Today I went for a swim. I achieved forty lengths in 25 minutes, which considering this is the first time I’ve been for over 3 months was a bit of a coup for me. And by 40 lengths I DO mean ½ a mile – it wasn’t a child’s paddling pool if that's what you're thinking. To be fair, swimming is a pretty boring sport which I only partake in for reasons of health. It wasn’t so bad last year. There was a rather attractive lady Lifeguard who kept me motivated to stay in the pool and plough on with a few extra lengths. But alas, she seems to have left and swimming is now just a dull chore once again.
In retrospect I suppose it is quite sad that the lifeguard lady would just become another figure I admired from afar yet never uttered a word to. But then I doubt would it have been appropriate to chat up an on-duty lifeguard. Let’s not forget, it may be my leisure time, but it certainly is not hers. She has an authoritative control to maintain, and for this reason any seductions would likely be a pretty humiliating experience for both of us. Approaching her as a half naked and dripping man would make me feel vulnerable, whilst let's be honest, she’d probably find the whole experience akin to being seduced by a moist, slightly obese chicken in a butcher's shop window.
Yes, I suppose it was best to have kept the whole thing as my little private lecherous fantasy (well maybe ‘fantasy’ is the wrong word. Fantasy implies arousal. And the physical consequences of arousal would probably not be contextually appropriate in a pair of revealing trunks around a swimming pool full of young children. But I’m sure you know what I mean).
So goodbye lifeguard lady, whoever you were. How sad that any chance of our love could drown before it’s even had the chance of a supervised swim. If I happen shed a tear over the tragedy, I promise I won’t cause a spectacle at your old pool - I’ll make sure I’m swimming underwater when I cry.
Sun 8th Feb 2009
If you’ve read any of the previous Sunday entries, you probably know the drill by now:-
Got up…. Went to my Mom’s…. We went out for Sunday dinner…. Blah blah blah…
Well today was pretty much like that too – except with a small but significant twist. Rather than going to the Hare & Hounds for dinner as usual, we tried out a brand new place called The Royal George. This provided a somewhat novel change. Rather than plating the meals up and bringing them to the table, The Royal George operated a carvery, serving beef and pork (see – I told you how I’d intended a crazy shake-up of my life). There were only four other diners in the pub, so we didn’t even have to queue at the hotplate. Bonus!
My Mom went first, ordering her usual “child’s portion” of meat, before heading off for some slim pickings at the self-serve veg counter. Then I handed my plate to the carver, ordering myself some of the pork. This morning I had skipped breakfast, so inevitably I watched the knife gliding down the hulking block of meat in ravenous anticipation. He placed the first slice on my plate. My mouth watered. But my anticipation soon turned to disappointment, when he began cut the second of his slices in half, returning it back to the hot plate. Apparently one and a half measly scraggs of pork was all I would be getting.
It occurred to me that just because my Mom had ordered the child’s portion, then maybe he’d assumed I’d ordered it too. I wanted to address his possible mistake, but having never been there before, I couldn’t really be sure if it was a mistake at all. Maybe it was simply a matter of comparative proportion because the Hare & Hounds had been spoiling us with meaty generosity for so long. Our usual Sunday establishment was a bit more expensive, so this possibly explained such varying portions. Even so, it still seemed a bit mean to have sliced so little. There were still mountains of meat left, and since it was 2 in the afternoon and the place was only occupied by four other diners, it was unlikely that much more would get used. It seemed a shame - most of it would probably just get thrown away. What other conceivable conclusion could there be? That the carving boy was some sort of young Nazi, wishing to use the pig carcass as part of some of anti-Semitic victimization prank?
Predictably, and irrespective of any dissatisfaction toward this frugality, my reaction was to say nothing, move on to the vegetable selection, compensate by serving myself a glutinous amount of roast potatoes, then quietly sit down to eat.
While sitting in near-seething disgruntlement, I couldn’t help but feel partly responsible for the measly meaty conundrum. If I wasn’t so socially self-conscious, maybe I would have been more equipped to address the issue. It’s possible I might have still decided it didn’t seem worth going all undignified and ‘Oliver Twist’ about it but either way, at least I’d feel confident enough to give myself the option to find out. So what if I risked looking a bit rude? My perceived sarcasm might have been the kick the carver needed to stop hogging the blatantly ample hog, and carve more generous portions.
Of course, I don’t wholly blame myself. It would be wrong not to acknowledge that the responsibility should also be partly awarded to my Mother. She was the one who ordering the child’s portion in the first place, thus allowing these doubts of portion adequacy in my mind.
I’ve never understood that. Why do people always seem to eat less the older they get? Have you noticed that there’s always something left on an old person’s plate after dinner? It makes no sense. Surely old age should be a time of indulgence. At such an advanced time of life, looks are well on their way to fading, so what difference is a few pounds going to make? God knows after a lifetime of hard toil, you deserve to knock yourself out. That’s what I intend to do. If I reach retirement having amassed a lot of money, I fully intend to get myself a heroin habit. You’ve earned that money through your labour and it’s not like you can take it with you, can you? What better time to see what all the hard drug fuss is about? After years of working hard and living in careful moderation, why would anyone want to conclude their existence in mundane boredom? It’s not like you’d technically be wasting your life cos most of it would have already been spent.
If there’s any pensioners reading this, I urge you to get smacked up immediately.
I’m telling you man, the twilight years ain’t half wasted on the old.
Got up…. Went to my Mom’s…. We went out for Sunday dinner…. Blah blah blah…
Well today was pretty much like that too – except with a small but significant twist. Rather than going to the Hare & Hounds for dinner as usual, we tried out a brand new place called The Royal George. This provided a somewhat novel change. Rather than plating the meals up and bringing them to the table, The Royal George operated a carvery, serving beef and pork (see – I told you how I’d intended a crazy shake-up of my life). There were only four other diners in the pub, so we didn’t even have to queue at the hotplate. Bonus!
My Mom went first, ordering her usual “child’s portion” of meat, before heading off for some slim pickings at the self-serve veg counter. Then I handed my plate to the carver, ordering myself some of the pork. This morning I had skipped breakfast, so inevitably I watched the knife gliding down the hulking block of meat in ravenous anticipation. He placed the first slice on my plate. My mouth watered. But my anticipation soon turned to disappointment, when he began cut the second of his slices in half, returning it back to the hot plate. Apparently one and a half measly scraggs of pork was all I would be getting.
It occurred to me that just because my Mom had ordered the child’s portion, then maybe he’d assumed I’d ordered it too. I wanted to address his possible mistake, but having never been there before, I couldn’t really be sure if it was a mistake at all. Maybe it was simply a matter of comparative proportion because the Hare & Hounds had been spoiling us with meaty generosity for so long. Our usual Sunday establishment was a bit more expensive, so this possibly explained such varying portions. Even so, it still seemed a bit mean to have sliced so little. There were still mountains of meat left, and since it was 2 in the afternoon and the place was only occupied by four other diners, it was unlikely that much more would get used. It seemed a shame - most of it would probably just get thrown away. What other conceivable conclusion could there be? That the carving boy was some sort of young Nazi, wishing to use the pig carcass as part of some of anti-Semitic victimization prank?
Predictably, and irrespective of any dissatisfaction toward this frugality, my reaction was to say nothing, move on to the vegetable selection, compensate by serving myself a glutinous amount of roast potatoes, then quietly sit down to eat.
While sitting in near-seething disgruntlement, I couldn’t help but feel partly responsible for the measly meaty conundrum. If I wasn’t so socially self-conscious, maybe I would have been more equipped to address the issue. It’s possible I might have still decided it didn’t seem worth going all undignified and ‘Oliver Twist’ about it but either way, at least I’d feel confident enough to give myself the option to find out. So what if I risked looking a bit rude? My perceived sarcasm might have been the kick the carver needed to stop hogging the blatantly ample hog, and carve more generous portions.
Of course, I don’t wholly blame myself. It would be wrong not to acknowledge that the responsibility should also be partly awarded to my Mother. She was the one who ordering the child’s portion in the first place, thus allowing these doubts of portion adequacy in my mind.
I’ve never understood that. Why do people always seem to eat less the older they get? Have you noticed that there’s always something left on an old person’s plate after dinner? It makes no sense. Surely old age should be a time of indulgence. At such an advanced time of life, looks are well on their way to fading, so what difference is a few pounds going to make? God knows after a lifetime of hard toil, you deserve to knock yourself out. That’s what I intend to do. If I reach retirement having amassed a lot of money, I fully intend to get myself a heroin habit. You’ve earned that money through your labour and it’s not like you can take it with you, can you? What better time to see what all the hard drug fuss is about? After years of working hard and living in careful moderation, why would anyone want to conclude their existence in mundane boredom? It’s not like you’d technically be wasting your life cos most of it would have already been spent.
If there’s any pensioners reading this, I urge you to get smacked up immediately.
I’m telling you man, the twilight years ain’t half wasted on the old.
Sat 7th Feb 2009
One of the things I dread about growing old alone (well, growing even older alone I suppose), is that kind of delusional thing that happens to people’s mind from the lack of interactional stimulate. There is a neighbor of ours who comes to the pub on a Saturday night. He has been divorced and living alone as long as I have been alive. His attitude and behavior continue to become progressively idiosyncratic the older he gets. For instance, although he has a great base of general knowledge, every now and then he will try to tell you something in that very ‘bloke in the pub’ type of way, that is complete and utter bollocks. The strange thing is, he tells these lies with the same complete conviction. I suspect he has had too much time and now honed his own world-view to a point where it has become total and solid, because he has lived alone for so long with no-one to question his opinions. Or maybe he is actually well aware of the falsehood of his statements but when in social situations he takes great pleasure in the novelty of messing with people’s heads. I remember him in the pub once, as bold as brass, trying to proclaim that the English invented the curry. At first, I assumed he was earnestly just getting his trivia a little jumbled, and had read or heard about the Balti dish having recent origins in Great Britain. I tried to tactfully correct his faux pas, but he was still insistent that all curried dished originated from English hands. The people around us expressed their surprise at this ‘fact’, but nevertheless seemed to completely believe him. There was only me who did not seem so willing to accept the statement at face value. I decided to dig a little deeper into his historical sources. I felt confident from the reaction I’d witnessed that he was rarely questioned his knowledge, so I could topple his logic quite easily. Yet to my surprise, and to his great credit, there was a deeper argument ready-prepared.
He informed me the dish was conceived when English Army were fighting in India. “Well it’s obvious when you think about it really. It was necessity” he argued with sincerity, “You can’t feed an army on rice alone, can you?”
As flawed as this justification seems, due to the confident sincerity of his argument, the people around us astonishingly took this ‘evidence’ as fact. They all had enlightened, ‘well-I-never-thought-about-it-like-that’ faces on them. Presumably they are willing to believe that up until that point in history, swathes of Indians had been dying off through malnutrition then? Maybe they even gave themselves and their ancestors a collective pat on the back. Thank God for the English.
So there you have it - the blinkered world view of the lonely, previewed in all its glory. I give it 3 months until this whole blog is just a tissue of untruths. Like I say, I am yet to find out whether these lies are going to be for self-amusement or self-delusion. But at least I know I’ll get away with them, so long as I can back it up with the most anemic of justifications.
He informed me the dish was conceived when English Army were fighting in India. “Well it’s obvious when you think about it really. It was necessity” he argued with sincerity, “You can’t feed an army on rice alone, can you?”
As flawed as this justification seems, due to the confident sincerity of his argument, the people around us astonishingly took this ‘evidence’ as fact. They all had enlightened, ‘well-I-never-thought-about-it-like-that’ faces on them. Presumably they are willing to believe that up until that point in history, swathes of Indians had been dying off through malnutrition then? Maybe they even gave themselves and their ancestors a collective pat on the back. Thank God for the English.
So there you have it - the blinkered world view of the lonely, previewed in all its glory. I give it 3 months until this whole blog is just a tissue of untruths. Like I say, I am yet to find out whether these lies are going to be for self-amusement or self-delusion. But at least I know I’ll get away with them, so long as I can back it up with the most anemic of justifications.
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