if only ....

Last night I watched Michael who cares, he's still a tory Portillo (and yes since you ask, I was still up) being hung in efigy, gassed and nearly asphyxiated. Unfortunately some Hollander saved him from death at the last minute. Actually it was a horrible programme, as Portillo tried to justify his belief in the humane application of the death penalty by investigating the ideal way to kill someone (hypoxia by nitrogen inhalation, it turns out). Still, I did like the bit where the smug bastard told a US death penalty advocate about his wizard wheeze and was a bit taken aback as this man made Portillo look like a wet librul gruaniad reader by explaining that any death penalty method that was painless was pointless. I hate Portillo. He is the epitome of smug tory bastardness. I once went to Halloween Party dressed as him, as he was the scariest most evil thing I could think of.

In other news, I have still been eating breakfast hurrah and will be facing The Scales tomorrow eek.

my one vanity

Well pretty much my only vanity, my only 'girly-thing', is my hair. I don't do much make up, don't wax or pluck, don't have manicures, don't buy many clothes and certainly don't do shopping-as-leisure activity¹. Even with my hair I am well short of the beauty ideal, rarely blow drying and never going near straighteners. But I do like to buy it nice products and now that R has a job (at least until June), I can afford to go to a good hairdressers and even have it coloured. So that's how I've spent my morning, sitting around knitting and listening to podcasts with bits of foil sticking out all over my head. Now my hair is a lovely festive red colour hurrah.

A conversatin with my lovely hairdresser:
her: so are you ready for Xmas?
me: actually I pretty much am, due to my "if I cna't make it or buy it on Amazon you can't have it" policy
her: oh yes CDs and DVDs make great presents
me says: mmmm / me thinks: books, books make great presents that's what i buy from Amazon, the papery things with words in.

Although, my son is a disappointment to me in the reading department. With a pair of bookworms for parents, I fondly imagined he'd grow up an avid reader too. But no. It's not that he can't read - when he has to he reads fluently and confidently for his age, he just doesn't much want to. There's always something he'd rather be doing. But at last, a breakthrough. I've been reading The Hobbit to him for his bedtime story and he has started reading on for a page or two after he's in bed. It's not the easiest book to read and the pictures are few and far between, but he is enjoying it. What with that and having to decipher the backs of his Yu-gi-oh cards, he may just be seeing the value of reading after all.


1. Wool and book shops excepted, natch

just one of the things I don't like ..

... when people don't say 'thanks'. At work, people email us with problems and we email back with information and advice that helps them do their job better; about one in ten of them emails back to say thanks. And at home, this week I've sent things to a couple of people (one something I knew someone needed, and one at the person's request and I had to go out of my way to get it) and neither has picked up the phone or emailed to say they've arrived or say thanks. It's not that I want people to grovel with gratitude, just a quick email saying 'ta' is all I ask.

oh dear

How did it get so long since I last posted? Partly because I have been away for quite a lot of the past month (summer school/holidays/conference) and when not away over night, I've had to travel around quite a bit for work. I think my life is feeling a bit crazy at the moment. Or perhaps it is my head that is going a bit crazy? I am not getting much constructive done. My studying is behind, so is my work, my house is a tip and I am usually found sitting knitting/crocheting. Actually crochet is the worst, I find that gets a bit obsessive sometimes. Goes without saying if my head is in a bad way, my eating is too. Which all reminds me, I must ring up for some more anti-crazy pills.

PS does anyone know if it's possible to stay logged in on two different google accounts on one computer? I have clarrie@ for blogging and realname@ for igoogle, and it's a right pain logging in and out between the two

fat end of the wedge

All of the meedja are up in arms at this story, that a child could be taken into care because he weighs 14 stone¹. He's lost weight since Christmas so it doesn't seem to be Praeder-Willi syndrome. I do feel for the kid's mum but I also want to shout at her. The child is 8. He only gets to eat what adults give him to eat.

Ms McKeown, 35, told the BBC: "Connor had a mouthful of apple once and he didn't like it. a mouth full? once? he's hardly been encouraged to give them a go

"He refuses to eat fruit, vegetables and salads - he has I buy, prepare and give him processed foods.

"When Connor won't eat anything else, I've got to give him the foods he likes let him understand that that's all that's on offer and he can chose it eat it or not. Perhaps then he will try more than one mouthful of apple."

I know I'm not much of a one to lecture on healthy eating, but I have taken a strong "don't do as I do do as I tell you to" line with O. He doesn't have to clear his plate (urgh I hated that when I was a kid) but he does have to try a mouthful of everything and stay at the table till everyone's finished (it's amazing how often a plate pushed away as being disgusting ends up getting eaten), and he knows we're not going to make him something else if he doesn't eat it. Oh and there are apples in our house most days, also oranges pears bananas grapes persimmons plums apricots pomegranates etc etc, so eating them is not some exotic new experience, it's part of normal life. Now I know I've had it quite easy with O (a child who loves cabbage and brussel sprouts!²) and other parents with similar regimes struggle to get their kids to eat healthily, but that doesn't mean you have to indulge their every whim.

I suspect there's a lot more to this situation than we are being told, and that the child's weight may be a symptom of the reasons why social services are concerned, rather than the cause itself. The mum has free reign to present her side of things but social services are not so free to publish the detail of their concerns. Social workers are not all the pc witchhunt brigade they get painted as - although I might be biased as my mum was one. I'd like to discuss this case with her actually but her and me dad have galivanted off on a 5 week round the world ski-ing trip.



1. 14 stone = 196 lb = 98.9kg
2. Another reason to hate SunnyD is there 'no child is like Max Wild' ad campaign, based on the premise that normal kids don't like fresh fruit and veg so caring parents have to give them vitamins laced with sugar instead.

my bad

oh dear. Today I had to go into town on some routine errands, remembered I still hadn’t spent my Xmas money from my parents so went to look for some boots. Ended up buying two pairs, these gorgeous turquoise ones at full price and some very cute brown suede ones in the sale.

And then I bought some books. Yeah cos what this house needs is more books sfxgroaningbookshelvessfx and especially now my geology courses are underway, I really need extra works of fiction to distract me.

See more progress on: buy less

all priests over-75 five a side indoor football contest

well nearly. Two of the Arran Islands are to have a five a side soccer¹ match to decide which is the real Craggy Island. John Aldridge seems a particularly fitting choice. May the best feckers win.

1. Yes they do call it 'soccer' in Ireland, as 'football' means Gaelic football.

oops

I have got meself all worked up about something going on locally and tonight was the only time I had to work on it, so I got all caught up in it and didn't get to belly dancing, preferring to stay in and fire off emails to secure my place on the moral high ground. Now I'm all wound up and won't sleep and have been forced to resort to the only booze in the house, a bottle of Triassic-era Tia Maria. No exercise + sweet sticky drinks = bad fat gurl.

stick it where the sun don't shine

The ever fabulous (& future Mr Clarrie) Ben Goldacre has written a magnificent article about Gillian McKeith and by extension a subject close to my heart, the pseudo-science of the whole woo wooo diet industry.

She talks endlessly about chlorophyll, for example: how it's "high in oxygen" and will "oxygenate your blood" - but chlorophyll will only make oxygen in the presence of light. It's dark in your intestines, and even if you stuck a searchlight up your bum to prove a point, you probably wouldn't absorb much oxygen in there, because you don't have gills in your gut. In fact, neither do fish. In fact, forgive me, but I don't think you really want oxygen up there, because methane fart gas mixed with oxygen is a potentially explosive combination.

....

These new nutritionists have a major commercial problem with evidence. There's nothing very professional or proprietary about "eat your greens", so they have had to push things further: but unfortunately for the nutritionists, the technical, confusing, overcomplicated, tinkering interventions that they promote are very frequently not supported by convincing evidence.

And that's not for lack of looking. This is not about the medical hegemony neglecting to address the holistic needs of the people. In many cases, the research has been done, and we know that the more specific claims of nutritionists are actively wrong.

....

the most significant "lifestyle" cause of death and disease is social class. ... This phenomenal disparity in life expectancy - the difference between a lengthy and rich retirement, and a very truncated one indeed - is not because the people in Hampstead are careful to eat a handful of Brazil nuts every day
....

I encourage you to read the whole article, and the rest of The Ben's columns on 'Dr' Gillian, and keep it in mind when the next nutrition guru pops up on your tv flogging miracle diets and super foods and vital supplements. One of the main reasons I don't go to WW meetings any more is the tendency of the leaders to spout whatever cr@p they've read in the Daily Mail in place of basic decent nutrition. And I was that mean ol' spoilsport who complained to WW when they ran an article on their website about astrology and dieting.

We know what we have to do - eat less cr@p, eat more fruit and veg, drink less booze, do more exercise. Sounds simple to those people who live like that already but for those of us who struggle it's a long hard road. But no amount of blue green algae¹ or horny goatweed is going to make that road any shorter, just more expensive.


1. I know someone who's doing a PhD researching the toxins in algae

older than kylie

aargh I will be 40 this year omg omg how did that happen wtf aaargh

that is all.

I was walking down the road the other day

Man walks up to me, says how far is it to the railway station? Ted Chippington, what a star. Who says the 80s were all bad?

a sad post

Not that Xmas was sad, actually it was great and I may even get round to blogging it (Oh yeah and resolutions) at a later date. But tonight I feel sad and old and maybe finally a grown up. K is the same age as me, more or less, and one of my oldest and dearest friends. On Friday night his mum died. It was completely unexpected and a huge shock. She was only 60. She was a brilliant woman, the centre of their family who held it all together. She was always kind and welcoming to me when I used to visit. Tonight on the train I was happened to be listening to HMHB and it took right back 20 or so years to when I first visited their home. And I remembered her and felt for K, who was very close to his mum. And I felt a bit sorry for myself, too; I am 40 this year and my contemporaries' parents have started dying. Does this make me a grown up at last?

Anyway I got home and cracked open the best whisky and gave him a ring. And now I'm going to sit and drink some more of the best whisky and raise a glass to K's mum.