13 Facts for 13 Miles

I’m training for the Cardiff Half Marathon for Cancer Research UK — see www.justgiving.com/hectorshalf and please donate! I thought I’d break up the pain of training by coming up with 13 fun facts about my limited experience of running any sort of distance so far…

1. Finding 13 flat miles is fine in Cardiff. It is goddamn impossible in Cornwall unless you count a mile on an 18% gradient as approaching flat.
2. Finding 13 (safe) miles of tarmacked road in Cardiff again does not prove the most difficult challenge. In the environs of Hayle, you should define “tarmacked” as including the following: lane, footpath, grass field, sand, dune and mud.
3. Wellingtons are my preferred item of footwear as a result of 2).
4. A sharp stick can be useful when jogging to either (a) fend off curious livestock (b) to lean on during breaks and (c) as a crude aid to the more mountainous stretches.
5. All dogs are allergic to the dayglo orange of my high-viz running vest (see 2) again re. lack of pavements in this county)
6. Cornwall is the sort of place where you should check the tide before going for a run.
7. My knees hurt when I run downhill — this is perhaps not the best sign.
8. Stopping drinking to train means I wake up properly in the morning. This is something of a novelty and something I might try and stick to.
9. 13 miles is the same as 20.92 km, 68620 metres, 823 680 inches,  and 20 921 472 millimeters.
10. The Zutons is the best band I’ve found (so far) to run to.
11. My ears glow a ridiculous red after even moderate exercise — expect traffic light sized glow on October 18th!
12. My next run is to Camborne, if I don’t come back then this blog stands as a memorial.
13. Embarassingly, I still drove the 1/2 mile to Co-Op today.

Drinking

I’ve just noticed a few new principles to add to the Hector Benjamin Roddan lexicon of random rules about the Universe (one day, I’ll write a rule book…) More accurately, about the relationship between drinking and any sort of problem, question or niggling itch which we encounter in this sea of emotion, experience and exchange which we casually describe as “existence”…

The first stage is to ask a question, pose a problem, consider something when entirely sober.

By the second stage you have imbibed at least one unit of alchohol and therefore the problem is much more clearly expressed / slightly fudged / staring you in the face in a grim manner.

The third stage arrives at the second or third pint (I use the “pint” scale, for those of you that prefer shots, feel free to use an appropriate conversion scale). At this point, not only have you solved the initial problem which set you on the course towards drink, but you have solved a range of alternative problems – some of my personal favourites are — what to have for breakfast, how to make a paper aeroplane and world poverty…

By the fourth stage, you have realised that the perfectly adequate solutions to the initial problem are entirely useless, but there must be something. At this point, you come up with ideas like “if only I could solve world poverty by making a paper aeroplane carry my breakfast…”

The fifth stage, all this is slipping away a bit. The initial problem, the new problems, that sort of thing…This is generally known as the final safe stage at which one can eat a takeaway.

By the sixth stage, reality is doing similar. DO NOT RISK A TAKEAWAY AFTER THIS POINT.

At the seventh stage, you’re entering hell itself…

By the eleventh stage, you could well bring hell back up again. 

 

By the way, if anyone finds out what the intervening stages are, let me know…

Byeee!!!

Hec xxx

Cookery

As a nice contrast from writing out revision notes and calling it a blog, I’m going to talk about food for a bit. This will not only demonstrate that I am a balanced individual with a variety of interests but also hopefully stop phrases like Beauvoirian feminism, the Great Incarceration and Three Phases of Infantile Libidinal Development from cluttering up my consciousness. Since my brain is experiencing the philosophical equivalent of a force 10 gale at the moment (cue: falling trees, thunder, lightning and dooooom), it should help everything feel better, hopefully.

OK, food, now where was I…? Colours, that was it! Have you noticed that the more colours there are in a meal, the better it tastes? The logic seems to work like this. A uni-colour meal has very little flavour, or excitement. Bi-colourity on the other hand can either indicate a fusion of eclectic textures, tastes and olfactory notions (aka smells), or something a little dull.

This leads me to postulate the significance of different colours. A meal which is mostly one shade of green (which we’ll call, for sake of argument, ‘lettuce green’) will generally not be that pleasant and/or exciting. Similarly, with the exception of quiche (see below), beige coloured foods on their own or with only the simplest of additions are, to be frank, quite rank. Anyone who lived with me in year one or two will doubtless have observed the rankness which I addressed by the laughingly polite title of ‘pasta with sauce’ (spaghetti, tomato puree, cheese).

This leaves us with muticolourity (which I think looks better as multicolarity, so that’s what I’ll call it). Multicolarity is a plate and/or dish which contains three colours or more. For example, meat (I don’t know much about this), green beans and yorkshire puddings (or quorn, if you’re one of those, we all know who you are). Similarly, although the outer appearance of quiche is one of uniform brown-and-beige dullness (or black, if you forget its in the oven), inside it is a delicious yummy eggy yellow suffused with whatever your particular penache for pastry-covered dishes happens to be. Cheese on toast, with onions, is a further case in point. And any good salad must have at least three colours. I would indeed be tempted to complain about vegetation selections which did not reach this stringent criteria, since it is wholly likely that they will (a) ming, as the youth of today say, and (b) that they will come in a Fort Knox style polythene container which renders the veggie goodness within unattainable.

At this point I tend to resort to sharp objects and return to the question. It should be stressed that multicolarity can be taken too far. For instance, the addition of certain brightly coloured ingredients to any dish is likely to render them inedible. As a guide, the addition of green mouthwash to plain beige pasta will not liven up the taste-experience, even if you sautee it. Although adding a toothpaste topping to a particularly uninteresting quiche may be a worthwhile experiment.

Potato wedges or roast potatoes should not be livened up with shaving foam. Equally, adding laptop, television, CD-Roms or newspapers to any dishes is to be discouraged, particularly at the preparation stage. The two exceptions to these are fish and chips, which have to be constituted to an approximate ratio of 1 part fish to 3 parts chips to 2 parts soggy papier mache from the newspaper which ‘wraps’ them up.

The second example is TV dinners, in which case any level of multicolarity (even to the mouthwash and shaving foam level) will not improve their flavour in any way whatsoever.

Now back to Beauvoir…

My Foot

Even when it is only your pride and dignity that is injured, it still hurts. In fact, it is probably more painful since it is something which you could have avoided. You could have watched your step. You could’ve held the handrail. You could, just possibly, have been a teensy weensy itsy bitsy bit more sober. All these would have helped, furthermore, all these were within the remit of your personal control.

No extraneous factor made me not watch my step. There was no monumentous event in the vicinity which for a split second took my attention away. Nothing made me slip, there was no fowl play. It was entirely my fault that I was off my tits at the time.

Thus, with a perfectly elemental sort of logic, it is me that is entirely liable for the fact that I am now hobbling around on one leg with a sprained ankle. I’m sure if I wasn’t in the predicament, it would be quite funny to watch the staggering, twitching walk which I have developed. Its somewhere between chronic constipation and that funny fat person walk of Oliver Hardy in those classic Laurel and Hardy films.

Of course, being a self-righteous little git, I’m not letting liability get too firm a hold on me. I will stand up in court, having waddled in like a constipated duck, hold up my right ankle and declare to the court — it was the footbridge what done it, your honour.

Gym, Palpitations, Question Time

Its a weird thing when the human body stops working, even for a bit. Whether its paralysis, blacking out or just that faintly uncomfortable dampness which suggests you’ve peed yourself (this joke prop. Peep Show), it is always somewhat disconcerting.

Whether it was the elation of getting a ticket for Question Time, the sheer body shock of attending the gym for the first time since Labour was ahead in the polls or the steroid inhaler I’m using, I don’t know. What I do know is me groaning over the bin outside the gym and twitching slightly probably wasn’t the best advertisement for the health benefits of said institution.

Vision is over-rated, or so the deaf say. I can report though that I have personally dramatically under-rated after experiencing piercing white lights, a burning sensation and things going blurry. The same goes for absence of nausea, absence of chest pain, absence of headache etc. Fully recovered, I feel perversely good for having an (albeit brief) encounter with illness, lack of health et al.

In light of this, I’m going to make myself a pizza (that was actually what NHS Direct advised). Looking forward to Question Time in the Armadillo (that sounds like a bestiality enquiry, but we won’t go there…)

Byee!

:-s

This is England

OK, I was stuck for a post title and I’m actually in Wales. The song just happened to be on my iPod (‘This is England’ by the Clash, incidentally). Since I’m feeling lazy I could just paste the lyrics below, because they’re really quite genius in my opinion. But no, I’m going to be a good blogger and actually write something. First off (see post from last month), have I learnt any IFs recently? Not really, although apparently everyone thinks my new (no, I can’t work it, no, I didn’t know it could do that…) camera is very cool (its a Fuji Finepix SLR digital, thats as far as my technical knowledge goes I’m afraid). Secondly, I’ve had a very productive morning combining the joys of Facebook with printing out, annotating and folderising my revision.

Yet another minorly OCD trait there, incidentally (and don’t laugh, too loudly). My concentration is distracted if my revision notes are not:

1. Organised by topic (obvious, but it really winds me up if they’re mixed up… Don’t get me started on notes which are relevant to two topics, that is a photocopying and annotation nightmare)
2. Printed in bold, with underline for important words
3. Arranged in a complex series of different bullet points (and these follow the same pattern throughout the document, for example, solid black dot, white dot, arrow, asterisk, dependent on the importance of the point).
4. Stored with each topic in a discreet folder (stapled to any reading lists ON THE OUTSIDE)
5. Golly, I’ve reached 5. That’s quite impressively sad.
6. Any series of points is contained on one page and the page break neatly correlates with a break in the notes, (for example, the end of a point

I probably could continue, but I won’t. You get the gist anyway. Other revision tactics include:

1. Best concentration when (i.e. I think I won’t work if I’m not) listening to a limited selection of music (mainly Beatles, for some reason)
2. Highlighters lined up in sequence, with the clip of the lid uppermost and the brand name, not the barcode side visible, cap first on the edge of my desk
3. Desk completely bare at the start and finish of every day (as if perhaps my notes might vanish if I don’t tidy them away every night)
4. Any timetable, schedule plans bluetacked to my wall (of decreasing importance from just above eye-level downwards)
5. Important timetables/documents copied and stuck in three places (at least) on my door, or beside it, directly in front of my bed when I wake up, above my desk.
6. Again, I’ve reached six without really trying, that is depressing…
7. I also have a highlighter pen specifically for crossing things off to-do lists and deadlines lists.
8. Oh, and I’ve recently got into the habit of obsessively straightening and tidying the various cables from my TV, laptop, printer, EHD, fairy lights. Although that might be a procrastination tool

Bizarrely, after completing all these little tasks (and a million others which it would be just a tad too anal to list), I still seem to lead a fairly messy life. Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something…

Incidentally, it has occured to me that listing ones own anal and obsessive features (anally and obsessively) on a blog is pretty much the most anal and obsessive sort of list possible. But whether that is ironic or apt, I’m not entirely sure.

Perhaps I’ll settle on the middle ground that ‘its all a bit pointless really’.

Chocolate and Health

Welcome back to yet another inane trip into my murky subconscious. I’ve decided to change the mode of address in these posts from using the specific ‘dear reader’ for several reasons. Firstly, I don’t actually have any readers, and therefore when I read these posts in the depths of the night to myself, I feel a dreadful and longing loneliness in the tortured depths of my soul. (Or some other quasi-emo rot at least). Secondly and more significantly, after the trading standards problems with the ‘Newsflash’ in the previous issue (now redesignated ‘A Regurgitated Whinge’), it seemed unfair to employ such a cruel deception to my myriad of imaginary fans (many, you may be interested to know, wear white coats and seem quite keen that I wear a very tight jumper with no arm holes). Thirdly, the more general form of address, where the reader is implied as opposed to overtly stated provides a more accessible and open form of address. Furthermore, such a form of address, dear reader, prevents the breaking up of sentences with unnecessary grammatical terms (just like that).

Well, with that minor formatting issue out of the way, dear reader, I propose that chocolate – those evil, yet sweet-tasting brown squares – are in fact good for me. I reason thus:

1. Chocolate contains sugar and caffeine, which are stimulants.
2. The higher your energy levels, the easier it is to work.
3. Therefore: Chocolate makes me more productive.

Alternatively, chocolate is justified thus:

1. It has been scientifically* proven that chocolate is a comfort food.
2. It is necessary to periodically destress and pause from work in order to continue for a longer time.
3. Such pauses should avoid leaving the immediate environs of the desk because doing so often leads to distractions.
4. Therefore: Chocolate provides me with the necessary relaxation to maintain work for longer.

I could alternatively propose that:

1. Eating chocolate is bad for your health (because eating it to excess increases cholesterol, fatness, cholesterol etc and similarly reduces skin quality, teeth etc)
2. I, as a fully self-aware and informed subject, with an intent for self-preservation act on 1) by attending the gym, eating bananas and not watching TV, all of which are proven to benefit your health.
3. Therefore: a sensible and well-balanced individual such as myself (allegedly) possesses the necessary knowledge and counter-measures to safely consume chocolate in moderation.

There are several disadvantages with the logic of the third argument. For a start, it negates argument two. For, if one has to be emotionally well-balanced and content in order to consume chocolate, it is thus unjustifiable to allow someone who is stressed or depressed to consume chocolate since they do not fulfill the mental health and stability criterion of the latter category. Similarly, such an argument could conceivably be used to justify the consumption of all sorts of other harmful substances. For example, cannabis, cocaine, alcohol, cigarettes, arsenic. All of the above have negligible health consequences in ‘moderation’ (a variable definition of this term might, however, be apposite). Similarly, they all can have fairly significant health implications when used to excess. Yet, unlike chocolate, all of the above can be seen to have a detrimental effect on one’s ability to make the relevant personal and moral decisions detailed under stage 2) of the third argument.

Thus, I would suggest that it is a misleading comparison to compare, say, my consumption of 250g of Cadburys’ finest Turkish Delight (in just over an hour, incidentally), with the consumption of a similar amount of cannabis (result: thoroughly stoned, possibly beyond speech), cocaine (result: fucked), alcohol (result: tipsy), cigarettes (about 150 a day) or arsenic (result: dead).

If there was a point to all of that, I think it got lost. If anyone finds it, could they carefully package it inside one of those bubble-wrap envelopes (I think they should be called bubbelopes) and post it to me, being careful to mark the envelope ‘DANGER! POINT ENCLOSED’ and make sure you use the Post Office’ tracking service, we know what they’re like at losing parcels.

Newsflash

Hangovers must be contagious. When I awoke at 7, I was the only person on Facebook with a hangover. Now that the day has proceeded, there are six friends with status updates that bemoan their alcohol induced agonies, and presumably more who are still lurking under duvets and groaning at the pain of daylight. Beyond the obvious ‘why do we do it’ question, I can’t really come up with anything exciting to say about this subject since it has only just occurred to me. Oh well, that’s life. I bet you wish you hadn’t invested your time in reading the above now, don’t you, dear reader? It hasn’t enriched your life, it hasn’t enriched my life, it hasn’t even got rid of my hangover. It was futile, pointless and – have you noticed how a headache makes you feel that everything is pointless.

At some point, the millions of dear readers who don’t exist and definitely don’t read this, will complain to trading standards about posts like this. Not only does it induce apathy and frustration but it doesn’t do what it says on the tin. For a start, the term ‘newsflash’ brings to mind the momentous, sudden update of vital news in this information driven society of ours. Up there with the invasion of Afghanistan, the death of Jim Callaghan, 9/11 and 7/7, this ‘newsflash’ is lacking in every vital component:

1. There is no new information being imparted.
2. It is not up-to-the-minute or accurate.
3. No drumrolls or trumpet parps preceded it.
4. And frankly, the whole idea of ‘flash’ is far too bright a suggestion for me at the moment.

So, pending a future public apology to all the non-existent people who read this, and a pledge to clean up my act, not do this sort of thing in the future, and if I do, to resign my blogging position forthwith, this inane ramble of a post comes to an end.