Bogart of the Twa Dogs
Thursday, 26 July 2007
I've spent most of this week in Keswick with Wonderful Witton, and have just got back. Mandu had kindly refrained from coughing up any furballs for me to discover when walking around the flat in bare feet, so my homecoming was as delightful as can be and we enjoyed a nice cup of tea and a final browse through the week's photos before parting company to do our respective laundry. We had commandeered for ourselves a room in a nice little B&B just down the road from the now infamous "Twa Dogs Inn", home of the only stuffed Bogart in existence - if you don't believe me, have a look at Anne's souvenir postcard and all shall be revealed. Our guesthouse did a fabulous cooked breakfast and had a beautiful ginger cat in residence but boasted rather a dodgy line in showers among its many facilities; ours oscillated gaily between scalding and freezing until Witteroony finally managed to adjust it on our last morning there. We went ostensibly to attend the Keswick Convention, a Christian holiday where one may partake of brilliant Bible teaching, worship sessions and seminars in a big tent, but also managed to fit in - delightfully (!!!) - a dazzling array of extra activities: walking at Aira Force and Ullswater, treating ourselves to copious reading, troughing ourselves with pub grub, ice cream, tea and buttered teacakes, meandering around Hope Park in the centre of Keswick, praying on park benches, delighting in the contents of our iPods, encountering a random lady called Batchy and a bearded local celebrity, purchasing knapsackery, photographing everything, going to the Pencil and Puzzle museums, playing Wonky Donkey and pool (in the Twa Dogs), studying the Bible (in both the Tent and the Twa), lying in bed all morning giving vent to our flatulence and laughing so much we couldn't breathe (which was probably a good thing, given the odours we generated), learning new worship songs, lining up my herbal teabags in order of vileness, discovering the existence of the Bogartus Vulgaris, impersonating the Bagpuss Mice ('Heave! Heave!...'), thanking God for the beauty of His creation and for loving us enough to send Jesus to die for us, talking about a million different things and opening up more to each other. I'm so happy and blessed to have Anne as my friend and loved spending this week with her, sharing so many great experiences with her and getting to know her even better. A gorgeous week!
The River Cottage Treatment
Sunday, 22 July 2007
I'm off to the Keswick Convention tomorrow with Witton, and have just spent a delightful hour updating my iPod so we can sing in the car as we drive through the Lake District. Ben interrupted to insist that I pay attention to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall as he took a group of ready-meal addicts to a slaughterhouse so they could watch lambs have their heads cut off and be hung from a hook, still twitching, to drip blood into a trough and have their coats torn from their skin. I eat meat as enthusiastically as the next person, and am very unsqueamish (I once helped to prepare and roast a whole pig, having transported it from the butcher in the boot of my car), but was reduced immediately to floods of tears, which I suspect was the reaction Hugh was looking for. In common with thousands of other busy online shoppers, I selfishly buy cheap meat week by week which has probably died the vilest of deaths, and give no thought at all to how it was treated when it was still alive. After drying my tears, I went to the River Cottage website, which is packed with helpful hints on the subject of free-range and organic shopping. Between that and our recent dinnertime conversation with Anne about how unethically most of the world's chocolate is produced, I think the Merricks' weekly shopping list will be looking a bit different from now on. And no, I won't be accepting substitutions, ASDA, thanks all the same, just in case you try to palm me off with a pack of SmartPrice chicken breasts. I know how they're produced now, and I'm on the verge of becoming a vegetarian as a result.
It's all broken!
Yeah, I know most of the page links don't work. All the lovely tabs go back to the main page. I know, I know. I'm also aware it's bad form to put a broken website up, but given the small amount of spare time I had to designate to this project, I'm working on the fact that having a working blog is worth putting up, even if nothing else works.
Proper website looking much the same to follow shortly.
Labels: Website
posted by benjamin @ 16:31
link
I just lost several games...
Saturday, 21 July 2007
Once upon a time, I used to be quite good at badminton. I had lessons, the Muir family regularly made up a foursome at the local sports centre, and despite being more of a musician than a sportswoman, I never received in my teens quite as much of an ass-kicking as I did this afternoon when playing Ben and Anne down at Lightfoot Centre. What can I say - it's been over a decade since I played badminton properly, and it definitely shows! However, best not to allow despondency to settle in, I feel. If I'm going to be fit, I'm going to have to work hard and make it a regular part of the routine. It is so tempting to come in after a day at school and sit down with a glass of wine and a book or film, instead of leaping back up and doing some exercise, but I'll definitely thank myself for it when I can look in the mirror and be happy with who I see looking back at me.
The Food Diaries
Wednesday, 18 July 2007
It's that time of year again where teachers all over the country commence their absurdly long summer holiday, to the outrage of all those who chose not to enter this noble profession. Having enjoyed 7 of these welcome rests over the course of my career to date, I am now wise to my own bad habits and have decided that languishing on the sofa eating chocolate and watching comedy repeats whilst swaddled comfortably in a duvet is a one-way street to becoming fat and depressed, so I have instead spent a highly productive morning in school, busily polishing pianos and removing grubby fingerprints from windows in the music department. My next task will be painting the Performing Arts Room, which I'm quite excited about; it's a vile shade of terracotta at the moment. I must at some point apply the same enthusiasm to touching up the paintwork in my own home, in order that someone might be encouraged to buy it. All this activity is, I'm hoping, burning off a few wodges of fat that have accidentally crept on over the course of the year. I am now keeping a Food Diary, which sounds like a worrying way to acquire yourself an eating disorder, but I'd actually recommend it to anyone. It's pretty hard to feel virtuous whilst jotting down 'Today I had Sugar Puffs with Whole Milk, a Croissant with Butter and Lashings of Jam, Cheese on Toast, Multitudinous Snacks during the Afternoon, Fifty Cups of Tea and a Muffin each Time, Pizza and Garlic Bread, A Bowlful of Chunky Monkey and a Large Glass of Wine to Round off the Evening - I have Avoided All Fruit and Vegetables Today and I also Drove to School and did No other Exercise.' Basically it means I think twice before demolishing a bag of Chocolate Chunks I've found whilst tidying out the kitchen cupboards, because of the shame I feel when seeing the evidence there in my own handwriting. Ben seems to love me regardless, which is nice, but I'm not fond of catching a glimpse of myself in the reflection of a bus stop and thinking 'Cor! She needs to lose some fighting weights!' Less chocolate and more squash is on the agenda for this year's summer holiday, though I'm not averse to occasional 'treats'. Everything in moderation. I'm off to make a banana smoothie now (instead of a batch of banana muffins, which clearly won't make me any slimmer), but I might leave the next brisk walk until after the rain stops. Fun though yesterday's riverwalk was, I only have one pair of dry jeans left!
A jolly evening at the WI
Tuesday, 17 July 2007
This afternoon I went for a gorgeous long walk with my iPod, and contrived to get caught in the most lavish thunderstorm I have ever had the pleasure of being soaked by. Despite recent doom-filled reports of people becoming far more of a lightning target while listening to MP3 players, I waded enthusiastically up Heaton Road listening to 'Bad Day' by Daniel Powter over and over again and arrived safely home with not a dry spot anywhere on me. After a brief shower and some pasta, I was on the road again, this time to a meeting of the Whey Aye WI in Wideopen with the lovely Anne Witton. We didn't lower the average age by as much as we'd imagined we might, and spent the evening learning to execute the Argentinian Tango with Ian and Jennifer. A fabulous evening, although the soles of my feet are now completely black from all that pivoting.
