Indefinite Leave

Muesli.

Yet more muesli.

I bought a Euromillions ticket this evening, and I didn't win. This latest disappointment in a lifetime of raffling non-triumphs has made me so miserable that I find I am unable to meet the objectives I set myself with this blog: to say something amusing, or interesting, most days. Until I have come to terms with this great sadness, I am putting myself on compassionate leave, and excusing myself from all bloggerly duties... (Well, it's that, or the sense that having made a very little progress with my writing, after a spell of complete gridlock, I feel I ought to devote all energies to that.)

I'll keep eating breakfast, of course. I just shan't be photographing it (which, let's face it, is a profoundly odd thing to do -- but then that was at the point).

As you were.

Happy Endings for Hosiery

Scrambled eggs and spicy tomatoey deliciousness.

Peanutbutter, honey and banana on toast.

It is a rare load of laundry for me in which only pairs of socks emerge at the other end.  And yet, today I have achieved just that: a rummage of contentedly coupled hose (rummage seems to me to be the aptest collective noun for socks that I can think of). So, my contribution to the pantheon of writings about lost socks is an usual, happy tale of halves and their wholes. That's nice. For the socks.

Catch-18

Bacon roll.

I read the other day that Catch-22 was originally to have been Catch-18. I don't know why, but I'm very tickled by this.

Become What?

Muesli and banana.

I walked past a running shop today called "Run and Become". Become what? I don't think you should be allowed to be so exigent and vague all at once. Run and become a svelte and be-spandexed wonder in our dayglo, breathable wares? Run and become rickety kneed (for this is all I seem to have achieved). Run and become king of the world?

It is a shop name that is at once aspirational and deflating--conjouring images of one's powerful self bounding capapbly across the land, until self knowledge abounds, and an image of one's red-faced, sweaty personage flashes through the mind. Run and become a puce and perspiring wreck.

Not The One That I Want

Monday: yoghurt, banana, linseeds, cinnamon & nutmeg;
Tuesday: honey nut cornflakes & banana; Wednesday: banana.

Surely we have peaked with the fashion for drippy acousticy covers of songs, with Chanel No. 5's take on The One That I Want. Please, please, let this be the last of it:

Digital Immigrants

Muesli, banana, and a dollop of honey.

So, we are digital immigrants, those of us born prior to 1985: our childhood's were blissfully unconnected. As teenagers we fought over the use of the landline -- sitting hot-eared in hallways gassing on the home phone as parents and siblings ducked, finger-waggingly, disapprovingly, into sight to chastise us for racking up the bill and monopolising the only means of connection to the outside world. It was a simpler time. And I miss it sometimes (she says on a blog post. Oh the irony.)

Of Cupboards and Monsters

Banana.

Chorizo roll, almond & vanilla croissant, and tea.

Every morning -- it seems -- I leave my cupboard door open (after my rummagings). And each evening as I peel back my duvet, ready to flop into bed, I glance at the open door, briefly consider leaving it so, and give in -- as ever -- to the impulse to close it, as thoughts of the monsters within flicker through my head.

However hard I try to bat these thoughts away, a little bit of me is still four-years-old and prefers that the cupboard monsters are safely shut inside. And I even though I know it's all nonsense, and it's ridiculous of me, I shut the door anyway, so that I can drift off to sleep untroubled by wonderings about what might escape otherwise...

Inadequately Attired Fairies

Muesli and banana.

Perhaps it is a sign of burgeoning curmudgeonliness, but rather than making me covetous of their many yuletide offerings, M&S's advert featuring a pair of inadequately attired fairies instead made me want to shout at them to put their coats on. There are few things that make me feel chillier than looking at other under-clothed people, fairies or not.

Darning, and Other Acts of (Self) Love

Peanutbutter and banana on toast.

A few weekends ago, I spent a goodly portion of a morning darning the many holes in the cashmere socks that I wear to bed when it's cold. Darning, I realise, is the greatest act of self love there is.

It is also -- I realised when I woke up this morning with my big toe protruding through a new unravelling -- the most Sisyphean act there is. Well, that and tidying my bedroom.

Very Drear

Banana.

Isn't it funny how dreary is such on ordinary, unremarkable sort of a word, and drear is so quaint? Only people who talk like Celia Johnson say drear, but stick a y on the end and it becomes perfectly normal.

I think I'm going to start saying it more, in my best Celia Johnson; after all it's November in Edinburgh, and November in Edinburgh is so often very drear.

You say Hiccough, I say Hiccup

Bacon, avocado, rocket and egg sandwich.

Almond croissant.

I have a fuzzy sort of a recollection of having come home on Saturday night and written a post about hiccups, and then accidentally having deleted it because I was trying to write it on my phone -- and, well, I suppose you can guess why I had the hiccups.

I've always found they rather cheer one up. I suppose I associate them with laughing too hard: giggling oneself into a state of reflexive hysteria. Everything is more amusing when you have hiccups. Except broken ribs (I have this on authority).

P.S. The missing breakfast was a bacon and scrambled egg roll -- chez Mr and Mrs, and Miss S.

Well of Course the Penguin Made Me Cry

Bacon roll.

Penguin love. PENGUIN LOVE. Damn it! How can a person see that and not cry?

The Double Cream Debacle

Honey nut cornflakes & doppelgänger shreddies.

 I found five biros in my handbag this evening, a pair of chopsticks, countless receipts, three ibuprofen  packets (all partially used), some ballet tickets, but not the iPod charger chord I was looking for. One of the biro lids bore some of the remains of the incident I like to think of as the double cream debacle: an episode wherein I thought it was a good idea to transport a pot of double cream (amongst other sundries) in my handbag. It was not. A goodly portion of the cream leaked out of its pot and -- perhaps due to the motion -- churned itself into a diabolical half-cream, half cheese, sludge which covered most of the possessions in that pocket of my bag...

In other news, I went climbing this evening, for the first time in yonks: and, unusually for me, mostly stuck to the colours, rather than opting for the rainbow ascent, as I usually do... I did not, however, attempt the overhang below. Another time, perhaps, when I grow Popeye arms:

Banana-Powered

Banana.

I noticed, looking at the Label section of my blog, that like my friend Eric at Acacia Road, I seem to be largely banana-powered. Unfortunately, I don't turn into a superhero when I eat them. More's the pity. Oh the fun I would have with the power of flight, and superhuman strength.

The Fried Eggs Have It

Toast with jam and peanutbutter. And grapes.

Most of the tales of my Great Grandparents, who opened the family home as a hotel in the late 1950s, suggest they were not natural customer servers... I recently heard one about eggs (which the scrambling of tonight's supper ones put me in mind of).

One morning my Great Grandfather (presumably the breakfast chef that day) walked in to the dining room and asked "who's for poached eggs?" -- a smattering of hands were raised -- "fried eggs?" -- some more -- "scrambled eggs" and so on. Once everyone had put in their request, he announced: "the fried eggs have it" and disappeared off to the kitchen.

I wish I was even a little bit this audacious.

The Girl in the Tower

Bacon roll; toast with cream cheese and jam;
leftover egg sandwiches; honey nut cornflakes & a banana.

I went home this weekend to my tower. It was full of leaves. I leave the windows open because a room with four outside walls and no heat and a leaky roof gets a little damp...

It all sounds rather romantic, but I seem to be living in an inside-out fairytale where princes turn into frogs, and your hot water bottle is always leaky.

Still, at least there a plenty of good fairies about.

And I suppose the view's not bad either: