Five (5) Things, Plus Maybe A Few More Because I Missed It Yesterday. Wednesday 13th February

1. In Canada, we are safe from Zombies. This is good to know because I have been worrying about it. 
2. Up at 4 yesterday and in office before the cleaners got there. Felt excellent until other people came into office. Felt bad around 4 when I accidentally knocked someone's drawer open on their desk and saw a massive rubber hand in it. 
3. Went to Toronto.  Talked about Tesco quite a lot.
4. Thinking about Waitrose and Tesco generally.  Do you like one more than the other? If so, why? 
5. Thought about John Lewis Partnership and its stores. Escalators in Peter Jones when was a tiny child & Monkeymother I think singing. Feet measured on the special foot measuring device in Start-Rite. School uniform. Green and white bags.  It is important to say that I love John Lewis Partnership so much that the other day I cried just thinking about it.  I make no bones about it.
6. Thought about it a bit more and wondered if I would be able to get a job there if we ever moved back to England. Realised wouldn't be a super idea as would just be crying the whole time. 
7. Ate a 'tunaburger' for dinner with odd Montreal fries which are both soft and crispy, sweet and salty at the same time. It has a particular heft, the Montreal fry. I know not where it comes from. (NB I am not talking about sweet potato fries. I know the difference.)
8. Wondered how 'up at 4 and at work before the cleaners' would look as a statement on a blog about 'non-working'. Here is the thing. The work I am doing at the moment is incredibly interesting and I am really enjoying it. If I wake up early I start thinking about it and then THAT'S IT. So I do the work. It's OK as long as I remember to sleep etc. 

Five (5) Things: Monday 11th February

So far the thing of writing down 5 "moments" (dread word) from every day is working out OK for me. I don't know about you, mind. Anyway, here are today's:

1. Eat North Staffordshire Pancakes for breakfast and marvel again at their chewy brilliance. If you do not know of them, they are like a cross between a crumpet and a pancake and sourdough bread and probably better for you than bread as made of oats etc. Recipe here. You should try them. 
2. Wonder about fancy dress themes and am pretty sure everyone is doing Downton Abbey. For those that can take it, you get to wear nice dresses, dangly earrings, black tie, tweed, etc. For those that can't, you go as Mrs Patmore.
3. A dog comes into office. I talk to dog, stroke it, pat it, play with its ears etc then realise Chairman is talking to me/looking at me/standing next to me etc whilst I am making "I love you" faces  at dog.
4. Am secretly proud of massive scab I have on left hand from burning self on oven yesterday. Looks like have been in a fight with a hamster holding a tiny lightsabre made of internally illuminated super-hot metal. Make a lot of expansive hand gestures but no-one notices.
5. Spots. Why spots? WHY?

Five (5) Things : Sunday 10th February

1. 'Bring Your Cat To Work' day
2. Blackcurrants rare in Canada although at least they exist here, unlike hedgehogs. Reminded of someone saying no trees in England, only hedgehogs.
3. Keep falling asleep like gigantic dormouse. No more water running from nose, just aching bones. Arthritic dormouse maybe.
4. Blogging on iPad hard but forced to be brief so blessed relief for all readers. (Do not put comments saying O we like it when you do the blog on the iPad.)
5. Treat for middle aged people: electric blanket on 8.

Five (5) Things: Saturday 9th February

1. Go the butcher to get some pig. And some quail's eggs, and some chicken liver, and some lentils. Come home with something I do not remember buying. It is a hot sausage wrapped in foil. Strange. It has been cut in two and had mustard put in it. It tastes like a hot sponge soaked in Bisto, which is odd because normally they make nice sausage. Put it in the bin, wonder if someone Montreal is missing a sausage. Wonder if there's a market for a Grindr type app.
2. Listen to the Archers, which appears to be homage à Brief Encounter. Confused. Spend quite a long time trying to imagine the BBC script meeting in which this (compete with smut in the eye, lady interrupting, etc) was suggested. Look it up but find no answer, only another question: why, Vanessa Whitburn, WHY?
3. Watch Four in a Bed. Decided I would apply to be on it if I ever open a B&B & go through scenario in head in which do audition tape, send it off and am rejected & pretend to be OK about it to neighbours, lady in local shop etc (all of whom have been rooting for my application as a 'local hero' who gives them wine when they 'just drop in'), but am in fact indignant but not embarrassed.
4. Hip hurts. Look it up. Probably arthritis, which seems premature because I haven't done half the things I was supposed to do before crippled by arthritis and/or have a hip replacement, e.g. appear in Four in a Bed, own a lively dog, go riding again, get photographed gurning behind Sting  when he is being challenged about his helicopter.
5. Notice seem to have cold, if a cold is water running out of your nose. Lie down. Remain lying down. Write this lying on left side so right hip doesn't hurt with water running out of left nostril. 

(Just one extra thing)

Five (5) Things: Friday 8th February

1. 2 cold hard boiled eggs for breakfast and a tiny cup of milky coffee which was like a child's drink (if they are quite a sophisticated child). Had manly tea. 
2. A lot of snow for Toronto, which means not much if you are from Montreal or Saskatoon, but a fuck of a lot if you are from for e.g. England. Everywhere quiet, meetings cancelled, busses skating, a taxi catches fire and we see it (the driver is OK). 
3. Did a phone conference about Quebec. Said some things about average basket size, Catholics and Celine Dion. A great deal of talking happened, mainly out of my mouth. Had some water.
4. Did a personality test thing. Apparently my top 5 themes are Input, Individualization, Futuristic, Intellection and Learner. I do not know what it means, other than I like reading. (True.)
5. All planes being cancelled out of Toronto, apart from ours.  We take a punt, yes we do. We look the sky (black) and at the ground (40 cm of snow) and back at the sky again (snow is still coming out of it), and we decide it will never take off, so we take the (5 hour) train instead. The plane took off and landed in Montreal before we were out of Ontario. Trout that was not trout, brandy that was devil wee wees. Crying with joy at a picture of Sting in his under crackers doing yoga. Stopped at a station: "We may be detained here for an indefinite period" or similar; man refuses to eat his supper and stands around watching us eat. This concerns the hostess of the carriage who wishes to reheat his stew; he will not have it. Some fellow passengers find this funnier than I believe it is. The man opposite me snores. We will be home time time around midnight, I think.

Five (5) things: Thursday 7th February

1. Spend morning writing a presentation which goes from "quite shit" to "alright, as it goes" in a perplexing way that has something to do with a picture of two babies in hockey jerseys punching each other in a playful style. Find self saying "yes yes very interesting" out loud to myself about my own presentation whilst sitting in an open-plan office listening to Sufjan Stevens on a set of Sennheiser noise-cancelling headphones accidentally 'acquired' from my last workplace.
2. Decide not to go to Toronto tomorrow morning because of pending snowstorm but was told had to go so went tonight instead.  Forgot to pack undercrackers.
3. Got 90% of the way to airport, realize have forgotten ID required to mount a plane. Make taxi go back the other way, wait, then come back again. Was sure would miss flight but O happy day flight delayed by 2 hours: good (caught it); bad: 2 hours late, wasn't allowed to land, crammed in tiny seat for 90 minutes more than any living being should be next to two girls I can only describe as asinine. Read the WestJet magazine twice and two chapters of a book that includes the word "Measurebation".
4. Get in cab. Driver says, do you mind if we take someone else too, there are few cabs tonight in this (non-existent) Torontonian snowstorm. A man gets in who is tall and thin with a sharp face carved from cheap frozen cheese. He is a consultant and he travels the whole time. He has a baby and he thinks that ladies should stay at home and not work especially as childcare costs $3,000 a month. (If this is the case he is an idiot and living in the wrong place and probably sending his kiddy to an organic free range nursery of some kind). It is all a bit embarrassing. He gets out of the car. The driver (in cap) attempts analysis. I realize it is 10.30pm.
5. Am on bed in hotel. They always leave me free biscuits.

Five (5) Things: Wednesday 6th February

Day 2 of attempt to write down 5 "moments" (whatever they are) every day until I get bored. OK here goes.

1. Marvelled again at the Nespresso Aeroccino Frother.  I would not buy a Nespresso coffee machine ever, no way man, not even if I were paid to buy it (and despite the box of pods which has the same effect on me as a large tin of coloured pencils did c. 1976), but this this really is good. It is $99 so if you want one, ask for it for your birthday (unless you're rich).  It makes everything a bit fancier and compensates for mistakes involving goat's cheese before 7.30am.
2. Read quite a long report about something called "Millennials". There are 2.6 billion of them in the world and they are people who are between 9 and 30 years old. The report drew conclusions that worried me, e.g.:  25% of Millennials believe that they will earn more than their parents; 78% proud of their nationality (up from 66% in 2006).  The only conclusion I could draw from it is that 9 year olds have far too much on their plates nowadays. When I was 9 I spent most of my time pretending to be a horse.
3. Went to the pharmacy to get some shampoo (enough to wash 500 heads: $3.99).  A lady offered to rub her stick over my face to test my "obviously very dry and red" skin.  Stick didn't work. She went off to get batteries. Came back 6 minutes later. Put batteries in. Stick did not work. Skin still "obviously dry and red".
4. Went to a restaurant (known as a risstrunt to G. Ramsay) and ate cheese fondue with some friends.  Told story involving a tiny mouse asking a lion for an insight. Was hit joke of the night (in my head).
5. Doing burny cheese indigestion burps and looking at this for quite a long time: 

Five (5) Things: Tuesday February 5th

I needed a magazine the other day. They were out of Horse and Hound and  Harvard Business Review*, so I bought one with Oprah Winfrey ** on the front and read an article in which a lady said that it was a good idea to write down 5 'moments' you have had that day before you go to bed.

I can't remember why this was a good idea - something to do with understanding that life is made up of good days (e.g. finding a Rolo down the back of the sofa) and bad days (you realise you are going to die one day and haven't decided on CofE service inc. Lord's Prayer, Morning Has Broken and Once In Royal David's City even if it isn't Christmas OR wicker box that you put on the BBQ then bury with the cabbages), but that normally you just keep on going and things are OK.

I don't know what a 'moment' is, exactly ('moment' gone into the same pot - labelled Words That Don't Mean The Same Thing Anymore - as 'connected' and 'meaningful'), but I thought I might try it for a while and see what happens.

OK here we go. First things that come into my head. Day 1. 

1. Had a bit of old salmon that was a bit dried up on the edge in my scrambled eggs. Spent quite a long time thinking that the egg would rehydrate the salmon then got a bit of salmon stuck in the tooth that needs a new crown, which led me to think about the ambitious 'endodentiste' and his spats.  
2. Had to lie on bed with legs in the air to get on boots.  Took them off and wore something else instead.
3. Went to sales conference where "Edge of Glory" was the theme tune and people with headsets made shampoo salesmen clap.
4. Sat in a car with a heated seat and was accused of being in love with a marketing director and going HA HA HA HA HA at all his jokes really loudly like I loved him.
5. Ate a blueberry yoghurt with a long spoon.

*  In truth, I only subscribe to one of these publications.

** I do not know what has happened to Oprah Winfrey since her TV station broke, but she must be quite poor if she has to lend her voice to this fuck-awful piece of advertising.  It is the sort of shit that a) gives advertising a bad name; b) makes anyone with ill-informed prejudices about American sentimental nationalism think they may in fact have a point.  

2013

Things I hope will end this year: 

1. People 'curating' things. Curators curate. You there with your antlers and your jars, you are just collecting stuff and arranging it. Desist.
2. All this chitchat about 3D printing. Either we are all going to be printing out new puppies by 2015, or everyone will have forgotten about it (see "QI codes").  On the other hand I do confess to finding it strange and terrifying in a way I can't quite articulate. 
3. The end of posters or cards or whatnot in letterpress saying inspirational things, e.g. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU DID SOMETHING FOR THE FIRST TIME?, or SNATCH AT THE TRUTH BEFORE IT KISSES YOU ON THE BUM-BUM*
4. Wedding photographs with balloons in.
5. Kimchee.
6. Food as hipster hobby (see Brooklyn Flea Food Fair).
7. That Laughing Cow TV ad (view it at your peril). The laaafing cow. The laaaaaffffing COW.

Things I hope will continue this year: 

1. Making quilts. I do that now. All the time. If anyone is interested I will write more about it. All the time buying cutting sewing cutting sewing cutting sewing. Strange, like bolt from blue. Quilty bolt from blue. Perhaps that's what happens when you are 43, like what happens to your eyes when you are 42. (80% of people see a decline in vision at 42; 25% of women take up quilting at 43).  NB: I went to the sort of school where Home Economics was replaced by Ancient Greek (which left us woefully under-equipped for real life, but very well equipped for pub quizzes), so the fact I can even turn the sewing machine on is a miracle.
2. Enjoying the job I have now. It is 2 minutes from home (this is not to be underestimated; it is life-changing shizzle) and all the people are super. It is not full of people in tight jeans and mysteriously ugly spectacles & grown-ups are in charge. And if my computer breaks I call someone in New York.
3. Game of Thrones, Borgen 3, Fresh Meat.
4. Looking at the cat licking her bum.
5. BB cream. I use the Garnier one. It's really good and it's not expensive.
6. Seattle. I visited it for the first time this year. I really liked it. Nice people, sprawly and interesting. Approved.
7. Putting things in Pinterest, which I like a lot. Here are Vital Informations, here are Items of Simian Interest. So much faster than writing about it, and so much more interesting for you, adoring reader and/or fan. (If indeed you are even there anymore, for it is likely that you have stopped reading blogs so much because everyone is Curating and Tweeting and Pinning and watching BBC iPlayer instead of reading blogs these days.)

*only one of these is real