Breakfast the Two-Hundred-and-Second

Shreddies, Special K and a nectarine.

I caught this song on the radio in the car this evening and thought it was rather charming. It's Admiral Fallow, Squealing Pigs. I hope you enjoy it too.

I have to get up at silly o'clock tomorrow so I must take myself off to Bedfordshire.

Breakfast the Two-Hundred-and-First

Cinnamon and raisin bagel with blueberry jam and an apple.

Perhaps because today has been glorious, sunny, picnicish weather I have the teddy bears' picnic song stuck in my head. And so that you in turn may fall prey to this particular earworm, I give you -- by the magic of YouTube -- The Teddy bears' Picnic:

Breakfast the Two-Hundredth

Fruit & Fibre and an apple.

There was a young lady who swallowed a fly... I say young, but my colleague informed me today that by medieval standards I am positively aged. Anyway...

There was a young lady who swallowed a fly,

I know just why,

She swallowed a fly - she was breathing with her mouth open whilst cycling, because pollen blocks her nose, and it flew right in.

I don't suppose she'll die - but it is none the less, quite, quite yucky.

Actually, I didn't swallow it so much as inhale it. It's probably buzzing around in one of my lungs even now, looking for a way out.

I didn't have such problems when I cycled to and from work at home. The midges were so bad I had to wear a midge net over my helmet (under was not comfortable), which made me look like some weird mushroom-headed alien out of a 1980s episode of Dr Who.

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Ninty-Ninth

Special K and strawberries.

Edinburgh is gearing up for the festival and I am winding up to digging out my bicycle bell. I intend to terrorise all the jay walking tourists. I wish we could have all the fun of the festival without the crowds. And the noise. I often wonder if visitors just forget that some people actually live here, and have to get up early on weekday mornings.

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Ninty-Eighth

Cinnamon & raisin bagel with peanutbetter, honey and banana.

Everyone must immediately go and see Potiche. It is perfection. When I grow up, want to be Catherine Deneuve. Or Deborah Devonshire. I saw her talk at the Edinburgh Book Festival a few years ago and she was utterly divine. She also had quite the most amazing pins for a woman in her late eighties.

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Ninty-Seventh

Fruit & Fibre and strawberries.

I imposed a curfew on myself this evening, which has worked out rather nicely. A friend came round -- not a contravention of the curfew -- I made risotto, I ate ice cream, and now I am off to bed, at a reasonable hour. Well done me.

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Ninty-Sixth

Cinammon & raisin bagel with blueberry jam, and a nectarine.

Oh moth babies, why must you eat my favourite jumpers? And WHERE are you hiding? I thought I'd winkled you out months ago... Dang nammit.

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Ninty-Fifth

Poached eggs and spinach on marmite toast.

I made a dangerous, dangerous discovery today: Cinnamon Oaties -- extremely decadent biscuits on sale at Real Foods. Strangely, given that it is a vegan/organic/veggie/hippy shop, I do seem peculiarly adept at finding its most indulgent muchables...

Breakfasts One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Three-and-Four

No 193: Doppelganger shreddies & Special K.

No 194: Bacon, eggs and tomatoes.

I'm going to have to be rather careful about my desert island disks. I caught the last ten minutes or so of Meet Joe Black this evening and the sound track turned me all tearful. I'll doubtless have to avoid anything from a Bond film too. I banned myself from listening to Bond theme tunes years ago after a journey on which I found myself compelled to "lose" the red ford fiesta behind me after I half convinced myself that the kindly looking OAPs in it were in fact Russian baddies...

Breakfasts One-Hundred-and-Ninety-One-and-Two

No. 191: Special K and strawberries.

No. 192: Doppelganger shreddies & blueberries.

Oh golly, I'm losing interest in this News of the World hacking malarkey. I know I probably shouldn't be, but there it is.

These certifiably bananas shark biting dogs were a welcome distraction though...

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Nintieth

Special K, Honey Nut Cornflakes, yoghurt and blueberries.

I popped in to Tesco-not-so-Express this morning to quickly (so, I thought) grab a yoghurt, a banana and a packet of mini cheddars (nom nom) for my packed lunch. There was no one at the till so I had to use the self checkout, which invariably takes forever because the machines always have a strop if you're using your own bag (or in my case basket). And then of course you have to wait years until someone appears to coerce the machine out of its strop and tut tut you for putting your bag/basket in the wrong place.

Why can't shops have nicely dressed flunkies behind tills who mindlessly beep things through whilst commenting on the weather and asking about your weekend? Those bleepy machines and I don't mix. Especially when I have to select my fruit/veg from the touchscreen - my fingers are always cold, so it takes about three tries for the flaming thing to register that I've pressed it at all, and then of course I end up accidentally selecting a potato instead of a banana and it takes about ten minutes to undo all that. I suppose this is what I get for darkening the doors of a Tesco...

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Eighty-Ninth

Cinnamon & raisin bagel with apricot jam.

My desk is littered with bits of scrap paper covered in various scribblings. I just found the following scrawled on the bottom corner of one:

Splendidly

Teabags

Very strange. I wonder what on earth I meant...

Breakfasts One-Hundred-and Eighty-Six, Seven and Eight

Oh dear, too many late nights again this weekend. Not even particularly late ones, but late enough that the call of the land of nod trumped my good intentions to relate some scintillating tale or other. Of course, now that I sit down to it, I can think of nothing to say except that my snail is gone. I wonder what became of it.

Also, I was found this particular passage in a Guardian article about how botox turns people into unsympathetic robots rather funny:

To demonstrate this you asked women to look at photographs of people's eyes and match them to human emotions…

'Yes, it's called the "Reading the mind in the eyes test."'…

Doesn't really seem worth naming the test in this instance. I mean, if it were called something obscure like the Jones Test, why not? But it's a test in which people are asked "to look at photographs of people's eyes and match them to human emotions" called the "reading the mind in the eyes test"!

P.S. Can't get my card reader to work, so you'll have to last one more day to find out what I've been breakfasting on...

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Eighty-Fifth

Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and banana.

I saw the most spectacular sunset as I drove back into Edinburgh this evening after a perfect supper with my goddaughter, and her parents. It was like someone poured lava into the sky. And then, so as not to be outdone, the moon rose in preposterously picturesque fashion also. It's incredible how fast the nights close in after midsummer. Just a couple of weeks ago I was marvelling at how light it was outside, and now the night is restaking its claim on the skies.

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Eighty-Fourth

Cinnamon & raisin bagel & apricot jam and strawberries.

Does anyone else see a resemblance between the Dark Knight poster and the owl window splat pictures the Beeb have been so fond of lately?

Dark Knight poster.

Owl window splat picture...

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Eighty-Third

Fruit & Fibre and strawberries.

I had an isotonic drink on my cycle ride this morning -- great excitement. A cycling mad friend of mine gave me a sachet last night. It purported to be summer fruits flavoured; I found it to taste rather more like a curious blend of cold lemsip and swimming pool water.

That's the second swimming poolish tasting thing I've had this week; the first being sea salty chocolate. Ho hum.

Breakfasts One-Hundred-and-Seventy-Nine, Eighty, Eighty-One and Two

No. 179: Doppelganger shreddies & strawberries; No. 180: Croissant & Honey
No. 181 Cinnamon & raisin bagel and apple juice; No. 182: Special K & strawberries.

Here's a curious thing: I live on the second floor (third floor if you're American) and below is a picture of a snail on my extraordinarily grubby bedroom window. How on earth did it come to be there? Did it fall from the sky? Climb all the way up the wall? (that's four storeys from the garden side...).

Snail...

And another curious thing... my mother phoned me at ten to ten this evening -- whilst I was having supper with friends -- I answered because I thought there must be some emergency. It turns out she was waiting for a bus. Generally speaking, I phone my parents; they do not phone me. When they do, it scares the bejesus out of me because I assume there's some crisis. There never is, it's just a rare moment of them forgetting their aversion to telephones (a shared family trait; except in the case of my sister who is averse to emails, which makes for limited contact...)

Breakfasts One-Hundred-and-Seventy-Seven and-Eight

No 177: Fruit & Fibre and a peach.

No 178: Honey Nut Cornflakes and Strawberries.

It's been rather a hectic week this week, I promise I'll do better after the weekend. (That is if anyone's interested).

Recently I've been seeing a lot of adverts for Quorn. I don't understand Quorn. I can't think of any reason why you'd eat it.

It's an odd sort of a choice if you're vegetarian and looking for something tasty, given that it's bland, and oddly textured. And if your non-meat-eating is down to concerns about farting cows, its no good either I shouldn't think -- I imagine that the carbon footprint of all that processing easily rivals that of a herd of flatulent bovines. And finally, if you're a meat-eater but looking to save on calories (this seems to be the angle they're going for), why wouldn't you just eat some yummy vegetable confection instead?

Breakfasts One-Hundred-and-Seventy-Five-and-Six

No 175: Banana, wolfed down on the run.

No 176: Doppelganger shreddies and a nectarine.

I had an early start this morning so no time to post Monday's rather pathetic breakfast offering last night.

Today's nectarine became the first casualty of my new bicycle commute. I popped it in my bike basket, looking forward to gobbling it at the other end of my bike ride. Instead, it fell out of the basket as I was wrestling my bike down the stairs -- missing the steps altogether and falling straight down the stairwell. It was remarkably unsplattered, though no longer edible.

The stairs are the worst part of my commute. So far, I have two bruises for heaving my bike up and down two storeys. No doubt I will accumulate more.

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Seventy-Fourth

Doppelganger shreddies and a nectarine.

Glorious, glorious sunshiney day here today. I slathered myself in sunscreen and ventured out to the Botanics for lunch. I had to stand on the peddles of my bicycle all the way, rather than sitting down, as my bottom is still sore (damn bicycle seats).

Later I joined my friend in one of the Queen street gardens. She, being English and accustomed to warm weather was in jeans and a cardi, whereas I, a scot, was in a little summer dress. Though, unlike most of my fellow countrymen, I was actually taking steps to avoid turning into a lobster.

Breakfasts One-Hundred-and-Seventy-Two-and-Three

Fruit & Fibre and cherries

Cinnamon & raisin bagel with apricot jam and a nectarine.

I cycled 16 miles today. Now my legs really are going to drop off. And my bottom is rather tender too (why oh why must bicycle seats be so uncomfortable?). I was testing out how long my new commute will take: 45 minutes. Not bad considering my cronky bicycle weighs half a tonne, and has useless gears. Also, it's been so long since I last rode it that it had cobwebs on it, and a flat tyre.

Am falling asleep as I write this so must take myself off to Bedfordshire.