Day 189: I Have Weird Elbows

Regular readers will be aware of the work of Anuja, who was once my personal trainer. She had her good points, like being able to spin in the air, but mainly she threw things at me and told me very long stories about people I do not know.

Anuja left to take up a career as a mobile masseuse and astrologer. Virgin Active took over Holmes Place; we were given new branded haversacks and a man with a moustache squatted in a poster that told us that if we forgot our pass cards, we would have to pay for another. Christmas, New Year, the wedding of my best friend and a delicious Pathologist came and went; I went to Bedford, saw a tiny baby inside a lady's tummy, put a cardboard box on my head to amuse a small child, and went to Amsterdam to Consider My Options.

But all of this Activity (including long walks in France with emergency cake in my pocket), could not detract from the fact that my arse remains Quite Considerable and my tummy - which is in fact an alien appendage created by boy scientists in the Pilsbury Dough Factory - continues to hang in a strange, almost apologetic way. (And this is Without Consideration of The Rest Of It.) There has been Little Gym Action of late and I have been feeling stiff and blobby, and like I am seeping over the edge of things when really, I am not.

Today, my arse hanging behind me, I rushed to the gym to meet my new personal trainer. He is called Nick (a name I have always liked), and immensely tall, as tall as a lamp-post, and cannot touch his toes. When it is cold, snow gathers on his head. Birds build nests in his hair. He is kind and gentle and you do what he asks as he would be sad if you didn't.

He made me do 50 situps, very fast. I was a bit sick in my mouth. And then me made me do 50 pressups, quite fast, but halfway through he shouted STOP!, so I stopped. No more sick came, but sweat went into my eyes and I blinked a bit. "I'm NOT CRYING", I said. "No, I know", he said, "but let me look at your elbows".

My elbows are a bit odd. Only last Thursday the lady with the tiny baby inside her (and the 2-year-old who only likes me when my head is stuck in a cardboard box), looked at my elbows and called me a freak. They sort of swivel around you see, my elbows, in an odd way.

Nick, who is so tall that he cannot fit his head in a normal car, told me that I had "hyperelastic" elbows. "Hyperelastic?", I said. "Well, that or hypo-elastic", said Nick. "Hypo- or hyper", I said, "I think you are saying I have WEIRD elbows". "Yes", said Nick, "You have Weird Elbows. In fact, I think you may be a freak." After that, he made me do other things, things that are the gym equivalent of cod liver oil and spinach, and said: "Not bad. For a FREAK".

I think I like Nick.

Day 188: I Make Low GI Muffins And Do Not Spit Them Out In Disgust

No reader has been so regular that he or she remembers Day 1 of this weblog, in which I was driven out of my own home by some revolting Low GI Muffins. Since that first terrible experience, all I can say is that people wandering around looking for the Holy Grail is as Nothing compared to my 187-day search for a Low GI Muffin recipe; a recipe that is Edible, and does not make me think of pony nuts and straw.

Thanks to various dull 'ishoos' involving the odd visit to Speshul Doctors, I must be Wary of things that are full of sugar and the like and eat mainly Low GI foodstuffs, for it is in this way, and this way alone, that I lose weight. (I hasten to add there is nothing faddy about this; Those With My Condition were aware of the Low GI Diet many years before size 10 journalists in womens' magazines decided to drop two dress sizes on it.)

Today I found a recipe, from the North America, that involved cups and yoghurt. I remembered, with a sudden jolt, that I had bought some 'cups' in the Canada: the making of North American recipes was possible! My friends, let me tell you something. I made the recipe, with the cups, which were easier than scales with numbers on. (A question for North American readers: does one leave one's cups attached to each other, or separate them?). I even worked out the rest of the strange and subtle North American Language of Recipe ("t" meant, I decided "teaspoon"; "T", "tablespoon"), all by myself!

The muffins are fairly palatable, bearing in mind that they do not contain the ingredients (e.g. butter, flour or sugar) that make 'normal' muffins (a.k.a. an excuse to eat cake for breakfast) quite nice. The walnut is my own attractive embellishment; one that, I am sure you will all agree, makes them look rather elegant.

From now on, I shall only make North American recipes with cups, as they are better than measuring scales. As far as I can tell, means I will be eating mainly Bundt cake, muffin and macaroni cheese. Still, needs must!

For those that wants it, here's the recipe:

APPLE OAT BRAN MUFFINS
From The Good Carb Cookbook; I found the recipe here.

Makes 12

2 c oat bran
2 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1 t ground cinnamon
1/4 c dark brown sugar
1/2 c nonfat or lowfat vanilla yogurt
1/2 c apple juice
1/2 c fat free egg substitute or 2 lg eggs + 1 egg white lightly beaten
2 T canola or walnut oil
1 c finely chopped peeled apples
1/2 c chopped walnuts, pecans, dried cranberries or dark raisins (optional)

1. Combine oat bran, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Stir and mix well. Add brown sugar and mix well. Press out any lumps of brown sugar.

2. Put yogurt, apple juice, egg substitute (or eggs), and oil in a small bowl and mix well. Add the yogurt mixture to the oat bran mixture and mix well. Fold in apples and if desired, nuts or dried fruit.

3. Coat bottom of muffin cups w/ nonstick spray and fill 3/4 full w/ batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 16 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center of muffin comes out clean.

4. Remove the muffin tin from oven and allow to sit for 5 minutes before removing the muffins from the tin. Serve warm or at room temperature. Refrigerate or freeze any leftovers not eaten within 24 hours.

Nutritional info per muffin:

100 calories, 19 g carb, 0 mg cholesterol, 3.4 g fat, 2.6 g fiber, 4.4 g protein, 133 mg sodium, 83 mg calcium

GI rating: Low

Stuff I did: Put the apples in; put in a mixture of walnuts, linseeds, pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries and dried blueberries; forgot to buy apple juice so used slightly diluted elderflower cordial instead; didn't have any ground cinnamon, so used mixed spice. Do not have a freezer so will not be freezing leftovers, and fridge is full of cabbage, so will have to eat them all by 6.30 tomorrow otherwise they will Become Poisonous and Kill Me. Didn't coat the muffin cases with stuff as forgot and they were fine. Remain deeply perturbed by N. American use of word "batter" to describe "mix"; "batter" is what you make pancakes (known as 'crepes' in the Americas, I believe) and Yorkshire pudding out of. Oh, and couldn't find any low-fat vanilla yoghurt that wasn't made mainly of sugar, so I used the rhubarb yoghurt I had in the fridge instead. And I don't know what a Canola is and I didn't have enough walnut oil, so I used sunflower, although walnut would have been nicer.




Random Addition: What has actually happened today is that someone I know died. (No comments on this please, we weren't close and I didn't always like him that much.) But it would be odd writing anything today without mentioning it, so now I have. He was 42 and died quite quickly. If you smoke, give up now, and be nice to people you like.

Day 187: I Am Enormously Happy All Of A Sudden

Morrissey! On the Eurovision Song Contest, representing Britain! (Possibly.)

I am crying tears of pure joy.

(Look! It really is true!)



Talking of quiffs, I am reassured to see that the years may pass, but Mark Kermode remains a knobber.*












* Worst celebrity hairstyle in existence, apart from present-day Paul Weller. And why is it that Morrissey and Stewart Lee get away with quiffs (as did Mark Lemarr, before he cut it off), but Kermode does not?

Day 187: I Live Beneath A Cunt

Regular readers will be aware of the work of Twatboy, the near-millionaire 27 year old who lives upstairs. They may also be aware of Fucking Cretin, his gormless flatmate.

Fucking Cretin is a moonfaced Sloane. Like Twatboy, he is shiny-faced and public-school educated. I suspect they both went to one of the minor public schools; schools that have no entrance requirement other than parents with money, and whose examination results do not necessarily provide much of a return on investment.

Twatboy is irritating, but he means well. He apologises and worries about the leaseholder, for example. But it is Fucking Cretin who will die, and die tonight.

Fucking Cretin plays a war game very noisily all the time, endlessly and without cease. It becomes impossible to work, or concentrate on Columbo and Murder She Wrote. Sometimes he plays music very loudly, and shit music too: things like Keane, for example. (Most of the time I ignore it, for they are ten years younger than me and I must be Reasonable.) And every morning, they wake me up stomping down the stairs.

Today I am very tired indeed. I have much to think about, not least whether the kindest way to kill the cat is by placing a cushion over his head and then sitting on him. I have been lying on the sofa drifting in and out of sleep and not feeling guilty about doing nothing, for every time I jolt out of a doze, I am ever-closer to Working Out The Thing I Need To Work Out. It is Vital that I am (for the first time in many weeks) able to think this weekend, and send an email to Amsterdam that may or may not affect my future in a six-month sort of a way.

But what is this? TERRIBLE MUSIC IS BOOMING THROUGH THE FLOOR. I sit bolt upright. The cat sqeaks. The book I am reading (50p from the charity shop) on the sofa, whilst drinking tea and deciding on my short- to medium-term future, slips to the floor.

I Lose It. I bang on the front door. And bang. And bang. And Fucking Cretin comes down.

"Hello Cretin", I say. "Come and listen to this."

Fucking Cretin comes into my flat. The music is extremely loud.

He has a look about him that I do not like. It is a look that tells me the little cunt thinks he is somehow better than me. Granted, my hair is standing on end and I am wearing a 'hooded top' over an otherwise sensible ensemble; and yes, all the self-help books I have acquired over the years are on the floor*, being sorted to take to the charity shop. But nevertheless, I am a) older than him; and b) his neighbour. And c), he does not own the flat; TwatBoy does. It is therefore in his best interests to be nice to me.

But no. The little shit looks at me, sneers slightly, and says "But it's not that loud".

I am astonished. "What did you say?"

"Well it's not that loud. You asked me my opinion and I'm giving it: I don't think it's that loud."

The cunt! I think.

"I didn't ask your opinion. I asked you to come into my flat so you could hear how loud it is. Then you might understand why I sometimes come and ask you to turn it down."

"But it's not that loud."

Time passes. Traffic stops on Brixton Hill. Storm clouds gather; birds fall from the trees. A distant shot is heard. I squint at Fuckin Cretin in disbelief.

"Are you arguing with me?", I say, as if I have just been told the earth is flat.

He crosses his arms and sticks his chin out. He laughs slightly, in that patronising way that only half-wits with over-inflated ideas of their own intelligence and importance can laugh.

"I just think you're being ridiculous. It's Saturday evening, I'm getting ready to go out, and it's not that loud"

What happened next I will not repeat in full, but the expressions "you're being fucking rude, Cretin", "had it crossed your mind to apologise", "don't fucking talk to me like that, Cretin", "get out of my flat NOW", "I have already asked you once: get out of my fucking flat", "yes, Cretin, I WOULD like you to turn it down" and "I wouldn't mind so much, except your music is fucking awful" were used.

Fucking Cretin will no doubt be spending the evening recounting in full how amusing he was in the face of the hysterical woman from downstairs. But what Fucking Cretin does not realise is that I am a trained assassin, and will get him when he comes in tonight. I will wait for him behind the garden wall and leap on him like a puma that has eaten to much cake, whip out a cushion, put it over his face and sit on it until he stops breathing. And then I will move to Amsterdam, and allow some practitioners of the heavy metal to move in.


* Every one unread, I hasten to add, apart from the first three chapters of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, from which I gathered you should put men on elastic bands and let them go into caves, and women just need a nice cuddle. What is more worrying is the fact that many of these books were given to me. Do I sound like the sort of person who wonders who's moved my cheese?

Day 186: I Am Really Very Confused

My brother and I continue our walk after staring confusedly into a shop window, and suddenly - as if by magic - I am Thrown Into Mental Disarray once again! What in God's name is THIS shop selling?














Still confused, we enter a local "bar" and drink some strong beer out of a tap with a seventeenth century man on it. Everyone is playing chess. It is a very nice bar with candles, smoke and dim music. (There are no bars like that in London*, but many in Amsterdam, Prague and Vienna.)

I am talking about work with my brother (the word "career" is neither appropriate nor entirely palatable), and we talk a little about the ever-increasing possibility of me living in Amsterdam.

Me: I like this bar.
My brother: I wouldn't be playing chess though.
Me: No, nor would I, but I'd be up for a game of badminton.
My brother: Twat.

* There are many, many English things that I adore and think are unsurpassed (the BBC and Marmite, for example), but actually living there is Rubbish.