Noreen happened to be in our local M&S yesterday and spotted that they had some smallish orchids at half price (like £6 instead of £12!). So she bought me one.
It is currently sitting on my desk awaiting a saucer to sit in. And it definitely cheers up a dull wet day.
Experiment, week 22. Continuing the experiment here are this week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.
My friend Katy blogged a few days ago about her quirks — inexplicable things ones does and habits one has. And I thought rather than post a long comment for her I’d write what follows.
Quirks? Yes, I’ve got my fair share of them; maybe more than my fair share. Who hasn’t?
My friends are too polite to tell me about them — and they still remain friends — so I can only assume they’re not too annoying for most people. Or maybe that’s why I don’t have a huge circle of friends.
So what are my quirks? Hmmm … you really want to know? OK …
I repeat words in the middle of sentences. For instance I’ll say something like; “I wonder if maybe I — maybe I could borrow your saucepan?”. I don’t know how often I do it, but I catch myself at it every so often and think “WTF did I do that?”. It’s a sort of hesitation, although not quite. It’s not that I don’t know what I’m going to say because invariably I do, so that isn’t the cause, unlike most hesitations. It’s something much more automatic than that, like a little loop in the brain circuits snaps open.
I interrupt people; and talk over them. This is very annoying for them, and almost as annoying for me. I catch myself doing this and every time I kick myself in the ankle and say something like “f***ing dickhead — STOP doing that!” in my own ear. It isn’t just something I do on the phone, where there are no visual cues about speaking; I do it in face-to-face conversations as well. Again I don’t know why I do it. I’ve been moaned at for it over many years by parents, work colleagues, managers, friends and myself, but I still do it. It seems to be something I cannot break. We all have a collision detection system which kicks in when we start speaking at the same time as someone else. Usually it stops both people, who then either start again after a random delay or undergo some negotiation; sometimes only one person will stop leaving the way clear for the other. Clearly my collision detection system doesn’t work properly. Why?
I also swear a lot. I know I do. Hopefully it (usually automatically) moderates itself in polite company.
Like many people I have the thing about peeing. I have to pee just before I go out and last thing when settling for the night. Yep, even if I’ve been only 10 minutes before. I also have it when doing anything in the garden: within 10-15 minutes of starting anything in the garden I have to go to the loo.
Does nudity count as a quirk? Yes, I thought it would. As regular readers will know I’m comfortable being nude. I always have been; it’s how I was brought up. We have a naturally warm house (no the heating isn’t turned up high, if anything the opposite) and I don’t feel the cold easily (too much blubber!). Consequently at home I seldom get dressed unless I’m going out, someone is coming round or the weather is really, really cold. I always have a dressing gown or jeans & t-shirt to hand in case the doorbell rings. I even sit in the garden, near the house where essentially no-one can see, in the nude, although I don’t normally wander down the garden in full view of the neighbours. Mustn’t frighten the horses y’know.
I almost invariably have to sleep flat on my front, facing left. Don’t know why; I always have, even as a kid. I have to be really tired (or ill) to sleep on my back or side — although I do sometimes wake up on my back. Bloody annoying now I have a CPAP mask (because of the sleep apnoea); it would be much better and easier if I could get to sleep easily on my back. But then I suspect everyone has one position in which they normally sleep.
Another annoying thing I do is sniff. It is about the only way of clearing my nose. As a kid I was always being told to blow my nose not sniff. But blowing my nose was a waste of time; I never could clear it that way; it just didn’t work, whereas sniffing did. And that’s still the case. I assume it must be something to do with the structure of my nasal passages ans sinuses; and despite surgery. The catarrh in my sinuses annoys me, so I’m damn sure the sniffing annoys others. Sorry!
So there are a few quirks. I’m sure I must have lots of ohers that I’ve not noticed.
Dare you tell us about your quirks?
Experiment, week 21. This week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.
Bring on the English asparagus!
For all cat lovers … this is Sally trying to blend into the carpet while doing her Miss Cute act last evening!
Considering she’s a fairly lazy pudding of a cat who could do with losing a pound or two of kibble (who couldn’t?!) she’s doing well for 13+. You’d not know she’s had her thyroids removed. She’s still a pretty (not so) small cat with semi-long hair (nice light fluffy striped fur that floats everywhere) an apricot evening gown and black gloves. And yes, she still does cute all too well.
Experiment, week 20. Yes, we’re now a third of the way through the 60 week experiment! So here are this week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.
Experiment, week 19. This week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.
This week’s Listography is a pretty open-ended “challenge” as we’re invited to complete the sentence “five reasons I know I’m a …”. So how to finish that statement? I know, with the word “intellectual”.
That sounds conceited but it isn’t. We all have different skills. Mine happen to involve brain power. But I’m absolutely crap at anything manual: I have 10 left thumbs. I cannot even saw a piece of wood straight!
So here are five reasons I know I’m an intellectual:
1. I have a science doctorate (on the boundaries of physics and chemistry) but I also run a literary society. Although I have a broad understanding of science, medicine, history, language etc. I’m not a polymath: for a start I’m useless at foreign languages!
2. I see three sides of every argument before you even tell me one. And I see through management and marketing bullshit like a knife through butter.
3. I can sit in a health education session and realise my brain is bigger than the sum of all the others in the room, including the trainer. Not necessarily an advantage as it means I struggle to suffer people who don’t use what they’ve got, especially when they then also don’t believe what you tell them. I’m useless at manual things, but I do have to try sometimes. I expect other people to do the same with their brains.
4. I don’t need mental crutches like religion. I can think, and read, and argue. I can do morality without having it imposed from outside. I know there is no such beast as “natural justice” and that life isn’t fair. I can deal with it.
5. My hypnotherapist struggles to get stuff into, or out of, my subconscious. My conscious brain is so fast and so analytical that whatever he does it goes “Oh, he’s doing X. That’s interesting. I wonder if he’ll do Y now? Or does it mean Z? And I wonder how that fits with A?” rather than just going “La-la-la, isn’t that pretty”!
Which doesn’t make for an easy ride; in fact it can be downright depressing and demoralising. But then who said it was supposed to be easy?
Experiment, week 18. This week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.
Oh dear, I just know I’m going to be in trouble now because Kate’s Listography this week asks us to nominate our top five cookery books.
Cookery Books! I ask you?! Who needs cookery books?
What do you mean? Of course I cook! Bloody well, I’ll have you know! I always have done. At 12-ish (yes, that’s 50 years ago!) I kept house for my father for a week while my mother was in hospital, and he had a 3-course hot meal every evening when he came in from work.
I learnt the basics at my mother’s knee and then honed them as a student. I haven’t looked back since. OK, so I don’t do fancy fancy stuff, or cakes, or clever puddings. I can do them, but I choose not to because I don’t need to or want to. But I do cook good things, from fresh, as you’ll see from the recipes I’ve posted here. (Type recipe in the search box on the right to get a list.)
But I hardly ever use cookery books. We have a couple of shelves of them and there are only two I use with any regularity at all (ie. about twice a year).
The first is Florence Greenberg, Jewish Cooking. And no, not because I’m Jewish, because I’m not. I bought the Penguin paperback of this when I was a post-grad student because it looked useful. And it is. Despite not being illustrated it is good on the basics and has some superb recipes. OK so it doesn’t do anything non-Kosher, like pork and offal, but so what? That’s easy: you just adapt recipes.
Thanks to Noreen, who brought this book with her when we got married, the other cookery book I use is the two volume paperback of Farmhouse Cooking by Mary Norwak and Babs Honey. No illustrations and no basics. But lots of good hearty recipes for just about anything you can imagine — as as you’ll know if you look at the recipes hereabouts we are people for good, hearty, wholesome peasant food with a minimum of faffing around.
Beyond these I might skip through the odd book for ideas, but seldom more. And I do also have a folder of recipe ideas. If I have a clue what I want to do but need to brush up on how to do it then I tend to use this new fangled interweb thingy called Google. Almost everything you’ll ever need is online!
There’s only one thing I hate more in the kitchen than the recipe book as bible, and that is scales! Unless you’re making cake, where the correct proportions are critical, learn to do it by eye! Cooking is all about having confidence!