cake and running

Baked rather nice ginger cake. Needs more practice - I used a tin that was too big, so it ended up wider and thinner than it should have. But then you can't buy a new tin every time you make a cake. I'll just have to make more mix next time and create a GIANT CAKE.

I rallied the troops on Sunday night for a late evening run around Richmond Park. It was about an hour before dusk and raining a little, which meant that the park was relatively quiet. There were four of us, although within 20 minutes we'd all lost sight of each other (despite GB wearing his enormous luminous yellow waterproof that could be used to flag down the aeroplanes going into heathrow), so most of the hour was spent alone with just the deer for company. They're pretty used to luminous-clad runners in the park, so they will happily congregate close to the paths. At the moment, all the teenage lads in the deer world are sporting those mini-antlers covered in velvet. So beautiful.

more running joy

At risk of sounding too smug, I did drag myself (and a hungover GB) out of bed for another Bushy Park Time Trial 5k this morning. I could claim that it was wanting to get out in the fresh air and stretch my legs, but in reality it was trying to undo the damage done by working this week at a client who has a 3pm tea trolley (complete with cake) every day.

I am very pleased to have beaten my PB this week. They haven't published any pictures yet, which is even better news. I have no doubt that I still look like a slightly agitated pensioner chasing down a bus.

On a different note, I feel that the conversations with my boss over instant messenger are starting to drift away from the purely functional. On Thursday we discussed what kind of cakes would appeal to fascists (conclusion: battenburg - regimented, controlled, uniform - but would Mussolini have agreed?). On Friday the conversation continued around the subject of whether heaven was like a doughnut:

Me... gosh - this is nearly as profound as the italian fascist battenburg
Boss... i worry that we are too obsessed by CAKE
Me... am also troubled by this
Me... particularly CAKES OF JUDGEMENT
Me... hell cake
Me... fascist cake
Boss... and holey cake
Me... true
Me... that redresses the balance
Boss... but still maybe shows a worrying tendency to relate all the problems of the world to CAKE
Boss... on the other hand it maybe healthy - maybe more people should do it - maybe if Hitler and Chamberlain had gotten out the battenburg and discussed nazism and CAKE world war two wouldn't have happened
Boss... or hitler would have died of overeating pink and yellow squares long before he shot himself
Me... plausible
Me... plus chamberlain might have been a bit more worried once he saw that terrifyingly regimented cake
Me... and softened hitler's world view through the judicious application of lemon drizzle cake
Me... or eton mess

How do calories work?

Last night I went for a run with GB. According to my running watch, I burned 473 calories. According to HIS running watch, he burned 991 calories for the same run.

How is this fair? It's not like he weighs twice as much as me.

Further running adventures

This morning I ran the Staines 10k. It was gloriously sunny, although that now seems to have passed and the sky has become largely grey, with odd scraps of blue. Slightly more than would be required for a pair of sailor's trousers, but by no means enough for a whole regiment (I'm not sure that sailors hang about in regiments, though. What IS the right word?)

This is a great shame. For as much as it was lovely to be strolling about and warming up in the sunshine, running in it doesn't really allow you to make the best of the weather, since you spend your time wiping sweat from your hairline and worrying about whether your mouth is developing that sticky white goo in the corners that old men get when talking enthusiastically.

Anyway. I used my groovy little sat-nav running watch (a prime example of spending money in lieu of actually getting off arse - equivalent to those people who purchase expensive gym membership in the hope that it is the amount of cash rather than effort expended that counts) to set a nice race pace. This helps with avoiding SUPER-KEEN-START: full of fresh-air, beautiful-morning, look-at-my-lycra enthusiasm, you set off at a cracking and leg-jellying pace before realising, ten minutes in, that you can't keep it up.

In reality, I've never been much of a one for super-keen-starts. Glenn always takes off like the bunny at the dog track before realising that he doesn't really fit in with that pack of elongated string-and-gristle types around the half-way mark. But it was still handy to have the "virtual runner" pacing alongside me (on the tiny screen, at least) showing me the way. Of course, the virtual runner doesn't get slowed down by hills, corners, bunching up of runners etc, so you have to stay a step or two ahead of him just to be sure of getting the desired time.

I am very pleased with this morning's effort because, despite having done almost no running since getting back from Australia, I beat the 10k time I set in Melbourne (59:13), by - ooh - 30 seconds or so. But this did mean that I broke 59 minutes for the first time. According to my own timing, I came in at 58:42, but I shall have to wait and view the official course time online later...

Right, Glenn's just woken up from his post-race nap, so it's time to go out and Make The Best of The Day.

Trussism

Further to my Truss-esque rant of yesterday, I am now trying to work out if Lynn Truss (of Eats, Shoots & Leaves fame) is a Jolly Good Thing, or a Rather Smug And Irritating Person.

Given that I occasionally make corrections to posters on the noticeboards at work, you'd have thought she was my soul sister.

But I feel that, although motivated by the same urge (if not quite the same level of ability - I would never profess to remember more than about three grammattcal rules simultaneously, and my spelling is shocking), she and I may differ somewhat in style.

I tend to be a bit embarrassed about my compulsion to amend things (apart from reports I am proof-reading, which don't count), and have to furtively sneak about to do it when nobody is looking.

She (presumably for reasons of publicity) prefers this to be a bold and overt action. Good luck to her - she has, after all, to make a living. But it still represents a point towards "smug and irritating". But the most damning evidence is on her website. Apparently, she has a house in Brighton (and one in Bloomsbury, too, darling!) but hates being woken up by seagulls. Uh oh, Lynn... the evidence is all pointing towards.........

Make a cake. Feel happy.

When I first met Glenn, he told me his favourite kind of cake was carrot cake, so I promised to make him one.

In the intervening years (many), I have made him three carrot cakes (few). Including one at the weekend. It was the perfect carrot cake, so kudos once again to my friend Charlotte who provided the recipe from her extensive collection.

Digression: I was going to extoll the virtues of cooking, but instead I will convey my love of learning new rules of grammar with which to terrorise the junior staff at work.

I only learned the difference between "less" and "fewer" recently. Isn't it shocking that I could have made it all the way through my (relatively extensive) education without picking it up?

I sense I am not entirely alone in my glorious ignorance, though. There appears to be a whole generation of us (well, us state school kids, anyway) who missed out on learning parts of speech (gerund, anyone?), rules of grammar, rudimentary spellings etc.

But the problem is that I'm happy as larry being a know-nothing until I learn a new rule. Once I've mastered it, though, I get tooth-grindingly annoyed with people making the very same mistake that I had previously been making. And I have a sneaking suspicion that correcting people's grammar when I'm reviewing their reports just makes me look irritating and smug (let's face it, that's how we all imagine Lynn Truss, isn't it?)

But she's got a point about "its" and "it's". I wrote that particular rule on a post-it note and stuck it on my junior's laptop after he got it wrong on every single page of a report. Does that constitute bullying on my part?

Jolly British fun

We had fun today of the wholesome British sort that johnny foreigner (with his constant sunshine and laid-back personality) just doesn't quite understand: we went to a fete in the rain. At one point, there was thunder and lightning too. There were a surprising number of people sloshing about on the (rapidly churning) sward of Bushy Park in cagoules and luminous cycling gear, pretending that they were having fun.

The exhibits at the fete primarily consisted of marquees full of picture boards extolling the virtues of "health walks" in the park and the evils of litter etc. The park bee-keeper (?!?) was there with a mini glass bee house full of glum-looking bees. I felt a bit sorry for them, but my dad bought some of the honey so their misery was not entirely in vain. Well, I suppose that's not quite true for the bees, since they didn't look fussed whether we bought their honey or not.

Once we were all thoroughly soaked through, we gave up and came home.

Last night, we went to see English National Opera's production of On the Town (Bernstein) at the Coliseum. For lovers of musicals it is much less well-known than West Side Story, but for fans of Lenny's serious stuff may also be under the radar, being decidedly lighter than, say, the Chichester Psalms.

The biggest tune, which you might know if I whistled it to you, is "New York, New York" (no, not that one):

New York, New York!
A helluva town
The Bronx is up and the Battery's down
The people ride in a hole in the ground
New York, New York -
It's a helluva town!

Despite it being an ENO production, a good proportion of the cast were of the west end persuasion (dancers who happened to be able to sing a bit, rather than the other way round). The only recording I've heard of it also goes in for a combination - of the five main leads, three were opera singers, two were broadway stars. The ENO version tipped the balance even further - only one of the five was an opera singer, and the production was (sadly) the worse for it. The main character, played by Super-creamy-double-whipped (TM) Thomas Hampson in my recording, has some of the most beautiful songs you've ever heard. Of course, comparing anyone with SCDW(TM) TH is a little unfair, given that he is probably the best baritone in the world. But even so, the sporting little fella up on the stage last night - although I admit he danced up a storm in his little white sailor suit - did not really have the voice for the part.

Not to say that I didn't enjoy the production. I'd go again if it wasn't so expensive. You can understand why these things cost so much to attend - at the final curtain there were 56 principals and chorus on the stage, and that's before you get on to orchestra, costume, lighting etc. Not forgetting also the person who makes the surtitles appear. I've met the man from the Royal Opera House who has that job (he's an amateur bassoonist: I met him playing chamber music). He really does sit through each performance pushing a button to make the next line appear at the appropriate moment. I'm not sure if I envy him the job or not.

And let's not get on to why you need surtitles at ENO, given that all the productions are in English.

*groan*

Me: Isn't it great? My milkman has delivered me an organic salad box.

Dad: Fantastic. Now all you need is some organic salad to put in it.

Is it a boy thing?

I had a very bad meeting at work on Thursday, where the people on the other side were quite mean and agressive. When I told my friend Sarah about it, she said, "I hate men. I bet if they were women they wouldn't have been like that"

She does have a point. There are a few scary women I know who do behave like that, but apart from those tiresomely "alpha female" examples, it is primarily a male technique.

The annoying thing is that you don't need to be belittling and agressive to get your point across. It's like when you're complaining about something in a shop. If you're nice and reasonable but firm, you get much further than if you get cross and shout at people. If the men in that meeting had been nicer to me, then I might have been able to give them all the answers rather than get flustered and shuffle papers about unconvincingly. But at least I didn't cry.

>>>

We had dinner at Blah Blah Blah (veggie restaurant in Shepherd's Bush) last night. It's BYO, so I had a glass or two of wine...

They have those paper table cloths that you can write on. I seem to recall explaining musical notation through a series of increasingly wobbly staves after a few glasses. How edifying that must have been for the rest of the table.

you'll have a little ice cream, sure you will...

Managed to grab a quick sandwich on the balcony with Conor today - the first time I've seen him in six months.

True to form, he nipped into the kitchen after lunch...

"will we have a little ice cream? Sure we will now, won't we?"

"sure, I'll put some raspberries on it"

"ah go on now, I've got this Flake in the freezer. Will I crush it up and sprinkle it on top?"

"I'll just be finishing it with a bit of cream"