I Always Only Blog At The Start Of The Year
I am reading The Master and Margarita, which Abi bought me for Christmas. I still mainly like to watch Harry Potter films. Last night I drank two beers and one glass of Scotch. I am going to lose weight this year and stop snoring and be a better person all round. Sound familiar?
We have a baby now. Here she is. She pretty much occupies our life at the moment.
I really hope that 2012 is a bit quieter than 2011. Last year was a bit too hectic for my liking.
Motivation to read
So far this year, books have been off the agenda. Not enough time, not enough energy. The exception has been the Harry Potter series, which has been good for providing a bit of paper-based nourishment but perhaps not a worthwhile solution to the mini-crisis.
(Another notable exception is JD Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, which currently props the TV forward so you can see the screen properly. Useful thickness).
This has happened before, and though I’m not one to force myself to do things to break the funk, some action is now required. It’s nearly the end of April, so that’s almost four months away from literature. Of course, no reading means no writing, which is another incentive to get back on the saddle.
I’m starting with an old favourite, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. The intention, if all goes to plan, is to progress from this to The Year of the Flood, a semi-sequel from the same author. Then, once I’ve put aside the pennies for it, The Pale King, David Foster Wallace’s recently posthumously published final novel.
Of course, plans are made to be broken. Most likely I’ll report back in a month’s time a snivelling wreck, having spent several weeks festering with a Waking the Dead boxset. We’ll see.
(Haven’t yet turned a page and already planning a new bit of writing. Funny how these things work).
Week Nine
This year rumbles on. A few weeks ago I was REALLY FUCKING ILL. I came home from work one afternoon and went to bed, then didn’t really wake up properly for about three days, then started to feel better, then felt a lot worse, then went to the doctor to get some antibiotics and gradually started to feel better. It was mad.
Around the end of this illness we went down to Cornwall to see my sister and her family. They have bought a rather nice house in the middle of nowhere with a massive garden. We had a great time.
Today we went to Ikea. There was a list of things to buy but we didn’t manage any of it. Instead we each ate a plate of disgusting meatballs and got a bit stressed. We didn’t even get any Daim bars. Then we came home, and I thought to myself on the way just how much more stressful it would have been with a baby in tow.
The house is not ready. Baby, do not come yet.
Week Six
Have spent most of today watching Equilibirum. I watched this film first about three or four years ago and loved it. Today, I also loved it. Obviously silly but strangely emotive. Its reason for existence seems to be to tell The Matrix to fuck off.
At this week’s midwife appointment Abs was, supposedly, 30 weeks pregnant. This differs by a couple of weeks according to the due date. I’m not sure if this means the baby might come early. Perhaps, perhaps not. She’ll come when she’s ready.
I read a small portion of From Lad to Dad this week. My friend leant it to me, it’s about pregnancy from the father’s point of view. I found it a bit infuriating, to be honest. It seems that the normal response to finding out your partner is pregnant is to panic, or think that your life is over, or both. This wasn’t my experience and I’m sure it isn’t the experience of most prospective fathers. I can find no expectant father book that doesn’t come from this point of view.
Have also been reading the fourth Harry Potter book and dipping into The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo on odd occasions.
Last night we rented Legion, a film about a purge of the earth by a disillusioned god. A kind of modern-day Noah’s Ark story. Paul Bettany played a rebellious angel defying orders by protecting an American woman who was carrying in her stomach The Hope of the World. It was tripe.
On Friday night I watched The Men Who Stare at Goats. Also tripe.
I think we’re watching In Bruges with some friends tonight, and then perhaps Abs and I will go to the cinema tomorrow for Paul. Don’t know why I feel the need to watch so many films at the moment.
I have lost 11lb, although today I ate half a bag of Tangfastics and had fried eggs on toast for lunch. So maybe I would have put on a pound again by tomorrow.
Week Four
January has skated past rather quickly.
My weight has dropped by 9 pounds, as of a few days ago. On and over target.
Reading has been patchy. Starts but very little in the way of finishes. Harry Potter is about my limit at the moment. Today I started to read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson, having watched the film during the week. It’s gripping, although I wish I didn’t already know the outcome of the story.
Aside from that, we have been busy preparing the house for our oncoming arrival in April (hopefully - perhaps May). This week we’re arranging for some guys to come in and tile our kitchen floor. We also had a clear out of all sorts of old shit. And decorating. We’ve been decorating.
Things are going to start to change indeterminately in the next month. Abi finishes work and is already ever expanding, her stomach a constant reminder of what’s to come. Our lives are pretty much caught up with the whole thing at the moment.
Week One
I don’t really have any resolutions for the new year. What I do have is a determination to lose weight. This week I have been eating much less than I would do normally and trying to insert some activity into my otherwise sedentary lifestyle. As a result I’ve lost close to three pounds. This is roundabout where I want to be. The purpose (rather than engaging in ‘fad’ diets) is to change the way I live, to take better care of myself. The aim is improved health, as much as it weight-loss.
On Friday we went to see The King’s Speech. It was our first trip to the cinema in 2011 and a good reason to start. Original but strangely comforting, funny, moving, dramatic. It had all the components of a good story and at the same time was extremely cinematic, which gives it the edge over other royalty-based films such as The Queen. Colin Firth was convincing, as you’d expect. There’s talk of him being Oscar-nominated. On the way home we talked about whether or not he deserves an award for that kind of performance. He was brilliant, as I’ve said, but was the role challenging enough? We thought of The Reader, in which Kate Winslett played an utterly disgusting character yet made us feel sorry for her, root for her, and feel upset when she took her own life at the close. No comparison between the two.
All I’ve been able to read is Harry Potter. I’ve started with The Philosopher’s Stone, reading a chapter to the bump every night. It’s nice to read aloud, although the crushing repetition of adverbs is hard to swallow, and makes me a bit angry.
I finished Stewart Lee’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate (incorrectly titled as How I Escaped a Fate Worse than Death in previous blog posts) between Christmas and New Year. It was hilarious, and also quite touching. He segued nicely between his stand-up routine and an account of a debilitating and quite embarrassing illness. At times it was a bit wanky. The endless footnotes got annoying. Overall a funny and clever man.
Statistics
I think I’ve managed to get a bearing on the data that I’ll set out to collect this year. It’s themed around movement and consumption, which sort of ties in with some of my aims (i.e. lose some weight, be more active, eat more responsibly and economically). So, I am tracking what I am trying to do. This means that the success of one relies upon the success of the other.
As previously mentioned, I’m avoiding the use of technology to record the data. I have a diary, which I will try to update at the end of every day. I like the idea of this and it has been useful so far (‘so far’ as in ‘the past three days’) as a way of downloading thoughts and information, helping to gain some perspective. It also means that I’m not weighing down this blog with stats about the amount of coffee I’ve drunk. There are some natural digital records (blog/Twitter posts for e.g.) which are helpful, as I don’t have to think much about keeping up with them.
In all honesty, I’m still sketchy on the point behind all this. What I do know is that I am endlessly fascinated by the Annual Reports put together by Nicholas Felton, and I want to create one of my own. Maybe I’ll understand why later in the year.
Chicken Basque
Not sure if this is ‘official’. It’s how I make it.
You need: Enough chicken on the bone (i.e. not the breasts) for four, two red peppers, one large onion, three or four garlic cloves, a couple of chillis, a good length of chorizo, a handful of sundried tomatoes, a mug of basmati rice, chicken stock, white wine or cider.
Season the chicken pieces then brown them in a large, heavy frying pan. Put them skin side down first, then flip them over. When browned, transfer them to a plate.
Chop up the onion, pepper, chillis, garlic, sundried tomatoes, chorizo and add them to the pan you browned the chicken in (with extra oil if it looks a bit dry in there). Once they have some colour, add in the rice. Allow this to get nicely coated in oil, then cover it all with the chicken stock and white wine.
Put the chicken pieces back into the pan (skin-side up), cover it with tin foil and then put a lid on it, so it’s nicely sealed. Turn down the heat and leave for an hour, checking now and again that the rice isn’t too dry (if it is, add some stock).
After the hour’s up, you might want to bung the chicken in a really hot oven for ten minutes or so, to make the skin all crispy. Or not. This recipe should probably have oranges in as well, I think.
2011 begins
It seems that I can post from my phone again, following a hiatus while I was unable to do this. I can’t sleep, so I’m alternating writing this blog with following a cricket match in Australia.
Christmas and New Year are fading memories. Today we put the house into order. I also spent some time nursing a quite dodgy stomach. Earlier we went for an hour’s walk along the seafront in Whitstable, then returned home like worn-out dogs.
There are resolutions too numerous to mention. Currently wrestling with whether or not it’s a good job to try and do too much at once. Logic says our brains have a limited capacity but also that our lives have a limited time.
One thing I’d like to get back to is some data collection. I’ve started this in long hand - a diary I keep by the side of the bed and plan to update every day. Whether I’ll keep it up or not and, if I do, what I’ll do with the data are questions I haven’t answered yet.
Going to try and sleep now.
Christmas
Christmas Day was a mess of various meats, pickles, pies, chocolate and an overly long and nearly-violent game of Pictionary. At the end we fell into an icy car and returned to Boughton and that was that. A fitful night’s sleep (populated by meat-based dreams) later and we arrive at Boxing Day. England are wiping the floor with the Australians at cricket, later there be football, we all have presents to play with and ‘Christmas Telly’ to watch. Recorded the Queen’s speech and a number of episodes of Born at Christmas, a couple of films, Doctor Who, that thing that David Walliams and Matt Lucas have done about an airport. Drivel, basically.
Revolutionary Road has now been superceded by two Christmas receipts: Stewart Lee’s How I Escaped a Fate Worse Than Death and Tom McCarthy’s C. That’s a fiction and a non-fiction, which is a good pair to be going on with. I’ve read Revolutionary Road before and the final fifty pages are the most depressing, so I’m happy to leave them to memories, until its next read.
The Stewart Lee book is an autobiography of sorts, about his return to stand-up comedy following a several-year hiatus. Included are transcripts from some of his live shows, with comprehensive footnotes explaining the genesis of his ideas. The footnotes are a bit heavy-handed in places, and I sometimes fail to understand why they’re not just included in the text, but overall the book is funny and interesting and well-written. I read some to our baby last night until Abi got fed up with my glasses poking her in the stomach.
C is a strange book, about what I know not. Currently, a baby has been born in the eighteen hundreds (I think?) to the sounds of the world’s first wireless transmission. What I do know is that Tom McCarthy has always written interesting books, even if they occasionally misfire. Remainder is about a man who receives a great deal of money as compensation for something falling on him, who then uses the money to reenact in minute detail very specific events from his life. It gets a bit much near the end, with the never-compromising level of detail, but it’s about ten times more fascinating than most novels. Tom McCarthy also wrote Tintin and the Secret of Literature, which is an analysis of the famous Herge creation and is a pretty-much perfect work of non-fiction.
I’ve also just had a bath. It was slightly too hot, and now I’m finding it hard to feel my feet. No matter.
