I want to learn to Scuba; it’s on my list plus I’ll have the opportunity to do it in some exotic locations on my round-the-world trip. But I started off today in the relatively unexotic location of Thornton Heath Leisure Centre.
I ain’t afraid of no ghost!
Despite having been granted blogging privileges on this blog, Mr Beet has decided to start his own blog. He’s all excited by his stats, bless him, so give him a click and make his day!
Points of order from my third piano lesson:
I have no rhythm.
Despite this, I have made good progress at Happy Birthday and Livin on a Prayer. Now I’m practising Someone Like You by Adele. Quite the repertoire.
My piano teacher cannot pronounce Adele, which means I look at him blankly and he thinks I haven’t heard of the woman who’s been No 1 for most of the year.
My hands are too small.
My piano teacher has an audition for a Dire Straits tribute band this weekend.
Days to go until my birthday: 16
Days to go until Glastonbury:25
Days to go until leaving work: 55 (34 working days)
Days to go until round-the-world trip: 65
I’ve left unicycling to the last minute so I now just have 10 weeks to master it before I go away. Desperate times call for special trips to Nottingham for unicycling masterclasses with my friend Jo. The unicycling book basically says first of all just sit on it and find your balance and to do this for days and days. Then you can progress to stepping off, for more days and days, before you even try rolling along next to a wall. Expectations duly managed, we went out to the backgarden and started putting in the first of the many hours that this is going to take. Click below to see my progress throughout the day. Hint – it wasn’t much.
Just to show that I am fair, I have to admit that I had a “SouthernWatch” moment the other day and am ashamed to say that it came from someone from Croydon, which is where I am from, who was displaying what I call “Yorkshire attitude“.
Celebrity hairdresser James Brown was on TV saying that who would have thought a young lad from Croydon could have risen to the top of his profession as session stylist to the stars.
Oh for goodness sake! Everyone’s from somewhere, and hairdressing’s hardly known for being an elitist profession where it helps to have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth. Also, enough people already seem to have the idea that Croydon is a shithole without celebrity Croydonians pretending that they managed to haul themselves out of some kind of ghetto.
I had a genuine breakfast TV “GAHHH!!!!” moment this morning when this week’s fired Apprentice was being interviewed. The first thing he said was that he was from Liverpool so he didn’t know London that well and that’s why he failed at the task. This made me GAHHHHH!!! more vociferously than this comment in isolation would have justified, but I’d watched him on the Apprentice - You’re Fired programme last night, when he was also constantly banging on about being from Liverpool (and not just being from Liverpool but also “representin” – like some West Coast rapper). And this morning he was at it again: very first question, mentioning that he’s from Liverpool.
Here he is being interviewed for the Telegraph and, what do you know, he’s so proud about being from Liverpool, but it also proved his downfall as he failed to appreciate that London was bigger than Liverpool.
Hmm…proud of being from Liverpool, but also using it as an excuse for your failures. Sounds about right. At least he didn’t win, so we didn’t have to put up with the standard “It just goes to show that people from Liverpool can succeed...” as if he has single-handedly confounded low expectations that nobody actually has, except in his imagination.
So I was in by myself last night and watching TV naked, as you do, when Mr Beet arrived home with his friend. No, it’s not one of those stories. This is not that kind of blog. As soon as I realised Mr Beet was not alone I loudly announced my nakedness and covered myself up with a blanket, while Mr Beet laughed his head off, and his friend (who actually didn’t really get to see any of the good stuff) was quickly re-directed into the kitchen.
Poor guy had had an allergic reaction that evening and had to use his epi-pen, so Mr Beet brought him home to keep an eye on him rather than sending him home by himself. So he’d had enough trauma for one day without seeing me in all my glory.
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
The plot goes something like this:
Organised crime, organised crime, organised crime, organised crime, gynaecological operation, organised crime, organised crime.
Yep – half-way through there is a 50 page sub-plot about a minor character’s operation to reduce her excessively capacious vagina. With all the medical detail one could ever want. This has nothing to do with the rest of the plot as far as I can tell. It’s almost as if someone said to Puzo – the story’s great but it’s a bit macho, why don’t you develop one of the female characters a bit more? - and Puzo thought long and hard about a “female” issue to write about and came up with vaginas.
The edition I’m reading has the most typos of any proper book I’ve ever read. Maybe Puzo’s editor is now sleeping with the fishes.
Despite those oddities, the structure of the story is fantastic – it’s a properly massive epic tragedy in just 600 pages.
One of my 30 things to do before I’m 30 is to learn a musical instrument, so I’ve just started having piano lessons. Well, keyboard really. My piano teacher’s even lent me his keyboard so I can practice between lessons (as you can see, it’s a beast and it takes up most of the kitchen table so it’s dinner on laps from now on).
After two lessons I can play an extremely faltering version of Happy Birthday with two hands, and the opening bars of Livin’ on a Prayer with my right hand only. Mr Beet thinks my lessons are hilarious because my teacher likes to sing, but is Hungarian so he doesn’t know the all the words and makes me sing along with him.
My homework – I can’t read music.
If I can master Happy Birthday before I go away, I will be a happy woman and allow myself to tick this one off the list.
