Day 124: Oooh, Betty

Everybody has occasional moments of amazing grace.

Hitting the sweet spot with a perfectly-executed dive.  A bull's eye.  A smoothly-pocketed pool ball.  A text-book omelette.  A one-handed catch.  Some people have more than their fair share, but everyone gets a piece of the action. 

Over the last few days, I have not been one of them. I am currently a catalogue of klutz.  A slap of stick.

I have broken the blender.  Totalled my laptop*.  Yesterday I trapped my bag in the train doors. It was a frenzied four-person struggle (on-platform and in-carriage) to free it. I skinned my knuckles. And my ego.

In the evening I accidentally booted a wooden trunk incredibly hard.  No shoes. It was eye-watering.  I think I've cracked something - judging by the sharp shooting pain when I walk.

And it appears that I have not managed to fully load the map on my satnav.  I've done a half-job - it refuses to recognise the second half of any post code.  Essentially it is shrugging and saying 'I can get you to somewhere within a five mile radius of your chosen destination.  After that, it's your shout.'  Very unmellow to discover this at six o'clock this morning. 

It's just as well that I do not believe in voodoo, or I'd be tempted to think that someone was getting busy with some pins and some wax.  But as it is, I don't think I can hang this on anyone else.  Picasso had a Blue Period.  I am simply having a Frank Spencer Period.

* Still haven't totally given up on the hard drive - am crossing fingers that I will at least be able to salvage something.  When I say 'something' I mean accounts, work, pictures, music, footage of last year's Edinburgh show etc etc.  Not backed-up, natch...

'Oooh, Betty.  The cat did a whoopsie in my beret.'

Quite.

Day 123: Short-changed

Today does not deserve anything.  But to give it nothing would accord it too much status.  Instead, an insultingly short entry.

Day 122: Mental Juju

Today I knocked a large mug of coffee all over my laptop.  The laptop that is barely six months old.  It is currently hanging out to dry, inverted tent-style on some newspaper. I know. I could just cut to the chase, snd get my arse straight down to PC World. But maybe, just maybe, a spark of life remains (I am optimistic by nature). Not giving up until I know for sure.

An internet search suggests letting it dry out for forty-eight hours.  This I can do.  Then I will perform compressions and mouth-to-mouth.  If nothing happens, then and only then will I indulge in a mourning ceremony - makeshift black hat (most likely to be a pair of leggings draped over my head - it's the colour that counts) and some moments spent reflecting on the time spent together.  Coffee shops - all those times I didn't spill anything.  The sofa (ditto).  That laptop was Robin to my Batman. 

The irony is that last week, during a workshop, a man put his coffee on the little laptop table I was using.  I asked him to move it, in case it got spilled.  I've never even thought about coffee on my laptop before.

SHIT!  This is the law of attraction in action.  Now I am SCARED OF MY MIND. 

Alternatively, perhaps I am clairvoyant.  I didn't make it happen.  I SAW it in advance!  Either way, I am in possession of some serious mental juju.

Good to know I have superpowers.  Not sure that's going to be enough to get me through a trip to PC World though.

Come on, laptop.  Stay with me.  You don't want to sleep.  We've got stuff to do.  Walk with me.  Don't go to the light.  Squeeze my hand.  SQUEEZE it, goddammit! 


(This post was brought to you by my ancient and heroic Dell, wheezy and overheating, but still in the game.  Good work.)

Day 121: Indoor Overachiever

Rain.  Then more rain.  Then quite a lot of fat, wet snow.  Then more rain.  Now rain, and wind. 

It's a day to stay inside.  I make one brief foray out, but it's not very enjoyable thanks to my 'waterproof' jacket (aka rain sieve).

Back home.  Jacket off.  Time to get dynamic.  Start achieving things.  This is what I manage (pretty amazing):-

Reading the paper - including the bits about London Fashion Week which I don't really understand (pastels, tribal and pyjama trousers, apparently).   

General personal hygiene - I finish my shampoo, my conditioner and my toothpaste today.  The planets align.

Washing-up - everything.  Even the peelings bucket, which is valiant, because it harbours bin juice that makes me gag. 

Achieving a PB at Patience - haven't played for years, but find I still have my magic touch.  All that practice not wasted, then. 

Making a salad for lunch - health is everything.  My body is a temple.

Wearing a grapefruit as a hat for a considerable amount of time - don't know why.  Born this way?

Making scones for tea - balance is everything (jam: cream ratio).  My body is a teashop.   

So, by my calculations, today I have been informed, cosmic, brave, consistent, responsible, monstrous and greedy. 

All without leaving the house.  Not bad for a rainy Sunday. 

Day 120: Sardines and Mint

Yorkshire Pudding

'Saturday Kitchen'.  James Martin, pudding-botherer and camera-flirt, presides over the eponymous kitchen.  Every week there are visiting chefs, a celebrity guest, and two civilian make-weights, who are largely ignored. 

Today the guest is Chris Isaak.  I know nothing about him, except that he's responsible for the mournful ululating 'Bluuuuuuue Hoe-telllll'.  (Which doesn't score him any points in my book.) 

He is hilarious.  Not in a Peter Kay 'I will take control and trample on your show format for my own comedic gain' way.  He plays nicely with ego-fiend Martin.  But everything is done with bone dry, playful humour.  From his 'Food Heaven and Hell' (sardines and mint) to his impromptu performance of 'Ring Of Fire'.  'Come on, join in!' he encourages as he strums his guitar languidly and serenades everyone up close.  Cue chefs and civilians all red and embarrassed, mumbling along like teenagers in school assembly.  Nobody can quite believe what's going on.  Is he for real?  Isn't he? 

He knows exactly what he's doing.  He reminds me of Tony Law.  Yes, there's the quiffy thing going on.  But it's more about the off-beat, relaxed, friendly manner but with a subversive twinkle that lets you know he's fucking with you. 

I am weeping with laughter.  And not alone.  I check Twitter (a rare occurrence) and the incident is trending.  'Isaak totally owned Saturday Kitchen'.   

There is nothing I enjoy more than watching someone mucking around with subtlety.  Are they?  Aren't they?  If you don't know, it's not for you.

Day 119: White Out

Proper fog on the drive to Heathrow.  Pockets of complete whiteout - hairy moments of sudden awareness that I'm hurtling along in a tin can and I CAN'T SEE, trusting that the road will reveal itself as I go.  It does, and fortunately there are no unexpected obstacles.  On a similarly foggy day when I was nine, I broke my arm.  A very long wait in casualty because the fog had led to a multiple pile-up on the M20.  The casualites were wheeled past me - I still remember a man draped in a blood-soaked sheet, moaning and groaning.  It terrified me.  So I don't take fog lightly when I'm driving. 

But I do when I'm walking.  Which isn't always sensible - particularly if you are left standing in the middle of a field in the Peak District, clutching a walking guide written by a local Reverend, that tells you chummily to 'head for the stile and the clump of trees'.  And all you can see is white.  Like the Anthony Gormley cloud chamber that I visited in 2007.  Limited numbers of strangers looming towards each other, giggling and embarrassed, in a glass box of 'cloud'. 

I had a great time at this exhibition.  Not just the cloud chamber, but also the 'Orifice' series (Anthony's inked-up 'holes' kissing paper - anatomical potato prints).  Julia and I play 'Guess The Orifice', with pretend earnestness.    'Penis or Anus?  Anus?  Yes, course.  Ahh, The Anus.  This speaks to me.  I find its shy imprint deeply moving.'  We snigger like fifteen-year olds.

And then the glorious moment when a tourist knocks one of the iron spillikins out of this (see above), and it clatters to the floor.  Everybody keeps conspiratorially silent as he shoves it back, in random panic.  Shhhh...  Don't tell Anthony... 

What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over. 

True in many situations.  Just not on a motorway...

Day 118: Big Soup

A fridge inventory reveals a tomato mountain.  A total of SEVEN different lots; most started, some intact.  I'm impressed by the range.  Tiny on-the-vine cherries, economy golf balls and droopy plums.  Not so impressed by the condition...  Many are looking very sad, wrinkly and shrivelled and soft.  Like old balloons.  Unsurprising, given that the use-by dates are all around the late January/early February mark... 

Soup.  A massive vat, stewed with onion, garlic and red lentils, spiked with coriander and cumin.  And razzed in the blender to uniform youthful smoothness.  A triumphant comeback.  I get my greatest culinary satisfaction from resurrection vintage cooking.     

The blender doesn't agree, and a suicide leap from the drying rack means that it won't be making another comeback.  No more razzing. 

The death of the blender and also the death of Davy Jones of The Monkees.  This morning on the news they played the title sequence from the television series - massive amounts of goating about on surf boards, pushing beds around, riding bikes into the sea, dancing around dressed like French Legionnaires.  The classic backdrop to a Saturday morning for any child of the seventies.

'We're the young generation, And we've got something to say'.

Here's Davy at the peak of his youthful smoothness.

From smoothness he came, to smoothness he will return.  Once he's been razzed back into The Soup.  You know.  The Big Soup.