Tainted Glove - the video

So during the cold and snowy winter months, intepid softballers take themselves down to Brixton for the indoor season.

This finished a few weeks ago, but was an absolute blast. It’s a fast and frantic version of the outdoor game. Innings are timed, balls bounce and can be caught off the walls and points are won and lost at a rate of knots.

Our captain, affectionately known as Gobby, brought along this video camera to a couple of sessions. This is the result. As I was operating the camera for most of it I only make a few fleeting appearances, but judging by the state of my ‘girlie’ throw, perhaps that’s a good thing!

Accentuate the positive

A few of my recent posts have been less than positive.  It’s when I’m feeling down that the urge to blog takes hold of me.

So, I thought it was time to redress the balance and send out some positive vibes.  I’ve been feeling much more positive for the last few days.  Isn’t it funny how things can turn around so suddenly?  Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the morning runs along the river in the sunshine, maybe it’s a few things that have gone my way recently, or maybe it’s just something in the water.

Whatever it is, I hope it lasts and I hope the positive hopes for the future that I’ve been daring to believe in recently come to something.  Don’t worry, dear reader, you will be the first to know if they don’t!

In the meantime, here is a picture of a happy duck - cos we all like ducks don’t we?

Image linked to from the BBC Gloucestershire Webpage.

A Thousand Cuts

So I’ve returned to the murky world of internet dating.

I tried it a few years ago and had a great time. I meet some lovely people, had some great nights out and although my heart suffered a few cracks along the way, I came out the other side more or less unscathed.

It is turning out to be a slightly different experience this time. Suddenly the spoof news report that was put onto The Onion website for this Valentines day just passed, doesn’t seem so amusing…but strangely poignant:

It doesn’t matter how many of my friends and family say things like, ‘you’re great’ ‘anyone would be lucky to have you’, ‘it’s his loss’ or ‘I really can’t understand why you’re single’ etc (that last one is my personal favourite - as if there has to be a reason?) it doesn’t make the drip drip drip of rejection any easier.

Each time I decide to be proactive and send out a couple of messages it gets a little bit more depressing as they read my message, view my profile and click delete. Like the news report says - now I can get rejected on my own terms!

When I did it before it did wonders for my confidence as a myriad of men paid me compliments and attention. Not so this time. I’m kind of regretting having signed up for another go now, but I’ve paid my money, and goddamit, I’m going to get my money’s worth of rejection!

New Year, New Resolve.

Right, I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions usually, but this year feels different. I lost the plot a bit over the last few weeks - what with a horrible cold knocking me out for a week or so, and then the excesses of Christmas, so it’s now time to reign it back in and get back on track.

I’ve heard that writing things down makes you more likely to achieve them, so here goes:

• Get up to date on medical appointments (dentist and opticians due soon, and other unspeakable ones as well)
• Prioritise my exercise classes - Pilates on Mondays, Yoga on Wednesday and Friday. These have made such a difference to my well being over the last couple of months - and have actually given me stomach muscles!
• Get back into the running habit. Run Tuesdays and Thursday and one day at the weekend. Option of outside or the university gym.
• Limit alcohol to one pint or one glass of wine on week nights. Most week nights I don’t drink at all, but occasionally I get tempted out and that tends to make my next resolution harder…
• Get up by 7 each weekday morning.* I used to get up at 6.30 every day when I worked to maximise my time, but that has all slipped a bit lately with my new student / teaching status. It also makes weekend snoozing much more enjoyable.
• Restrict weekday Facebook usage to ‘3 meals a day’ - Breakfast, lunch and evening. I need to realise that clicking refresh all through the day is not going to make me any more popular!
• No daytime TV*.

These may seem like odd or restrictive rules to impose on myself, but they are all pretty much designed to contribute to the same overall goal by making me more focused and - completing my PhD to a high standard and in good time (before the money runs out!) and furthering my academic career.

Right I know that isn’t very interesting for anyone happening across my blog (probably trying to find out what ‘ducks in a line’ means) but hopefully it will help me! Also rest assured I’m on the hunt for another amusing picture of malards in formation to please the googlers.

*These may be relaxed in the case of illness. Cos that’s what lies-in and daytime TV are for!

The News Today

This made me happy:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7098219.stm

This mad me sad:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/7098383.stm

and this made me angry:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7098480.stm

Be Positive - more than just my blood group!

I thought I would put down some thoughts about the more positive aspects of my recent change in circumstances. In no particular order:

• The need to keep my mind occupied and away from all the destructive thoughts and questions, I have found that I am reading a lot more. Even a short bus trip is enough to start my mind wandering, so I’m submerging myself in fiction. Currently that means nothing more sophisticated than the most recent Harry Potter books, but I have my eye on the last few years long lists for the Booker prize.
• I’ve lost half a stone in weight. Something I’ve been trying to do for about the last seven weeks, was achieved without effort in 7 days!
• I’ve rediscovered a lot of music that was languishing at the back of my CD collection - somehow, for the last few years I haven’t found myself reaching for Kirsty MacColl or The Indigo Girls, but now they somehow seem more relevant.
• I’ve realised just how fab my friends are!
• I can watch as many horror movies as I like.

I’m sure there are more, and I’m trying desperately to focus on the positive. I’ll add more as I think of them.

A brief detour into my emotions

And so, at 31 I find myself unceremoniously and unexpectedly back living the single life again.  It’s not particularly what I wanted or expected, and I’m still having trouble understanding exactly how it came about, but that’s the way it is.

I’m determined not to mope about too much, but this blog is a reflection of my life, and this is most definitely a part of my life at the moment.  I’m hoping perhaps that setting down how I am feeling here might help with the whole process.

I’m finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that a massive part of my life has ended.  I’ve lost my best friend, and I need to accept that the person who I thought I would one day marry and have children with no longer wants to be part of my life.

This also comes at a difficult time for me (is there ever a good time?) as my professional life is also in a state of flux at the moment, and as we all know, change is stressful.

More than that I am mourning the loss of so much more.  The routine, the shared places, the friends and family (and cat!) with whom I had built relationships.  I know a few of those friends occasionally read this blog, and I would like to say that I am really glad that I met you and got to know you, and that I am genuinely sad that things have worked out this way.

I’m sure that things are for the best in the long run, but the breakdown of a relationship is always sad, and really that sums up how I am feeling at the moment - sad.

Anyway, I won’t harp on in this depressing tone any longer, and I shall return very soon with a post about all the theatre I have been to recently.

You don’t find many special people in your life.  Sometimes the timing is wrong, sometimes someone else has got there first, sometimes other people get in the way.  There are so many ways that things can go wrong.  A three-year relationship is something to be proud of in this day and age, and so I will try to be grateful that it happened at all, and try to believe that memories which are now painful will one day be cherished.

Petitions

This morning I came across the UK Government petitions site.

This is a website where members of the public can start a petition on pretty much anything. There are hundreds there and a browse through the list makes pretty interesting reading.

There are the usual sort of things that you’d expect to find, ‘repeal the hunting act,’ ‘repeal the smoking ban’ ‘reintroduce capital punishment’.

There are some heart-felt pleas, such as ‘legally recongize a third gender’, or, ‘Give minority rights to individuals on the autistic spectrum’

And then there are the bonkers suggestions, which reveal a little too much about how some people see the world and what makes them tick. Some are just plain ignorant and others are (I hope) not entirely serious. Here are a few choice examples:

• Tattoo the foreheads of all convicted Paedophiles with a large letter P
• make Monday’s (sic) an additional weekend day.
• bring back public hanging and torture for serious criminal offences- I’ve included a link to this one, as the details are what really sets it aside from the other ‘death penalty’ petitions.
• stop asylum seekers taking all of our jobs
• enter Ultimate Frisbee in to the 2012 olympics
• Honour the Status Quo 40 Years on
• Gary Neville Deserves a Knighthood.
• Support Pet Keeping
• Mark the 4th of March as a National Holiday in honour of Sir Patrick Moore’s Birthday
• Knight the Chuckle Brothers

the list goes on…

Right, now I’m off to sign up to the Enforce the £30 fine for cycling on FOOTpaths petition!

Taking the wrap

There is lots in the news and in the media about waste, recycling and the impact it has on the environment. The headlines today return to the fact that local authorities are alternating rubbish collections with recycling collections in a bid to encourage the later (and probably save money as well I suspect).

On Friday night I just caught the end of a television programme about the amount of unnecessary packaging we as consumers get through on a daily basis. The presenter, Mark Constantine, who is the managing director of Lush cosmetics (see the website for pictures of Lush staff without their packaging!) spoke to representative from supermarkets about where the responsibility for excessive packaging lay.

The supermarket rep. confidently informed Mr Constantine that this was all driven by consumer demand, and that all customers have a choice, but that they choose to buy heavily packaged goods. Whilst I am sure that this has a lot of truth behind it, I decided to see for myself on Saturday as I headed out for my ‘big shop’ at a local Tesco.

I decided that I would consciously try to avoid excess packaging wherever possible. I would look for this ‘choice’ that I was supposed to be being offered.

As a vegetarian a large part of my shopping experience in the fresh produce area. I started off well - courgette, carrots and onions found their way into my basket without any wrapping other than that ably supplied by nature. Next - mushrooms…not so good. There was no option to buy a few mushies without also taking home with me a plastic box. I’m sure they used to offer nice biodegradable paper bags for mushrooms, but that choice seemed no longer to be on offer - in this store at least.

I grabbed the last red pepper - again no more than a price sticker. However, the next person would be forced to buy a pre-wrapped pepper. Not much choice there then.

There was very little in the way of lettuce or other unpackaged ‘leaves’ so I sadly resorted to a bagged salad…

I won’t run through everything on my shopping list - but you get the idea. The choice that we consumers have only seems to go so far and the supermarkets need to start taking more responsibility for the impact that this kind of unneeded rubbish has on the environment now and in the future.

Funnily enough both myself and the nice man on the till managed to get through the checkout process in one piece, despite my lack of plastic bags for veg, and my desire to take everything back home in my lovely comfy backpack as opposed to the shops plastic carrier bags. I even got myself 3 green clubcard points in the process!

Look to the stars

This morning a new project was launched on the internet which allows us all to look far into the universe, see things that no human eye has seen before and help extend scientific research in a quite literally ever expanding field.

Galaxy Zoo is a project where you, yes you, can help categorize galaxies.  Scientists from the US and UK have been doing this, but there over a million images that need to be analyzed, it is no small job they have on their hands.  An astrophysicist spoke about the project on radio 4 this morning.  He described how he had analyzed around 50 000 galaxies, but explained that after that sort of number you start to lose it slightly!

So if you are interested in the universe and helping to advance human understanding of it, log on and have a go.  There is a short tutorial and quick test to make sure you know what you’re doing and then you’re away!