Keep on Running (and therefore enjoying pizzas more)

Did you have a good Christmas and New Year? I did - it was too good in fact. I had far too much food, booze and even the occasional take-away, thanks to a tempting pizza menu offer that came through the letter box one cold night.

As such all my good fitness based work that had taken place in the autumn was completely undone. So, during a night of quite contemplation, I decided the only thing for it was to enter a 10k race to force myself to get training.

So March 20 in Clapham Common is the location and going sub 40 minutes is the goal.

Long-time readers of this blog will remember I did a 42.20 in Richmond about 18 months ago which is the fastest I've ever run (over that distance) when it was quite undulating and very wet. I also did a 44.12 on a three-lap course in Hampstead that took us up a climb of almost one enter kilometer each time around. As such I am confident I have the capabilities to hit this time, even if it is going to be painful training for it. Still, no pain and all that…

I'm not just a speed merchant though, and do enjoy running purely for the pleasure. Even on cold nights there's actually sometimes nothing better than getting outside and pounding the pavement for a few kms, listening to some choons (Arcade Fire's The Sprawl II, the top song of the moment (still)), or chatting with my running mate around the highways and byways of South West London.

So far training is up to 4.5km in 22minutes, which is not too far off, need to add 500m and lose two minutes, and hopefully with increasing light and receding cold this will become easier as well.

The other benefit of all of this running is now I can enjoy a pizza after work without any guilt...

The Perils of Buying a Sandwich

Everyone says that's better to shop a local, independent stores, rather than faceless conglomerates, and for the most part they're correct, but sometimes I find the personal element of these stores – something that is part of their charm – the thing I enjoy least.

If you go in to Pret to buy a sandwich they act all matey, and it's very friendly but it's a façade, one we are all happy to buy in to. We say hi, smile at the cashier, complete a transaction in 30 seconds maximum and leave again with our food. Yes, we're just in-out numbers to be processed, but I am sort of fine with that.

Head into a local place and the same basic thing happens but because it's small, because it's a 'real' person behind the till, you are thrust in a 'genuine' customer-seller situation, and I seem to struggle with those.

Example: In Soho there is a nice little café that does good, tasty, reasonably priced sandwiches, yet I always approach its door with trepidation. Every time I go in I am treated like a stranger, while everyone else, without fail, gets a big hello, and a "how are you?" and a chat about the weather or football.

Today, I ordered a BLT. This costs £2.80 (40p for the special focaccia bread). Yet when I went to the pay the man behind the counter had to get his own menu to look it up – despite it being on the board behind him. Then I said, helpfully, casually, "It's £2.40." (referring to the sandwich alone of course, assuming he'd know to add the bread price on) and he immediately replied, deadpan, "It costs more than that mate", as if was trying to short change him or something.

The whole thing was almost excruciating. Except it wasn't. Not really. But it was enough social exhaustion to probably send me back to Pret the next nine times out of ten I venture out to buy lunch. Most days I make it myself though. More straightforward for all involved.

Arise, Sir Chicken

I find it both strange and wonderful that coronation chicken was actually invented for the coronation of the queen in 1952. What a British way to celebrate a new monarch – make her a cold chicken dish.

I've also heard that gammon, egg and chips was invented for Henry VIII, but that could have been a lie.

Also, it's cold now – I think my previous claim that those last few days of niceness in London over the weekend were the end of the beginning of winter were correct.

Eggscellent

I tried to make an omelette last night and end up with metaphorical egg all over my face. Let me explain.

I had fried some mushrooms and chopped a couple of slices of pepperoni to add in to the dish and everything was ready for the addition of the eggs so I grabbed the egg box and took an egg from the box.

I should clarify that, despite what I am about to tell you, I have made many omelettes in my life, at least 40 I would say, maybe 50, and know how to make them. Yet somehow in the rush and excitement of the frying mushrooms and the egg in my hand my brain let me down.

I cracked the egg on the side of the pan and, at the same moment, said aloud, "Is this how you make an omelette?". The egg splashed and broke across the pan, immediately beginning to fry. "No," I said aloud to no-one, "this is how you make a fried egg".

Man, did I have egg on my…oh wait, I've already made that joke.

For closure nuts out there – I just turned the meal into fried eggs, mushrooms, pepperoni and a handful of chips I had already started making in the oven. Disaster averted!

Microsoft and chocolate

I went to see Steve Ballmer talk this morning at the LSE. He's a funny chap. Quite interesting and not in anyway a wallflower, which made for an on-your-toes kind of talk as his random way of accentuating certain words meant you couldn’t switch off.

This was a Good Thing as it started at 8.30am and all the free food promised before the event had been taken when I got there – only students would ransack free food quicker than journalists.

Ballmer reminds me a touch of the character Rawls from excellent TV show The Wire – of which I am not half way through season two and enjoying very much. I am about five years behind the curve on this show, as noted, but if you're like me I would still reinforce everything you've read about the show and tell you to watch it.

Also, massively off topic, I have really got in to Double Decker chocolate bars now, what's all that about?

Apparently the man who invented it was sacked for breaching company rules by creating it - pah (click on the above link to get this definitely true story from Wikipedia).

The enchanted kingdom of McDonalds

Hiding from the rain in a McDonalds on Tuesday night in Putney, a girl, maybe 16 years-old, walked into the golden arched palace I was sheltering in and, to my fascination, looked around agog at her surroundings.

Never before had she seen such splendour, or such ornate decorations and furniture, her face seemed to say.

After she had stopped and taken in the sumptuous surrounding she slowly stepped forward, as if scared of shattering the dream she had wandered in to by stepping to heavily. She craned her neck up in wonder at the ceiling, as if Michelangelo himself had painted them.

Then suddenly it was too much. She went outside again, stared up in disbelief at the giant M outside.

"Could it be," she wondered. "Is this really what a McDonalds is? My parents had told me they were evil, dirty, downtrodden places where the masses come to fritter their finances on fries and milkshakes."

She stood still, wondering what to do next. Then, strangely, she left. Turned tail and removed herself from the scene, and tramped off into the rain. I looked around. No-one else seemed to have noticed this strange creature so enraptured by the place.

I continued chomping, sent a text, received a text, texted back. In this time I never noticed she had returned. She sat this time, wearing dark sunglasses, at the end of the long formica bench I was sat on, as if she was the coolest girl in the world because she had found a McDonalds.

She was an odd one, no doubt about it. I wonder what her reaction would have been if she'd had any food. She may have exploded.

Post this to Twitter

Bread

I like bread. I bet you like bread. Everyone likes bread. Man shall live by bread alone, that's what God said, and I bet God likes bread. That is what he said right?

There was an interesting documentary on BBC4 last night before the election debate nonsense about the history of bread...wait, come back...honestly, it was really interesting; it's such a simple, everyday commodity but, like so many everyday things, it has a very interesting back story.

For instance, did you know, (if you're of a certain age you will), that in rationing times, the government forbade (WE FORBADE, they would intone to the nation), the selling of fresh bread to stop people eating too much of it? "Give 'em day old hard stuff and they'll only eat what they need," was their ration(ale). What a world it was.

Still, bread is expensive now. It's often £1.39 a loaf of squashed white or brown from a convenience store. I remember at Cardiff when it was 79p a loaf. I went to that Spar to buy that bread for three years and the women behind the till never acknowledged me as a regular, dammit.

I hate bread that doesn't fit in toaster and worse of all has a hole, that often runs through the entire piece of bread (i.e. each slice), up at the top...do you know what I mean, it's hard to explain...that annoying hole at the top that breaks the bread in two. Drives me mad.

My favourites breads are browns, baguettes, olive bread but sometimes nothing beats a clean white bread sandwich with nothing but fresh cheddar cheese. Mmmmm, lunch time!

How refreshing

So there I go, getting you all excited that I might leaving, only to come back. This was something that happened that I felt required committing to the internet's paper.

I went for dinner with a very good friend on Tuesday night. We've known each other for over seven years, gone through the school system, the university lifestyles, the job hunts, and many other things between and come through it as even better friends than before. We make each other laugh, enjoy the same things, discussing books or films, sport, running together, comedy and so forth. You get the idea.

But...at dinner on Tuesday, something happened that scared me. We'd been talking for about an hour, about this and that, our mutual friends, holiday plans for summer, the usual. Then there was a lull, nothing unusual there, happens all the time, perfectly easy silence between friends...only, it seemed to drag on slightly too long, I really couldn't think of a thing to say, and evidently neither could he....I panicked, I thought of something, anything...

"I've got some Polos in my bag," I mumbled, "We can have them afterwards." I winced, wondering why I had said such a banal thing.

My friend though, perhaps sensing he needed to at least feign interest said, "I tried that new Trebor chewing gum the other day."

"Oh yes," I replied, "Any good?"

"Mm, really refreshing!"

There was a pause...I looked at him, and spoke in a hushed voice across the table, "I think we've just hit a conversational low in our friendship." He nodded back and we asked for the bill.

J is for...

Jelly.

Look at it move. Isn't it hypnotic?

I was talking to someone the other day about jelly and I opined that if a friend of mine made jelly, for no other reason than simple "to have some jelly", I would find that very odd. Something about actively making such a childish food seems wrong.

On Ten Tors (which I did in 2002) jelly cubes were an acceptable form of instant sugar and energy. I wondered if they would work for running / the marathon too?

B is for...

Butterscotch.

A last minute request swung this one for me. Remember Angel Delight? I used to love Angel Delight, especially the strawberry flavoured stuff. Chcolate less so, but then I’ve always been a bit odd (apparently) in not liking chocolate based puddings (or not much anyway). Butterscotch though I couldn’t stand. In fact I doubt we had it more than once after the first time due to my protestations that it was ‘the most vile punishment ever ladled out upon man since the Tolpuddle Martyrs.’ I was a weird eight-year-old.

Unexpected item in bagging area

Many years ago, well about five, I worked in ASDA on the tills. Oh, the times I had. But, like all good things, it came to an end. And, as I walked off into the sunset, waving once more to my green clothed colleagues and kicked my heels I thought, "Well, there's the obligatory supermarket job done, no more for me the scanning and packing of items..."

But, the supermarkets, not content with near world wide domination of our eating habits, have decided they can get us to do our own scanning and packing too. The self-service machines are the new choice of payment for today's fast-paced, latte drinking, 24/7, news junkies, as they are quicker and faster, and importantly involve no human interaction whatsoever.

What has happened to us? Why are we so keen to embrace this? We are slaves to the supermarkets already but now we're doing what is paid work for free. Up with this, we should not put.

I would suggest one of the two following options.

1) For using self-service you should get 1% off your bill. This won't be much each time you go, but over a year could add up to several pounds - about the same as an hour of work at the supermarket - which leads on to idea two...

2) They could time you from the moment you place an item down to the moment payment is made. They then work out what they would have paid you for this pro rata and this should come off the next bill.

On another, but relevant, point: Why do they say 'Unexpected item in bagging area". It's always something you've picked up in store so why is it so unexpected?

Pound in the machine

Talking of tuck shops and vending machines yesterday reminded me of one of my favourite school time events: the trapped pound in the vending machine. Let me explain.

To stop pupils leaving class rooms mid-lesson to go and buy food from the vending machines they were set on timers so they only worked during the allotted break times of 11:05 – 11:25 and 12:50 – 2:10 (the machines, not the pupils, obviously).

However, the 20 minute gap in mid-morning break often meant a queue and a crush at each vending machine (there were only two!) and if you arrived there at 11:24 you took a huge risk that sometimes you’d enter the money, only for the machine to then ‘lock itself’ with your shiny, hard-begged for pound trapped inside. Additionally, the machine would proudly display that it had £1.00 inside for all to see. This unfortunate child would have to return to lessons, knowing the entire school was learning, through a series of Chinese whispers, lesson to lesson, that there was a pound trapped in the machine, ready to be spent by the first pupil to arrive at the machine at 12:50 when the machine decreed snacks could be bought once again.


However, lessons before lunch ended at 1:15. The 12:50 unlocking time was because sixth form pupils on free period could take lunch from that time. Still following? Good. This meant at 12:48 all across campus, cheeky little sods were sticking their grubby mits in the air, asking teacher to be excused for various reasons, and hurtling like mad towards the vending machine - usually along side the one, true, heir to the pound in the machine, who would never again be so foolish as to attempt to buy Nik Naks at 40p at 11:24.

Good times.

Crisps

Crisps are funny aren't they? Little pieces of potato flavoured with all manner of combinations - cheese and onion, salt and vinegar, Thai chicken, Worcester sauce, and so on. Why are they so popular? What is it about crisp that makes them so necessary for snacking or lunch boxes?

Frazzles: A classic from primary school. You knew it would be a good day if mum had put frazzles in your Action Man lunchbox. Tasted great (in that fake food way) and left you with a tangy zing on the lips, and incredibly greasy fingers. Wonderful.

Quavers: Named after a form of musical notation, quavers are great fun to eat if you 'follow' the shape around as you eat. Try it, you'll see what I mean. How do they make quavers anyway? To create those shapes I mean? Anyone know?

French Fries: Never sure about these. Very confusing. Crisps, which are made from potatos, being shaped to look like chips, which are made from potatos, but called French Fries, the American name for chips. American's call crisps "potato chips". So in America French Fries would be thought of as potato chip chip crisps. Right?

Monster Munch: Utterly vile yet they have the word monster in so forever popular.

McCoys: I've written about the stupid adverts before, but as a crisp they can't be beat. Plus they have become the pub choice of crisp which is as it should be. Big, tasty, manly - sit perfectly next to a pint of lager. And come in a bag which doesn't try and con you about the amount of crisps within by adding extra height, like some do, which is always empty space. Think of the money Walker et al could save if they produced bags that fitted the crisp - and it would be good for the environment too.

Hula Hoops: As above, they use small bags so you know how many you get. Great fun for putting on your fingers and pretending they're rings. Soggy HHs are the worst though.

Skips: Fizzy little critters these. Never understood the name. They don't skip, they look more like limpet shells than a skip, and eating them doesn't cause an uncontrollable urge to skip everywhere. I'd have called them Fizzles - then you could mix them with Frazzles and have Frizzle Frazzles.

Pringles: A crisp with ideas above its station: shaped in the form of a hyperbolic paraboloid these strangely moreish things are most often seen at special occasions such as Christmas, birthdays, family get togethers and wakes because, while being reasonably priced, they have an air of pseudo-sophistication you can't get with crisps. I mean, you can't just put some cheese and onion crisps in a bowl at Christmas can you?

Nik Naks: At my secondary school we went from having a tuck shop (how quaint) to soulless, faceless vending machines. This did mean the sudden arrival of these new and mysterious crisps called “Nik Naks”. The teachers, clearly not knowing what they were either, priced them at 20p (I guess it was the teachers anyway). As such, they were a popular choice before even tasted. But, the fact was, they were delicious! Especially the Nice ‘n’ Spicy flavour - covered in some sort of 'dust' and nobbly all over. Trouble was, the teachers soon got wise to the popularity and put the price up every term by 5p. Must have been the economic teachers. On it rose, 25p, 30p then a jump to 40p. We were outraged. But by now I was on the verge of leaving the school and my pocket money was probably up to about £2 a week so I didn’t really care as much as I let on in front of everyone else.

Quick Jeeves - to the fire escape route!

I've been at a conference in the Whitehall area this morning - very interesting it was, and a nice lunch too.

The fire exit signs (they're on the way out aren't they?) are so posh the man fleeing from impending danger is wearing a top hat and tails. I love that.

While there I, and two other delegates / attendees at my table, managed to shock, confuse and eventually convince a Swedish chap that English football stadiums really can be emptied in about 10 minutes.* He was utterly incredulous about this and demanded I explain how it worked.

I replied, 'don't look at me mate, I'm just a journalist', which failed to impress him, but thankfully, with my two table sitters - who knew the speed and order of a football crowd post-match - we managed to, just about, win him around to this notion. He claimed he'd seen a sector of a Dutch crowd empty in about 2-3 hours. I was tempted to make a cliched joke about the Dutch, but decided decorum suggested not.

*If you want proof of this - see Bernabeu 2004 - eight minutes.

Cheese running

I went for my first run last night since my 42.20 in Richmond and it was quite hard. Only did 4.56km - such accuracy due to shiny Garmin watch - but did do third km in about four minutes (which is quite fast) so that was good.

The reason I only managed such a short distance is because I've picked up this really bad habit. When I get home I am always hungry so grab whatever is to hand in the fridge and munch. Now, despite knowing that cheese is terrible pre-running, it's also very good to bite a hunk of (loving using the word hunk in relation to food) to fill the stomach and feel fine for about 15 minutes.

Every bloody time I do this I even think "it'll be fine!" and for 15 minutes it is. Then after about 20 minutes it all goes wrong. I always end up having to stop due to agonising stomach cramps that are brought on by my own stupidity. Most of the time I even feel like I want to throw up and I have a painful aching inside to the point where I have to stop running.

Bloody cheese. I must resist your wily charms.

Caption: People chasing cheese; they should try eating it first then running down there.

Hard sell

Everyone knows supermarkets research every last detail of our spending patterns, ensuring offers are placed in prime locations, that bread is at the back to get you in to buy other products and so on.

However, can't help but think this idea is a bit far fetched. My dad prefers Salad Cream anyway.

Working from home

Hello, are you at home? I am. I have been for a bit now. I was ill on Tuesday, and today the tube's are on strike.

When I first moved to London on only my second day of work at my (then) new job, I had to deal with a tube strike. Man it was terrifying. Can you imagine it? Second day in London and having to work out an alternative route to a destination I still didn't even know the main route to. But, thankfully, the Northern Line was running a normal service (different union you see), so I was able to make it in without too much fuss; in fact I even got to walk past the Oval cricket ground; tick it off the 'things to see and do list'. I don't really remember much about it now, but the tube trains must have been rammed if they were the only ones running.

Being at home is odd; I've been working, doing exactly what I would have been doing at work, but from home, which is both the blessing and the curse of the modern internet age I guess. Although, when you've got deadlines looming and writing to be done, while it's theoretically nice to not have to work, the reality is it leaves you with a huge amount to do on your return, with very little time to do it in. So I'd best get back to it.

Still, at least I can have a proper lunch. Beans on toast all round!

Checked out

I had watched the guy in front of me, and he was a pro. He did the entire thing without speaking once. He barely made eye contact. I had to step it up, there was no half measures here.

I strode to my position and it began. Beep. Beep. Pack. Pack. Beep beep. Pack. Pack. On we went, almost flirting; she threw down the ham, I packed it faster than you could say swine flu. The sausages followed suit; thrown, bagged. Bring it on. But still we registered not a flicker of recognition of the other.

Soon the final item, the eggs (cleverly positioned by me), were coming down, and as I packed them away I knew, and I knew she knew too, we were coming to the hardest part of the ballet. Instinctively, before she had a chance to tell me the cost, I took my card from my wallet and glanced at the Chip & Pin screen. She hit her button to do whatever was necessary and I inserted the card, chipped & pinned, and withdrew, placing it back in my wallet. She took the receipt, handed it to me, I placed it in the bag and was about to turn, when...

When...it all went wrong. I don't know what happened but...I faltered, something kicked in, some latent shred of human interaction London hadn't managed to crush and destroy took over and from my mouth, before I could stop it, like vomit from the hopeless drunk, came the words 'Thanks very much!'

I turned before she could make eye contact, but the damage was done. I had broken the code. I had been cheery. I felt ashamed and knew she was chalking up another victory.

But I've learnt my lesson. Use the self service machines. No chance of human interaction then.

Hidden messages

Quick link - some brilliant examples of hidden and/or subtle messages within companies logos and the power of graphic design. I've never seen the arrow in the FedEx logo before (find it right) or the bear on Toblerone.

Biscuit Fail

From the ever brilliant failblog.org. Click on the story to enlarge.