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.

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.

Gloves, and Other Tales

A peanut butter slathered banana. Mmmm.

Klinger's Glove series popped into my head today (I think it was stumbling upon Otto Dix in The Guardian that did it). I've always been bewitched by it. I suppose it's the logical progression of a childhood obsession with Outside Over There: from one mesmerically dark set of imagery to the next.

There's something so romantic about gloves, so vital: lost gloves, found gloves. For so flimsy a garment, it certainly supports a great deal of intrigue -- for me at least. I suppose it's all to do with touch: brushing fingers when you shouldn't, electrifying first caresses, longing to hold a hand that isn't yours to reach out for. A glove -- moulded to your hand -- takes on the taint of all this intrigue.

(On second thoughts though, your glove might just be some entirely unromantic half-mothed stopgap you picked up in Boots on an unseasonably cold day... and I could be talking utter nonsense.)

Words from Sir Walter, Scott

Banana

The entrance to Waverley #waverley200 pic.twitter.com/gHdv1HigTc
— Edinburgh Spotlight (@edinspotlight) October 18, 2014

This popped up in my Facebook feed today (and yes, I hate myself a little bit for writing that). I must say, fucked if I know what the other half of the battle is. Though I've never really experienced either arena as a battleground -- that would suggest that there are occasions when it seems like I might be winning...

879 Days

Guacamole on toast, and tea (of course)

It has been 879 days since my last breakfast…

… in the blogosphere. In the real world, I imagine there have been 879 of them too, give or take the odd one I slept through (I don't do well on none).

I won't lie, away from watching eyes, I've had some outrageous breakfasts -- custard creams, reese's pieces, leftover pizza, leftover thai food, cake, all sorts. Today, I was accidentally "on trend". The internets tell me it's all about avocado on toast for bendy, balanced yoga types. I'm neither bendy, nor balanced (in any sense of the word), but I did have a dangerously soft avocado languishing in the fruit bowl, and awoke to tomato and lemon remnants in the kitchen that screamed "guacamole me", so I did.

879 days seem like the number of days in which seismic things could have happened. I could have won an election (I didn't); spawned three infants, albeit in alarmingly Catholic succession (I haven't); finished my novel (I haven't); had my heart broken (I have, twice); moved house (I have); finally figured out how to leave the flat without having to go back at least three times because I've forgotten my phone, sunglasses, wallet etc (I haven't).

879 days focus the mind: I need to figure out all sorts of everything before the next 879 fly by.

Top of the list: did "tagging" get rebranded "labelling" while I was absent from the blogosphere? And is it just as bamboozling an exercise as ever it seemed?

On being irresistible to toothless chain-smokers

Pain au chocolate and an apple, lime and kiwi smoothie.

The universe has a funny way of paying you back. Having bored Miss Ferguson to tears last night about seemingly no-one ever fancying me, I've just spent a three-hour bus journey rebuffing the repeated advances of a drunk, smelly, middle-aged pervert.

Perhaps it's a lesson in not overlooking what you do have. I'd forgotten in my despondency that while it tends to be the case that nice, pleasant-smelling men familiar with the norms of social interaction are largely oblivious to my charms, I am an absolute hit with chain-smoking, toothless creeps.

I suppose one should always try to be thankful for one's particular strengths (however unwanted!). There can't be many women in the world who can say there's not a single boozed-up, bad-breathed, fifty-something multiple-divorcee who can resist them...

What is it About Matt Damon?

Honey loops and cornflakes and apple, grape and pomegranate juice.

There's just something completely winning about Matt Damon. I can't put my finger on it at all, but every time I watch him in something I fall a little bit in love with him (with the possible exception of The Talented Mr Ripley; but even then...).

I have just spent the last two hours wishing I was Emily Blunt in "The Adjustment Bureau." Much as I spent a lot of watching "Birdsong" wishing I was Clemence Poesy. Eddie Redmayne's a pretty darn winning one too. Except I'd want to inhabit a fantasy universe in which there was no death and destruction and Mr Redmayne and I just had lovely freckle-nosed babies together and lived on stinky cheese and red wine.

What can I say, living in the middle of nowhere with a small shaggy dog as my most regular companion has left me a lot of time for extremely far-fetched daydreaming. I'm not sure I'd entirely enjoy life in early twentieth century France though. The corsets and lack of gender equality might prove tedious.

(On an entirely unrelated note, I've been eating a lot of humbugs lately; it's upsetting when you get one that isn't chewy in the middle.)

Breakfasts Two-Hundred-and-Seventy-Seven-and-Eight

No 277: Breakfast of champions (people who set their alarms too late) -- the Tracker bar.

No: 278 Part I: Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and a strawberry & banana smoothie.

No 278 Part II: Boiled eggs and soldiers.

There really is nothing like a costume drama binge to fill you with the false hope of some romantic-hero-shaped chap sweeping you off your feet. I've just watched the wonderful North and South for the first time, reaffirming my love for both Richard Armitage (so much better than the gent before him on Spooks who got exploded) and Brendan Coyle.

Where are the real world versions of these characters? That's what I want to know. Mr Thornton went all the way to Helstone to pick a rose to remember Margaret by. The best most girls nowadays can hope for is some half-hearted Facebook stalking.

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Fifty-Seventh

Muesli with strawberries.

Darn it! I missed the lunar eclipse. I keep missing them.

I did once watch one from a balcony in a ski resort in France. As I stood there with a friend, marvelling at the spectacle, she turned to me and said: "It's so shit I'm watching this with you and not some handsome man." I shared her feelings entirely.

There we were in this preposterously romantic setting, standing about like the odd couple in our flannel PJs and lamenting about our love lives.

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Twenty-Third

Doppelganger shreddies and strawberries.

Sometimes the only sensible course of action is to curl up in front of Pride and Prejudice (the Beeb version of course, not that Keira Knightley travesty).  I honestly think that if a man in a tailcoat, britches and long boots rode up on some steed and told me how much he ardently admired and loved me, I'd run off with him in an instant.

I have only this to add: shelves in the closet -- happy thought indeed.

Breakfast the Fifty-First

Oaty cluster thingys, yoghurt and raspberries.

I saw stars this evening, proper spinning round your head ones like in cartoons. They were brought on by a combination of hunger, and standing up too fast after running to yoga class. Probably this is the closest I shall ever come to a swoon.

We Macdonalds are not the fainting type. Especially not me. I am relentlessly robust: a hopeless candidate as a damsel in distress, and indeed a romantic heroine. Although... an early Austen heroine did counsel "Beware of Swoons ... Run mad as often as you chuse; but do not faint" -- so perhaps there is scope for non-fainting romantic heroines.

My Mama, on the other hand, is a champion fainter. So much so that she can't do Pilates, and has to sleep propped up on a mound of pillows. 

Breakfast the Seventeenth

Muesli with yoghurt and raspberries.

According to the BBC, "Events occurring in the brain when we are in love have similarities with mental illness." Golly. Though it does explain a few things.