Day 286: Racing Myself

A morning run accompanied by my personal GPS system.  I haven't yet worked out how to pause it, so as a result there are no breaks for stretching (aka catching your breath), as my dormant competitive* side is not prepared to see my pace per mile take the hit.  Back home I cannot speak and have to lie on the floor to recover.  For this I like to be in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room.  The kitchen is two steps down, so I can have my knees bent and my feet on the kitchen floor with the rest of my body in the dining room.  For some reason this is very comfortable, and feels correct. 

* I do not seek competition.  But I will rise to the occasion.  For instance, when I am at the gym, and someone decides - amongst a bank of empty treadmills** - to use the treadmill next to me.  Sometimes there's an obvious reasons for this - like a better view of the television.  Or you can sense that this is just their preferred, auto-pilot choice of treadmill.  But every so often, you get someone who's checking out your pace, and then deciding to make their treadmill just that little bit faster.  Gauntlet down!  In this situation, I am merciless.  I will (even at cost to my own personal injury) raise the stakes, and keep raising them. 

** This behaviour is only triggered in these situations.  If the gym is full, and someone uses the treadmill next to me because it's available, I have no issues with whatever speed they choose to run.  It's when it's a DELIBERATE challenge.  Utterly ridiculous.  But slyly enjoyable. 

Now the GPS system is throwing my own shit back at me.  Serves me right. 

Day 285: Black Gold

This afternoon the plan is to go any buy some more work clothes.  It doesn't happen.  Instead I go to the forest and pillage the blackberry bushes.  I think others have been there before me, as initially it doesn't look promising. 

However, if you are prepared to brave the nettles and push yourself into the middle of a thicket (and I am), there is treasure to be had.  At a price.  I emerge triumphant but scratched and stung, with hands stained guiltily purple.  It is foraging, and free for all, but it still feels like scrumping.  I smuggle my box of blackberries in my bag, and hide my hands in my pockets from the searching eyes of dog walkers.  On one occasion, when caught RIGHT in a bramble bush by a elderly couple, I ridiculously hold the box behind my back, and stand as if this is the perfect place from which to admire the view.  Idiot. 

It is worth it.  I have spoils.  And I have also noted further plunder potential - sloes and hazelnuts.  Just need to deal with the guilt issues.  Or get some camouflage.

Camouflage.  Easier.       

Day 284: Bear Necessities

What do you do if you meet a bear?  Today I meet a woman who recently encountered a bear not once, but twice. 

The action takes place in the Canadian wilderness.  She and her husband are hiking, and have considered the whole bear encounter scenario, but not seriously. What are the chances?  Pretty good, it seems.  They stumble across a bear in their path, so back away slowly and carefully.  Bear disappears.  Big relief all round.  Some time later a noise makes them turn round, to find the bear BEHIND them, and ADVANCING.  There are no climbable trees nearby.  So, being religious, they do the only thing they can think of.  Pray.  Magically the bear stops.  Disappears into the undergrowth.  Panic over.

No chatting.  Or praying. 

Inadvertently, they have done exactly the right thing.  Not necessarily the religious content (although whatever floats your boat), but talking out loud, calmly.  The 'talking out loud' tells the bear you're human, and the 'calmly' tells the bear you do not consider them a threat.  So they tend to back off.  The words you use are immaterial.  It's not what you say, but the way you say it.

So now we know. 

I give you this story as it is the single most exciting thing about today.  And who knows?  It might prove useful.  (Please note - this is a technique for black bears.  Not grizzlies.)

Day 283: Daarn Sing + Tears in Migh Yighs

Today's job requires me to sit in on the last fifteen minutes of the very dull introduction to a graduate induction programme.  The woman doing the talking has a very strong Welsh accent, which is quite soothing and pleasant.  I drift off mentally to a blur of business speak, but wake up at the words 'Midge Ure review'. 

It takes a couple of beats before I realise (disappointingly) that what she actually said was 'mid-year review.'  (Try it out.  Say 'Midge Ure review' and you've got a pretty convincing Welsh accent on the go.)

How I wish I had been right first time.  That's a properly maverick and despotic way to make sure your graduates are up to speed.

'No, I don't want to know about your lousy business development ideas.  Just gimme a critique of 'Vienna' and make it quick, goddammit!'

 

Day 282: Book Thief

Work is still slow during the dog-end of August, so I make the most of a free day by taking my book to Heartwood Forest.  Behind one of the pieces of ancient woodland, there's a brilliantly sturdy bench, warm in the sun, and looking out over rolling arable fields. 

The forest behind me is very lively, full of creaks and rustles, but I don't see a soul as I shamelessly steal a couple of hours of reading.                       

There are blackberries ripening in the hedges.  I will be back soon.  With a container and crumble-intent. 

Day 281: Bank Holiday Bacon

Woke up with a pressing need for a bacon sandwich.  No bacon in the house.  Faced with the walk up to town, I would normally find my need less pressing than I originally thought.  Not today.  A purposeful march to the supermarket.  Bacon sourced (not any old bacon - 'Finest' bacon).  Head straight for the self-service tills, and scan bacon, money at the ready.  Not so fast!  'Approval needed.' 

For bacon?  What if I don't get approval?  What if the management at Tesco's (other supermarkets are available - and indeed preferable, but this is a proximity decision) somehow know that my diet is already dangerously high in salt, which I love, and they decide not to grant me approval? 

It's fine.  The guardian of the self-service tills doesn't give me a second look as she swipes approval.  She's preoccupied with doing induction training for a new member of staff, who is getting all the attention.  Unsurprising - particularly as she (the inductee) is around six foot five and distinctly Adam's apple-ish. 

I like your hiring policy, Tesco's.  But you're going to have to lift the bacon approval requirement if you really want to win me round. 

 

 

Day 280: Sign of the Times

Walking through Soho I am very pleased to spot the old facade of 'The Hobbit' - the newsagent on Wardour Street that closed a few years ago.  I remember it with more modern signage, but I vastly prefer this version, which smacks of the 1970s, and has been hidden under more up-to-date layers for years.  Only to come to light in this most recent renovation. 

I'm a sucker for any of this sort of thing.  I like ghost signs - painted on the sides of buildings back in the thirties, and so worn they're barely visible.  Or when you're decorating and you find wallpaper strata, revealing decades of design choices.  But I like shop fronts best - mainly because they are so well-preserved behind new frontages.  I love that they've been sitting there, quietly dormant as years come and go outside.   

Marks left behind and forgotten.  In my old Muswell Hill flat, just outside the back door, carved deep in the brick work, were several sets of initials and the date 1963.  Who put them there?  Why?  And were they wearing flowers in their hair?  How many other people wondered these things, in the decades before I lived in the flat?  Were they wearing loon pants?  Satin trousers?  Ra-ra skirts?  Thinking about this gives me a strange feeling.  Like cheese jaw. 

Feel the urge to carve a message somewhere.  Not just on the internet. 

Off to find a penknife.