crack on with my to-do list

The Art of Sleep

I have never really mastered the art of power napping. I know the theory. Short, sharp sleeps make us work more efficently and power us through the afternoon. I get the sleeping aspect of it. I just don't get the short bit of it. If I go to bed knowing that I have got to get up in twenty minutes and carry on with my day then I don't relax and I don't sleep. If I tell myself that I have a four our window and if I am unconsious for all of it then it doesn't matter then I sleep well and deeply for about an hour. If however I don't set an alarm and have to be somewhere eight hours from the time of the nap then I will sleep deeply and soundly for 10 hours only to be awoken in the pitch black by a ringing phone.

Incidently there is nothing more disconcerting than lolling on your bed in broad day light, thinking about going for a walk or something, then closing your eyes as the light of the sun filters through the window and... then waking up ten hours later with no idea where you are, the house in darkness, completely unaware of what time it is, what day it is and what you are meant to be doing. The only thing you can work out is that something, possibly a small animal, sneaked in whilst you were asleep, had a lavish dump in your mouth then curled up and died in there for good measure. You also appeared to sleep face down as every crease your pillow had is now transferred to your face, these will drop out in a few hours. Also you appear to have been having some kind of wrestling competition with your clothes. Despite being able to sleep in pyjamas without spontaneously undressing yourself or wrapping your sleeves round your back, when you sleep in clothes you will wake up with them two sizes smaller than when they went on and discover you have had some kind of wrestling competition with them when you were unconsious.

You don't sleep like this at night. At night you drift off, during the day it's like you've been hit with a stun gun. You sleep or you die. At night, if you wake up unexpectedly you know exactly where you are and are content to wander to the bathroom or whatever with no need to put the lights on. Wake up suddenly from a nap and it's like you're in the middle of a horror film. You patrol the house for invaders and check for what may have gone on whilst you were asleep.

The biggest difference however is moisture. You can wake up after a nights sleep refreshed and raring to go. You wake up from a day time sleep sweaty, covered in drool and about to wet your pants.

It's more than spectacular to use the venacular

It's wizard, it's dashing, it's keen.
This is what happens when you buy a 3cd musical compilation for a fiver. You end up with the most horrendous songs stuck in your head. Although I have to say not as horrendous as whatever the person next to me in the office is listening to, which is some kind of folk music. Without headphones. Someone has just called me and half way through a technical question was forced to stop and say "Are you listening to pan pipes?".

So I can now keep up with fast paced wording of Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang. Even the bits towards the end where every second word is 'Chitty'. The writer must have put it like that in the hopes that Dick van Dyke would slip up and call the magical flying car shitty at some point. I acknowledge that this isn't really achievement (Incidentally I am now at the shaking with laughter stage of folk music listening). But I believe in achieving little and often. I am not going to climb Everest but there is a chance I may take a walk in the park. Therefore I shall take that walk in the park and be proud, ignoring any little voices that say I should be mountain climbing.

Hang on, folk's gone electric. I also like to reward myself lavishly for tasks complete. This normally takes the form of coffee, a nap or a visit to the library. In many ways I am well prepared for life in an old folks home - got out of a chair? Have a nap. I find in this way that I am fairly satisfied with life. I don't feel I have failed in any way as all jobs are easily achievable. There is a chance that this approach means that I will never really achieve anything of note as I am too busy rewarding myself for having got out of bed.

Folk is now prompting myself and a runner to dance. We look like the Wombles. Incidentally another song which I know all the words to. All this remembering doesn't really do me any favours. I am simply good at quizzes and know the words to a lot of songs. Which no doubt I shall reward myself lavishly for

I have to go now. This is doing my folking head in

Sing. Sing a song

For reasons unknown, quite regularly in the morning I wake up with the song ‘Think of a world without any flowers’ stuck in my head. I sing it to myself as I clean my teeth, finding myself hilarious as I sing it in a terrible mournful voice before leaping in to a lively falsetto for the chorus. I seriously need either a boyfriend or a flatmate. I am turning in to Su Pollard. Equally I find it amusing to sing to (selected) friends when I am cold or tired ‘I was cold I was naked, were you there? Were you there?’ There is only one thing to blame for this – the Come and Praise hymn book from Primary School Assemblies. Featuring a lurid blue, 70s tastic cover of a load of hippy kids with their mouths agape (presumably “praising”) it was full of some of the strangest, left over from the drug addled 1960s bunch of hymns imaginably. We sung them with gusto as we started our mornings in an act of communal worship.

Not one of us had a clue what we were singing.

Such gems as ‘Carpenter, Carpenter make me a tree – that’s the work of somebody far greater than me, Electrician won’t you light me a star, that’s the work of somebody who’s greater by far’. I don’t think any of us realised it was about God, I personally assumed they’d need to refer the job to their boss. My particular favourite was ‘The ink is black, the page is white, together we learn to read and write to read and write.’. I had no idea it was a blistering attack on racism (one of the strangest). We also sang a salutation to Autumn (Autumn Days) all year round.

As if the songs included in the book weren’t odd enough they were supplemented with photocopied bits of paper with some extras on them. We sang an ode to disarmament ‘Last night I had the strangest dream, I ever dreamed before, I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war’. For some reason we also had a bash at ‘There is a castle on a cloud’. Which must have been unspeakable. Our choice of hymns was recently usurped by a memory of another woman who could remember singing about ‘Ticky tacky boxes and dry martinis’.

Come secondary school and we had all got over our sheer enthusiasm for singing in public and so simply stood and mumbled through five verses of music before being told we could sit down. The one time we all decided on mass to hit the top note in our school song we were all screamed at for the unearthly racket we produced. The lack of effort and lack of singing didn’t put our school off. Not only were we required to mumble/sing pretty much every morning we were required to have a hymn practice before the arrival of our headmistress to ensure we knew the song before ruining it for her. Given that we only sang five songs on rotation in the seven years I was there this was utterly pointless. It also meant that we put no effort in twice rather than just the once. It did mean we were treated to a woman in her fifties skipping around and clapping her hands trying to get us to sing ‘Jubilate’ twice a week. Her attempts to get us to shout ‘OI’ at the end of ‘In the Presence of your people’ was woefully unsuccessful.

However even as an adult I can remember all the words. If called upon (which I never am) I could sing you most of ‘Light up the fire and let the flame burn’. I also rarely let a harvest festival go by without singing about ‘the broad beans sleeping in their blankety beds’ (yeahhhhhh). The only other song that I have remembered for so long is one that was featured on the BBC1 programme ‘The Lowdown’ and was about someone recording their own song. I know all the lyrics. It was called ‘Bye bye Baby Bye bye’. Looking back I must have only seen this programme once as it was pre-video. It makes me worry for my childhood self.