i.e. good

i.e. a baby

2010-06-28T20:03:00.003Z

So i had it, the baby.

I had it at home again. I know, i know, hippy blah dangerous blah foolhardy blah etc.

But i did it, so, there it is, done. It was an interesting labour. I had the baby on the 4th of June, and all day the 3rd of June i had on-off light contractions which never really got much closer or more painful. Eventually (about 11pm) they started to ramp up, but they stayed totally irregular all night so i never got to being "in labour" really. All night we slept in 10minute snatches between contractions. At 6am my dad arrived (yes, i had my DAD there, gasp, faint in shock etc, that my father saw my vagina (which he had seen before since he used to wipe it clean for me when I was the baby) but please also know that he got to witness the first moments of his fresh new grandchild with us, and he made us cracking bacon sandwiches afterwards) and then i got in the bath for a change of scenery. Towards 7am i decided, given i was grunting at the peaks of my still-sporadic contractions, that i wanted my midwife.

She came, then about half an hour later the baby came. I had it on the bedroom floor. I pushed for only 6 minutes. I was on all-fours and i reached back and caught the head and then her body and lifted this new little person to my belly myself. The midwife stayed peaceful and attentive and helped me when i couldn't find the armpit (most babies turn to deliver their shoulders but mine don't!) but didn't steam in with assistance i didn't need. I turned it over to see which flavour we got, and it was a girl. We called her Camille. She had a true knot in her cord. This is probably why she didn't have a "normal" pattern of labour. For those out there who think we were incredibly lucky not to have a dead baby having a true-knot kid at home, her apgars were 10, 10 and 10. I don't doubt many a baby is saved by hospital intervention, but i suspect mine would have been in quite a lot of trouble if, at 2am when i was dilating but still not having regular contractions, someone augmented me with pitocin to "normalise" my labour and coincidentally pulled her knot tight for her. The only true knot baby i know who died died of that.

She is 3.5weeks old now, and she loves, in order of preference:

breasts (mine, though i'm sure it is cupboard love)

cuddling

going to sleep in the wrap

when daddy holds her to his chest and hums to her

sleeping

her big sister playing with her toes

She does not like:

hiccups (which she has a lot, possibly a hangover from her cord issue)

the breasts being put away when she isn't actually choked to the gills with milk

any time in the evenings spent conscious but without a breast in her mouth or unconscious but without a breast smooshed against her face

We love her a LOT.

It's a joy having a second baby. I still demand feed, co-sleep, baby-wear, respond instantly to crying and generally enforce no routine except one of frequent, emphatic kisses and loves showered upon her, but i feel so much less defensive about it all this time. When anyone doubts me, questions me or tells me i'm making a rod for my back if i don't leave her to cry/force her into a routine/make her sleep in the cot/put her down sometimes, i just smile, point to my (absolutely SMASHING) 4 year old and say "it didn't do her any harm".

i.e. returns

2010-04-21T18:32:00.005Z

Well, i'm not dead. I have never been even nearly dead! I've just been thinking, also moving house 3 times, getting knocked up 3 times, losing 2 of the pregnancies (do the maths, it's ultimately happy news) and you know, living.

Why am i here? Well, because i know i should be, because i know i should be writing, and because i'm 6weeks (give or take) from having another baby and if i don't form a routine now i never will. Also i am super-grumpy and this is probably a nicer place to vent that than at the unfortunate man on the bus who was silly enough to light a cigarette near me...

Last time i had a baby i had an NHS homebirth. At the time it was fabulous. Without the fog of endorphins the lucky among us get after birth, it was...ok. When G and i decided to try for a baby we discussed the options. My main concerns were that i have a thyroid condition which was missed during my first pregnancy (putting myself and Esme at some increased risk) which would need to be managed carefully during future pregnancies, i met with 6 midwives during my first pregnancy and still, a total stranger turned up to catch the baby when i was actually in labour, and i felt that total stranger was fearful and distracted, and clearly we didn't know one another which, i believe, significantly affected how she managed my labour and birth.

My general feeling is that the NHS is full of midwives who are wonderful, caring, skilled women, who want to do a job they felt called to. And the vast majority spend their time tied up with guidelines-turned-laws, paperwork concerned with avoiding litigation and protocols concerned with the same. The result is a bunch of stressed out, burned out, dissatisfied women who are forced to try to support women under the constraints of a system whose first concern is not them, nor the women and babies they care for, but the money it costs to do so. Recently in Glasgow there have been huge cuts in the numbers of midwife posts, many of which have been replaced by "maternity healthcare assistants" - people who are not autonomous and have no decision-making powers when it comes to apt treatment. People, therefore, who will be far more likely to toe the party line (and therefore better protect the contents of the NHS coffers) regardless of what is in the best interests of the baby and the mother. I do not consider it safe or wise, especially as someone who laboured and birthed relatively quickly last time, to put myself or my baby or our care in their hands.

So we had a hunt around, and turned up an Independent Midwife, a rare find believe me, since she is one of a dying breed, called Allison Ewing. Our initial contact was through email where she was reassuring and open. Before we had even booked with her she had supported me through two losses, and sent me a lot of valuable information on other aspects of birthing (which would have been especially relevant if we HAD decided to go the NHS route afterall).

We subsequently booked with her and she's been caring for us AND being paid for it (very modestly given the level of care she gives) since last November. She's a breath of fresh air, and i am SO glad we found her. Down-to-earth, good-humoured and a sci-fi fan to boot! I feel very calm, healthy and lucky, and i'm genuinely looking forward to birth knowing it will be her who will be walking through our front door when i go into labour.

So that's where i've been and what's on my mind. I now have to put my big 4year old girl to bed, but visit again soon, there will be more.

i.e. Mama

2009-01-10T22:02:00.002Z

I know, it's been 6 months, but what can i say...? I moved house, G and I have been smashing our lives together and buying rugs. It's been long enough that you now all have to suffer a self-indulgent ramble about my opinion on parenting - a part of my life that i am NEVER short of a few words on.

I am a hippy mother.

It is a default, not something i decided. Other people label the box don't they? As a parent you just decide where your various techniques and not-to-be-crossed lines are, and then other people with other techniques and lines rock up and go "oh you're such-and-such" and then either criticise you or wander off in search of another learning experience to ignore.

I am a hippy mother not because of wearing big skirts and beads and never washing my hair (because i don't, don't often and do) but because there seems to be no category of "mainstream" parenting which allows one to have a homebirth, breastfeed, babywear (that's putting bubs in a sling or wrap on your chest, tummy or back, rather than into the more usual car-seat/pram/bouncer option), use cloth nappies (what does that have to do with parenting!?), respond to crying and not smack. I am a hippy mother because it is the only way people seem to be able to reconcile the fact that i do not want to ignore or hit ANYONE i love.

The strangest thing about this, especially when i'm among other women, is the number of people who take my choices as a direct aggressive challenge. Barmy chats i have had:

Woman at toddler group: This formula is leaking again! What brand of bottle did you use?
Me: I breastfed, so i didn't use many. Avent i think, once i pumped milk.
Woman: (loudly) I TRIED to breastfeed but i didn't have any milk.
Me: (half-listening) Oh.
Woman: and she's 3 months old now and she's NEVER been ill. When did you little girl first get ill?
Me: (watching my daughter eat play dough and wondering how toxic it will be) Um, oh 7 months, seriously a week after i'd had to stop breastfeeding. Probably just to make me feel bad...(laughing a bit)
Woman: (angrily) Well, i think it's a lot of crap. My husband feeds her, how could you bond if you didn't feed?!
Me: Yeah, my ex bathed her and played with her, and later on i pumped milk and he fed her that...so...they're bonded ok. I think it just depends on the family..
Woman: (as she stands up) Yeah well, it's all very well if you want a baby hanging off you all day - I wanted my LIFE back! (she then stormed off, though not very effectively because the only other empty seat was about 4 feet from the one she'd just vacated).

Once the ex and i were walking down the street, our then 3 month old daughter was in a wrap snuggled against his chest, and because it was sunny and she was asleep the outer layer of (thin, breathable) fabric was tucked right over her as per manufacturers instructions. A random woman stormed up and SHOUTED at us "Yeah that's a great fucking way to smother your baby! Well done!" and stormed off.

I have been told if i don't FORCE her to sit screaming and crying with distress on the loo she'll "never learn" (whatever that means), that if i don't smack her she'll "grow up to be a murderer!", if i don't stop her thumb-sucking it'll ruin her life (still suck mine aged 28, life pretty much intact and no, i never needed orthodontic work), that by picking her up when at 13 days old she cried in obvious pain (was her tummy) i was "letting her manipulate me", that by letting her get into my bed to sleep when she's scared i'll "make a rod for my own back". I could go on and on and on.

So here it is. I had a homebirth because i am shit-scared of hospitals. I breastfed because it is faff-free (no washing/sterilising/mixing), danger-free (no worrying that on 90minutes of sleep in the last 36 hours i'll have fucked up the washing/sterilising/mixing in some way) and financially free. I stopped because i had a medical condition that dried my milk up, not because she was getting "too big" "too old" or "too demanding". I used a wrap, then a backpack, then (and now) a meitai to carry my kid because a) i like the cuddling and b) i cannot steer a buggy well, shop aisles are too narrow for them, buses can only take 2 and there's always 2 already on the bus you need to catch and c) for me, it's less hassle throwing her in a wrap or onto my back than packing up a buggy, carrying it down 3 flights of stairs (presumably while DD lay alone in the flat) then abandoning it while i go and get her. I used cloth nappies because they are cheaper than disposable unless you have an outside agent clean them and i didn't. I respond to her crying because i love her. I don't ignore friends or my partner or my family when they cry and they are in the main FAR less helpless than a newborn, a toddler, or a young child. Why would i ignore her? I have never read ANY evidence that it does anything positive for either of us. Yeah, i might get more sleep in theory when she gives up crying but it's possible the knowledge that i just taught my newborn baby "cry all you like, no-one gives a flying fuck how you're feeling, least of all me, your mother, the only person in the world you thought you could actually rely on" might keep me awake somewhat. I love her, i don't care if she knows it! The same goes for smacking. I don't want to hit someone i love, nor teach my child that someone who loves them can or should hit them. I know, i know, some people think children and grown-ups are very distinct from one another, but i don't buy it. Inability to articulate pain, frustration, hurt, is not the same as inability to FEEL those things. I don't speak Japanese, but if you put me in Japan and hit me i'll be feeling EXACTLY what i'd feel in Scotland in the same situation, i just won't be able to express it.

I am not a crazy liberal mother, i'm a strict one! Just because you can't think of anything to do but hit a kid doesn't mean in the absence of hitting i do nothing when she misbehaves. I am creative! If she kicks the back of my seat in the car she gets 2 warnings to stop and the 3rd time i put my seat right back so it is firmly against her legs and she cannot move, let alone kick. It doesn't hurt, it just takes away the freedom she had and couldn't be trusted with. After a few minutes i shift it back, she does not resume kicking. If she does something crazy in the house i send her to sit on the stairs alone. If you cannot act like a member of the family and respect the house and the people in it you don't get to BE with the family. After a few minutes, during which she reflects or moans loudly or both and i consider why she is acting as she is (tired, hungry, thirsty, bored?) and then we re-convene for an explanation from me, an apology from her and a hug all round. Then we forget it and move on and if i DID identify a problem i could alleviate i do so.

This is how i raise my kid, and before you get all up-in-arms some bit of it you disagree with, i do not GIVE a shit how you are raising yours.

i.e. Gold

2008-07-01T20:35:00.003Z

I went to see Goldfrapp last night at Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall.

We were three, G and J and me. M forgot and went on holiday...

We looked at the gig memorabilia first. They had t-shirts, hoodies, colouring pencils, drawing books, badges, tote bags, tea towels... The artwork was....um....i want to be kind and say "home made" but if i do, please know that i mean "home made by a toddler". I'm sure the concept took real effort, but i'm not sure the execution got the same time and attention... Of course i thought that at the time and the SECOND i left thought "Those stag-head motif t-shirts were actually really nice..." LOL.

The fans are an eclectic bunch. I looked around the bar before the gig and wondered if everyone here was REALLY here to see Alison. There were old couples, young hip things, geeks and nerds, the uber-trendy, the ultra-scruffy, suits, kids, you name it. Although i didn't actually see any pets, except the stuffed ones on stage.

The support act were called The Fryers. There were 3 young things, an intense-looking (but skilled) male drummer, a slender and hip-looking female keyboard player (complete with 70's long-fringed bowl-bob haircut) and a frizzy haired front man. The front was, to be fair, a simpering fool. He gushed at us between tracks about how grateful he was that we were there rather than at home watching Andy Murray (as if!), began every track by mumbling the track title into the mic and ended every track by barking "thanks" into it. Their levels were all over the place (maybe they didn't have much time to sound-check), a lot of his lyrics were yelped at us rather than sung, and most of their tracks were so verbose it was like listening to essays to music. Their sound was a strange mix of 80's pop and reggae. Despite all that, a few things stood out, though unfortunately the only track title i can is "olive eyes" which was a bit mediocre. Catchy though...

After the support the lights went up on the (still half-empty) room and i went out to refresh our Pepsi's. When i got back G and J were deep in conversation and i realised that the interval music was the soundtrack of Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man. This did tie in with the stage set which included stags antlers atop a colourfully ribboned maypole, stuffed (or possibly fake) owls and crows, woven wicker panels on the back wall, and deep loops of multi-coloured bunting and large-bulb rope lights. G had never seen the film, but since i had, it did heighten the tension, especially when i heard, just for a second, Edward Woodward's final scream of "Oh God!" and the crackling of flames...

The room filled up, the lights went down. The band came on. The theme continued - the girls were both in long white floaty robes with pompoms on long cords, the boys in white shirts and pale trousers. So far so folk. Alison came on. She was wearing a pink robe which stopped shortly after her legs started. There was plenty of fabric - when she raised her arms it swept from her forearms to her thighs in one elegant curve each side, forming iconic wings - it just didn't cover much of her slender legs. She was bare-legged and barefoot. At first appeared she was in that very short smock, only later, when throwing her hands into the air, did she reveal matching and very short shorts beneath the robe. The girls hair was loose but secured back from the forehead, Alison's was a foaming crown of fizzy curls, standing out like a halo. So, from the depraved sex-kitten i last saw (in October 2005) had arisen folk-angel. She had on less make-up than i'm used to seeing her in. I realised that despite all the poster and pictures and videos and gigs (ok, only 2 of them) i still don't REALLY know what she looks like. She doesn't look her age anyway, that's for sure.

I can't list the set, and i've got no desire to. They played a lot of very good music. When she sang Utopia the hairs on the back of my neck stood in some kind of micro-ovation for her beautiful, eerie, ethereal voice. When they played Train and Strict Machine the whole room stood to dance. When they played Happiness i could hear most of the row behind me singing along, and i joined them. They played my favourite from Seventh Tree (Little Bird) and G's (Eat Yourself). Her voice is sublime and her songs NEVER seem to get tired. I must have run uphill for about 30miles total to Train and yet my hear still beats faster to hear it.

There were some sound problems, a few patches of feedback and excessive volume from the electric violin, which Alison addressed with a determined shake of the head and a graceful arm gesture. The lights were spectacular as usual, and there was some heavy strobing on some tracks, particularly Strict Machine (which was also accompanied by a video of a pneumatic ram rising and falling with the bass - filthy) of the sort which always makes me mildly concerned i'm about to find out who is epileptic and that it might be me.

Alison looked small on stage. Her bare legs and feet gave her a child-like quality, despite her obviously grown-up curves, backlit through the fabric of her smock. She's 42 this year and she looked about 23 from where we were (row M).

They played two tracks as an encore, which was fortunate because one of them was Eat Yourself and G was waiting to hear it. Overall it was a really great gig.

It was however, somewhat marred by the witless fucknut sitting directly in front of G and his female companion, sitting in front of me. He was wearing an Orbital tour 2004 t-shirt and had lank shoulder-length hair, which he regularly oiled with agitated sweeps of his palms. Perhaps he is reading this and recognises himself. If so, this is for you, Orbital man:

You are not the conductor. Goldfrapp is perfectly capable of playing without your angry arm waving. They do not require your opinion on their timing and you thinking it's time for a big musical moment isn't relevant to anyone but you. I for instance, do not give a fuck if you think they started Strict Machine too slow and i'm sure your karate-chop-on-closed-fist hand gestures, even if they saw them, were as baffling to them as your choice in haircut is to me. You whistled between and then DURING every track, sometimes for 30 or more seconds continuously. You might be on the Live CD now. Which means you've fucked the gig up for another 10,000 fans. Well done. You stood up through slower tracks when the rest of the room was seated, obscuring our view with your stone-washed, straight-fit, probably-bought-in-1982-when-you-last-changed-your-hairstyle, denims. The woman you were with; she is also not the huge fan she thinks herself, since she thought the middle of the gig was a pertinent time to make a phonecall. You wandered off and came back, maybe you were off to do a line, maybe it was time for the meds you take to stop you being a dick (they aren't working), either way, it was fucking RUDE. During the pause to find the right guitar levels for a requested encore you shouted "in your own time!" as if you are some sort of comedic genuis instead of an ungrateful, greasy little twat with low self-esteem and a desperate need for recognition for something, anything from those around you. Every time i crossed or uncrossed my legs i wanted to kick you hard in the back of your oily thatch. When the lights for Strict Machine flared and strobed i seriously considered grabbing a handful of your greasy locks and then faking a particularly violent fit. When the lights went up a guy from the row behind tapped G on the shoulder and said "I'd have punched him". I wish i fucking had. Luckily i was commenting without reserve on what a fuckwit you are when we were standing at the Memorabilia stand while G had a ponder. As i finished a particularly vicious outburst re: your "admirable" whistling and "hilarious" commentary, i turned around and there you both were, not three yards away. I hope you heard me nice and clearly. I was blonde and wearing a grey-print top and blue jeans. If we're ever at a gig together in the future you'd better pray you see me first so you can stay Out. Of. My. Fucking. Way.

i.e. Deloitte & Touche

2008-06-06T14:09:00.003Z

When i was 23 i had the misfortune of working for Deloitte and Touche (though actually they had just dropped the Touche). It was three days, as a temp, on their phone switchboard and general reception which was in the penthouse of the office building on Glasgow's George Square.

Overall i hated it. The other receptionist, whose name escapes me, was actually very friendly and nice, but my contract coincided with her buying and having delivered a brand new merc, which was all she talked about. I don't mind cars but there's only so much one can say/hear about someone else's car before one begins to nod off... Also she was terribly excited to get a bouquet of flowers and "congratulations" card delivered from Mercedes with the car - hello, you spent £28k! Flowers cost like £20! Talk about easily excited...

Anyway it was incredibly sterile. £300 worth of flowers were delivered twice every week by some contemporary floral arrangement company, everything was made of marble and slate, and the desk had a high back so no one but those behind it could see such visual affronts as computers and paperclips.

The reason i REALLY hated it was the people who i had to deal with. My job was to answer incoming calls and direct them. If a call came in for someone who wasn't available i was to divert the call to that person's voicemail. I'd not used that specific switchboard software before but it wasn't rocket science - you typed in the name and hit enter!

Well i started at 9.15am on a Wednesday, to do 3 days. The previous temp had moved on to another job and the "real" receptionist she had been covering had a broken leg and was due out of plaster that weekend.

At 10.03 the phone rang and since the other receptionist had gone into the empty boardroom to call, i presume, from the hushed tones and giggling and the fact that she switched immediately to Urdu whenever i was in earshot (i could vaguely hear English words when she was farther away), her boyfriend, i answered it. "Good morning, Deloitte?" i said. A short silence and then an incredibly plummy woman's voice replied abruptly "Frehd Holdswerth."

I typed holdswerth into the system. Nothing happened. "I'm terribly sorry," i said, "could you possibly spell that for me?". There was a longish silence and then the voice replied, "You're joking." More silence, i frantically altered my spelling but it made no difference. I tried again, "i'm terribly sorry, could you spell it?".

"What!?" yelled the voice, "Don't yew knehw who Frehd Holdswerth is!? Don't yew knehw who ay am!? Put me threhw to Mr Holdswerth IMMEDIATELY!" i continued to frantically alter my spelling but it made no difference. So i tried again, "I really AM," i said "terribly sorry, but i'm, obviously misspelling the name as the system is giving me nothing.".

There was a lot of tutting, heaving of great sighs, under-breath mutterings, on the other end of the line. "Are yew tehlling me, ME, that yew don't know who Fred Holdsworth is!?" demanded the voice.
"I'm so sorry" i stuttered.
"WHO are we employing these days!?" continued the voice.
"I know, i'm so sorry" i replied timidly, "if you could just spell the name..." By now i was actually close to tears! The situation was ridiculous!
Another loud exasperated tut and then, finally, mercy "H-A-L-L-S-W-O-R-T-H!".
"Thankyou," i whispered, and transferred the call.

Now sadly i cannot remember this woman's name, though for a long time i could (it was 4 years ago now). I'm sure it was Ann-marie something. Or possibly Eileen something. If i COULD remember it i would actually email or maybe even phone her to tell her what a complete cunt she is.

I wish i hadn't maintained, or attempted to, a professional phone manner. I wish i'd said "You know what sugar, i've worked for your miserable company for 48 minutes and so far i'm not impressed. Also as shocking as it might be, i am just one of the many millions of people in the world who have never heard of you or Fred Hallsworth and do not give a flying fuck who either of you are. How often do you think a 23 year old TEMP accesses services like those provided by Deloitte? Now spell the fucking name you self-important bitch, so we can end this pathetic exchange."

But i didn't.

The only sad thing is that it is Fred Hallsworth's name i remember in relation to this, and he, based on the few times he had the misfortune of getting me when he used the switchboard, was a patient, good-humoured, kind man.

i.e. Modern Youth

2008-04-15T08:18:00.003Z

Just a quick one. Yesterday The child and her father and i went to the local park so she could run about. While there i overheard the following exchange between boys who looked somewhere between 9 and 11 years old.

Boy 1: ah've goat this stone look, an ma maw sez ah can take it hame wi me. Am gonnae make a spear! This is for ma spear!
Boy 2: (not interested) oh right.
Boy 3: what it is?
Boy 1: it's fer ma spear! Maw sez ah can take it hame!
Boy 3: You'll be the bad guy when you've made that spear.
Boy 1: (running towards boy 3 in mock attack) Yaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!
Boy 2: (running away) Oh no! You're Hitler! You're Hitler!
Boy 1: (chasing and yelling) Ah'm HITLERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR, an' ah'll get yeez!!!

What are they actually teaching kids in primary school about Hitler that he can be equated in young minds with a spear-head-weilding maniac? I laughed for a long time.

i.e. Trevor Sorbie I ain't

2008-04-14T15:32:00.005Z

So, i cut my own hair last week...

Christina, if you are reading this i'm sorry. Christina is my hairdresser. She has been cutting my hair for a long time, since i was 15 in fact. Over a decade! Actually no one else but Thomas Civita has cut my hair SINCE i was 15. Christina is basically an expert, especially when it comes to my head and hair, so even going to Thomas (which i have done twice, once in 1999 and once in 2006) feels painful to me. But Christina is in Perthshire (Little Hair Company, Back Street, Bridge of Earn, 01738 815888) and i am a busy single mum in Glasgow so laziness takes over and, well, i cut my own hair.

It's not the first time i've done it. I first did it just before Christmas. My hair was terrible back then. Here's a photo of it looking as good as it got...

Please disregard the cigar. I was just holding it for a friend. And it was all Niall's fault anyway.

Well it was a bunch of lengths as you can see. I had had it trimmed by Thomas in August 2006 because after having a baby and my Thyroid failing a lot of it fell out and the regrowth looked, well, ridiculous. But by December 2007 what i had was a lot of long thin growth and a lot of short curls (the pic above is from October) and it basically looked straggly and crap.

So i cut it. It didn't look totally terrible, luckily because of my hair type, but i made very basic errors. My intention had been to cut layers into it to break up the look of 2 lengths with one growing through the other, but the reality is that there is no easy way of doing that to yourself (all that "put it in a ponytail on your crown and cut the top off" nonsense is just that - on thick strong LONG hair it looks crap, on anyone else the hair police are going to be carrying you off before you've put your scissors down...).

So i divided it into sections from my crown down and cut them progressively longer as i went down. I also hacked a good bit into the front to give my face some framing as the length at the front was dragging my face down.

The results, if i washed it and let it dry naturally with it's forgiving natural wave, was a long slightly severe but not too terrible layered look. If i blow dried it and used the straighteners, it looked like someone had cut a staircase into it. Really, that bad. So i KNEW i'd need to do something about it (i.e. get it cut by Christina) but since it looked ok if i didn't straighten it, and i hardly ever do anyway because i am a lazy jones when it comes to haircare, i left it the way it was. Sadly (or happily) there are no photos of it from that period though i did live with it for 3 months.

Then i got sick of it once again. I knew what i wanted, a cut Christina did on me back in late '02 when she was heavily pregnant. On the shoulder, layered but not drastically so, great straight or curly, still went into a ponytail (NOT about to try running a 10k with my hair down) and was generally low care. Somehow finding the time to get to see her either without the kid (so i COULD sit down for an hour without having to leap up and prevent hairdryer/scissors/hairspray/knife accidents every 2 seconds) or with both the kid and a handy kid-watcher (i.e. G) wasn't happening. Eventually, with my defences against self-cutting lowered due to the not-SO-terrible results the last time, i got sick of it, sharpened some household scissors carefully with a diamond stone, and cut it myself.

First i tried to cut a layer in the internet DIY way - wash it, tip your head upside down, comb it so it is all hanging straight and cut across in a straight line. This means the hair on the top of your head is cut to the distance you cut from your head, and the hair at the nape of your neck is cut to that length plus the distance from your crown to your nape. So i did that. It worked (the technique) and i stood up and looked at the results. It was then that Christina's words of once-upon-an-appointment came back. They were "your hair is too thin/fine to support a long layer". On me it just looks straggly, the thickness of my hair (not much) means that the longest layers are pathetically sparse and weird-looking.

Well there i was with the scissors in my hand and my hair all wet and ready to cut and so i did what they tell you all over the web and everywhere else you should never do. I took a deep breath and just began to cut. I removed the hair which fell lower than just below my collarbones. With my natural curl that hair sits just above my shoulder when dry, and onto the shoulder when straightened. Once i'd cut the longer under-layers off i set to work trying to shape my hair.

I lifted hair out from my head a small section at a time and cut straight down (something i'd seen Christina do when shaping my haircuts in the past). This (ideally) means the hair is a little more layered and the ends fall less bluntly. The main problem with that is that it is very very hard to do accurately to your own head. But i tried. Once i'd finished i pulled sections from opposite areas of my head (above each ear, at neck on each side, both temples etc.) forward to check the cut was more or less symmetrical, another handy trick from Christina. Then i dried it, straightened it and neatened the results up with more scissor action (something i'd failed to do last time).

The results? This is it after the dreaded straighteners, revealers of crap technique...

I'm not going to win any awards with it and i'm sure any hairdresser worth their salt would roll on the floor laughing if they ran their fingers through it, but it isn't so terrible that i regret doing it. It's a MASSIVE improvement on the last cut and things can only get better as i practice (which will take ages since i only do it once every 3 months or so). I now own ACTUAL (cheap nasty) hair scissors, which shall not be used for other household tasks, which can only help. I'll blog a pic of it natural/curly later on, when i've had time to wash my hair and take one.

i.e. a thank you

2008-04-13T10:41:00.002Z

Two weeks ago i was running with the jogger buggy, the Royal Lady inside, when a woman running in the opposite direction (and a good bit faster than me), called out as i approached her, "Now THAT'S impressive!". I'm afraid i laughed in response mainly because i was out of breath and couldn't manage to call out a thank you, but it struck me as such a lovely thing to do - it really made my day.

Last Wednesday i was doing a tempo run, again with the jogger and its usual cheeky contents. When i'd done about a kilometer a man closing fast behind me called out to me that i was "a credit to all the mums out there!". I laughed and blushed (under my already red running face) and replied "Not at these speeds!" with a wide grin. He slowed a bit to run with us and we chatted briefly about how fast i was running (i was trying to run a sub-9min/mile tempo, which is TOUGH with the 25kg buggy/baby combo to push) and he said if he saw me one day when he had his Garmin on he'd run with me a bit so he could tell me my speed. He told me he was training for a marathon (he looked like it too, in fact i wonder if it was the London marathon he was training for) and asked which races i'd got coming up. He was just really lovely, and so encouraging and friendly. After a few hundred yards i told him to run on as i knew he was nowhere near his stride jogging along with me, and off he went with a wave.

Not even a kilometer later another woman, again running in the opposite direction gave me the friendliest, widest, sunniest smile and i called out "Wow, YOU look happy!" and smiled back.

A few hundred yards later i passed my mile mark and recorded my first split, 9:37. Not as fast as i hoped, but that's why we train, right? So then i slowed up a little, and ran the next mile at recovery to have another crack at getting under 9mins.

About a third into the slower mile i met the marathon guy coming back the other way towards me. I called out my mile split to him and he called back "you're doing great!". I ran on, and i felt pretty good. About two thirds into the second mile there was a stretch on pavement next to a main road (most of the route is in parks) and as i got onto the bridge that crossed us back to the north side of the Clyde a car beeped at me and when i looked i saw a young woman driving, leaning right across her male passenger to wave and give me the thumbs up! WHAT a feeling! The sun was shining for me, that was sure.

My second mile was 11:10, and i felt much better for the slower pace so i stepped it back up and tried to get back to my 9:something pace. When i was almost done that mile (and killing myself trying to keep my pace up a long gradual slope) another guy, again coming up faster behind me, passed and shouted "wow, that's dedication!" at me. I managed to shout back "HEY! You're cheating! Where's your baby!" More big smiles and i finished my final fast mile in a respectable 9:46. I guess if i have the buggy with me i'll have to keep chasing that 9 minute mile, but i'm very interested to see what sort of speeds i run at without the buggy. It's been 3 weeks since i tried it!

Anyway this post is for the people of Glasgow who show their support so generously and so vocally when i'm running. It makes so much difference just being smiled at, all those shouts of praise and encouragement really made my day.

Thank you!

Hopefully the new tights i ordered last MONTH will arrive from Start Fitness this week, and i'll be able to give you all some more pretty pictures...

i.e. blood and buggy breakfast...

2008-04-12T22:55:00.003Z

The results are in....

TSH - 2.6 (perfect) which means my current thyroxine dose is doing the job fine.
Full Blood Count - Normal

WOOT! I am just working to hard and not sleeping enough. I have talked to Smee about this on Friday but she said "more more cuppotea Mama" and marched off to get her cup. LOL. She's a tough boss but i just LOVE the work...

So i shall try to get more sleep, i shall nap with her whenever possible and i shall take a vitamin pill every day. These things ought to help i reckon.

I am currently researching healthy breakfast bars i can make to give to the child so we can run "before" breakfast (so she can have her breakfast in the buggy i mean). I'll update if i find a good recipe but if anyone out there has a good recipe PLEASE post it :D

i.e. two more things...

2008-04-04T18:06:00.002Z

1) i have noticed that because i'm cutting my portions to "normal" in some ways i'm just eating more of other stuff. Like i just made bolognese. Normally i'd have about 120g pasta and a small amount of bolognese sauce made of half an onion, a couple of garlic cloves, about 100g beef mince, a tin of tomatoes, tomato paste and herbs. Tonight i had about 55g (uncooked weight) of pasta and sauce made of 1 large onion, 3 garlic cloves, 2 grated carrots, a tin of tomatoes, 4 mushrooms, 100g beef mince and some herbs. My plate was piled high, just with veggies instead of pasta.

2) i do not know why the young man in the mini shouted "fucking slut" at me when i was walking home from town at 5.40pm. Perhaps my outfit (flared jeans and a red and beige bench top which would comfortably fit a 6'7" 18 stone man) was too much for him. Maybe my huge gap gym bag full of shopping was overly promiscuous looking. Perhaps he was shouting it at my 2-year-old daughter rather than me, there sure wasn't anyone else around. Maybe her candy-striped pushchair and tesco carrier bag screamed "whore" at him. Maybe, and i think this is probably closer to the truth, he is just a horrible, nasty, cowardly person.

So if you are that man: I don't know what happened to you today to make you do that to me, but i sure hope it happens again tomorrow. You fuck.

i.e. Xena

2008-04-04T10:49:00.002Z

Well i finally hopped on the scales at a reasonable time (i found i'd gained 14lbs by weighing myself at 7pm, after a huge evening meal and 2 pints of water, fully clothed and with shoes on) and i haven't gained anything.

Faced with this info (and the fact that my jeans are tighter across my ass and thighs and not round my waist) i now realise that it is not fat but muscle which is making my jeans too tight. Perhaps it isn't a surprise but i'd not thought about the fact that running 80% of my runs with the jogger and doubling my squat and lunge weights in bodypump would make this happen. But the doctor confirmed yesterday, saying "it's very unlikely you've gained fat but not weight if you're exercising like you are.".

That is great, because muscle is G-O-O-D, but annoying because one could reasonably decide to lose fat, whereas it is madness to try to lose muscle mass. So my jeans are in the wardrobe where they shall stay until i lose fat from my thighs to balance out the muscle growth, or alternatively until my quads/hams get even BIGGER and i just give up and chuck them away.

I am still eating a bit better because i'm curious to see what happens if i stop eating 3x the normal intended "portion" sizes for things. So far nothing tangible has occurred.

I have had blood taken to check my thyroid, iron and blood sugars to see if there is any reason beyond toddler parenting that i am exhausted, i'll post if anything exciting comes of that.

i.e. fatty

2008-03-10T21:31:00.003Z

My jeans are tight. It's not a major problem that makes them unwearable, it's minor. But i can feel it.

Since the jogger came i have run 96km, and though i initially felt a bit leaner, my appetite soon caught up. That's not a problem as such, but i have a terribly sweet tooth...

My normal routine would be to try to eat pretty clean all week so that i can eat junk at the weekend if i feel like it without gaining weight or getting ill. My slow thyroid does make gaining easy and losing hard, hence having a system at all, but recently i've been eating junk all week long too.

So as of today i am trying to eat clean again. I haven't been out shopping for junk, just eating cakes with friends or buying biscuits "because they're cheap" and then who will eat them but me....?

I think part of the problem is winter. The miserable weather makes me want to sit in and eat comfort food, and being stuck in the house all day with Esme grazing (i just let her graze, she's too young to have problems with food) means i tend to snack too. So maybe i'll try getting out more this week as well.

I cannot WAIT for the clocks to go forward. For me, this seems a lazy, hard-to-get-going time of year...

i.e. where i have been at...

2008-02-20T23:35:00.008Z

Gaze in wonder people. The Baby Jogger is among us.

My dad bought it for us, which is too marvelous of him to get into, but thanks Dad ;)

We LOVE it. Not just me, because that is obvious, but also the wean, actually ENJOYS being run with now she has this smooth little Rolls Royce of a buggy to ride in instead of the rattly crapmobile we used to use.

It came on the 11th (which, ok, makes me still quite lax since there were 10 days prior to that on which i failed to blog) and i ran on the 11th, the 12th, the 13th, the 14th, the 16th, the 18th, and today. Tomorrow i'm having a break. Maybe...

So that is where i have been. It's SO different from running with the other buggy. The other buggy being a Graco Mosaic, which works perfectly for what it was designed for - pushing a baby or toddler at low (walking) speed, on a pavement. The BabyJogger is designed for running with and, with its 20" wheels, can off-road better than i can! It is so smooth, it's almost a hovercraft. It weighs 11kg but it pushes like it weighs about 3kg, even with the 13kg baby in it it feels GREAT, like a bike - it is like pushing an incredibly stable bike.

And Esme loves it! She used to need constant entertaining and STILL complained loudly in the old buggy, but with this one she is peaceful, or pleasantly chatty, or, and this is the best, she SLEEPS!

We have run 45km together since last Monday...and counting...

i.e. Athena

2008-01-31T22:49:00.000Z

Well the new gear is great, though the weather and an ill bodypump instructor have thwarted me getting a good go at it all...

I was surprised recently to find out that in many US road races for runners have "clydesdale" and "athena" categories for heavier runners, as it's not something i've encountered when entering races here in the UK.

And at first i thought, yeah, this is kind of fair enough, i mean, i can see that the heavier runners would be slower than the little ectomorphs, and with the media full of pictures of skinny people and articles about how we are all too fat, sure it's great to give heavier racers a chance to compete in a category so that their finishing position reflects their effort and achievement compared to others of their size rather than the real athletes being the only ones who can win anything.

But then i looked at the criteria. In most races a "clydesdale" man is 200lbs (14st 4lbs, 91kg) or above. For the average 6 foot male that is a BMI of 27.1 - the middle of the "overweight" category. Of course, BMI doesn't reflect muscle mass or fitness, only weight, but still, i can see that after sweating for a race you lose so much that the people who tick the box are probably more like 205lbs+ (14st 9lbs, 92kg). I've been 210lbs (15st, 95kg) myself, right before i got pregnant that's what i weighed, and guys i was fat. It might not have looked hugely big on me, but i was BMI 29.3, almost in the obese category, and i FELT fat.

So, yeah, i think, some people might want to enter in such a category to be running against others also carrying extra weight, be it muscle or fat.

Then i looked up the "athena" weight. 145lbs (10st 5lbs, 65.7kg) and above.

Now, i am healthy and relatively fit, and i weight 171lbs (12st 3lbs, 77.5kg), my BMI is 23.8. The healthy range is 18.5-25. In order for me to NOT be an overly-heavy "athena" runner my BMI would have to be 20 or less. Taking into account the same 5lbs of water theory (i believe in many races they weigh you to check your qualification) i applied to the male catergory, it would have to be 19.5.

I do not know on what planet it is that one should have to have a BMI of 19.5 JUST TO BE NORMAL! What the fuck?

Anyway, in the UK they don't seem to have this option and if they did i wouldn't take it. Who the fuck wants to be Athena anyway? I'm much more of a Diana...

i.e. the new

2008-01-27T21:31:00.001Z

January. Rain. Cold. Grey. Dark.

Fancy going for a run?!

Nope, nor me.

So, get new kit!

Bras were the first order of the day. My good friend Heidi had a bunch she was too small for and i am getting a little too small for my poor beat up bra too. I only have one and after 18 months of running in it, washing it, running in it, it's beginning to show, the seams are splitting and, without putting too fine a point on it, i'm starting to bounce when i should not be bouncing! So last Tuesday Heidi showed up to bodypump with a big bag of bras! Brilliant stuff, i took them home and tried them all on and chose 3 which i love. I'm not blogging a pic, forget it!

Actually before that, last Sunday night, while idly googling my running shoes (women's asics gel 1120's), to see if one can still get them (they are last year's model) i found them and at £29.99, and since i paid £70 last year, i had to buy them. While i was there (Start Fitness) i also ordered a pair of asics 1000 running tights (£9.99), a pair of asics 1000 running shorts (£4.99) and a donut water bottle (£2.98). I paid a couple of quid for the slow post, 7-9 working days, and sat back to wait.

5 days later my package came. What a thrill!

The first embarrassing thing i noticed is that the shoes i ordered, an identical pair to the silver, grey and ice blue ones i'd been running in for a year, are actually silver, WHITE and ice blue. My old pair have seen me through a 10k and a half marathon and all the training for both and are still a comfortable and supportive option, but i haven't washed them in all that time. They don't stink! Honest! But they have gone a horrible colour in the Glasgow-street-ming. I still love my old ones but WOW, the new pair feel great! :D

The tights are tight (the clue is in the title i guess), but i went out in them on Saturday afternoon in the hammering rain and they kept me warm if not dry for most of the 5k i ran.

The bottle rocks pretty hard too, the spout is easier to deal with than the normal vittel-or-evian-or-strathmore sports caps i use, and the hole in the centre of it allows it to slot over the buggy's handle - AMAZING!

The shorts didn't come with the first order and it was only when i read the invoice the third time that i realised they weren't coming "OUT OF STOCK" being printed against them on the form. Damn!

Today Graham wanted to look for new shorts for himself, and said if i found a pair i liked he would get them for me. Well we went to two Greaves stores and Run 4 It,and though i saw a few that i didn't hate, £8-£15 just seems like a lot of money for something you don't hate. In Run 4 It G found me a pair of Ronhill vent-sided tiny running shorts which were really similar to the ones i'd ordered online, but they were a) for an 11-12 year old child and b) £20. We were wandering to yet another Greaves when i remembered T K Maxx, the discount labels store and dragged him to there instead.

Well boy was THAT worthwhile! The first thing we found was almost identical Ronhill shorts, but for a size 14 woman, which i am, which were £7.99. Then we had a look for vests and G picked up a pink Nike vest with brown trim. It seemed really bright when i first looked at it, but then i found the same vest but brown with pink trim, which i really liked, and made me like the first one better too. Both were £7.99. I have real trouble letting G pay for things but today i just let him. I bought the shorts, since they were only £3 more than those i'd ordered online and not gotten, but he paid for the vests.

And now despite the rain, despite the cold, despite the grey and the dark and the miserable month outside, i cannot WAIT to run tomorrow, and even bodypump seems like it'll be exciting with my new vests.

Oh, and on top of ALL of that, and not running or gym-related at all, G's mum bought me a new handbag. It is huge and means i won't have to carry nappies, wipes, wrap and cup for Smee in my overstuffed little red one anymore.

See, lucky duck, that's me. :)

i.e. a lap band

2008-01-22T15:53:00.000Z

I am struggling with the concepts of weightloss surgery. Not the science - i understand that the idea is to inferfere surgically with digestion in one of a variety of ways in order that it no longer functions normally and thus the patient loses weight. But i'm struggling with WHY someone would put themself through this when perfectly ordinary calorie control and exercise can achieve the same thing without any of the risks...?

Firstly, so many people i hear talking about this (on television mainly i admit) say "Oh, i WISH i could have surgery, dieting just doesn't work for me." The claim is that no matter how litte they eat they cannot lose weight. Sorry, how will weightloss surgery help with that? If you claim you get fat while eating no food, how will surgery restricting how much food you can eat make any difference? But of course what they mean is "I cannot stick to a diet." They KNOW they eat too much, they can't stop, or in the case of the "it-doesn't-work-for-me"'s, they are in denial about how much they actually eat.

And whether willpower or denial is the problem then surely it is likely that an underlying psychological problem exists? Or at least that there is some mechanism interfering between the desire to lose weight and the actions which will make that happen. And if THAT is the case, surely therapy is a more appropriate treatment than surgery?

Surgery itself is dangerous, and having surgery when one is morbidly obese is even more dangerous. Why are people being put at such risk to achieve something that can be achieved through diet and exercise? Why are we sticking a plaster over a symptom instead of curing the illness?

Of course the same happens to other eating disorder sufferers. The treatment for anorexia is so often weight gain. That's it. Make the sufferer eat more until they have an "acceptable" Body Mass Index and then send them home to starve again. More often than not all of these people, whether their condition leads to emaciation or obesity, have to seek their own therapy.

Obesity and morbid obesity exist in my own family, and i have been only a few pounds short of "obese" myself. But surgery is just such a shit solution. It's risky, it's painful and it doesn't address the root cause of the problem. Obese people shouldn't just be thinner, they should be allowed to have a normal relationship with food. It's not about the problem at all, just about appearance!

Fat people want to be thin, of COURSE they do! Partly because being trapped under layers of flesh is no fun and partly because despite the appearance of the actual population, the media which represents and controls us only shows us thin pretty people with lovely faces and expensive clothes. Or thin pretty people with no make-up on and "Britney on verge of suicide" printed large beneath to show us how someone not wearing mascara can be a useful psychological insight on their mental breakdown. Or thin pretty people who are not holding their stomachs in as tight as the cameraman expected with "Colleen really piles on the pounds!" underneath it, in case any of us over 6 stones were feeling in any way slim or attractive. With this "be thin, be pretty, look good" message constantly urged on us all, of COURSE obese people want to be thin.

But the weight is a SYMPTOM. When you eat and eat and can't stop no matter what it is doing to you, there is a problem inside. Weightloss will not cure the problem. Have a lap band fitted, lose the weight and discover you are a thin person with surgery scars and the same old problem. Society tells the overweight they are worthless and telling us to resort to surgery is an extension of this. It says, "I don't care why you look like that, just be thinner". It says, "You're not worth anything looking like that. Get skinny and then we'll talk". It says, "How you feel is irrelevant, how you look is what matters".

That is such shit. If anyone out there reading this is obese and considering surgery - please seek therapy first! You matter. Your happiness isn't in a smaller pair of jeans. It's inside you somewhere and you DESERVE it - you DESERVE to be really happy, inside out, not just to look like you are.

i.e. shave sir?

2008-01-20T15:04:00.000Z

We saw Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street last night. It is an ordeal no-one should miss.

The film is an adaptation of the Sondheim/Wheeler musical of the same name, keeps much of the score and is shot in Burton's familiar brooding and slightly surreal style.

It has darkness, it has (albeit brief) snatches of light, it has comedy and it has gore. I haven't seen the stage production, so i have no comparison for it, but once again the Depp/Burton relationship has thrown up something quite brilliant.

It was a late showing, 23.10, due to finish at 1.45am, though in fact we sat through the credits and left the cinema at 2am. Going in i thought if it was bad i could sleep and if it was awful we could leave. 10 minutes in i knew i would not leave and i would not sleep, possibly even in bed later on!

Depp's portrayal of Mr Todd, the barber whom rage and desire for revenge has twisted into a cold killer, is horrifically convincing. I actually had to read the credits to be sure it WAS Mr. Depp, so seamlessly had he inhabited the character. His accent was impeccable, his mannerisms perfect; for such a pretty boy he really can act!

So, the character Depp inhabits; Benjamin Barker, a once-barber who was transported for life to Australia on a false charge so that the unscrupulous Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) might get at his beautiful wife Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly), returns to London 15 years later under the alias Sweeney Todd to look for his wife and the baby daughter Joanna he'd been forced to leave behind. Upon his return to the pie-shop above which he once plied his trade he meets Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), the pie-shop owner, who tells him his wife was lured to his house and raped by the Judge Turpin and took arsenic, and that Joanna (Jayne Wisener) became the ward of Judge Turpin and lives with him still. This twists Todd into a tortured and vengeful character, bent on destroying the Judge who ruined his life.

It is awful to admit, but having seen the journey to his destination as an evil murderer, so acutely did i feel the suffering of his soul, i actually sympathised with him even as he slit the throats of innocent men.

Todd crosses paths with various characters, the most amusing of which is probably that of Signor Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen), his first line and his appearance made me laugh for several minutes and i'd quite like to see the film again to hear the dialogue i missed while i was chuckling. The physicality of him is funny, and his acting is superb.

The storyline moves more slowly than a normal slasher movie, because it is hard to move a musical quickly when much of the dialogue has to be sung, but this only adds to the apprehension and agony of watching it. It is almost a relief when a tragedy or attack you have seen coming for five or more minutes finally comes. You see the blood spray and you feel revolted, and relieved. By the end of the film i practically had my knees under my chin and i felt like i was drowning, it was so intense. I am rarely so drawn in by a film, and i really, really enjoyed this film.

Any criticism?

Well, for me the blood was a little too red. While obviously meant to be a visual motif, it was slightly too bright for me. The colour of the film was desaturated during editing, so the blood they actually shot was orange, and perhaps this is why it remained a little too lurid? That said, the brightness of the blood did very little to reduce the gore factor, the violence is convincing, despite the blood (and the singing).

Also while Helena Bonham Carter's depiction of the wily Mrs Lovett was brilliant, and her voice was beautiful, despite her actual age (41), she is too young and firm and sexy to convince as an middle aged old-maid pie-shop owner. Though she acted the character impeccably, she just didn't look the part to me. I'm not sure how upset she would be to hear that though.

Overall this film is quite quite brilliant and certainly entertaining enough to justify the price of a cinema ticket. That's what i think anyway. Suck it and see.

i.e. bad

2008-01-17T22:10:00.000Z

I am a bad blogger.

This morning i got up at 7.45am, fed Smee, fed me, dressed us, tied her up on my back and went through the pissing rain to a toddler group for 2 hours. Then we came home and i fed her stew from the slow cooker, read her a story and put her down for a nap. 20 minutes later i went to put her back to bed as she was pottering about, and was told "change-a-bum mumma!" as she needed a fresh nappy. So i changed her nappy and tucked her in again. She slept for nearly an hour, and i ate my own lunch. She woke up, her dad arrived, we packed her bags up and went to the pool.

I got her ready then he took her to the showers while i got me changed. We played with her in the pool for about 25 minutes by which time she was shivering despite her vigorous splashin's. Then we took her back to the changing room where i wrapped her in a big fluffy towel and left him and her to it while i went to swim. I only did 10 lengths but in about 5 minutes because i really burned it up. Then i got changed and we had coffee and (ENDLESS) eatins in the cafe - she is such a gannet just now, stuffing herself all day long. Must be a growth spurt, it is quite something when she is robbing the veggie box for raw carrots to snack on!

Then we came home, she had MORE stew, some cherries and rejected some raw celery with a "yuk" - she likes it cooked, honest! While her daddy read stories i folded her washing and laid out her pyjamas and turned her room heating up. Then he left and i had a shower with her, read her stories and put her to bed. I put her toys away, tidied her books and started the dishes. I went in to her tearful cries for "snuggles mama!", wrapped her in a fleece blanket, lay on the single bed with her, sang to her (with her applauding after each song) and put her back to bed.

Now she's asleep and i'm about to go on with the dishes. Today i'm a bad blogger, but i'm an ok mother, so that's something.

i.e. vanity

2008-01-15T20:07:00.000Z

My friends, i am a size 12.

What did i do? How did i lose the inches? How did i burn the fat off?

Nothing. I didn't and i didn't. I am exactly the same size as last year.

Stores lie on labels. I note this is particularly prevalent around Christmas, probably because it means that Christmas gifts are extra-loved by the recipient and January sales are extra expensive to the shopper. Imagine, your auntie gives you the usual slightly-weird jumper, which you'll probably never wear, but you try it on and notice the label with the teeny tiny number on it and well, it feels good. Or you go to your usual shop in mid-January to see what's left of their sale. You've totally gorged yourself solid for 3 weeks and everything in your wardrobe is beginning to pinch, but miraculously the clothes you try on not only fit, they're too big! You have to drop a size!

In the land of plenty we are all size conscious. We might not be unhappy with our body, but we're aware of it. Some people are obsessed to the point their lives revolve around tiny portions and long gym sessions. Some are aware enough that they quietly keep an eye on it and take action when they see a little bit of extra padding creeping on. Some people are the stranger (but probably more common) mix of complaining loudly and constantly about their shape/size but never actually acting to change it.

It's the climate; having to be visually delicious, which tends to mean depriving one's self of the delicious.

It is insane though. I have trousers from 6 years ago from Topshop which fit fine and are a 16. I have tops from Dorothy Perkins which are a 16 and again, fit great. In the last month, courtesy of G's Christmas generosity, i have been shopping. I am a Topshop 12 in tops, 14 in skirts, and a Dorothy Perkins 14 in skirts and have a long sweater which fits fine as a (very short) dress in 12. I have checked and not only have i not lost weight, i have not lost inches either.

All of this is well and good for me, because most stores stock from size 8 up, and at this rate, so long as i maintain my weight, i won't be a size 8 for about 10 years. But what if you were a size 8 six years ago? Now you're a 4! What do you wear? Where do you shop?

Anyway it was not a particularly happy experience finding myself to be a size 12, because i know i'm not any smaller than i was, and i also know that realistically the last time i was a size 12 i was 2 stones lighter and 13 years younger. And i guess it looked ok on 14-year-old me, but nowadays with post baby skin and post breastfeeding boobs, my body needs all the padding i've got. I have no desire to be a real 12.

i.e. iBlog

2008-01-13T23:17:00.001Z

G's computer is starting to creak. It's a PC but since the Apple store opened in Glasgow he's been more and more tempted by The Other Side, the iSide. So today we braved the rain and went into the Apple store to have a looksee.

The Apple store is on Buchanan Street in the space which used to be occupied by Pier. The refit is impressive. Gone are the dark wood pigeon-hole shelves, the cosy candle-filled nooks, the fully laid tables of flatware and cutlery, in their place is light, space, a crystal (toughened glass) spiral staircase linking the hardware sales floor to the mezzanine level which contains the accessories and software, the Genius Bar and several machines for tutorials (customers can make appointments to come in and be taught how to use applications) and entertainment (where bored kids can play games while mum and dad browse and buy). Glass, slate, light wood and neutral colours maximise the sense of space, but do give a slightly warehousey feel. Staff roam with hand-held card processors so one can buy wherever one is, although there is a more traditional "till" area where one can pay.

We made a beeline for the laptops, since G is attracted by the freedom of home wifi, and had a play on the machines. The MacBooks probably have sophisticated and subtle differences, but to a layperson like me they come in 3 sizes and two screen finishes. I don't get the appeal of the glossy screen finish, unless you have a home with no overhead lighting, surely there would be constant reflection? The 17" screen MacBooks are also slightly ludicrous. The keyboards seem the same size across the range, which means to accommodate the size of the screen the 17" has room for you to rest your entire forearms from the elbow to the wrist while typing. That would probably annoy me. I mean, it is a laptop - how big is your lap? Also the screen resolution is incredible, but i'm not sure i can see the point of having a screen with a natural resolution so high that the icons, which are so detailed and edgy they probably qualify for an arts grant, aren't actually visible to the naked eye.

While G browsed i wandered about examining other products. The iPhone drew me. It has about a million functions, and only one button. It has a touch sensitive screen of course but lost in the maze of options i couldn't help feeling like any potential mugging would be over and the assailant on the bus home before i'd managed to get the "phone" function up and mash 999 in...

The crystal stairs irritate me for a stupid reason. The staircase is beautiful and appears to float, but the risers are the wrong height - they're about 2 inches less than your legs expect, which makes for an awkward ascent with a lot of initial high-stepping and a frightening descent when your foot connects suddenly with a step you weren't quite expecting yet and your body goes rigid in anticipation of overbalancing. Maybe it's just me though. :D

What did G choose in the end? I don't know, it isn't the end yet. He examined all the MacBooks and a few iMacs and then we wandered upstairs to see if the entertaining iBob was around but he was not. And so we left, with G remarking that he would wait and see what the new machines, out tomorrow (thanks Niall :)), had to offer, before making a decision. I fear this might mean paying £200 extra for something which will turn out to be remarkably clever but relatively useless, but at least if it breaks we can take it physically into the the store and put it directly into the hands of an iGenius.

i.e. debt

2008-01-11T20:35:00.000Z

I just watched Tonight with Trevor McDonald. I will admit this was mainly because i was pottering about online and couldn't be bothered to go get the remote but in a way i'm glad i did because now i actually have something to blog (you were going to get a post about muffins, so be grateful). This evening's edition of Tonight was called The New Year Debt Buster.

The basic premise of the programme is that we are all borrowing too much and need to cut down and are loaded with debt and blah blah blah. This is of course general knowledge and possibly not that surprising, but what IS surprising is that one enterprising debtor has written a book about how she stopped running up debt.

This book by ex-shopper Alexis Hall describes in mindnumbing detail how she didn't go shopping for a year and it saved her some money. Yeah, thanks professor.

Alexis herself had built up £32,000 worth of debt on 4 credit cards, on clothes, bags, shoes, make-up, whatever. "I'd go shopping almost every day. It could be anything from a new mascara to a handbag costing several hundred pounds. My attitude was, 'Why shouldn't I have it?'" The answer to that question transpired when, one day in May 2006, she added up her debt and found she owed more than her annual salary on credit cards.

So she decided to stop shopping. "The rules were: no shopping at all and no new clothes, unless it was an emergency... I was only allowed to spend money on food, transport, bills and the occasional coffee or meal out with friends." Stop! It's like PRISON!

What the fuck are emergency clothes?

Was it hard, we ask? "Everything was difficult. From going shopping or browsing the internet every day to not buying anything at all, that was very hard. There were some moments when I thought, 'This is horrendous,' and others when it was easy." So sometimes it was hard and sometimes it was not as hard. Edge of seat stuff.

Even her partner suffered, "Kevin has had to physically remove me from a shopping centre because I was having a tantrum - I'm not joking." He might have done better to remove himself from the relationship instead, in fact he might have been better to do that BEFORE he paid off and cut up some of the cards for her, only for her to replace them with new cards...

But her experiment did work and it saved her money and along the way she learned some gems of wisdom. "I've realised there is no reason to own every possible scent of shower gel or six types of shampoo. Life is too short to spend 10 minutes deliberating over that day's choice of deodorant." Gather round! She has much to teach us!

Her tips on how to avoid getting into debt at the January Sales include:

Ask yourself, "Do I really need this?"

Don't get caught up in the whole rush of adrenalin and end up buying something just because it's the last one in your size. Think whether you actually like it first.

Would you have paid full price for it? If not, don't buy it.

This woman is a fucking genius! 'Don't buy things you don't like,' she's like Gandhi, but for shopping!

Do we REALLY need this advice? Do people REALLY need to be told how not to buy things they don't need or want with money they don't have? I am feeling great because i realised today this habit i have of only buying things i can afford that i need or at least like is actually a rare and much sought after skill. I can't really be arsed writing a whole book about it though. In fact even finishing this post is probably stretching it.

Anyway, if you are the sort of person who DOES need to be told how to not buy things you don't like with money you don't have you can buy her book In The Red: Diary of a Recovering Shopaholic (Icon Books £10.99) from major bookshops now. Don't worry if you can't afford it. Just stick it on the credit card.

i.e. a rant

2008-01-10T12:42:00.000Z

To the man who was sitting just behind me at the pharmacy yesterday.

Dear sir,

I apologise my daughters questions and observations were so painful for you to witness. Unfortunately she was not, unlike yourself, born knowing absolutely everything. Thus she has to seek clarity on some issues.

For the record, i too find it slightly wearing to be shown a light or a smoke alarm or a radiator for the 63rd time too, but she is on the steepest learning curve of her life and i guess she needs the reassurance. You are possibly unaware that she is exceptionally verbose for a not-even-two-year-old child and part of the reason for that is because i do not mutter "shut the fuck up" at her every question. You probably didn't notice that she learned two new words just sitting there, or that everyone else in the room thought she was sweet or at least inoffensive.

Yesterday she was pushed through the pouring rain and freezing cold in a buggy she'd rather not be in to the doctors surgery, where she then waited 10 minutes for me to pick up my prescription and a further 25 in the pharmacy for it to be filled. It is not her fault my thyroid gland is faulty. It is not her fault everyone and his dog needed a prescription filled yesterday. It is not her fault that the methadone clinic made the queues even longer. She did not cry or scream, she did not make any kind of fuss, all she did was ask questions and smile at people.

I apologise deeply that her pointing to you, smiling, waving and saying "hi guy" was so offensive. She is very ill-mannered as yet and doesn't know that scowling, heaving dramatic sighs and muttering "fuck's sake" is the proper way to interact socially.

She did get a little anxious to get out of the buggy and leave in the moments before my medication was ready and asked several times, "down? 'bout?". She cannot control her emotions or how she deals with them BECAUSE SHE IS A BABY. What's your fucking excuse?

i.e. work it out

2008-01-09T12:21:00.000Z

January gym bunnies i hate you all.

Last night saw my return to the gym after the holidays. Our last bodypump class had about 12 people in it, it being "nearly Christmas" loads of folk hadn't bothered. There are usually about 18-20 of us. Last night there were about 30!

Val (i hope you don't mind me mentioning you) and i went pretty early and looking through the window on our way by saw that the pool seemed not too busy and all looked good. By the time we had paid and changed the pool was busier. Val jumped in the slow lane, i jumped in the medium lane. There was only one other woman in Val's lane, but i was sharing with 3 others. After one length i switched to the fast lane as my lane was too slow. More people got in. There were now 5 people in the slow lane, 6 people in the medium lane and 4 people in the fast lane.

The lanes are wide enough to allow 2 people to pass, if the people are over 5 feet tall there is a risk of being kicked but you can limit your stroke while you pass people. But with so many people in each lane you are constantly limiting your stroke and thus swimming far slower. I was starting to get a bit frustrated as the guy in front of me was going so slowly, but the guy behind me was swimming into my kicking feet, and i couldn't pass the guy in front because there was never a gap in the oncoming traffic long enough for me to overtake.

Normal people know that if they finish a length with someone right up their arse they are supposed to let that person lap (pass) them to allow everyone to swim at their own speed as much as possible. No-one in the entire pool knew that except me and i was swimming faster than everyone else. I tried swimming catch up (which is a kind of front crawl, but instead of moving the arms continuously one moves each arm through one complete stroke before moving the other (so you have both hands together stretched out in front for a pause between each stroke) - you have to kick harder to stay afloat and moving, and it slows me up a good bit) but i was STILL too fast.

Then it was time for aquanatal so the lanes were moved across the pool, which caused general confusion for everyone, and the three lanes were collapsed into two. Thankfully some people got out, but now there were now 6 people in my lane and 7 people in Val's. I did 6 more angry lengths as fast as i could by waiting until the person in front was miles away (yes, by backing up the other traffic in my lane - you were swimming 3 lengths an hour, i know i am delaying you, I DO NOT CARE!) and then powering down in 20 seconds. It was great, stopping at the far end and feeling my wake washing over my shoulders :D

Anyway, i got to the far end and looked at Val who was waiting in a queue (!?) to do her next length and we decided after a very short discussion to give up and go sit in the spa.

We got in the (also mobbed) spa - like slightly overweight gym soup - and 3 minutes later it turned off for a cleaning cycle and we had to get out again. We got changed.

After a bit of a wait (we'd gotten out of the pool a bit prematurely, last time we went i did 40 lengths before bodypump, this time i did 16!) it was time for bodypump. The room was mobbed, but you could tell that most of the people there weren't regulars because they'd ALL decided to "stand at the back". Fortunately Val and i decided long ago that if being stuck out in front where we could SEE what the instructor was doing meant other people could see us then so be it, so we were right at the front with a bit of space. Even then, the guy behind me was close enough that i was slightly concerned i'd trip over him when we were doing lunges.

Our usual instructor is Sharon, but she was ill last night so Leanne took the class. The relaunch is next week so all the instructors had been mixing and matching old tracks to keep everyone interested, but we'd not had only Leanne for a good while, which meant that every single track was new to Val and i except the tricep track, which Leanne altered a bit of (we'd been doing tricep press-ups, she introduced an overhead pull-over instead). So today i am disabled. It's funny, i'm always happy to see Sharon, but i always seem to work harder for Leanne.

The whole gym was ridiculously busy. WHY people!? Why do you come for 3 weeks at the start of every year and think it constitutes a healthy lifestyle!? I saw several people dressed in such a way that suggests they asked Santa for a full designer gym kit, complete with lifting gloves and wicking-fabric vests by Nike, when they have blatantly never even SEEN a gym before, not on the inside.

My favourite moment was between activities. I was standing tying my damp hair up high at the mirrors outside the pool changing area, slowly as i was kind of half waiting for Val, and two girls came out of the changies behind me chatting. They had been two of the girls clogging up Vals lane.

Now, they got in (bone dry) after her, and were out and showered and changed before her, and because of the speed her lane was moving at she only swam 10 lengths, so they cannot have swum farther than (being generous) 8. The conversation went like this:

Girl one: Fuck, i'm knackered.
Girl two: mmm, me too, i'm SO glad we decided to do something though.
Girls one: think i might get a mars bar now, after that, i'm sure i can afford it. You want one?
Girl two: no, i'm gonna stick to the diet, i really have to lose some weight. (long pause) Get me malteasers instead.
Girl one: (looking at the hairdryers) Do these take money?
Girl two: You're not drying your hair here are you? Just do it at home for free.
Girl one: yeah, suppose... Hey, shall we walk home too? Burn a bit more fat?
Girl two: (bit whiny) aw, i'm knackered, we just swam for ages!
Girl one: yeah suppose, fuck it, let's get a taxi.
(they start to wander off, and pause to get chocolate from the vending machine and peer through the narrow gaps in the blinds at the step class)
Girl two: look at them!
Girl one: i know! Fucking nutcases! (whispers) Hey, did you see that girl at the mirrors, she was so RED...

Ahhhh...... In case either of you are reading this, you probably burned about 120 calories during your swim, and a mars bar contains 259. The reason the girl at the mirror (me) was red is because she was actually fucking swimming in the pool, instead of drifting up and down on the tide. Going to the gym doesn't burn calories, you have to ACTUALLY do something when you get there.

i.e. workshy

2008-01-08T16:52:00.000Z

Benefits scum. Workshy. Ned.

David Cameron recently suggested that those on benefits long-term should be made to work in the community to "earn" their benefits. Is that the solving of a long-term problem, or the legalisation of slave-labour in Britain?

I am on benefits. Long term? Just over a year.

I don't HAVE to be on benefits. No-one HAS to be on benefits (except of course those who are physically unable to work). But my choice is this: i can be on Income Support and stay at home and raise my daughter, or i can put her in childcare 8am-6pm, 5 days a week and work full-time (presuming i could find a very well-paying job). Either way i have the same money. I am not an idiot so it didn't take me long to work out that i was better to stay at home on benefits than go out to work and let a 17-year-old with an NC in Childcare raise my daughter if either way i would be no better off.

To explode a myth; i am not rich. My benefits total just under £900 a month (that is income support, housing benefit, council tax benefit, child tax credits, child benefit and child support). My rent (Glasgow's East End, no double glazing, no central heating) is £530/month. My water costs (not covered by council tax benefit) are £21/month. My electricity (which i use to cook, heat water and power oil-filled radiators - remember, no central heating and no gas at all in this flat) is £60. My phone (which i need with a baby in the house) is £20. That leaves around £269/month. Out of this i buy food and clothes for myself and my daughter. She is under 2, in the last 6 months she has grown 7cm and gone through 2 shoe sizes.

I am not living entirely on the edge. She has clothes, a car seat, prams, and dozens of toys, all provided by loving godparents, grandparents and friends. She has decent food, goes to toddler groups and on (free) outings to museums, galleries, parks. But the image of me as some self-satisfied dosser lazing about with my fags and beer while the rest of the nation work is laughably far from my reality.

Who ARE all these "rich" benefit slobs with cable tv (i had to agonize over getting a normal tv license) and cars (i have a pushbike which my dad bought me, with a seat for the bubs of course) and designer clothes (everything i have is from Primark or was received as a gift) and gold jewelry (which to be fair, even if i could afford it i wouldn't buy). I can only conclude that they are all committing some kind of fraud.

The joke of some of this is that once every 6 months i meet with the lone-parent advisor to discuss me going back to work. Last time was hilarious. The first thing they do is offer you training. "I have a degree" i say, "is there any post-grad training?"
"No," she wrinkles her brow, "no, it's more you know, literacy and numeracy courses."
"Ah," i say, "maybe not then."
"Well, let's do a wage calculation, so we can see what sort of money you'd need to be on to be better off."
"Ok," i lean forward, this is more interesting.
"How much is your rent?"
I tell her. Another frown. A long silence. "To be honest," she says, "you'd have to be earning about £22,000pa."
"WHAT!?"
"Well," she says, "you'd have to be earning about £1600 a month to break even because you'd be paying for your childcare."
"Won't i get help with childcare?" i ask.
"Well you only get that up to a certain income, and you'd have to be earning a lot more than that to be able to cover your rent."

And that my friends, is why they call it the poverty trap.

i.e. petit faux

2008-01-08T12:37:00.000Z

Channel 4, Wednesday 2nd January. My Fake Baby.

A documentary about women who spend hundreds, or thousands, of pounds on dolls that look like real babies. Complete with milk spots, veins, birthmarks, stuffed with weighted beads and sand to feel like a new baby, with real hair, eyelashes, eyebrows, breathing mechanisms, heartbeats, warming pouches. The list goes on.

Why?

Well, as far as i could tell, mainly for attention. "Being able to be a new mum all the time, it's great" says rebirther Jaime. Frankly mad fake-mum Sue confirms, "It's not really the holding, i don't really hold them much. It's the maintenance, you know, doing their hair and dressing them and getting to push a nice pram. It's living the role of the parent but, only half of it." If that is half of parenting i am being severely short-changed!

Sue is going to go to America to pick up her new baby, the ultimate "open-eyed smiler". In preparation she spends £300 on a single designer baby outfit, packs a giant suitcase of tiny clothes and picks which pram she wants to take (she has 6). Laying out a tiny vest she remarks "It'll be hot, so she'll be alright in that," and then adds, "everything's ready now, everything's here but the baby." Yes, and when you've picked your doll up and brought it home, you'll STILL have everything but a baby.

Sue goes to America, and receives her new baby in a cardboard box with disposable nappies wrapped around its limbs and head. For a few days she is enraptured, breathily exclaiming "oh, look at the open hand!" as she claws at tiny plastic fingers with her curved red talons. "She's happy, she is happy! Look at that!" she remarks as the face is revealed.

A few hours of fake baby bonding follow, "I can imagine her moving and what she would do next, i imagine she would turn over and perhaps crawl off." She's a newborn, but still, faux babies don't have developmental stages. But the honeymoon ends rather abruptly when after 2 days of bonding Sue discovers a crack in the head of the doll.

"She's kind of not what i expected. That's it, it's ruined." The doll has to go back to be repaired. "I associate collecting a baby with happy memories, happy times. Anything that taints that makes me feel sad and it's never the same. It's a weird feeling. Empty."

"So you can't really have her as your baby?" asks the interviewer.

Sue stares mournfully past the camera, "No, not with the crack, no. She will definitely be going back." She is sad about this though, "to see her and to grow to love her...and that definitely happened, once I'd changed her and brushed her hair and had a hug, and i kept lookin' at her smiling face and you know she's still smiling even though she's injured..." Perhaps that's because she gets to go back to the artist and not home with her mad fake mummy...? "We wanted a perfect baby." Thank god this woman buys dolls instead of having actual babies, or i imagine it'd be drop-kicked into the nearest skip the second it got nappy rash.

Of the women featured Christine is probably the saddest story. Having cared for her grandson while her daughter fought cancer, she then lost him when he went to live in New Zealand with his recovered mother and her new partner. She has Jaime make her a doll using newborn photos of her grandson so she can have him back and "no-one can take him away this time". Her husband says, "I don't think she's mad, i think she was very attached to Harry..." When "harry" the reborn arrives however, he is not so enamoured as his wife, remarking "no, i don't like it, I'm sorry. Makes me think of something on a mortuary slab. I have to agree, these dolls, even with their finely formed features and little toes and breathing mechanisms, they look more like stillborns than reborns to me. But you can't help feel for this woman who raised her grandson as if he was hers and then had to say goodbye. Jaime is undeniably a talented artist, even if her art isn't to my taste, but there is something macabre about her front room, which is filled with plastic bags containing limbs and heads and babies in various stages of creation. At one point we see her taking the perfectly painted head and limbs of a convincing sleeping newborn out of the oven.

There is some humour though. Jaime tells the camera how four cesaereans and a ruptured uterus mean she can't have any more children, and that she makes reborns because she just loves babies, and over her words, "this is the closest i can get" we see her injecting sealant from a giant pressure gun through an eye-socket.

My verdict? Well, as someone who loves to hold and cuddle babies, and would have a football team of my own given the chance (although i admit the birth and newborn bit is way easier than the ongoing responsibility bit), i DO get why women might want this to cuddle. And i can see that my current outlet for this urge (cuddling my toddler and borrowing babies for a cuddle from friends and fellow mums at parent and child group) would be far harder in the absence of my own kid since the childless don't go to toddler groups. But perhaps it's because I've had a real baby that i find the whole concept a bit depressing. On the one hand i think it'd be better for Christine to find a living outlet for her love - infant fostering maybe? But then she'd have to go through the loss again and again... It's probably a good job Sue only has dolls - she herself seems to know that she isn't cut out for motherhood, saying "It's too much of a commitment, i just can't do the noise and I'm just so fussy really. If i could pick a child off the shelf, that would be wonderful. Because i could say well, i want one that's quiet, i want one well-behaved, i want one that keeps clean, you know this kind of thing but obviously the reality isn't like that..."

No. No indeed. The reality is the adventure of a perfect little person unfolding right before your eyes. I guess maybe the reborn is to parenting what the vibrator is to sex. In a fit of need it's a reasonable substitute sure enough, but are any of these women ever going to look down at the bit of plastic and machinery in their hands and feel that mix of emptyness and self-reproach one feels when one comes face to face with one's own battle with reality?

i.e. racial tension, employment aspirations...

2008-01-07T20:24:00.000Z

I was walking down Argyle Street in Glasgow today when i witnessed a bizarre scene. There was shouting to my right. Outside WH Smiths a smallish man was standing, selling the Big Issue. From a few yards away a large swaying oafish drunk was yelling abuse at him. I paused and heard said drunk garble-scream in the peculiar slur of one whose brain has encountered rather too little oily fish and rather too much heroin, "The Big Issue used to get selt (sic) by GLASGOW people!". His shortish, fattish lady-friend attempted to drag him from the scene and was batted violently away.

I resisted the temptation to laugh at this outraged figure, so furious that his career as a big issue seller had been snatched from him by a dirty foreigner (i assume - in fact the big issue seller could have been from anywhere, i could only see the back of his head and i wouldn't have wanted to rely on the oaf's comprehension of reality to confirm anything) that he could not stagger past without being reduced to shrieking his ire and shoving his girlfriend over in a display of indignation.

I could have pointed out to him that it was because Glasgow is such a friendly city in such an affluent country that people from other places in the world want to come here. I could have pointed out that their willingness to actually work is all that sets him apart from them. I could have checked where the Big Issue seller was actually from, since it could well have been Newcastle. I could have done these things, but i didn't.

Instead i pushed my sleeping toddler home in her buggy and came here to blog it safely where no-one concerned will see it. I am totally positive i am better than the drunk, but i can't really figure out why....

i.e. hurl

2008-01-06T19:05:00.000Z

There was a little hidden extra something in my Christmas stocking this year. Norovirus, or the winter vomiting virus.

Actually it was almost New Year. Food poisoning was suspected for several days. Then the baby got it and we got well enough to read the internet and watch the news and realised it was the norovirus.

I woke on Monday morning sometime around 5am. I felt a bit odd, got up to pee (might be that right?) and then lay awake, trying not to toss and turn too much so that G wouldn't wake up too. Actually G was turning a lot too. I was hot then cold, throwing off the duvet and then dragging it back to shiver under. My stomach felt uncomfortably full, though i'd not eaten that much at dinner.

At about 6am G said "Are you asleep?" and i replied, "No, i think i'm ill, i feel terrible". And it turned out he felt ill too. We lay and talked a little about how it felt, and then he jokingly reached over and rubbed my belly. I got up, i waled into the bathroom and i was SO sick. Serious, projectile, painful vomiting. After it passed i brushed my teeth, then went back to bed. I lay still, we talked about what was wrong, both wrongly assuming food poisoning. G wasn't sick, but he had to keep running to the loo.

I was sick. Every 40-60 minutes for 10 long hours i was violently sick. It was the most deeply unpleasant experience of my recent life.

The vomiting stopped but the exhaustion and digestive pains/problems just went on and on. Yesterday was the first day when i could eat normally without pain for a whole day, and today i still feel the remnants of the back pain from the vicious heaving.

Apparently this year has been particularly bad for it, an epidemic, so presumably the nation is going into 2008 as G and i are, having already lost the Christmas lbs and more.

i.e. Great Scottish Run

2007-09-04T11:05:00.000Z

Well i finally did it. I ran the half marathon.

As those of you who read about my trainers know, i've been aiming at this all year. As lots of you also know, it's not exactly been fun or simple getting my body to do it.

As G said to me "the training journey from running 10k to running 20k isn't linear". No, no it isn't. Since June i have had 4 injuries. Some of them mild (knee pain, shin aches) some less so (external snapping hip leading to bursitis and 3 weeks off, and, most recently, well, read on...). A few weeks ago my left foot began hurting a little during runs but since it ever hurt afterwards and wasn't all that bad i was pretty unconcerned.

On Monday the 27th of August i did a 12.4 mile run, my last long training run before the big day. During the run my mild foot pain came on early, about 1km in, and became, at times, eye-wateringly painful. A stabbing pain in front of my arch as i rolled my weight onto the toe to push off. I largely ignored it but wondered if i should look up and see what it might be. It still ached the next day and Wednesday but by Thursday it wasn't aching anymore so i decided to ignore it.

On Thursday, out of curiosity i had a look online to see what it might be. I found my symptoms easily enough. Pain on top of foot. Check. Sore spot which can be located with fingers. Check. Pain worsening with each run and within each run. Check. Diagnosis? Stress fracture. A bone in my foot, under the repeated strain of catching and pushing forward my weight, was starting to crack. Prognosis? Really good if you cease running and let it heal for 4-6 weeks. If you run on it, not so good, possibility of it progressing to a full break (cast, crutches, etc.). Advice? DO NOT RUN. I was gutted. My body had complained so much about running more than 10k that i had already decided this would be my first and last half marathon. And now, after all that work, all those 2 hour runs and all the injuries i wasn't going to be able to do it.

Well, never say never to Bec! I did as much research as possible and read that the chance of the fracture progressing is greater the closer the fracture is to the body's core (so femoral neck, femoral, tibial THEN metatarsals in order of likelihood). I rested, i skipped my last short run, i took a shitload of calcium and vitamin D, i doubled and even trebled my supplements. I iced and elevated every chance i had. I looked at everything i had to gain (satisfaction of having done it, not wasting my training totally, the money i'd raise in sponsorship for East Cheshire Hospice) and i thought i'd probably do it. On the Friday morning, heading out to meet Nicky i was thinking maybe i was being stupid and i should reconsider, what if it really broke? Then i passed the entrance to Glasgow Green and saw the finish and i knew whatever thoughts i had between now and then, i was going to do it.

On Saturday evening G took me out for Korean food in Kokuryu (Argyle Street, West End, Glasgow). I had Bul Go Ki, which was delicious, G talked to me about the next day, telling me to go for it, but to listen to my body and heed warnings.

On Sunday i got up at 7.30 (though i'd been awake a while already) and took my meds and waited the 30minutes before i could eat. Then i ate 2 bananas and drank half a pint of milk. At 9.20am i set off for the start. I jogged some of the way to warm up and stretched once i arrived and went to look for my running buddy Victoria. We found one another and chatted and got into the start muster. I was running with a yellow number but elected to go out with the greens (which Victoria was) as i didn't know how my time would be anyway given i had no idea if my foot would not hurt at all or break 100m in.

We set off through town and i felt pretty good. My foot was pain free and all seemed well. It was surreal to be running through the start with so many other folk, with people cheering us on, and crossing the Kingston Bridge, on foot, as part of a huge gang of runners, was amazing. The first 3 miles were fine. Right at the 3 mile flag was Nicky's flat and at the window Nicky waving like mad and Esme looking confused and affronted at the hundreds of runners and her daddy's insistence that one of them was mumma. Her hair was like a blonde mist round her wee face and she looked like a little Dr Seuss character to me. It cheered me up no end seeing her.

As we went down Paisley Road West i started to feel tired already, i was running just slightly out of breath and i knew i needed to slow up. Victoria's pace was naturally a bit quicker than my usual pace and i was even slower than normal. I told her several times to run on and she kept declining but eventually, at the entrance to Bellahouston Park, i convinced her to go on and run at her own pace. She did and i was glad to know her time would reflect her ability and not mine! She's trained hard and had injuries too, and deserved the best time she could get. I put my mp3 player on and tuned out for a bit to let my body find a comfortable speed.

In the park i decided to stop ignoring the urge to pee. I went before i left and had assumed it was nerves which made me feel that way but when i went to the row of portaloos i found my bladder wasn't such a liar afterall. The problem with that was that if one stops one has to start again. And it hurts. My thighs burned, my chest throbbed, my whole body expressed it's displeasure at my stop/start but i told it all to shut up and kept going.

We left Bellahouston Park and headed East to Pollok Park. A flag was coming up on the horizon. "Thank God," i thought, "5 miles". Guess again - the flag said 6 miles! A mile was feeling like a LONG way already so this was a great boost! So my mp3-player had served it's purpose in distracting me a little.

As we ran through Pollok Park the hills started to feel different. Going up was ok, just slightly more exhausting than running on the flat, but going down, my foot started to ache. Just a tiny bit at first, then more, then more. We got out of the Park and headed roughly north again towards Shawlands and as i was at the 8mile mark something told me i needed to walk. As i ran down hill every foot fall brought a sharp stab of pain in my arch then a hot dull ache. I thought about my time, then i thought about my foot. I walked.

From 8 miles in i walked down every hill steeper than a mild slope and for about the first 100metres past every mile flag. On the one hand this made my re-starts progressively more and more difficult and painful (you should have seen my ridiculous power walk, trying to keep my legs warm while reducing the impact on my foot - looked like an angry duck i'm sure!) but it did keep the foot pain at bay on the uphills and flats so it was worth it for that.

From 11 miles on i was back on home turf, on roads i run all the time. This helped my spirits but not my exhaustion or foot aches, but i managed to keep my walking to a minimum there. Once in the park i passed a very athletic-looking girl who i'd been seeing since i'd had to walk/run as she was doing the same. We chatted a little, i told her to run, we were nearly home. We ran, slowly and painfully together. She told me she was a 10k runner (she really looked more like a runner than i ever do!) and her body, though trained, wasn't so hot past that distance. I told her about my foot and urged her to run and we ran together, talking about who was meeting us and what our plans were for the rest of the day.

200m from the finish we turned the corner and ran in together, holding hands. It hurt like hell. My foot hurt, my body screamed at me and i felt like i was going to throw up my own heart. But we did it, we crossed the finish. I then walked slowly (what a relief) through the series of points (ChampionChip drop-off, medals, race bags, bananas, water, space blankets) and found G who gave me a massive hug (which was really brave of him since the ammonia from my sweat was enough to knock people several yards away over) and congratulated me.

My time was 2 hours and 37 minutes. I broke no records. But i also broke no bones in my feet and i raised 500 or so pounds for the Hospice. I am not intending to try another half marathon but i'm already planning next year's 10k races. Must be an idiot ;)

i.e. Sunday/Monday

2007-08-05T19:52:00.000Z

Yes, i know, it took forever... Stop complaining and read.

We woke and dressed on Sunday and went out for the pre-arranged 9am breakfast. Peter Abbot had requested "no 'ish'" when i said 9ish so 9am it was. Toast, cereal, coffee and orange juice was there, we were offered, and accepted, cooked breakfast. A young woman served us, not Peter himself, she wasn't British and i realised later, when peter said goodbye to her, that she was Polish.

We were seated next to the window which affords a wonderful view down into the bay, and i savoured my coffee as i gazed out. Our cooked breakfast screamed Engineer - bacon, fried egg, sausage and a tomato with grilled cheese on it arranged with mathematical precision on the plate. All very tasty too i might add.

After breakfast we packed up and went to pay and check out. Peter Abbot was clearly excited about cars and we had seen him having a walk round the RX8 while we were eating breakfast. So, Graham being the generous man he is, offered him a shot. He accepted, then changed his mind saying he wasn't sure how his classic insurance would cope - it'd be third party only if he crashed. I pointed out that we were here now and he should seize the day and eventually he accepted. We packed our stuff up and all climbed in. It was hair-raising! He actually never went above 28mph (i was watching the speedo as i prayed ;)) but the RX8 can really shift when you ask it to and it felt like the whole time we were either accelerating hard or braking hard. I've driven the RX8 and it was terrifying so all credit to Peter for handling it so well. He seemed to enjoy himself anyway and all too soon we were back at his B&B saying goodbye.

We went then to look at McCaig's Tower which was not far from the B&B. It is Colosseum-like and, when conceived, was to hold an art gallery, statues and a museum, but McCaig, a philanthropic banker, died and work ceased ling before completion. It now contains a small garden and affords amazing views of Oban and the ocean.

From there we decided to head on to our booked activity for the day - horse-riding. G had never ridden before and i rode all through my teens but hadn't been on a horse since before i fell pregnant in 2005. So off we drove to Argyll Adventure centre. I should mention at this point that Graham had borrowed a Tomtom from his good friend Mark, without which we would have been, quite literally, lost. We arrived at argyll adventure and i sent Graham in to tell them we'd arrived while i changed into riding gear which i'd brought.

Ten minutes later and we'd both signed in, collected hemets, and were assigned and mounted on our horses. Graham was on a black cobby gelding called Barra, and, sparking my envy, riding in an american stock saddle. I was on an almost-black cobby gelding called Lewis. Both were around 15.2hh i think, not tall, not small and both big enough for our 6ft forms. My saddle was English and my stirrups were set low. I usually i ride long anyway, and often i take my feet out when i'm hacking anyway as too many years bareback have ruined my seat when i have a saddle, but i still felt odd with such long stirrups - i really need lessons again to knock my rust off! The stirrups, everyone's, had toe-stops on them, which to begin with was like riding with scuba diving flippers on my feet - very odd! It also meant that when i took my feet out for a stretch they were nigh impossible to find again as the toe-stop was heavy and made them rotate inwards. There's nothing like trying to turn one's toe in while seated on a huge round horse! Great fun.

The whole ride was 2 hours, all in walk, down the side of Loch Fyne and back. It was wonderfully schizophrenic weather again. We left and arrived at the yard in bright hot sunshine and yet came home dripping wet as it POURED while we were out. Graham did fabulously well considering he'd never ridden before. He looked well in the saddle actually, with a good seat for a beginner. At one point there was an almost-disaster when his horse, trying to graze a sneaky mouthful of leaves, tore a whole branch off a small bush and then, when said branch kept hitting it's legs as it walked, started to become mildly alarmed. This in itself was ok, the lead rider caught him and removed the branch and then started to take him back to put him in behind my horse, at which point a large young horse which was out with us, as they put it, "had a moment". Believing that she was being left behind, she freaked out and wouldn't let Barra pass, crashing into him (and pinning Graham's leg between her rump and his saddle) and making a fuss. A few moments later and calm was reinstated, Graham settled on Barra behind me and off we went. This was so minor if G could ride i'd not even have mentioned it, but watching it unfold i realised that a) i've seen more minor things turn into trips to casualty, and b) something which i failed to notice before, in all my eagerness - horseriding can actually be quite dangerous! Nothing much else happened, at one point Barra had a good shake (we were all soaking) and G lost his stirrups and Barra then proved reluctant to stand still while he found them again, but that was resolved fairly fast too.

To G's immense credit he spent the rest of the day quizzing me about horses and what had happened and even seemed keen when i suggested lessons together! We shall see, but i wouldn't be surprised if he ends up being a far better rider than me.

After horse-riding we got back in the car and went off to find our bed for the night at the White Rock B&B. The tomtom once again found it for us and on the way there we stopped at Inverary and Lochgilphead (where we bought some chips - just as well!). We went on to the B&B which was at the end of a forestry track. This is fine in itself but the RX8 is pretty low and G had to drive v-e-r-y slowly so that stones wouldn't fly up and damage the guts. The clutch stank as we were going uphill and whatever else RX8's like, driving at 4 miles up a rutted track they do NOT. We were so glad to have eaten and not need to go out again to find food! We eventually arrived and were greeted by our hosts, Mr and Mrs Hamilton. They showed us our room, our sitting/breakfast area (for guests only so we could have watched tv) and left us to it. Their house was old and smelled faintly of aged, dampish books, dogs and stone. We lay on our bed and listened to the sound, roaring from outside of complete and absolute silence. We couldn't hear ANY man made noise. The odd bird chirped, the odd sheep baa'd. Nothing else. Just silence, the sort which allows me to remember what "peace" means. The view from our room window was spectacular, across the hills and woods. We had a hot chocolate, read a little, dozed a little, lay and talked and counted the room's other residents (7 house spiders) then curled up together and went to sleep.

We woke to sunlight blazing into the room. G showered (i'd showered the night before) in our teeny en suite shower and we headed down for breakfast. It was incredible! Toast, bacon, sausage, eggs, beans, black pudding, tomatoes, you name it. All fresh and either made on the farm or locally produced. Over (delicious) coffee we chatted and admired the posters on the walls, all drawn by the hostess, Polly Hamilton, for the Shakespeare plays put on annually at the Ludlow Festival. In our bedroom there had been a Hamlet poster i admired and in the dining room was a Comedy of Errors one, inspired by Escher, which we both really liked. After breakfast we asked about them and were told that the prints were 8 pounds, and the framed prints 40 pounds, all runs having been limited to 1000, some of the earlier ones only 500. G talked me into letting him buy some for me, and i agreed on the grounds that when we live together he will get to enjoy them too. I chose the framed Comedy of Errors and a print of the Hamlet, which i am yet to have framed. She signed both for me. I've never been bought Art before.

We loaded our precious purchases into the car, threw our bags in, waved goodbye and headed home. We'd planned to visit a power station on our way but this proved not to be as i had to get back to get Esme back from her daddy. The drive home was too beautiful to feel sad during, even though the weekend had been so wonderful and it was coming to a close. We talked about the fact that being lashed with sea-spray felt like a week or more ago, and it had only really been a few days. At one point a bird of prey hovering above the road, hunting, revealed itself to be a golden eagle. Such a special sight.

I'm not going to go on. Needless to say we arrived home, unloaded things and eventually G took himself off home to unpack and get ready for reality. Esme came home, looking so much bigger and more grown up than when i'd left, and was glad to see mummy, but more interested in having mummy read to her than any huge displays of affection. The Comedy of Errors poster is hung in my hallway, where i pass it and smile 10 or 20 times a day.

But forget all of that. For now we're still driving along country lanes in the brilliant July sunshine, talking and smiling and watching the golden eagle soar above us.

i.e. Ee Usk

2007-07-31T21:35:00.000Z

Where was i?

Ah yes, we disembarked from the ferry in Oban and trotted (staggered) up the giant hill to the B&B again. We had longer dealings with Peter Abbot, the owner. He is an interesting man, a bit mad, VERY engineery and reminded me very much of my dad. He showed us our room, asked us if we'd like cooked breakfast and then, at our request, recommended a restaurant for us to eat at that evening. Ee Usk he told us, on the North Pier. He knew the owner but didn't have the number and i'd happened to read that they stopped serving at 9.30 so we quickly showered and ran back down the hill.

Ee Usk was mobbed, and a somewhat harassed maitre d' asked us to sit upstairs. At this point Graham met someone from work (!?) and chatted briefly and we then went off upstairs as instructed. We were given menus and left for a few moments before being asked to come back down to our table. We were sat on the West side, against the window (3 walls are glass actually, only the kitchen-ward northern wall is solid) in the light of the setting sun. The view was breath-taking, the menu even more so.

Graham made the fatal mistake of reading everything. After 3 items i could see i wouldn't be able to choose so i only allowed myself to scan until a word grabbed me and then i stuck to my choice! We were brought bread and drinks (a beer for him, a glass of white wine for me) and our order was taken. I ordered King Scallops to start and Seafood Linguine to follow. He ordered Dressed Crab to start and Monkfish to follow. We also, because he likes them and i'd never tried them, ordered half a dozen oysters.

The starters all arrived together, and we attacked the oysters first. They came wet and raw in their seawatery half-shells, in soft greys and blacks, looking delicate and intriguing. I squeezed lemon juice onto them all and Bruce added Tabasco to one and showed me the technique of tipping the contents of the shell into one's mouth. I tried it. The entire ocean was in my mouth! Briny, cold, firm and soft and like nothing i have ever tasted before. After the first one i thought i liked them. I tried another to make sure. Then another. They are delicious. Like good sushi they satisfy the palette without over-filling the stomach. I can still taste them now.

I attacked my King Scallops with relish. They were perfect, two with the coral on, two with it off. Firm and sweet and tender, they melted in my mouth. I let G taste one in return for some of his dressed crab. I last had crab as a child on Orkney and it was muddy and unpleasant. So the delicate white shreds of meat with the sweet marie rose sauce were a BIG surprise. Really lovely!

The mains arrived and we ordered a bottle of rose to accompany them. The wine was fresh and fruity, we don't usually have wine with our meals so this was an extra treat. My seafood linguine came in the form of a bowl of pasta with prawns and salmon (smoked and unsmoked) thickly coated in a rich creamy mornay sauce, with a generous number of mussels still in their shells on top. Prolonging the moment i inhaled deeply as i removed each mussel from its shell and dropped it into the dish. I let G taste it first, then i tried some. Warm and creamy and seasoned exactly right, i couldn't fault it. It was the sort of pasta the memory of which will have me going to Italian and Seafood restaurants for the next 3 years though i doubt i'll find anything so good. Graham's monkfish had the texture of good-quality, perfectly cooked beefsteak. Tender and melting but with some bite. His mashed potato accompaniment was a surprise but a deliciously moreish one. All was well and we ate and ate.

'Dessert', we thought. But we seemed to have problems getting the attention of any of the waiting staff. We sipped our wine and chatted and waited. The tables began to empty. Eventually we managed to summon a very young looking waitress and asked about dessert. She left and returned to say she was sorry but the kitchen was closed. We ordered a coffee each and when she left discussed how much we should cut the tip by. The signs outside the restaurant clearly state that last orders will be taken at 9.30pm. We were seated before this and felt we should have been warned if the kitchen was going to close before we'd finished - in other restaurants we have been told, even while still eating our main course, that the kitchen will close soon and would we care to order dessert to ensure getting it. So we debated 10%, less than 10%, and waited for our coffee.

A man, clearly the owner, appeared at our table. He leaned down, concerned and asked "Were you not offered dessert?", there was a pause and then i replied, "No, we weren't, but if the kitchen is closed, the kitchen is closed." He said immediately, "what did you want?" By then we were both very full, and really the issue of dessert not being available was one of service not hunger. I said again, if the kitchen was closed we could live without dessert and he asked again what we'd have wanted. I replied, honestly, lemon cheesecake and then said we were very full and that just one slice and 2 forks would be plenty. He left. Our coffee arrived.

A few moments later he was back, in person, with 2 slices of lemon cheesecake on one plate saying, "There were 2 slices left, so you should have them both". As he turned to leave i told him i was deeply impressed, and when he asked what with i indicated the cheesecake and said "this", and Graham added "the table, the view, the food". He thanked us and left us to it. We ate what was, in all honesty, the best cheesecake i have ever tasted. We finished our wine, drank our excellent coffee, payed the bill and tipped nearly 25%. It was not cheap to eat there, but i have never had such a save of service before. To be treated like that, a little forgotten then totally spoiled, was worth more than just good service to begin with. I shook the owner's hand as i left, his place made a great impression on me.

If you're ever in Oban, go to Ee Usk.

i.e. Friday/Saturday

2007-07-30T17:24:00.000Z

We went on holiday. Just a weekend, but we did lots. Want to know? Two posts then, one will need defrosting (mammoth). Actually three might be better...
It all began about lunchtime on Friday. First we passed the lovely one to her Daddy so he could safe-keep her all weekend (which he did). Then we got in the car and drive north to Oban. Hang on, is it a bit ugly in here? Here's himself looking happy despite me shoving a camera up his nose when he was trying to drive.

Ah, that's handsomer. :)

On arrival in Oban we checked into our room for the night at the Jeremy Inglis Hostel. After some confusion and moving about we were put into a room described on the key fob as "small". NOT HALF, half would have been bigger! It was a room about 18inches longer and wider than a double bed. With a double bed in it. The walls were gloss-painted white so it was like being inside a glacier mint. Here's Bruce trying out the bed which he described as "like sleeping on a bag of jam jars".

Hilarious details aside, it did save us money, since it was only a tenner each. We spent Friday evening having a wander in Oban and enjoying lashing rain, then sun, then drizzle, then sun again - the weather for our whole weekend away was decidedly schizophrenic. Oban is a small town, we were seeing the same faces again within about an hour of our arrival. Dinner came in the form of fish tea in a small chipshop restaurant and was long-awaited and delicious.

We went back to the hostel quite early with some mangosteens (delicious) and a Dragon Fruit (blandsville) and went to sleep so we could get up early for our Three Isles Trip on Saturday.

Early Saturday morning we vacated the broom-cupboard and had "continental breakfast" which consisted of a breadroll each with some jam on. We didn't even have coffee which in fact we could have but kitchen-space was limited and so was time. We took the car to the B&B we'd booked for that night and left it in the loving care of the proprietor, Peter Abbot.

And here's what i recorded with my camera on too-blue setting - I'll swap for his pics as soon as i have them. Provided they're better...

Once on Mull we got on a coach which was to take us to Fionnphort where our boat to Staffa was leaving from. The bus driver was our tourguide and tortured us en route with terrible jokes and random facts. Mull is beautiful, here's a sample, I'll be able to post Graham's shots later on, which should prove better.

At one point we ground to a halt to look at an owl on a washing line. A "teat owl". Teatowel. Hilarious. On to Fionnphort then to join our wee tiny little Staffa boat. About 50 were on the tour, but we didn't all get on the same boat, there were two, that's how small they were. We sat at the back of the stern, outdoors, on a wooden seat, where, once we were in the more open waters, where we were lashed by spray every wave we hit, waves which were only about 10 feet high, but that is PLENTY high enough in a little open-decked boat! After half an hour we were thoroughly soaked and salty, then the captain killed the engine and we were staring straight at this.

That's not Fingal's cave, it's the Boat Cave, just a bit away from Fingal's cave. This is Fingal's cave.

Pretty impressive, huh? Wait until you see inside. Our little boat dropped us off and we walked along the cliffside (with the help of the attached ropes) to the cave mouth. I went in first, once inside i stood up off the path to let the faint-hearted retreat past me...there were a lot of them!

This was the view in.

And this was the view out.

Once we'd both been in we sat on the rocks in a little cranny and sheltered from the rain. The view out looked like this.

The view in looked like this.

I mainly looked in. Staffa felt very remote and small in all that ocean. We were both cold and wet from the boat trip and our faces were crusted with salt from the spray, and the dark rocks of Staffa were warm from the sun. I can't tell you how good it was to sit down on those warm rocks. We had some food and then headed back to the pier as our boat was coming back to get us after an hour.

The crossing back to Iona was rough. Rough enough that i felt very sick, although i didn't actually throw up. I couldn't talk it was so severe, every time my mouth opened my throat tried to join in. I made the mistake of sitting inside (and convincing poor Bruce to sit with me!) because while i found the wetting we got going out thrilling, i didn't think it'd be a good idea to volunteer for that twice in 2 hours. Without the fresh air it was hard going. Through the window beside me i could see Iona and by keeping my face close to the glass could keep the horizon in line of sight. The windows opposite showed only sea, then horizon, then only sky as we rolled on the waves. It was an uncomfortable thrill, but a thrill undeniably.

We landed safe and sound on Iona and were instructed to get the 5.15pm ferry back to Fionnphort to catch up with our coach. We went straight to the restaurant and had a coffee and some food which helped settle my stomach. We then popped into the gift shop and i bought Smee a little furry seal (which she has nicknamed "doggy" despite me calling it Staffa). We then walked up the slope to look at the nunnery and abbey. The nunnery is most beautiful despite its ruinous state. The gardens are very well-kept - lovingly, so they are wild enough to have personality and tame enough to void the chaotic look.

We went on to the abbey then and looked around. There is a peace on Iona. A sweetness of the air, a calmness of the land, it is very easy to unwind, you can feel your various everyday woes ebbing away into the distance as you relax. Even the wildlife conspires, as little finches hop closer and closer to see if you have a few crumbs for them. It was very peaceful.

Like all good things, it had to end, and we were all too soon back on our coach going towards Craignure and the Ferry to Oban. On the return trip the driver told us a story about a girl who was a Nazi sympathiser and tried to shoot herself with a pearl-handled silver pistol (gifted by the Nazis) in the head but got it wrong and was patched up to some extent but only given 8 years to live, which was so accurate they were only 10 days out! It was very league of gentlemen and for a long time i kept assuming either it was a terrible joke, or i was mis-hearing him. But it wasn't a joke and I wasn't mishearing him.

We made it to Craignure ok despite this and got back on the ferry to Oban. I think i need to post about that evening and the meal in a seperate entry so that's it for now. Here is my sweetie once again managing to evade the camera.

i.e. wrapstars....

2007-07-05T16:02:00.000Z

I know, I know, i've been away for ages. Want to know why? Keep wanting!

I made a new wrap for Smee today, full instructions are available on request. It's a Mei Tai (NOT mai tai, although since today, BEFORE breakfast, Esme unrolled a whole toilet roll, hit me in the face with the bathroom door, and spilled couscous all over my kitchen floor, and the day has gone on as it began, i could actually DO with a drink...) style which is a soft eastern/oriental style wrap carrier. I used 2.5 (ish) metres of crepe fabric and a sewing machine.

It allows you to carry on the front of your body....
...on one hip...
...or on your back....
I prefer the rucksack-style strap arrangement (as above), but for the flatter chested mummy/daddy you can cross them in front like this...my boobies were too squished!
And that was today. I must go and put food in her now, although actually maybe she'd calm down with calorie deprivation.....?

i.e. weeping

2007-05-08T23:13:00.000Z

The missing toddler thing is making me crazy. I don't want to read the news but i can't stop doing it. It makes me feel sick. I have to keep checking on Esme, even though i'm in a locked house and i can hear her breathing through the monitor. It gives me this feeling in my belly, like when you go over a bump in the road and your stomach drops? I can't hack it, i feel sick everytime i hear or think about it. Who takes a toddler? Why? Did they want her because they can't have their own? If so, why take the older kid and not the younger 2, people want babies don't they? If they took her to kill her, that's just fucking awful. It's not fair - how can it be some people's lot in life to have to go through this? :(

I think what makes it really awful, really terrible, is that she reminds me of a toddler i know :( I want to cry. I feel like it's just going to go on and on until they find her. Lots of abducted kids never get found. Never never. The thought of Smee going away forever, not knowing if she's dead or alive, if she's happy, if she's loved, or if she's living in a petting zoo in some sick bastard's cellar. Having a baby has made this far worse.

When i was about 13 or 14 mum lent me a book by the mother of Lesley-Anne Downey, one of the children Ian Brady and Myra Hindley killed. They did repellant things to her, and they recorded it all with photos and a reel-to-reel tape recorder. When it went to trial her mum had to sit in court while they played the tape for the jury, and listen to her daughter crying, gagging, begging to go home and screaming "mummy! mummy!" while they threatened, taunted, raped and tortured her. She was 10 years old. To go through that, to listen months after the funeral to your child's final moments, as they screamed for you to save them, and know that you didn't hear, you didn't come. No one did, and they died there in that dirty house, alone. I still think about her, and her mum, and how miraculous that anyone could stand that. How can it be fair? How can people do that to children? How can it be laid out in your future for that to be something that should happen to you?

I'm crying now. Stupid woman. If you look at how sad the world actually is, there aren't enough tears.

i.e. running

2007-04-10T13:24:00.000Z

Hey,

I've been putting this off for no reason other than laziness! I was going to post about it last Saturday! But there you go. Such is Bec.

I run. Slowly and painfully i run. But i enjoy it, and it makes me feel good. I also value the time to think alone since i spend most of my days discussing where the lights are, where my nose is and whether or not a nappy needs to be changed with my wee lovely.

Recently I've become over-ambitious and have entered both a 10k and a half marathon. Not only that, i have promised to run for a charity in the half marathon! So i couldn't put it off anymore...i had to buy proper trainers.

I've resisted getting my runners fitted for almost a year. Why? I guess that i didn't want to spend money i don't have, i didn't believe i could trust the shop staff (they MUST be on commission, right?) and mainly, i couldn't be bothered. I used to trip down to some cheap sports shop or other periodically and spend 20 or so quid on a new pair of shoes, but as my distances increased so did the niggly pains, the fatigue and the worry that i was possibly doing irreparable damage to my legs.

So, on the recommendation of many, i went to Achilles Heel on Great Western Road in Glasgow's West End. It was a Tuesday morning, about 11.20am and i figured this would be a nice quiet time to go. Not so, the place was very busy and every single assistant was busy helping someone already. We looked about a bit and then a member of staff came and said she'd be with me in a minute. She completed a sale and then asked me to come over to the fitting area.

I told her what i needed shoes for, how long I'd been running, and the little pains i was getting. She asked about the shoes i currently used, then asked me to take my shoes off, roll my trouser legs up and let her "check my alignment". She gently felt my arches, my ankles and the sides of my feet. Then she asked me to walk up and down the shop in a straight line while she crouched low and watched what was happening as i went. She told me to sit down and said she thought my feet were a tiny bit unstable and i needed a little support, but not too much. I'd told her i was on a budget so at first she only brought sale shoes out to me, but it was soon evident that nothing they had left in the sale was all that wonderful.

She told me this and i said (I'd kind of been expecting it - the sale had been on for weeks!) to try and fit me and I'd decide if i could afford it when i knew what it was i was buying. She went into the back and returned with 9 boxes. I then tried on all 9 pairs of runners, each time taking a walk up and down so she could assess how the shoes were treating my feet. She was only interested in my gait, foot size and comfort. She did not talk about colour or style. She was a true professional.

In the end i bought 2 pairs. A perfect pair of Asics.

And, in the sale, a pair of Sauconys which she said were not quite as supportive but perfectly fine as a second pair to prolong the life of the Asics, so long as i used them primarily for my shorter runs.

That night, despite the niggling knee-pains I'd been having for about a week, i ran. I only did 6k, but i wore the Asics to see if they helped (on the advice of a personal trainer, although admittedly, not MY personal trainer unless you count the endless free consultations and advice... ;)) and it was amazing. I couldn't believe the difference, like running on air! I really enjoyed it and i was so fresh when i got in i did 40 minutes of yoga on top! Incredible. I ran again in the Asics on Thursday night, 7.5k to the West end, up every hill i could find. It was agony in my muscles but my joints have all ceased complaining.

On Saturday afternoon i laced up the Sauconys and did 6.2k round the parks. It was a lovely sunny day - i got sunburned! But again, the trainers felt fabulous and my post-run niggles have all been muscular. I'm a very happy lady.

All in all i would recommend the shop to anyone. They were brilliant - friendly, knowledgeable and as seen from the giant and instant improvement in how my running feels, trustworthy. Go on kids, run over there just now....

i.e. photos

2007-04-02T20:43:00.000Z

So, on Saturday, the day after our wonderful curry in Balbirs, we decided to take his new camera out for a walk. It was a beautiful blue day and i ended up also taking some shots with my phone. The results were pretty good, though, having seen his, he probably wins.

I photographed him.

So, in revenge he photographed me.

Thankfully this is my blog, so i can omit the rest of his shots of me, but here's another one of him looking down his nose at me. And what a handsome nose it is....

Here's a shot of the 3 dames of the area. I called it 3 sisters when i was saving it as they're all so voluptuous. They had they're finery on, perhaps trying to impress....

...the 3 brothers, who were lurking on the horizon, eyeing up the candy.

What a glorious day it was. It was only a few hours, we just wandered and had coffee and snapped away, but it stands out somehow, it was timeless and lovely and i'm glad of it.

i.e. Curry

2007-04-02T19:44:00.000Z

Go to Balbirs. GO!

We went on Friday night. We recently had a terrible eating experience in Glasgow, so awful we not only demanded a refund, we actually GOT it too. So we found ourselves both apprehensive about the night ahead and then incredibly grateful for the excellent service. However, even taking our gratitude into account, the service really was excellent.

We arrived just after 9pm at Balbirs which is on Church Street in the heart of Glasgow's West End. We looked at the menu in the window which looked fabulous, and then made our way inside. The place is enormous! It stretches back deep into the building and it manages to feel airy, but cosy too. The deep reds of the decor and sumptousness of the deep pile carpet reminded me of a cruiseship, it certainly doesn't feel like yet-another-indian.... We were greeted immediately and eagerly by a waiter in an apron. It's a small detail but i LOVE waiters in aprons. We asked for a table for two and he took us to one straight away. He then took drinks orders and fetched us menu's. Our drinks (he had a Cobra, i had a mango lassi) arrived very shortly afterwards. Getting from door to table was a warm and smoothly professional operation. Aye, there's my gratitude speaking but when you've been denied eye-contact and treated as though you're interrupting the maitre d's evening by wanting to eat you appreciate the little things...

The place was busy but not packed, so the atmosphere was lively but not so lively we couldn't chat easily to one another. The menu is awful! Don't go when you're hungry, EVERYTHING looks not just good but unmissably amazing and choosing is nigh on impossible. We asked about the banquet, which is an interesting take on a set menu whereby the waiter asks about your likes and dislikes and then produces things the House thinks you might enjoy. Bruce was keen to try this but sadly i had my heart set on some things i'd seen on the menu so he was denied - baby i PROMISE i'll go back for the banquet and next time I'LL pay. ;)

Eventually we chose. I ordered mussels to start and he ordered fish pakora. The pakora arrived first. Moist bite-sized pieces of white fish coated in a delicately seasoned batter, with a selection of sauces/chutneys to dip them in. One, a kind of cucumber and mint chutney, stood out for me. It was heaven, zingy and fresh and not at all overpowering for the delicious morsels of fish. My mussels arrived next. A large metal tureen, and in the bottom a delicious-smelling rich turmeric-yellow soup with mussels, still in their shells, scattered through it. It was spicy and hot. I'm not usually keen on very hot, but this was really good. The soup was oiniony and coconutty and scorching, the mussels were tender and peeled easily from their shells, fresh coriander added colour and another level to the flavours. A basket of chapati came with for dipping and we did, oh we did. As i said, i'm not overly keen on very spicy food, if the spiciness is overpowering the other flavours then it's not for me, but this was so moreish i found myself having another bit and another bit and soon Bruce and i had emptied the shells, the tureen and my bowl. It made my nose run, it was so hot, but thinking about it makes my mouth water.

We wanted more drinks, and had to catch a waiter's eye. The waiters nearby were joking and chatting as they reset a large, recently vacated table, but the second Bruce caught the attention of one he dropped from the conversation, rearranged his grin into a look of professional attention and hurried over. Brilliant.

The table was cleared quickly and our main courses arrived. We're rubbish at choosing between so we get AND rather than OR. Thus he had Lamb Mirchi Korma, i had Lamb Passanda and we shared a Garlic naan, a peshwari naan and a (very generous) dish of pilau rice. It was a lot of food. His first then; it was hot, as hot as my mussels, but it was delicious. I only tried a little taste but there was chilli and cloves and cinnamon in there, and rich yogurt too. My Passanda was a joy, mild after the starter, fruity and nutty and creamy-good. The lamb was so tender it melted in my mouth, and the ratio of meat to sauce was perfect.

The rice was spot on, not sticky, not dry, with just the right amount of cumin seeds to flavour but not overpower. The garlic naan i didn't try, but it was remarked that it wasn't all that garlicky. This man adores the clove though, so it may well have been perfectly garlicky by normal human standards ;) The peshwari naan, and believe me, i KNOW my peshwari's, was excellent. So good that when i was unable to finish it, i asked for it to be bagged up and i ate it the next evening. So good that being left overnight on a table then zapped in a microwave did nothing to spoil it's sweet fruity goodness.

We ate too much, it was inevitable, obligatory in fact. But it was too good to stop. I continued to eat well after i was full and i stayed full until the following day when i had breakfast because of the clock rather than my appetite.

The bill came in at around 43GBP, and we tipped 15% because we were so happy. If you're in Glasgow, go to Balbirs.

i.e. Niall's Tablet

2007-03-26T16:43:00.000Z

Right, I'm back. Now, who out there is desperate for some sugar? Well, push your fears of diabetes aside and get the pans oot. It's time to make Niall's Tablet. This was his recipe but it's my method, since I've eaten lots of his tablet but never seen him make it....

You will need:

2lbs of white sugar (granulated is fine)
1 cup of milk
half a 400g tin of condensed milk (i know, half a tin, annoying, but read on...)
35-50g of butter (butter makes it glossier and less "melty" so if you like it more crunchy than melty, put 50g in)
a few drops of vanilla essence

and equipmentwise:
-a heavy bottomed pan with high sides (the mixture will more than double in height in the pan when it boils and as boiling sugar is extremely hot, you want to make sure it has lots of room to expand safely).
-a wooden spoon
-dishes for it to set in - i use 2 roasting dishes, but you can buy pans specifically for it i imagine, you want your tablet to be around a half to one inch thick, so bear this in mind when pouring...)
-greaseproof paper to line the dishes
-a strong arm, for operating the wooden spoon..

Ready? Good.
1. Put all the ingredients together in the pan, stir it together and put it on a high heat. Stir continuously.
2. Keep stirring. The butter will melt, the sugar will dissolve and you'll have a thinnish pale blonde mixture. Keep stirring.
3. Allow the mixture to boil - KEEP STIRRING! The mixture will be VERY hot when it boils so take care not to get splashed. You need to be careful not to burn the mixture, the heavy bottomed pan will help but turn the heat down slightly and remember, stirring is a necessity here...
4. After it's boiled for 5-10 minutes it will get a little thicker, at his point turn it right down to the lowest possible setting. Keep stirring.
5. Now settle back for 20-60 minutes of stirring. The longer you leave it on the low heat while you stir it, the darker it will become. I like a pale tablet and mine takes about 20 minutes to develop after it stops boiling. For those who like it darker, leave it on longer.
6. Once it's the colour you want take it off the heat and.... Stir it VERY vigorously for about 20 minutes... You're basically keeping moving while it cools to make it set into little crystals rather than big ones. It will get stiffer as you stir. When it is stiff enough to be hard to stir but still liquid enough to pour, pour it out into your paper-lined dish(es).

7. Leave it to set. Don't put it in the fridge as water will condense onto it which makes it crumbly. Once it's completely cool you can break it up and put it in an airtight container.

8. Eat it. You will :)
9. Go and buy 2lbs of sugar and use the other half of the tin to make another batch.

i.e. Botanics

2007-03-26T11:05:00.000Z

Hello ladies,

I'm supposed to be having a shower as it is naptime for small ladies, but since she's not sleeping i too am kicking against the rules and posting.

I will be posting a tablet recipe in a second, but it is Niall's so everyone take a while to digest (in advance) that fact. Niall's not posted it so i must. I should really have photographed it when i was making it to show the process but stirring continuously is part of the deal so i only have it in the dish and in the tub (where it stays for 40 second before i eat it...).

First have a look at some pictures i took at the botanics. Bruce gave me one of his drawer-phones on Saturday (thanks G! :)), and it has a great camera. The phone itself is totally lush and i am terrified of scratching/dropping/breaking/losing it, but I'm managing to use it with some success despite this. It's a Razr v3x, in case any of you lot care.

They're pretty good eh!? I was surprised as it was very much pointing and shooting from my point of view. Some are a bit blurry but still. Everyone go to their nearest botanic garden immediately, it's that time of year. The hyacinths are out and (overwhelmingly) pungent. Go on! NOW!

Right, tablet to follow soon, though now i really should have a shower as I'm going for a blood test this afternoon and the nurse has a rubbish enough job sticking needles in folk without having to scrape the dirt off first.....

i.e. Hot Fuzz

2007-02-18T21:14:00.000Z

It was early Saturday morning when i emerged from Simon Pegg's most recent release. It's taken a slating from some critics for being self-indulgent. It is. I loved it. I like Simon Pegg enough that i am perfectly happy to pay for him to indulge himself a little, especially when the result is entertaining and, in places, utterly hilarious.

It is the film a 7-year-old boy would make when asked if he would like to make a movie about being a cop. There's something about Simon Pegg's work (i.e. Spaced, Shaun of The Dead), that makes me feel like i know him. Luckily i have never met him, since if i did i would almost certainly be inappropriately over-familiar. But the upside of this feeling of familiarity is that i like him and his work so much that i fear to an extent he can do no wrong.

Some would say this makes my opinion of his work less valuable. But screw them. Go see it, it's amazing.

Also, when you go, go with someone who's great. The company also contributed to the general greatness of the experience. Thanks. Yes, you. ;)

i.e. Spoiled

2007-02-14T22:02:00.000Z

I am ruined! All future gifts will me greeted with "meh....".

Why? Because a marvelous person who shall remain mainly nameless sent me a dozen red roses and a card and a really HEAVY box of chocolates. I spent all day running up and down the stairs. I liked it muchly.

In other news, i am going to watch Buzzcocks now as i am anxious to see Preston spit his dummy out. A cup of tea? Yes, yes i think i should...

i.e. furthermore

2007-02-10T19:23:00.000Z

I was hungry and my good friend Jen (who might be Ignoble, if you're looking) suggested 'mattresses'. And i did, and it was delicious, and so here i shall share:

You will need:
2 or 3 eggs (depending on how greedy you're feeling)
2 or 3 slices of toastie or super toastie thickness bread. White is nice but wholemeal/granary/whatever works fine
salt and pepper (or just pepper if you're me)
pumpkin pie spice blend (cinnamon, allspice, ginger, nutmeg)
little oil for the pan (not olive oil - you need to get it hot and hot olive oil stinks)

Break your eggs into a dish large enough to fit a slice of bread in - i use a square pyrex casserole dish. Beat them up with a fork, add salt, pepper and a good generous pinch (level teaspoon) of the spicemix. Put a slice of bread into the mix, meanwhile get your oil good and hot in a frying pan, drop the egg-soaked slice into the pan and drop your next bare slice of bread into the egg mix. It will brown quite fast - flip it then, and flip the slice in the egg mix too. Then using a fish-slice style tool impress lines running diagonally in both directions to form a diamond-like mattress pattern on the bread in the pan. Remove from pan and drop the next slice in, putting the 3rd bare slice in the egg mix at the same time. Repeat until you have a nice stack of mattresses on your plate. I eat it with ketchup. No Niall, not from the fridge and i don't CARE what the bottle says.... For a twist for the extra-greedy, grill some bacon and layer it with the mattresses (i can this 'horse between mattresses'). In general terms one egg properly coats one slice and if you do more than 3 you'll need to put more oil in the pan.

Enjoy...

Perfect Morning

2007-02-10T14:59:00.000Z

Is there anything nicer than waking up next to the person you love and then meandering through a morning together? I seriously doubt it.

Today i found an amazing piece of music which i demand you all immediately listen to. Find it at www.myspace.com/elenakatschernin it's called Eliza's Aria from Wild Swans - it was on the Lloyds bank advert. GO. LISTEN.

:)

i.e. Start

2007-01-28T21:45:00.000Z

I used to, and i thought i should again, and now i am. So that's the story of this blog.

The title? Oh, one of you knows. I'm nodding at you, Mr Who-Knows, right now. Oh aye, you know. Oh Yeah! ;)

Sorry everyone else, but screw you all. The whole point of an In-joke is that someone is Out and when it's your turn to be In you won't mind...