If anyone's interested, the Gods of Weather read my blog yesterday and decided to grant my wish for consistent weather. Sadly, they did this by crying with laughter at such a request, which resulted in pissing rain. All day long. Accompanied first by grey cloud, then in the early evening (when I escaped the office) by swirling mist. Very atmospheric and that, but not really what I was after, in the way of cheering up.
Oh well, I have been balancing up this lack of the new and exciting, weather-wise, by continuing my programme of Inaugural Experiences. Yes, here at Purple Towers, I have been throwing myself at New Things with what might be termed gay abandon. Undeterred by my giant Fail at the step class (my bum still hurts if I sit for too long on it, or on too hard a surface, which is, in itself, a good reason for moving around more, rather than slumping in front of the telly), I have tried not one but TWO new exercise things recently.
First up: boxing. Cheerful James decided that I needed to do something different, and in his great wisdom produced a pair of electric blue boxing gloves, and velcro-ed me in. I had visions of myself as Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby. Minus the horrifying chewing-your-own-tongue-off-to-kill-yourself denouement, obviously. Nipping about, punching things in a way that suggested I was really good at exercise. After all these months in the gym, I thought I could probably manage that. How hard can it be, it's just hitting stuff. I mean, I hit the printer in the office at least once a day. Let's get started! Turns out, I was more Hillary Clinton than Hilary Swank. Trying to co-ordinate hitting something with moving my feet simply wasn't going to happen. Trying to hit a pad at the right angle and the right speed is way trickier than it looks. After about a minute, my inner pacifist became my outer wimp and I wanted never to hit anything ever again. After twenty minutes of valiant flailing around, I complained that my wrists were hurting (they really were; anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that my wrists look like they were hastily assembled from pipe cleaners. It's a wonder they hold up my hands at all, frankly). I waved them at Cheerful James, wheedling, 'Look at my wrists! They're not built for this!' and he took pity on me, telling me he'd 'strap me up' next time. Crikey, there's an offer. No wonder I'm paying him by the hour.
Having been quite enthusiastic about the idea of boxing making me a bionically buff Hilary Swankenstein, I'm now hoping that it goes the way of kettlebells, which I've tried twice. The first time I just about got the technique (it's to do with your legs and hips - not your arms, which would seem more logical) and the second time I failed miserably. Haven't been near 'em since. So, we shall see about boxing; maybe a few goes and I'll get the hang of it and be punching my way round Edinburgh, running up and down Arthur's Seat like Rocky.
Second new exercisey thing: kayaking. Whooh, outdoors exercise! Revolutionary. Having dreaded a Zambesi-style white water rafting expedition, I was assured that a/ a child would be doing it with us, so it was going to be pretty tame and b/ I could be in a double one, so a large man could do most of the work instead of me. This turned out not to be the case, as chaps were in short supply (and most of them were married, so palled up with their partners), so I palled up with a very nice girl who looked like a sporty, efficient type. We somehow ended up at the front of the queue for kayaks - in for a penny, I thought, as I merrily suggested that we set off and show everyone how it was done. We'd had a five minute demo from a man with a paddle, so I reckoned we should just get on with it. As is usual in any situation where there are more than two people involved and there is something to prove, I then got insanely competitive and pretty much insisted on being at the front of the pack at all times and took some actual pride in getting all co-ordinated with my paddling partner (I was in the back seat, as it were). Despite this, it was proper fun (we saw cormorants, herons and shipwrecks, it being Cornwall and us being up muddy creeks); we got quite wet, but it was sunny and we ended up at a pub. With a large pack of men dressed up for a stag do to look at. Not sure I'd rush to do it again, but it's a nice way of traversing a river, and certainly less hard on the shoulders and the stress level than trying to steer a barge.
Now, the third thing is a proper turn up for the books. I have been shopping for a bikini. Not only have I been shopping for one, but I tried some on. And then bought the cheapest one I could find, as I will never wear it. Bikinis are for supermodels and mental people. Supermodels must of course show off as much flesh as possible on holiday - they're pretty much getting paid by the yard, given how tall everyone insists they have to be, so you might as well get your money's worth. But for everyone else, it's wearing your bra and pants in front of everyone. Why do people want to do this? If you said to your average woman, 'Here, wear a bra and pants - in lycra, but still, it's a bra and pants - down the high street', they'd all say no. Stick a pool or a beach in front of them, however and, brilliant! Here I am in my bra and pants! What could be more natural? Then you can have three months' worth of articles, from about May onwards, in women's magazines exhorting you to acquire a 'beach body' and giving you punitive diet and exercise regimes in order to achieve this nebulous goal. (Over the last five years or so, they have added an extra three pages per issue telling you how to do a flawless fake tan).
I, of course, have always merrily skipped past these articles, believing firmly in the Nigella-style 'burkhini' approach to summer holidays: take one swimming costume, layer it with an ankle-length sarong, top off with a shirt (possibly) and a very large hat. Then place yourself under an enormous umbrella. Read book until friends have tired of frying themselves in the sun in their ill-advised bikinis. Repeat for a week to ten days.
But now I am going to Ibiza (another first) and I have apparently got a new, bikini-worthy body (ha ha), I feel obliged to join in. We are going to have a private pool, after all. My friend has told me I have to have a bikini. I battled my way into the offending item in a strip-lit changing room and surveyed myself. This was weird. Why would I want anyone to see me in this little clothing? It's a nightmare. Everything looks pallid and wobbly. There is too much exposed. I'm not going to be sunbathing: I fry like a vampire at the mere sight of sunlight and am violently opposed to both ageing prematurely and skin cancer. Ergo, what's the point of this? You can't swim in it, the whole thing would fall off in seconds. I'm not confident enough to parade around, inwardly thinking, 'Look at my GREAT FIGURE!' I'm just a slightly smaller version of the rubbish-at-summer person I've always been. What I should really have been buying was a sarong, but I couldn't find one of those for love nor money. So, a bikini it is. I now have four days of manically reading articles on lunges and broccoli and trying to be a woman who 'does' holidays instead of merely tolerating them.
Wish me luck. But don't ask to see the photos - there won't be any. Have I ever shown you a photo of me in my bra and pants? Exactly.
Tuesday 21 June 2011
Monday 20 June 2011
Holiday! It Would be so Nice. Etc
I am finally going on holiday - for the first time since this time last year. I don't know how people who have loads of holidays cope with it - I've spent the last two days dodging the incessant rain, running around the shops trying to find shoes and Things For Going Out In. That are suitable for a temperature above 18 degrees, which, after a year of living in Edinburgh, is frankly unimaginable. It's very hard to shop for summer clothes when you are still wearing a winter coat. Towards the end of June. Wimbledon is on, and I'm STILL WEARING A WINTER COAT. And my heating remains on in the evenings.
Going away is stressful - you have to find someone to go away with, for a start (I'm not good on my own, abroad - I can't work a map and I'm useless at talking to strangers; I get lonely and really freaked out). This is hard if you're single and live at the other end of the country from nearly everyone you know (there's no casually finding out about an upcoming trip over a bottle of wine and just going, 'Can I come?'). Plus all my friends are Good at Holidays, and have them sorted out months, if not years in advance. They have plans to visit places like Argentina, and Mexico and Bali, which require flights and accommodation to be booked months ahead - not to mention factoring in things like when it won't be too hot/cold/expensive/full of children on half-term breaks. One friend is really into sailing, which requires you to be both hearty and good at drinking; I may go to the gym a lot, but I'm still not hearty, and I can't keep up with the drinking - I manage a total blow-out about once a quarter, then have to lie very still for three days afterwards, groaning. Combine that with sea-sickness and it's not a holiday, it's a punishment. Most other friends have partners, and once you're partnered, it never occurs to you to ask your single friend if she wants to go away with you. I suspect the dread word 'swingers' might be lurking, subconsciously. 'Well, I'd love to ask her if she wants to come away with us, she's fun'. 'No, Martin, what if she thinks that we're SWINGERS, and that we want to have a THREESOME? We can't risk it'.
Then even if you manage to find a holiday partner and a mutually agreed destination, you have to synchronise diaries to find a time when you can both actually leave work for a week, or, God forbid, a fortnight. 'I can't go then, I've got a hen do/wedding/40th birthday/massive family gathering'. 'I can only do the first week in September - then I have to prep for our annual conference/sort out a massive ad campaign and then move house'. Everyone is insanely busy and ramming as much as they possibly can into their lives. A holiday? To relax? The whole idea of it seems like a contradiction in terms. Not to mention the amount of money it costs you.
But anyway, the time has come when I have to get away. Because everything is doing my head in, and the only way to solve that is to leave it behind, if only for a week. Here is a list, in no particular order, of the things that are making me stabby:
1. Glastonbury. I have never been. I have no desire to go. So why is it that for about a month before it starts, and then for the entirety of its duration, there is wall-to-yurt-wall media coverage of this music 'n' mud-fest? It's not like it's special any more - there are a billion bloody festivals. There's practically a festival in my flat (I'm thinking of erecting some tents during August and renting them out - people will have to pay extra for a shower and loo paper; sorry, you're going to be fleeced. That's just what happens at festivals). I am sick of it - the pointless debate over whoever is headlining that year - some people will like them, some people will object to them being there. Yadda yadda. There are thousands of fucking stages there - if you don't like it, then go and see something else and stop whingeing about how U2/Jay-Z/The Wombles 'just aren't Glastonbury'. I don't care. Nor should you. Worry about getting TB from the toilets instead. That's the more pressing problem.
2. Following on from this is the acreage of print devoted to 'festival fashion'. Ooh, what should one wear to Glasto, Bestival or the Hay Festival? (Actually, there's never any advice on the latter, which is a shame. Bookish people deserve fashion tips too!) It's always a variation on wellies, micro-shorts and a top. Plus cheap jewellry and whichever style of hat is currently in fashion. It does not deserve to take up pages on end of everything from the Guardian to Grazia. Stop it. Now.
3. It's not necessarily fashion, but it's exercising a lot of fashionable types - can we all stop talking about Pippa Middleton's bum, and how it's become some sort of cultural phenomenon? I know it's a smashing arse, and she can be rightly proud of it, but reducing a woman to just her arse is no better than reducing a woman to just her tits. It's no wonder women mentally chop their bodies into 'alright bits' and 'bits I'd like to take a cleaver to because they make me so miserable' when everyone in the world is focused on one singular body part. Women with big bums hate themselves. Women with small bums hate themselves. Pippa Middleton has become the Goldilocks of Bums - hers is 'just right' and nothing else will do. Personally, as mine's always been behind me, I've rarely given it much thought. It's useful for sitting on, but I've never viewed it as attractive or unattractive. I feel a bit sorry for Pippa - it must be hard when you've got to think of some way of upstaging your own arse in terms of a job/partner/phenomenal act of heroism or charity. Still, she seems a fun girl, I'm sure she'll think of something amusing to do with all this arse love. Can't believe she didn't get Rear of the Year, mind. And there I am, buying into the whole thing again! An award for the nation's best bottom! Ludicrous.
4. The fact that The Shadow Line has finished. I am gutted about this. I know loads of people had problems with the arch dialogue, and Rafe Spall's somewhat David Walliams-esque villain, but I loved all of it. It had a great soundtrack. The fact that loads of people got offed in the kitchen (usually whilst making tomato-based dishes), became a fun in-joke. Stephen Rea doing brilliant malevolent whispering and lurking about behind glass front doors in a hat and an overcoat, plus black gloves, was ace - and you haven't known fear till you hear him yelling 'DO IT NOW!' through a baby monitor, I tell you. The emergence of black gloves as the go-to symbol for shadowy figures who are about to kill you will make me suspicious of anyone wearing black leather hand-coverings in the future. The police boss who loved smoking, but was being played by an actor who looked like he really hated smoking gave me a much-needed snigger every week. Christopher Ecclestone playing a baddie (he was trying to smuggle masses of drugs into the country!), who you were totally rooting for and didn't want to get caught (he loved his poor wife, who had crippling Alzheimer's and had a plan to save her! In some way that never actually seemed to be specified!) was really understated. The aforementioned Rafe Spall may have been madly mannered, but I found his psycho turn pretty terrifying. The plot, even by the end, was impenetrable, but had loads of 'Oh my God, I can't believe that just happened!' moments that made me shriek at the telly. Especially the last episode. And above all, it looked absolutely beautiful. There were tons of just amazing shots. You don't see very much in the way of stunning visuals in police dramas, but there were some here that will stick with me for a long time (one of the drugs bosses being killed on a motorway, and ending up hanging from nets between concrete bridge posts, lit up in red, may have had no basis whatsoever in reality or likelihood, but God it looked brilliant). It's the first TV series I've seen where I thought, 'I want the DVD of that, so I can try to work out what the bloody hell was going on, and to enjoy it all over again in about six months' time'. Congrats, Hugo Blick, you've played an absolute blinder - I hope you carry on with TV, rather than being lured to the Dark Side of films.
5. Finally, the weather. I am fucking sick of the weather here. I don't particularly mind the cold. But what I do mind is the weather changing every twenty minutes. You can't just leave the house and think, 'Yup, I'm wearing something eminently suitable for today's conditions'. If it's sunny when I leave home for work, then halfway into my walk to the office, it will be pissing it down with rain. Half an hour later there will be a howling gale. Ten minutes before lunchtime: the sun's out! By the time I want to go for a walk after I've eaten my lunch: oh, bad luck, it's drizzling again. There may be some mist! Or just loads of black, threatening clouds. Temperature? Who knows! Freezing, probably, but then it could equally be the kind of cloudy day that means it's actually really muggy, so you're sort of sweating by the time you get wherever you're going. It's like the menopause of weather.
So next week, when I'm on holiday, I'll be complaining that it's too hot all the time, but at least I won't be doing it in a muddy field, surrounded by people who've been told what to wear by the Guardian Weekend and who're moaning that U2 are too corporate for Glastonbury. Which is something.
Going away is stressful - you have to find someone to go away with, for a start (I'm not good on my own, abroad - I can't work a map and I'm useless at talking to strangers; I get lonely and really freaked out). This is hard if you're single and live at the other end of the country from nearly everyone you know (there's no casually finding out about an upcoming trip over a bottle of wine and just going, 'Can I come?'). Plus all my friends are Good at Holidays, and have them sorted out months, if not years in advance. They have plans to visit places like Argentina, and Mexico and Bali, which require flights and accommodation to be booked months ahead - not to mention factoring in things like when it won't be too hot/cold/expensive/full of children on half-term breaks. One friend is really into sailing, which requires you to be both hearty and good at drinking; I may go to the gym a lot, but I'm still not hearty, and I can't keep up with the drinking - I manage a total blow-out about once a quarter, then have to lie very still for three days afterwards, groaning. Combine that with sea-sickness and it's not a holiday, it's a punishment. Most other friends have partners, and once you're partnered, it never occurs to you to ask your single friend if she wants to go away with you. I suspect the dread word 'swingers' might be lurking, subconsciously. 'Well, I'd love to ask her if she wants to come away with us, she's fun'. 'No, Martin, what if she thinks that we're SWINGERS, and that we want to have a THREESOME? We can't risk it'.
Then even if you manage to find a holiday partner and a mutually agreed destination, you have to synchronise diaries to find a time when you can both actually leave work for a week, or, God forbid, a fortnight. 'I can't go then, I've got a hen do/wedding/40th birthday/massive family gathering'. 'I can only do the first week in September - then I have to prep for our annual conference/sort out a massive ad campaign and then move house'. Everyone is insanely busy and ramming as much as they possibly can into their lives. A holiday? To relax? The whole idea of it seems like a contradiction in terms. Not to mention the amount of money it costs you.
But anyway, the time has come when I have to get away. Because everything is doing my head in, and the only way to solve that is to leave it behind, if only for a week. Here is a list, in no particular order, of the things that are making me stabby:
1. Glastonbury. I have never been. I have no desire to go. So why is it that for about a month before it starts, and then for the entirety of its duration, there is wall-to-yurt-wall media coverage of this music 'n' mud-fest? It's not like it's special any more - there are a billion bloody festivals. There's practically a festival in my flat (I'm thinking of erecting some tents during August and renting them out - people will have to pay extra for a shower and loo paper; sorry, you're going to be fleeced. That's just what happens at festivals). I am sick of it - the pointless debate over whoever is headlining that year - some people will like them, some people will object to them being there. Yadda yadda. There are thousands of fucking stages there - if you don't like it, then go and see something else and stop whingeing about how U2/Jay-Z/The Wombles 'just aren't Glastonbury'. I don't care. Nor should you. Worry about getting TB from the toilets instead. That's the more pressing problem.
2. Following on from this is the acreage of print devoted to 'festival fashion'. Ooh, what should one wear to Glasto, Bestival or the Hay Festival? (Actually, there's never any advice on the latter, which is a shame. Bookish people deserve fashion tips too!) It's always a variation on wellies, micro-shorts and a top. Plus cheap jewellry and whichever style of hat is currently in fashion. It does not deserve to take up pages on end of everything from the Guardian to Grazia. Stop it. Now.
3. It's not necessarily fashion, but it's exercising a lot of fashionable types - can we all stop talking about Pippa Middleton's bum, and how it's become some sort of cultural phenomenon? I know it's a smashing arse, and she can be rightly proud of it, but reducing a woman to just her arse is no better than reducing a woman to just her tits. It's no wonder women mentally chop their bodies into 'alright bits' and 'bits I'd like to take a cleaver to because they make me so miserable' when everyone in the world is focused on one singular body part. Women with big bums hate themselves. Women with small bums hate themselves. Pippa Middleton has become the Goldilocks of Bums - hers is 'just right' and nothing else will do. Personally, as mine's always been behind me, I've rarely given it much thought. It's useful for sitting on, but I've never viewed it as attractive or unattractive. I feel a bit sorry for Pippa - it must be hard when you've got to think of some way of upstaging your own arse in terms of a job/partner/phenomenal act of heroism or charity. Still, she seems a fun girl, I'm sure she'll think of something amusing to do with all this arse love. Can't believe she didn't get Rear of the Year, mind. And there I am, buying into the whole thing again! An award for the nation's best bottom! Ludicrous.
4. The fact that The Shadow Line has finished. I am gutted about this. I know loads of people had problems with the arch dialogue, and Rafe Spall's somewhat David Walliams-esque villain, but I loved all of it. It had a great soundtrack. The fact that loads of people got offed in the kitchen (usually whilst making tomato-based dishes), became a fun in-joke. Stephen Rea doing brilliant malevolent whispering and lurking about behind glass front doors in a hat and an overcoat, plus black gloves, was ace - and you haven't known fear till you hear him yelling 'DO IT NOW!' through a baby monitor, I tell you. The emergence of black gloves as the go-to symbol for shadowy figures who are about to kill you will make me suspicious of anyone wearing black leather hand-coverings in the future. The police boss who loved smoking, but was being played by an actor who looked like he really hated smoking gave me a much-needed snigger every week. Christopher Ecclestone playing a baddie (he was trying to smuggle masses of drugs into the country!), who you were totally rooting for and didn't want to get caught (he loved his poor wife, who had crippling Alzheimer's and had a plan to save her! In some way that never actually seemed to be specified!) was really understated. The aforementioned Rafe Spall may have been madly mannered, but I found his psycho turn pretty terrifying. The plot, even by the end, was impenetrable, but had loads of 'Oh my God, I can't believe that just happened!' moments that made me shriek at the telly. Especially the last episode. And above all, it looked absolutely beautiful. There were tons of just amazing shots. You don't see very much in the way of stunning visuals in police dramas, but there were some here that will stick with me for a long time (one of the drugs bosses being killed on a motorway, and ending up hanging from nets between concrete bridge posts, lit up in red, may have had no basis whatsoever in reality or likelihood, but God it looked brilliant). It's the first TV series I've seen where I thought, 'I want the DVD of that, so I can try to work out what the bloody hell was going on, and to enjoy it all over again in about six months' time'. Congrats, Hugo Blick, you've played an absolute blinder - I hope you carry on with TV, rather than being lured to the Dark Side of films.
5. Finally, the weather. I am fucking sick of the weather here. I don't particularly mind the cold. But what I do mind is the weather changing every twenty minutes. You can't just leave the house and think, 'Yup, I'm wearing something eminently suitable for today's conditions'. If it's sunny when I leave home for work, then halfway into my walk to the office, it will be pissing it down with rain. Half an hour later there will be a howling gale. Ten minutes before lunchtime: the sun's out! By the time I want to go for a walk after I've eaten my lunch: oh, bad luck, it's drizzling again. There may be some mist! Or just loads of black, threatening clouds. Temperature? Who knows! Freezing, probably, but then it could equally be the kind of cloudy day that means it's actually really muggy, so you're sort of sweating by the time you get wherever you're going. It's like the menopause of weather.
So next week, when I'm on holiday, I'll be complaining that it's too hot all the time, but at least I won't be doing it in a muddy field, surrounded by people who've been told what to wear by the Guardian Weekend and who're moaning that U2 are too corporate for Glastonbury. Which is something.
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