Friday, March 31, 2017

Drink me

There aren't many things I like about my husband (as you may have already gathered) but there's one thing I like.

Nay reader, love.

And I mean LOVE.

His Vitality membership. For those of you not blessed with this, it's essentially a membership (paid for by companies who love their employees) where the employee is rewarded with gifts when they exercise.

Every time Ginger Beard completes a certain number of steps, Vitality rewards him with a Starbucks voucher. I then force him to send me said voucher and get free coffee.

That's right, his getting fitter, supports me getting fatter (I love me a caramel macchiato).

Here's what annoys me:

When he's not moving.

Because when his little, oddly shaped feet aren't dancing about, coffee is not on the menu.

When he comes home from work and is all, 'How was your day? I missed you!'

I'm like, 'Shut up and start running. I don't have time for this shit.'

And then I push him out the door, and close my eyes, and try to forgive him for being slow.

Honestly, I resent it when he sleeps.

His sleeping benefits me not at all.

This is what they meant when they told me that marriage would be tough I guess. You have to acknowledge their shortcomings and then try very, very hard, to change them.

But I wonder if it would just be quicker to divorce him and then marry someone like Usain Bolt?

Can you imagine that volume of coffee?

I can. Despite the fact that due to to my excessively high volume of caffeine intake, my vision is strobing.

Usain takes so many steps, that unlike Ginger Beard, he would have time to eat dinner and see his friends AND keep me in coffee.

The best ideas come to me on Fridays. Good ol' Fridays.








Friday, February 17, 2017

Lose like a boss

Guys, I am very clearly on a losing streak.

Yes, you might use my choice of a life partner as evidence of this, but it's not something I'm ready to talk about.

Just as I was about to type out this post, I knocked an entire cup of tea over my desk. Now, in all my clumsy years, never have I been able to empty out the whole cup. Furthermore, never have I so expertly targeted my phone, keyboard and mouse, so that when tilting these items slightly, rivers of tea fell down to my socks.

I am not surprised by this.

Why?

Because this week (and hopefully this week only) I am losing.

Luckily, this is not unfamiliar territory to me. You don't get drive by ketchuped in your youth and emerge from the experience thinking that luck is on your side. No, you ready yourself for the next saucing. You make a mental note to purchase a range of waterproof jackets and start to wash your hair less frequently, because, well, you just never know when it's coming. Only that it is coming.

I started trying to get fit this week, started with an early morning lane swim. When they're cleaning the swim changing rooms, you can only use the dry sports changing. Which is fine, until you return from the pool, and realise there's no privacy, just one wide open room. I'm not good with nudity.

Despite my foul mouth, and love of all things dark and inappropriate, I want everyone's bits (including my own) wrapped up and out of sight. It's the chink in my otherwise shameless armour. My close family could not be more different - and used to swan about, bathroom door wide open, tanning in the garden stark naked. Whilst I would run quickly away from the slightest sight of buttock.

Thus began the mammoth challenge of me trying to cover myself with my small towel, whilst simultaneously trying to dry and dress. Luckily everyone else was in front of me, so I just had to focus on covering my front (which is where most of the offensive articles are). So I was quite happy to bend over in order to dry my toes etc. When I was fully dressed, I turned around to find that a full length mirror was directly behind me.

I've not yet made any friends at the pool.

ALSO

Last night I tried a Hula Hoop exercise class. I assumed (and I think it was a fair assumption, judging by my masterful ability over the skipping rope as a child and the level of dance moves I have thrown out in clubs across the UK) that I would be simply marvellous.

I was not marvellous.

I was humiliated.

When I wasn't simulating aggressive sex with the invisible man, I was picking my hoop off the floor. Picking it up, over and over, after it had smacked into my shins, for an hour, whilst everyone else, fat or thin, fit or not, and even my own 65 year old mother, performed effortless spin magic.

Keep smiling the instructor said.

Keep smiling? It was effort enough not to burst into tears folks. But I didn't feel like uttering the truth, which would've been something like

 'I'm sorry that I'm almost thirty and yet somehow crying like a hysterical child in your class, but I'm losing a lot recently, including, since you asked, being rejected from the Jerwood Writing Mentorship Scheme, which I was foolishly holding up as some kind of last ditch attempt to retain my sense of self as a writer. And I have mistakenly assumed that if I came here tonight and smashed this hoola hoop lark out the fucking park, then everything would be okay, but I was wrong. Because I am very clearly shit. And very clearly red. And life is not what Disney sold me. Not at all.'

So I didn't cry.

I HOPE YOU'RE HAVING A REALLY GREAT TIME.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Yes Sir, No Sir.

Been going through a bag of old school reports. Illuminating stuff. I was a very special thiirteen year old:

History - 'I am enjoying our new topic on slavery.'
R.E - 'This year in R.E I have really enjoyed the topic on racism.'

Maybe this is why I don't have any friends who aren't both White and British. Who enjoys the historical struggles faced by ethnic minorities? ME.

I was also a shitty fifteen year old:

'My weakeness currently is 'apparently' in maths.'

It really was. I was shit at maths. A girl called Yasmin threatened to attack me if I didn't do her homework and I was like, 'Look, I'm sorry, because I really don't want to be stabbed, but you will fail maths if I do your homework.' Then she laughed, and told everyone on our table that I was actually alright. And she never attacked me.

Come to think of it, bad things happened to me regularly in maths. Like, once a boy touched my thigh by accident then turned a worrying shade of purple and never talked to me again. It's a shame because we used to have some top quality conversation. But I guess my legs are pretty intimidating at the best of times.

Also one of my math's teachers was fired, becuase he was arrested for growing weed in his garage.

I had to take extra math's lessons in my spare time. It's amazing that I have a healthy relationship with my mother.

ALSO - and this is just a school thing in general, I once started a petition against the two most popular girls in school called the 'I hate Clare and Emma Petition.' I've changed their names in case they read this and come for me. I really don't think I understood what a petition was. But a lot of people signed it. And then Clare's sister found me and tried to throw me through a window on the second floor of the building. But my history teacher, drawn over by the crowd screaming for my blood, interrupted and saved my life. I can't remember his name, but he used to carry a large volume of pencils in his pockets which made him both a painful person to bump into in the corridor and a popular target for penis jokes. However, he was probably more well liked than me at this particular juncture.

You might be thinking that I was very unpopular at school. But you'd be wrong. I bought my trousers from M&S, was only comfortable in flat shoes and was once in a band naievly named, 'Threesome.' I spent many lunch breaks on daddy long legs killing sprees (their small deaths made me feel safer in the world), and got very upset when people borrowed my gel pens, then failed to return them.

That is all.