Tender Tarmac

Winning vista

A Good Friday decision to spend Easter in the Peak District.  With spontaneity comes a dearth of accommodation, which leads to the unexpected.  A Spanish-themed hotel, located on a dual carriageway, opposite a 24hr Tesco?  Yes, thanks.  I enjoy the check-in process, especially when the receptionist asks 'Would you prefer a view of the dual carriageway or the car park?'

Tough question.  Both have merits, obviously.  Car park wins, but I can't pretend it's an easy choice.

Mam Tor.  A brute.

Hills and lambs and primroses and cowslips. And landslips. At the bottom of Mam Tor, the road just falls away into a yawning maw. Odd to see the authority of tarmac and white lines overruled by nature.

Owned by Mam

The earth has swallowed some parts completely, and crumpled others.  Like you might effortlessly screw up the foil of a Lindt bunny.*.

Thick chocolate (apparently)

Back at the hotel, I marvel at the tender beauty of the dual carriageway and the car park.  So fragile.

(* I use this as a random example, and not because I am the sort of person who would eat a Lindt bunny in its entirety, especially as it is common knowledge that the chocolate in the ear area is particularly thick, so this would make consuming a whole rabbit an act of immense greed.)  

Numan Intersection

I must face the sad fact that the season for Brussels sprouts is coming to an end.  Last night's candidates were sorry specimens, starting to yellow and soften.  I have late-onset enthusiasm for sprouts, having scorned them for years.  Hence the zeal - making up for lost time.

Over the weekend I watched a documentary about Gary Numan, 1980s electro-robot.  Like sprouts, he has never appealed to me.  Easy to dismiss and ridicule in his tin-foil and eyeliner.

I have changed my position.  I'd failed to understand how radically he influenced music.  I'd disregarded how heavily he's been sampled and covered.  And how fresh his old tracks still sound. Not softened, not yellowing.

There's a Venn within all of this.  You work it out.  I'm not going to spoon-feed you.

 

Perfume Ponce

Today reality imitates art as Richard E Grant officially becomes a 'perfumed ponce' with the launch of his first

Essence of Petunia

scent.  He's been busy with PR, and I've read several interviews detailing his life as an ardent nose - sniffing everything from old exercise books to narcissi.  As a fellow nose, I understand this.  I think I care about smell more than most. I have even broken off associations on the basis that someone smells wrong.  Not necessarily bad, just wrong. To me.  Similarly, I occasionally find people who smell right.  Not necessarily perfumed, just right.  To me.

Handily close

I am free for the first day in months, and the air is full of cherry blossom, magnolia and hyacinth.  Closer to the market, it's bacon - from the breakfast van that serves early morning rolls to the traders.  Frying bacon in fresh air always makes me think of Glastonbury - mingling with wood smoke and crushed grass and grass smoke.  Undercut by the impressive tang of the long-drops.  Pity the foolish virgins who think they've bagged a good spot, conveniently close to conveniences.  I love the pace of festival mornings, as people emerge bleary-eyed, croaky-throated, in search of tea.  I've no interest in boiling under nylon, so I'm up and out, watching the site come to life.  

No tickets this year.  Having to make do with an alternative.  Here's hoping it smells right.  Not wrong.       

Sideways Move

Reminded how much
I dislike Garfield.  Prick.

I am very much enjoying one of the neighbourhood cats. Overweight and exercise-shy, with plumy tail. The first time I saw him, he was eyeing the garden gate.  He concluded pretty quickly that there was no way in hell he would be jumping over, so he attempted to squeeze through the gap beneath.  Optimistic.

This cat crawls better

He ended up sprawled and pancaked, like one of those Garfield toys.  And stuck.  After fruitless failed-marine attempts at crawling, he turned on his side and bicycled wildly with back legs, slowly winning ground.

I've just spotted him again.  He doesn't even bother with considering a jump or a belly-down approach.  He has learned from experience, and now goes straight to his Heath Robinson sideways bicycle move.

If I had a cat, I'd want one like him.

Penalty Kicks

This morning the machine in the station car park greedily ate my £7.40 and refused to issue a ticket. Unsurprisingly I didn't have a further £7.40 in coins (cards not accepted; change not given - helpful), so I had to sprint to WHSmith to break a tenner. Missed my train. Stood on dank platform, £14.80 down and disgruntled.

Left a note with the station supervisor for the car park attendant. Not holding out much hope for action, but feeling that I had to make some attempt - however feeble - to right wrongs.

A long and tough day. Approaching my car, I see the unmistakable yellow of a penalty notice stuck to my windscreen. I must have been in such a rush this morning that I forgot to display the replacement ticket on which I expended so much time, energy and cash. This is turning into a parking fiasco.

Open the penalty envelope.

Inside is a voucher for a day's free parking.

Sprouts of Recovery

The last two weeks of March have been looming ominously in my calendar for some time.  I oversubscribed myself some time ago, past-me pimping future-me in multiple acts of meanness.  I am in the eye of the storm right now, but as the phrase suggests, it's calmer in the middle than on the edges.  One week down, one to go.  And (scratched record) the intent not to do this to myself again.  (Although experience suggests this is much like a teenage boy saying he will no longer look at online porn - ie laughable.)

I will eat all the sprouts.  All of them.

Spent yesterday wrangling an 'introverted' group (frequently - not always - an excuse for being as cuntishly inconsiderate as those who proclaim themselves to be 'forthright').  After all the necessary wheedling and coaxing, I had to lie on the floor to recover after they'd left the room.  Spent.  On the way home I dropped in on a friend.  She'd spent the day pottering and was just considering doing some meditation.  I feel I've taken a wrong path somewhere...

On the plus side, ROAST BRUSSEL SPROUTS!  A game-changer.  They - if nothing else - will get me through the next week.  Seriously.
   

Fathletic Prowess

Stop panicking, man

I've been banging on about this health assessment for some time. The results were far from expected. Turns out I have a heart rate that would make Hannibal Lecter look like he's suffering from an anxiety disorder. A stress-recovery response that puts me, hilariously, into the 'elite athlete' category. And a spine that could not score higher for regularity and flexibility.

Daisies before balls

Admittedly, I am hiding these Olympian gifts under a considerable and shameful blanket of blubber, but nonetheless they are there. And this is a revelation to me, and my sense of identity. I am the offspring of a fat father, and an asthmatic mother, and the currency in our house was words and music. So I trawled through the all the grades on piano and bassoon, and won awards for public speaking. I was fat, but so were all my family - and I accepted this as the natural order, picking daisies on the hockey field and staring blankly at any ball that came my way. It was almost a matter of pride that I was last choice for team selection.

With adulthood came the recognition that exercise was probably a good idea. So I started taking some, in a dutiful fashion. Never enthusiastically.

But now my feelings have changed. Who knew that I'd been hiding an engine like that under my shitty bonnet? Now I just want to know how fast I can go. This is better than a Viking hoard turning up on Antiques Roadshow.

We are not always who we think we are*.

(*Though would still ignore a ball if it headed in my direction.  So don't pick me for your team.)