not much going on

The husband is in Italy, we have run out of the bottled gas that we use for our gas hob and I have been eating soup from the freezer (my old friend the jerusalem artichoke again), salad, bread, cheese, toast... all because, with my silly weak body, I can't safely lift a full bottle of gas. So there have been very few food adventures since last week. We were away at the weekend where we had some lovely wedding food (prize-winning bangers and mash! Wonderful!) but not much else of interest. Maybe I'll cook something once our hobs are back in use and I have a husband to cook for/with. Until then, I leave you with a proliferation of speech marks courtesy of the BBC News online last night. What's going on with that?



Plus I have noticed a proliferation of people, journalists that is, misusing the word phased when they actually mean fazed. God, are people educated at all these days? Spellchecker isn't infallible, you know. (Sorry to get all hoity toity but it pisses me off!)

self help

So what's the deal with self-help? It's pretty sad, really, isn't it, the idea of hiding away alone and reading books to try to make yourself more confident, more successful etc.? I readily admit I'm probably a prime candidate for self-help, but my god, I'd far rather be pathetic without help than a tragicomic self-help reader. You can spot these freaks a mile off. Or am I being silly? Should I start reciting mantras to myself in the mirror every morning telling myself I'm wonderful and beautiful and various other lies?

And there's that nagging feeling with these books that they are written by people who are even more needy than you, the reader, are. Like Greg Kinnear's character in Little Miss Sunshine, who tries to follow his own programme of self-help, and pushes it on his kids, but is nonetheless quite a tragic figure of repeated failure and disappointment.

Well, I'm not about to start reading these books, but my goodness, do I need some help sometimes.

the weekend...

was strangely symmetrical. Drove to my parents' house whilst listening to poor old Andy Murray losing to Roddick at Wimbledon; drove home on Sunday listening to poor old Roddick losing to Federer. By the way, the world has me to thank for ending that increasingly boring latter match. Yup, I went for a pee in a service station about two points before it was over, leaving Mark to listen to it in the car. When I emerged from the harrowing bowels of the McDonald's loo, he was standing there grinning because I had done SUCH a good job of finishing off the match. It's true, you know.

Families are screwed up, aren't they? I sometimes feel like mine is scarily near the tippy top of the pile of crazies. There are some things I won't write about here, but one of the more minor (yes indeed) things was that upon our arrival on Friday night, my mother took me out into the hallway and showed me that she and my dad have just covered the entire wall next to the stairs with mirrored tiles. I nearly died of horror. Apparently they have been listening to some random quack feng-shui-inspired friend and decided to make a few 'changes'. This also involved my dad hanging a heavy art-deco mirror somewhat precariously over my bedroom door like some kind of booby trap. Nice mirror, bloody weird idea. They are nuts. I love them, but they are absolutely out of their trees.

Obscenities

Firstly, it is obscenely hot. We have just devoured the leftovers of yesterday's lunch, seated in a most civil manner at the garden furniture outside. I knew it was hot, I know I don't burn easily, but I was definitely getting a little pink out there by the end of the meal. Not good. By the time I'm fifty years old I'll be wrinkled as a scrotum. It's so quiet out there, as if nothing can be bothered to stir itself to do anything. I certainly can't stir myself into action today. I put in a titanic effort to get some roughs sent off before lunchtime, and having crawled painfully, brain bleeding, up to that difficult target at 12.17pm, I duly scoffed as my reward the wondrous foodstuffs we had brought home from our friend Naomi's house. I am now back indoors, belly full, watching my skin gradually grow less radiant and writing this.

Naomi's salads yesterday were a triumph. Pearl barley, tenderstem broccoli, butternut squash, red onions, pumpkin seeds, all brought together companionably under a dressing of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic and parsley. I could eat that salad until I'm sick. Which would be obscene.

Speaking of which, the obscenity I intended to write about was something that I thought I was alone in noticing. That bald one from Masterchef - Gregg Wallace - is it just me or does the way in which he eats make you shudder too? I mean, what kind of weirdo puts cutlery in his mouth so deep and for so long that you think he's trying to eat the bowl of the spoon or see what the metal tastes like? Those poor forks sometimes get fully two seconds of in-mouth action, I swear. When it's his turn to taste the food, I have to look away. It grosses me out. To my delight yesterday, I discovered that Naomi shares my horror - we laughed like drains about it.

Homicide Saturdays

Today is one of those days when you wish you'd never got out of bed. Everything is a chore, even eating breakfast. We've been to town to do our weekly food shopping. I thought I might die, or at least someone might die at my hands. Saturday mornings in Waitrose easily induce thoughts of homicide - you get the grumpy mothers with three brats in tow, who treat you like you've personally offended them if you don't move out of their way; you get the dozy old couples who can't find anything or reach it once they've found it; you get the impatient young couples like us, who spit out swear words scattershot at adults and children alike. I don't care if your fucking daughter hears me swearing - leave her at home if it matters that much. It would certainly make me swear less or maybe I'll just run my trolley over her head next time. How does that sound, hm?

Right. Calm. Spouse is making soup. I'm sure it will cheer me up. It worries me that food makes me so happy. We bought a crab to have with some pasta tonight, and that will probably make me the happiest person alive for about eight minutes while I'm eating it.