Older and Hairier (?!)

Physically, I notice the little things now as I charge headlong into my mid thirties.

It's a daily struggle to keep the hair at bay nowadays. The greyer and finer it becomes on my head, the more it makes a presence felt elsewhere. Luckily I have E as a grooming alarm, her eyes light up with a fevered passion when she notices an errant eyebrow hair that needs attention. Without her ministrations I'd end up looking more like Dennis Healey.

Salvador Dali wanted his spare moustaches back..

E plucks thick horrible colourless hairs nestled on my brow (good riddance). She also regards my nostrils with a proprietary sense of ownership - every little follicle is considered fair game for her and her tweezers.

Of this latter fact I'm grateful (eye watering discomfort aside). Every few days I also take myself to the bathroom mirror and am reminded of a hermit crab with by the nose which flares back at me. The pert little hooter of youth has been replaced with a black, cavernous pair of nostrils today, complete with nasal hair that waves back cheerfully..

Everything else seems to be working fine (the knees get little tender sometimes though). Still, I'm really starting to notice those minor changes in the way I look and feel. The facebook photos of former years portray a creamy looking, youthful me that's a world away from the slightly weathered 2011 vintage... and I can't help but marvel at the differences.

A.

Torture Playlist: Track 1

If you haven't heard this already, prepare for your brain to slop out your ears in a watery grey sludge:

Tie me to a chair, play this again and again. I'd admit to anything. Anything.

Its the latest interweb phenom. 13 Year old Rebecca Black, 16m + hits on youtube in a week, etc, etc.

Horribly cliched (Autotune? Check! Creepy older rapper interlude? Check!) but so obscenely catchy. Just one viewing had it wedged in my brain. The lyrics are currently worming around my skull, I'm losing higher brain functions whilst writing this. This time tomorrow I'll be communicating in teenage valley-girl speak with a Stephen Hawking stylee.

It's like the plot of some kind of infectious disease type disaster movie: what happens if this gets out into the wider world?!! God help us!

A.

Straight out of the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe

I loved Donnie Darko: enigmatic, confusing, scary as hell at times.

It was of course Frank the rabbit who gave me all those sleepless nights. Milky cataracts, shiny irridescent skin and horrible pointy teeth which loom over a gaping stygian maw - he had it all.

On a similar note, I'm a fan of amusing image/jpeg website cheezburger.com: your clearing house for all things of mirth. One of the features of the site is 'Sketchy Bunnies' - a rogue's gallery of Easter Bunnies which would torment any child's imagination. Here are some of my favourites.. would you really want your child sitting on their laps?

Pick of the bunch for me are the first (Hitler eyes!) and the last (alien abduction?).

Really, really creepy...

A.

Plasmas and Hamster Wheels

Gyms? I hate 'em!

Only remembered this last night when I took a friend for a powerplate session at the shiny David Lloyd centre in Kingston. Ever since I cancelled my membership at the cheapo council gym a couple of years back, exercise has been distinctly lo-tec.

So my reaction wasn't wholly unexpected. I felt that uneasy discomfort and slight disdain for the row upon row of step and running machines. People marching away furiously upon them and getting nowhere, some with mobile phones clamped between shoulder and ear, others with eyes focused on the array of TV screens arranged high in front of them. In an idle moment I've often thought: 'How much electricity could all these gym bunnies produce?' You could probably power the lucosade vending machines by yummy mummy legpower alone...

Makes no sense to me. I always thought exercise was about escaping the appliances you spend your life surrounded by. Am I right?

Awkward social moment that made me chuckle I

Still waking up at the crack of dawn. Damn.

Uncaffeinated interaction after about 4pm becomes difficult for this fact. Case in point yesterday afternoon.

As a treat, X got the visit to the local soft play area that he so craved. I was on guard duty as he threw himself around whilst E attended to domestic stuff. She returned after about 45 mins so I went to pick up some leaflets from the shiny new sports centre we were visiting. Not looking up, and with brochures in hand I returned to our table with a cursory "Here we go, darling!", eager to share the info I had gleaned.

At least I'd thought it was our table. I was leaning over an adjacent table, facing a bewildered middle aged man in a rugby shirt who looked like he'd just been propositioned! Laughing, I explained my error and moved onto the right table. His head dropped back down to his mobile phone which he regarded with even greater attention than before.

Judging by the rabbit in the headlights expression it looked like I terrified him. Hope not.

My meditations on property porn.. and other things..

A quick one here, I'm tapping down a few words in my lair in the attic whilst Ellen watches 'Vacation, Vacation, Vacation in Australia'. Or whatever the hell its called...

She seems transfixed, which is remarkable as:

1. It's about Australia. And sunshine. Both of which she finds abhorrent.

2. It's about well-heeled people with lots of disposable income. The kind of folks she seems to have little time for.

This evening I've been ribbing her for this new love of aspirational television. What next, Cash In the Attic??

Anyway, Ive just bought myself a couple of silver half onces this evening. The silver price has touched $35 dollars per ounce and just seems to keep on rising. As I've said before, with underlying factors in the economy still the same (debt, massive uncertainty, inflation, money printing etc, etc) it seems the sensible option is to continue to buy commodities. Donning my smug hat now, I've been boring you about that since silver was hovering at $22. Bar a few slips it can only go in one direction as far as I'm concerned.

Who wants to lock their savings in for years and just get 5% on top for their effort? Doesnt seem like a sensible option to me...

In other news I've been carefully squirreling away my matched betting profits, £20 here, £40 there. It all adds up. A certain major high street operator has just offered me a hefty 60 quid bonus for signing up to their website. I'm trying to squeeze every penny I can out of it. Gives me a purpose in my perusal of the sporting press websites - something I did endlessly before I realised I could make a few quid out of it anyway!

Thats about enough for tonight. Not even 10pm as I write this and I feel my eyelids drooping. Whether thats due to the fact that sleep escapes me after 6.30 every morning nowadays or I've just finished a rather generous G&T, I dunno..

The descent down the attic ladder will be precarious either way, If you know what I mean!

A.

A visit into my former workplace..amongst other things..

So its March now, and the sun is starting to show itself..

I can't believe we're two months into the year, already! In the dark and the chill I found it difficult to retain a positive frame of mind. But now the sun is starting to peak out, you can't help but raise the spirits.

Ellen has taken her first tentative steps back to work, a couple of hours in the office today. I took the chance to join her on the bus to work, treating myself to a Big Breakfast en route. It was very odd to be in my old workplace. The place hasn't changed at all, some different coloured application forms in the postroom seemed to be the only difference. The bottom line is, I'm glad to have left. As a place to work it is comfortable and safe, but I could very easily see myself there for years to come, with only holidays to look forward to. Something had to give.

My buddies greeted me with a wistful warmth, but also a certain envy at my escape. Ellen says I was enquired about with interest - makes me feel guilty as I haven't given much thought to the majority of my former peers. As she says, they miss me. It's shameful to say, I don't really miss them though.

In other news, after February indulgences I'm back to being active again. My Fitbug is a godsend, it sets me daily activity targets which so far I've been sticking to, and keeps my guilt of sloth at bay. One of my winsome office buddies raves about pilates so I'm just lodging my order of a DVD for Ellen and myself to try whilst writing this.

I await how that turns out with considerable interest.