Sunday, January 18, 2009

Pool rage

This morning I had breakfast with a blogger! The Divine Ms M is, I'm pleased to report, every bit as divine as her name suggests and we have agreed that our next meeting will involve wine rather than sausages and eggs.

Unfortunately I was a lot less divine - I woke up feeling fairly crap and sadly as our breakfast continued so did the nasty feeling that something had gone distinctly awry inside my body.

A stressful yet boozy week is inevitably to blame and the result was a sordid little moment on the way home when I had to pull over in the middle of a very posh part of west London and dispel said breakfast. I have never done that before and I don't intend to repeat the experience. All most unpleasant and embarrassing, and a complete waste of a meal in one of my favourite weekend breakfast haunts.

By 6pm I was feeling just about human again so decided to take myself down to the gym for a jacuzzi/sauna pampering session (which I don't think I'll be mentioning to my trainer. She has told me in no uncertain terms that *nothing* I am currently doing is conducive to weight loss, sigh).

I was floating around in the jacuzzi on my own, thinking rude thoughts (does anyone else find all those bubbles mildly arousing?) when I heard raised voices coming from the direction of the pool. My hearing isn't great and without my lenses I am comically if hopelessly shortsighted but even I could understand the problem: a rather large and very aggressive lady who was taking up most of the fast lane and absolutely refusing to swim clockwise in it like everybody else.

Cue much shouting and arm waving (well, it wasn't exactly easy to swim around her either) as Large Lady insisted that she was in the right and they were all wrong. Eventually they got so cross that they all stomped over into the middle lane and then moved the lane rope so instead of the fast lane it became a Large Lady Lane and they had a bigger lane for all their speedy strokes.

I was inwardly applauding their ingenuity and wishing one could do this in other walks of life, like when one is driving behind somebody very slow who will not go any higher than 2nd gear. How lovely to just be able to create their own little slow lane and zoom off at one's own pace.

Large Lady didn't seem to be too pleased with the solution though and got out. At that point a hapless member of staff came along, just to take a sample of the water. Terrible timing. She chewed his ear off for about 10 minutes and then everybody else piled in to tell their side: apparently she is well-known in these parts for being a swimming offender(interesting accolade).

Then she got back into the pool - in the middle lane - I suppose to make a point (honestly has the woman no shame?). The exasperated fast laners moved back over and took their lane rope with them.

Unfortunately then I realised that I'd been in the jacuzzi for so long that my skin had turned to mush so I got out and hit the sauna to dry out. I saw her waddling in the direction of the showers shortly afterwards so I suppose she admitted defeat in the end. I shall look out for her in future. She's the most entertaining thing in this gym by miles.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Life laundry

Last week I finally succombed to gadget envy and got myself an iPhone. I'm sending all sorts of strange texts as my clunky fingers are evidently too huge to touchtype the delicate keyboard, and I haven't even got round to sync it with iTunes yet, for reasons too tedious to go into. But I love it.

iPhoning up involved ending a long term relationship with Vodafone. They didn't take it very well. I received six letters begging me to stay, and even more phonecalls offering ever more incentives to stay. I am half expecting them to turn up drunk on the doorstep at 3am declaring undying love sometime soon.

Anyway new phone company = new SIM and therefore the task of inputting all my contacts from scratch for the first time this millennium. My contacts list got a very harsh edit. Out went ex-boyfriends (including the chap now doing 10 years for drug dealing, somehow I doubt he's still got his mobile on him), people I haven't spoken to since university (I graduated in 1998) and people who I just don't recognize (like 12 of the 14 'Robs' listed). Finally, I decided not to transfer dad's phone numbers. That was a tear jerker. But it's time to move on.

Speaking of which... I spent a surprisingly enjoyable Saturday afternoon trying on wedding dresses. Typically I now have three favourites and I seem to have managed to fall in love with gorgeous bridalwear from north London's most expensive designers. Marvellous!

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Happy new year

How quickly have the last two weeks flown by? One minute I was eating endless turkey and trimmings and now I'm sat at a computer at the gym, desperately putting off the beginning of the inevitable health kick that NEEDS to start happening right now... I haven't dared to get on the scales yet but my new jeans are already a bit on the tight side. Hence the fancy new colours etc - that alone has happily squandered 20 mins that should have been spent on the treadmill.

NYE was spent in fancy dress with MC and my best mate - we went to an old smugglers pub hidden away on the clifftops of Dorset and drank endless pints of scrumpy. I can't remember the last time I was cider-drunk but I felt so relaxed and in love with the world. The last time I felt like that was back in my clubbing days, only this time it wasn't followed by 3 days of insomnia and a stiff jaw. Cider could well be the way forward (but not during health kick obv. Sob).

Wedding plans coming together surprisingly smoothly - and next weekend the hunt for a dress begins. I am terrified. I have no idea what I'm after and I hate trying things on in front of people at the best of times. Please send me positive vibes as I'll have who-knows-how-many shop assistants, two bridesmaids and two mothers (yes, Mrs MC is coming too) casting critical eyes over me. Any more and I may have to start charging admission. I think I may have to drink my way through it.