Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring

I was rudely startled awake by my mobile phone ringing it's very loud 'classic bell' at 6.40am this morning from under my pillow. 

The reason it was under my pillow in the first place was because the alarm on it was set to go off on a gentle vibrate at 7.40am in order to get up, drag Oliver out of bed, throw on my clothes and go get my parents for a lift to the airport.  The phone call was my Dad asking me to come 15 minutes earlier. 

I ask you.

When my Dad is up - everybody's up.  It's been like that since I was a kid.  Some things never change.  Still, he gave me a guilt-filled tenner at the airport, so Oliver and I scoffed a Subway on the way home.  Hee hee. 

I have laboured through the daily chore that is the maths session, losing my temper in a quite bonkers way when I discovered that Oliver had used the calculator to find out how many 4s there were in 1024.  He is, I find to my distress, a naturally lazy child - looking for the line of least resistance in things which he need not.  In my opinion.  Which is the same as a God-given truth, as everyone knows.

His waily defence was that I told him he could use the calculator for 'awkward' sums, and that there were 4 digits involved.  Bloody hell.  Between hissing and spitting uncontrollably I tried to explain that by 'awkward' I meant four million divided by 14.8, or something like that.  Poor, poor child.  All he will learn over the years by being home educated is that his mother should be institutionalised. 

calories schmalories.

Last Sunday whilst scoffing my lunch at work, I was reading the magazine which comes with the Mail On Sunday.  In it was an article about three sisters who started off a café together, and now it is one of those trendy/vintage hangouts for locals and visitors alike.

I was drawn to this recipe:

and dutifully toddled off to purchase ingredients post-fasting days last week.

In another fuck me sideways moment, I realised that this recipe calls for nearly 8 bars of chocolate. 

EIGHT!!

This is not a low, or even reasonable calorie-loaded treat.  I soldiered on, and produced thirty-two, chocolate-covered, biscuit-filled babies. 

Oh, they is nice, but I am truly not convinced they are worth the cellulite.  In fact I have worked myself up about this to the point of emailing the sisters a piece of my mind.  This is basically a biscuit cake/fridge cake/rocky road thing and is so unnecessarily sugar and fat heavy it has made me feel quite cross.  Particularly as they tout it as something the local children can't get enough of.  Whilst bemoaning the chocolate outrage to a colleague at work, she told me of her recipe, and bought in her version for me to try. 

Here they are together, mine and hers.  Hers is on the left.

Visually, not much difference, and they don't taste significantly different either.

And, as an added bonus,  you can't feel your own teeth rotting in your head when you tuck into her version. 

Chocolate Splodge.

Meh. 

last night there was wine

A little 'health' update.

I did 'Dry January' this year, largely in a bid to instantly cut the wine habit I had allowed to spiral out of control in December, (at practically a bottle a night for the last week of the year, I felt this was probably dipping into the realms of excessive drinking), and found this worked well for me.

I can confirm that January was not a barrel of laughs as a result of  no alcohol - that would be a big fat lie as looking forward to tipples at the weekend is standard adult practice methinks.  But I did find, much to my great surprise, that I felt 'happier' - which is weird.  Maybe years of wine has caused happiness mood swings - times of feeling wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee as I look forward to an evening of a nice dry white, and times of feeling boooo hissss as I endure 24 hours of feeling a bit lousy due to an excess of wheeeeeee the night before.  With no alcohol in my system, I felt a general sense of calm wellbeing, which is hitherto unknown in my world. 

So, with the advent of February I swore I would not slip back into old habits, and I consume no more than 2 bottles of wine per week.  Still probably a tad more than the Government health limits, but hey. 

Last night there was nearly a whole bottle left in the fridge.  Whilst making a baked bean and mushroom lasagne, I drank it.  Quickly.  Then I felt very pissed.  Then I recall being on the Internet and thinking what a good idea it would be to purchase things whilst tiddly, thereby removing the sense of guilt associated with buying things you don't really need or can afford. 

Omigod.

This morning, after I had stumbled out of bed at 4am for lots of water and paracetemol, I was beset by the terrible vision of perfume and handbags.

MUCH to my enormous relief, after checking Amazon and Ebay  I have not got a vat of Narciso Rodriguez eau de parfum on the way accompanied by a few Orla Kiely sling bags.  Seems I have a smidgeon of self control after all.  But the fact that these thoughts were even in my head is alarming to say the least.

I will not be drinking wine tonight. 

I have been hauling my cookies out of bed twice a week for the last couple of weeks to swim at 7am at the Golf Club.  More endure than enjoy, although I feel great about life and myself as I plough up and down the chlorine highway with my goggles on a la Rebecca Adlington.  (but not as fit or fast obvs.)

My weight remains constant (and constantly a stone lighter than this time last year) thanks to the 5:2 diet which has been the easiest and bestest diet ever.

I am doing Pilates at home regularly, and really love the way it makes me feel - longer and leaner - really.  I can feel muscles venturing out beneath the layers of flab on my arse cheeks and stomach and this is a nice surprise I can tell you.  This DVD is ace - in 10 minute sections, very do-able.  No, I am not on commission.

In crochet news, the Mosaic Blanket, more commonly known as 'that bloody blanket', is now demanding 12 squares per day in order to reach completion in April.  This is because I put in on to a proper double bed to see how it measures up instead of plopping it on our king size and saying 'oh yeah - that many squares, that'll do' as I have been doing up until now.  Gulp. It needs to be at least 28 wide by 32 (if I can get away with it) or 34 (if not).  I have so far done 575 squares.  Quite a few left to do then.

Meh.

After you, Madam.

Stupid buggers.

This cat flap has been in situ for many, many months now, and they use it quite gratefully in the wee hours.  However, during the day, when we are in, they sit and gaze mournfully at the door handle, mewing pitifully until either a) one of us loses our temper and jumps up to open the door for them or b) they get shoved through the cat flap by the scruff of their neck like a turkey being stuffed with ill humour on Christmas morning.  More often than not though, I decide to brazen it out and ignore them, occasionally screaming 'go out the frigging flap' across the kitchen through gritted teeth.  For this I am treated to a look of contempt which would curdle milk at twenty paces and that only a cat can pull off.

Meh.

The Cat Flap War rages on.

Last week we joined the local Golf and Country Club.  Tres posh.  I have the thought in my head that Oliver, being home educated, is disadvantaged of usual physical activities open to your regular schoolboy.  ie PE lessons and twatting about in the playground twice a day.  This led me to researching sporty type locations - one being David Lloyd health clubs. 

My goodness, (or words to that effect) that is one mightily priced place.  For the price of a weekly shop I would be allowed to visit between the hours of 6.30am and 4pm.  Since I only wanted to be able to play tennis and swim with Oliver, and maybe cough up for the extra pilates class now and again, I felt this was unfairly overpriced and said so.  Smug Adam, who was showing me around, said that they could not take away the gym membership to reduce the price as it was 'hard to police' who was using it, and that I would probably find I would use it anyway.  Hah, NOT Adam.  Just get a door and a digi lock or swipe pad like other gyms, you knob.  He annoyed me.  A lot.  I didn't join.

Instead I have taken on an extra shift for work and coughed for the local G&CC where I don't feel duty bound to enter the gym AT ALL and Oliver can play tennis, golf and swim to his heart's content.  That is, whenever I can be arsed to drive down there.  The biggest draw is the fact they have an outdoor pool with space to 'lounge', so my keenness to join up is largely driven by my vision of hot summer afternoons spent sunbathing and splashing about in cool water.  This will, no doubt be entirely spoilt by Oliver whining at me that he is bored as there will be no electricity supply to plug himself into for the purposes of uploading himself into the internet.

I am already bracing myself for this argument. 

I shall overcome.

In other news we have been driving to the nether reaches of the country for Oliver to play Pokemon, that is, Wakefield, which is about as far north as I have ever been apart from when we flew to Iceland. 

 

 

I felt like a softy southerner the minute I got out of the car.  I kid you not, I struggled to understand much of what was said to me throughout the day, as people tended to talk north language which I am unfamiliar with.  This said, the general friendliness of people did outstrip what I have experienced down this way, so maybe there is some truth in the north-south divide.  Oliver did not have a good tournament, coming in 14th, but as this is around his National Ranking, he can't really expect much more than that I suppose.  He met up with old friends from previous tournaments though, and it is this camaraderie within the Pokémon community which keeps me keen to encourage the whole hobby.  I see lads (we are talking men in their twenties here, remember I am quite old now) turning up and greeting each other with such warmth and humour that I see it and want that for my son.  I saw it at the Worlds in Vancouver last year too - the friendship between players which has been established over the years.  Nice.

I have, against all my principles, started a facebook account for Oliver.  I bloody hate facebook.  With a passion.  HOWEVER - I can see that for Oliver, with all his Pokémon friends the other side of Bristol, it is bloody useful.  I have told him that I do not want to see 'friends' on there who live down the road or relations we see on a regular basis.  Pointless.  In my opinion.  Which is right, obvs.

I am one month away from completing this:

Nuff said.