Shoes and strings

After a lengthy period away from here doing all sorts of exciting things (not true), I am back back back to report some shock news: both my hamstrings are sore.

Both.

How, I ask, and you doubtless wonder, can this be? Did I strain them racing over rocky outcrops chasing a masked villain who was carrying away the Duke’s comely young daughter over his shoulder? No I did not. Did I strain them racing over rocky outcrops with the Duke’s comely young daughter over my shoulder, forced to maintain a frantic pace by a determined pursuer? No, not that either. The answer is sadly more prosaic: I don’t know.

I may not know but I do have a theory. I think it might be to do with the new trainers I bought. They, these trainers, are brown Adidas trainers bought from Lillywhites. All, therefore, you would imagine, if you believe in brand names, should be well. But no! First off, they didn’t fit properly, which I admit, grudgingly, might be more my fault than Adidases or Lillywhites. But, not only were they too small, they also, for the first few weeks, squeaked like mice with a list of grievances that they demanded would be heard. The squeaking has now stopped but it was a bad sign; a sign of poor quality, I think. And now, the hamstrings! You see how it all adds up? I blame the trainers. Or it could be my shoes, as I’ve been wearing them a lot more recently because I don’t like my trainers. It’s one or the other. Or something else as yet undiscovered.

Eye on the clock

This picture was taken from the London Eye and I would have taken more but the battery in the camera died. I think it got a massive attack of vertigo and took itself out of the equation. The time on Big Ben (don’t give me any grief about that not being the name of the clock) is twenty-five to three. Ludicrously, the people running the Eye describe a ride on it as a “flight”. £15.50 is an awful lot of money for a flight without any actual flying but it’s worth going on the once, especially on a day like this one. That one, I mean. The one in the picture.

Cheek on fire

My right cheek is hot. No other part of my face is anything other than a standard temperature, well within normal parameters, but my right cheek, for whatever reason, has decided to heat up and give off a rosy glow. I am imagining the rosy glow because I haven’t got up to check. Why would a cheek heat up? It’s not near a lamp or a fire or anything, the right side of my body isn’t embarrassed. It is a mystery. Perhaps the tea I had earlier rushed directly to certain corpuscles and super-heated them. That seems unlikely.

Squid clarity

Having read the BBC link properly I now know that the giant squid and the colossal squid are in fact different species. The giant is thinner. At least the 14 metre squid can be accepted in one community or the other now. Still, it’s a shame that there needs to be a distinction. And what happens if a giant squid puts on too much weight? Does it become colossal? That’s a bit harsh, if it likes being a giant squid, to get chucked out for overdoing it on the jellyfish.

The Big Eye

It turns out that the colossal squid has two colossal eyes. Of course, being colossal, this isn’t that surprising; perhaps it would have been more of a surprise if it had eyes the size of peas, or smaller still, say the size of baby peas, but no, colossal eyes it is. I wonder what the colossal squid sees with its colossal eyes, down there in the deep, swishing about, striking terror into the heart of any underwater types who happen to be pootling nearby. Perhaps it sees the truth: after all, an eye that big must see pretty far. But then, it’s dark down there so perhaps, despite having the biggest eyes in the world, it can still only see as far as the end of one tentacle. Still, that’s pretty far. Apparently the colossal squid is about 15 metres long, although the BBC site says ’size unknown’. I am a bit disappointed by 15 metres. They say the giant squid is 13 metres long and I’d have thought that if you want to consider yourself colossal rather than merely giant, then you’d need to outstrip the giant squid by more than a couple of metres. And what about 14 metre long squids? Are they big giants or small colossals? It’s a grey area in the squid world. Perhaps neither the giants or the colossals really want to accept the 14 metre squid, so it lives as an outcast, floating about down there, unloved and ignored, simply because other squids are too scared to try and understand. It’s a shame.

A sardine abused

The other night I decided to get the train home instead of the tube. Yes, I know, wild, crazy, riding the edge of sanity and all that but damn it, sometimes you have to go out there with no safety harness. It turned out to actually be pretty mad. The train was full, as trains get during rush hour, and people were pressed in together, with the main area of body-compacting taking place, as ever, in the little vestibule area near the doors. Between the seats things were a little roomier. To complete the picture, I, feeling smug and relaxed, had a seat.
Then the voices started.
“Can you move down, please?”
“Move down, please.”
“Would you move down, please.”
As you can see, though the words differed slightly, people were united in what they wanted to get across. But one woman refused to comply. She stood firm, rock solid between some seats, ignoring the pleas of the squashed. She had plenty of space to move down but she didn’t. FInally the person next to her said, “Excuse me, would you please move down a bit so people have some more room.”
She grudgingly shuffled down about, oh let’s be generous, a foot, and someone said, “Show some consideration for other people.” This provoked a response, and what might that response from this obviously delightful woman have been?
She said, “Fuck off.”
Not exactly a shocking twist in the tail there, eh? The target of the abuse, who was by then very probably a mashed sardine, wasn’t surprised either. He remarked that it was what he expected to hear.
This story was not brought to you by M. Night Shyamalan.

One idea of perfection, no idea of how to achieve it

I have been the victim of a Supercuts-authorised assault upon my hair; an attack by a wild-eyed hairdresser with ideas of his own. Well, one idea of his own: that all people who enter his dominion must not leave, regardless of what requests they make as to styling and cut, until their hair resembles a childishly constructed version of his. I sat in the seat and made my request: shaved at the sides and short on top but with enough for a bit of styling. He seemed to understand. All seemed ok, or at least as ok as it can be when every cut feels more like the hair is being torn from the head, but at least he seemed to be following the template laid out for him. But then, at the last moment, he swerved away; his instincts directing him elsewhere, to a place he knew, even if he could not recall it accurately. Here’s how it played out: I told him my hair was too long on top but he refused to cut any more. He said to shorten so much as one more strand would be to ruin the whole effect. He was adamant. He pulled at my hair, he showed me how short it already was, and in the end I broke. I broke like the weak-willed pussy I am, and I let him have his evil way. As a consequence I left that place looking like the hairdresser had forgotten to tend to the top of my head - the hair there rises up like tall grass. I expect some fun-loving aliens to turn up tonight and carve out a crop circle. I am probably going to have to shave it all down to a regular, even, 2 millimetres of fuzzy goodness.

Middle of the road

This may be the offically most boring season in the history of West Ham. We have been 10th since just before man discovered fire, with no prospect of any movement in either direction until recently, when the slow, lumbering shape of Tottenham Hotspur appeared in our rear view mirror, trailing despair and dripping misery. What makes it worse is that we aren’t even a flamboyant mid-table team, winning and losing but doing both with flair and adventure. No, we are boring. Every single week 5 Live go over to the West Ham game after fifteen minutes and we hear, “Nothing much has happened as yet” or “Slow start” or “This is god awful. I could be at home slamming my toes in every door in the house.” Then, with 15 minutes left 5 Live returns and we hear, “It’s been disappointing”, “A lack of quality on display” or “I’m going home. I never wanted to be a football commentator anyway. I’m going to paint pictures of my smashed and bleeding toes.” It’s awful. I don’t even know who we’re playing this week because I don’t care enough to take the ten seconds to look it up. Yes, poor show by me that but poorer show by West Ham. I blame Curbishley. He has the air of bland competence hanging around him and the team are getting that air too. I expect if you stray too close to Upton Park these days you end up doing your tax return on time and having 6/10 sex with your wife once a week until you come home to find a note from her saying she’s gone off with Alvaro the Cuban dancer she met at her Salsa class.

Gatecrashers

I have a box of Alpen on my desk. Not the blue no sugar one but the Original. It looks good there, all healthy and vibrant with the little stack of ingredients neatly placed in the bottom right corner. But here’s the thing: while gazing at this nutritional hoard, with the legend, “The Goodness of Natural Ingredients” proudly underlining them, I noticed some interlopers. Frauds. Imposters. Sitting there, comfortably settled behind a hazelnut, some raisins and some oats, are two grapes. Grapes! There are no grapes in a box of Alpen. At first I thought, yes, not grapes as such but their withered corpses, raisins, but then I realised that there are also raisins in the group. In other words, the grape is already represented and so has no business being there. The two grapes are like kids from a different school who have gatecrashed the end of year photograph. Now the whole box looks to me like a giant lie. If Alpen will let grapes in then why not pomegranates, bananas, cheese, a Ford Mondeo? Those two grapes have opened the floogates. Now, anything at all can get in there and claim to be The Goodness of Natural Ingredients. Where once you had to actually be an ingredient to qualify, now you merely need to be able to turn up on time for the photo shoot.  Look at them there, so pleased with themselves.

How things are

A friend saw this and thought of me.