Horrible Supermarket

The trivial subject matter of this blog has sunk to new lows, mostly because I have concluded that I seem to delight in being miserable; it is what fuels my occasional ranting about the mundane and universal. And this post is perhaps the most mundane and universal of all: the supermarket shop.

Convenience required making a visit to an alternative supermarket last weekend. It was the sort of supermarket that you would only use to stock up on their shampoo deals and Kettle Chip offers. Usually, my mother makes a point of driving over the bridge to the shrine of middle-class grocery shopping quality that is Waitrose. I usually delight in making a visit there, and often accompany her, purely because the whole experience is so pleasant. Gleaming floors, impeccably arranged displays of tomatoes and subtle signs informing of this week’s 3 for 2s. There is no such thing as a lurid ‘OFFERS!!!’ sign in a Waitrose supermarket; instead they like to place the emphasis on Delia’s latest seasonal offering, or the importance of buying organic lamb. 

Before we left for the Alternative Supermarket, my mum advised my father and I to dress warmly. It was another maddeningly warm October day; the sun was like an oxyacetylene torch directed on Plymouth, but I obeyed and wore a cardigan, leggings and a shirt. 

We arrived, and after negotiating the vast and hazardous car park, made it through the doors to find ourselves in Antarctica: blinding white light and low temperatures. For a moment, I felt as if I was on a skiing holiday without sunglasses. If a flock of penguins had wandered down the aisle towards us, I would not have been at all surprised. I pulled my cardigan around me and looked in pity at the other shoppers. Most of them were shivering in their unseasonal choice of t-shirts and shorts. One crazed woman was wearing a summer dress, as if she had just ambled off a beach. All of them were wearing the same miserable expression.

I think that a supermarket lives or falls on the freshness of its fruits and vegetables, and this one fell a very long way from this criteria. Having the Waitrose standards firmly ingrained in my psyche somewhere, looking at the pitiful display of soft tomatoes and withered corn on the cob was not encouraging. It was a veritable mish-mash of over-ripe bananas and withered salad onions. I found myself yearning for the perfectly stacked shelves of Waitrose strawberries.

Trawling around the rest of the supermarket was something akin to soul-destroying. I overheard a woman asking a manager where the yoghurts might be, his reply was ‘back there somewhere’. By the time we had reached the checkout, my hands and feet were icy cold. I longed to abandon the trolley and make for the balmy October weather outside. Instead I became privately incensed with the flimsy carrier bags that proved impossible to open. To make conversation with the check-out boy, my dad asked if he was cold in his short-sleeved shirt. “Oh, I’m used to it now” he said, with Scott of the Antarctic bravery. Clearly, customers were expected to have an insulating layer of blubber akin to that of a whale. 

During the journey home, I thought about the rotten tomatoes, the unfriendly temperature, the miserable faces of the shoppers. It was hard to forget the dim-witted manager and the impossible carrier bags. I found myself wildly considering, for a moment, to go back there and make a complaint. I managed to put away this brief, uncharacteristic moment of madness and instead consoled myself with the idea that soon enough I’d be trawling down a Waitrose aisle, choosing from seven different varieties of hummus. Soon enough I would be indulging in my proper breakfast of porridge. 

Yet, I am not enough of a Waitrose wanker to not recognise how some of their products are a con. For instance, some breakfast food manufacturer hit upon the simple notion of emptying out the leavings of a horse’s nosebag, adding a few other things like unconsumed portions of bird feed and the sweepings of a squirrel’s hibernation stash, packing the mixture in little bags and selling them in shops like Waitrose and Fortnum and Mason - and charging £6.99 for the privilege. That, I do not condone in any respect. 

However, I do place an almost obsessional importance upon the fact that the meat I eat came from a happy pig, cow, duck, walrus, and the eggs I bake with are from happy chickens. I am quite happy to be branded a food snob for this, but I am not happy with putting up with hypothermic temperatures and rotten tomatoes. 

Heatwave: an account of a weekend's sufferings

Friday Sometimes, I genuinely feel that I should have been born in another era, one in which the Thames froze over every winter. The term ‘global warming’ would be meaningless; it would be regarded as ‘extreme’ if snow did not fall in January.

I do not react well to heat, and for it to touch 29 degrees on the last day of September, I am in hell. I have returned from Tesco’s with bags full of tonic and other nice things to add to gin, in preparation for easing my pain. The obscene temperatures have seen an inexplicable rise in fruit-fly numbers, and I have spent my day embroiled in a hopeless battle with the little shits. On Spotlight last night, Plymouth’s medical officer warned we citizens of the town that we must drink at least three liters of liquid a day. I was planning to follow his advice assiduously. 

My house is not a pleasant environment for pre-drinks. The windows are closed to prevent further invasions of fruit flies. The Aga is like a fiery monster in the kitchen, but I refuse to switch it off out of principal. Two years ago, in the middle of a deep, icy winter that saw us trapped within the parameters of our own street, my mother had made the decision for our family to be Aga purists. The conventional oven would be confined to the single task of baking muffins. And two years later, two weeks into autumn, as my parents bask in the German sun, I am living with the results of our puritanism. 

My friends arrive around nine, and it is still uncomfortably warm. Its the kind of temperature that makes your trousers stick to the wrong parts of your bottom. So we begin to down chilled wine and gnaw on ice cubes; I begin ranting about my new nemesis, the fruit fly, and how I regard them as practical burglars in my home. The Aga continues to throw out hot air like a small volcano; the fruit flies meet a boozy death in our half-empty wine glasses. The windows remain closed. I find myself looking back, damp-eyed to the days when I left the windows of the house wide open, the door unlocked and ajar, Radio 4 left on loudly in the kitchen. In my half-drunk state I imagined legions of potential fruit-fly ‘burglars’ arriving on the doorstep, hearing Nigel fall from a roof in The Archers, and, deciding they just cannot tolerate such poorly written melodrama, buzz off to plague someone else. 

Saturday It is 10 in the morning, and God only knows what the temperature is. I have the very worst of hangovers, as if someone has pooed inside my head. I feel like lying in a grave; at least the soil would be cool. Flicking through the Saturday papers and I’m half expecting to see a resurgence of the mid-summer heatwave headlines: of people frying eggs on the bonnets of their cars in the middle of Plympton, with the caption reading “What a scorcher!”. I swear it is that hot today, and it is the first day of October. My rage at this fact is indescribable, as are the waves of alcohol-induced nausea. I swear it is that hot today. Delia Smith could cook a full English on my forehead, including fried bread. I look in the mirror and see a glistening sheen of sweat that has nothing to do with my hangover.

Later on that day, the fruit-fly invasion reaches a crescendo. I realise that creeping around the house in my dressing gown, with a permanently rolled-up Telegraph magazine, does nothing for my image, but the heat has made me half delirious. 

It appears to be Fruit Fly Week in my house; they have truly made themselves at home. Remember that song, ‘C’mon over to my house, hey hey, we’re having a party’? Well, they did come over to my house. To an outsider, I must look like I’m on e, constantly darting around in sudden bursts of energy. It’s an uphill battle because the fruit-flies adore the hot-house temperature of the kitchen, and their numbers seem to be doubling. The Aga seems to be providing something like a fruit-fly maternity ward. You can practically hear the champagne corks popping. 

2pm 28 degrees Celsius A respite of one degree has done nothing for my mood, or my hangover, or the fruit fly infestation. All around me people are exclaiming how wonderful this weather is; that I must be the only person in Britain who is cursing this unseasonal weather to hell. Yet, as I recline in the marginally cooler living room, a man walks past the window wearing a pinstriped business suit, shirt, tie, waistcoat and heavy leather shoes.

Incredulous, I wonder if he would wear the same outfit in the middle of Barcelona (experiencing the same temperatures). Of course he would not; he would at least adopt the unfortunate attire of a holidaying middle-aged Englishman: too-tight khaki shorts, off-white vest, black socks, sandals, and a hat with side-flaps. He’d still look completely ludicrous and be an embarassment to the nation, but at least he would be dressed in something appropriate to the weather. 

I feel a strong temptation to run outside and shout “Take your clothes off”, especially as all I feel like doing is lying in the shade in nothing but my pants. But I don't, because it would mean going out and acknowledging the fact that autumn in England now means temperatures in the high twenties. It would also frighten him; he would mistake me for a mad young woman who has been affected by the heat. 

Whereas, the truth is that I am a mad young woman who has been affected by the Aga, the fruit-flies, the gin, but not the heat. 

Hunchback

Something terrible is happening: I’m getting a back problem. It started months ago, with the sore neck here, the odd twinge there. Turns out that was transferred pain. The real source is where my kidneys are, but now I have replaced my pathological fear of kidney failure with the probability of a more muscular complaint, I fear that soon there will be a new entry in my imaginary telephone book, under ‘C’ - for chiropractor. 

Years and years of bad-postured writing at various different desks over the course of my education seem to have collided with the contained hysteria of having no purpose. This has only been exacerbated by several years of intensive typing activities and heaving literary theory textbooks around. My natural posture was never poker-straight, but recently seems to have deteriorated to that of a defiant hunchback; soon I will become shrunken and wizened, like my 90-year old grandmother. 

This evening, I look like a human question mark. I am bent, but not curious. Pain takes the curiosity away. Pain is introspective, it doesn’t give a damn about the rest of the world, it concentrates on itself. Not that I have anything of great note to be getting on with; the extent of my responsibilities are taking the dog to the vet and picking up dry-cleaning. Soon I’ll be retreating back to my tea-stained dressing gown and crappy novels, only bent over in some peculiar position in order to avoid looking like a down-trodden peasant. It brings tears to the eyes and moans to the lips, so god only knows what sciatica is like. 

Lying here, contemplating my gradual descent into muscular agony, a thought has occurred to me. In fact, two thoughts. One is, did my choice of shoes tip my back over the edge and down the slippery slope towards a painful middle-age? Is my rare indulgence in shoe vanity responsible for my worsening condition? I confess that there have been three occasions in which I have fallen off said shoes, whether inebriated or otherwise. Once was in the changing rooms of the shop. So could this be nature’s warning to start wearing MBT shoes in future? Boat-shoes they may be, but they’re kind to the spine... 

The other is, has my pathological hatred of massages aggravated a condition that could have been periodically relieved? I am fortunate enough to have had a number of spa experiences, and each time I have been desperate to avoid the complete torture that is any kind of massage. This is born out of my inability to relax (inherited from father) and irrational intolerance of people that I don’t know ‘touching’ me (also inherited from my father). But of course, each time I declined the opportunity to be pummeled and prodded by a woman in a lilac baby-suit, I was denying my muscles the opportunity to relax just a little. And as a result, they’re punishing me. 

My greatest fear is that I will eventually become a regular viewer of daytime television, although apparently my last three years as a student entitled me to this habit..yet I never felt the need to touch base with ‘Des and Mel’. Regardless, I still fear the possibility that I will grow fond of Jeremy Kyle and his visiting cretins, and may begin to regard them as proper human beings. However, too many other shows appear to rely on the ritual humiliation of members of the public, whether it be demonstrating your rendition of a whale being machine-gunned on X-Factor, or being shouted at by a professional chef because you don’t know what julienne vegetables are. 

In essence, I fear that if this back pain gets any worse, I will spent increasing amounts of my time horizontal on the sofa, with my head at a 45 degree angle at the TV, at a time in my life where spending more time than necessary in a horizontal position is really nothing less than soul-destroying. The purposeless existence of the unemployed English graduate is enough motivation to keep my back teetering on the brink for a while longer, I hope.

Lucy

My dog is old; 91 in human years. Her name is Lucy and I think she has begun to suffer from some form of doggy dementia, now that she is well into her twilight years. She spends her days, lying on her beanbag, looking as if she bears the world’s problems on her furry shoulders: as though she is in charge of Middle Eastern peace talks or responsible for the compilation of the British Rail timetable...but she can’t quite remember why. She wears a permanently miserable expression. I’ve become convinced that she has never ever really looked truly content at any point in her doggy existence, even as a puppy. My mother is quick to assure me that Lucy’s dour expression is a consequence of bone loss in her wobbly, worn old teeth. I personally believe she is in an enduring state of disgruntlement. 

Occasionally, she plods out into the garden, and will quite happily remain there for about ten minutes or so, staring into the middle distance, until she finally decides to leave what my father terms ‘a product’ in one specific corner of the garden. More often than not, she does not even manage this, but just stares, vacantly, with her cloudy, cataract-riddled eyes.

It had reached the point in the household where we would openly discuss what would happen to Lucy “once her time comes”. My father would suggest burying her in the garden, to which my mother would reply “Oh Martin, how could you! She’s only lying over there!”, perhaps forgetting that Lucy has been as deaf as a post since 2009.  

She has a serious eating disorder; this is because she is also a pathological liar. People come and go in our house all the time, and Lucy manages to convince each resident or visitor that she has been starved of nourishment for a week. Out of ‘desperation’, she would raid the bin each time the house was empty. 

She is also stupid. This is because her life-time habit of bin-raiding recently caught up with her. She has her own food, yet the fool decided that the bin would hold a more promising variety of delectable treats. Why on earth she thought a piece of corn on the cob would be palatable, I don’t know. Regardless, Lucy somehow manages to swallow it, unbeknown to my family and I. So follows three days of a literal playing-out of the term ‘sick as a dog’. By Wednesday, however, things had taken a significant turn for the worst. I thought her tiny little dog brain was finally succumbing to its slow but expected demise, little more than a useless sponge that told her to do two things: 1) stare into space some more 2) inexplicably dig holes in the flower border. A rushed visit to the vet revealed an ‘obstruction’ in the shape of a corn on the cob, and immediate surgery. Had we left it any longer, the vet said, then Lucy would have died. 

Naturally, Lucy is blissfully unaware of this. Dogs do things that humans are unable to do (except psychopaths or people reared by wolves). Dogs have no conscience; they do not suffer from feelings of guilt. Lucy remains unfazed by my father’s numerous barbed remarks over the ominous vet bill. She will not wake up in the night, drenched in sweat, thinking about the astronomical costs of anesthetic and gastrointestinal recovery food. Dogs don’t suffer from existential angst. 

One look at Lucy’s greying old face and shaved, bruised legs where her drip had been, and I started to question the point of animal and human existence. Why are we here? Lucy lived to eat, that much was true, and little else ever popped into her tiny little brain. But now that she’s home and recovering, her strange behavior has evaporated into little more than sleeping and eating mouthfuls of cat food, and eyeing each of us with equal amounts of disdain. Naturally her sleep is being constantly disturbed by stumbling, swearing people. Not to mention the furry intervention of the youthful equivalent of her great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter, Ella, shoving her nose into Lucy’s stitches with great enthusiasm. 

Yet, she appears to take this all in a spirit of haughty, ancient doggy tolerance, proving that at the age of 91, there’s life in the old gal yet. 

Hobo-man

I recently came across a ‘gentleman of the road’, sitting in a shop doorway, and drinking from a can of Kestrel at just past nine in the morning. 

“Ha ha ha I’m not being very p.c!” the hobo-man said, brandishing his can by way of a toast. 

I continued on my way, pretending not to hear him. Of course, I reflected - as I hurried towards the sanctity of M&S and all the comfort and security of the middle-class shopping experience - getting pissed at 9 o’clock in the morning outside the Iceland on Sidwell Street, Exeter, has absolutely nothing to do with political correctness. Nor is it an effective means of ‘challenging’ the establishment. He is merely playing up to the stereotype that all tramps get wankered at unseemly hours of the day. He was not formulating a conspiracy to bring down the Murdoch empire, or concocting ways to undermine David Cameron. 

I glanced back towards hobo-man, who was now engaged in a wordless discussion with Iceland’s resident security guard, staring blearily up at him and waving his Kestrel can. He was the perfect incarnation of the recurring nightmare I’ve had since grammar school - the nightmare of failing, and ending up like hobo-man. His choice to be ‘politically incorrect’, by indulging in the vaguely risky fun of drinking cheap lager when most people are at work, chimed very well with the habits and lifestyle of student-hood that I have officially chosen to leave behind. No longer is it acceptable to devote an entire day to drinking - not that I ever have; my old-woman tendencies extend to my liver also. Going out will be confined to Friday and Saturday night, once regular employment occurs. I am no longer privy to the accepted norm that all students are allowed to sit around in their pyjamas all day, spooning Sugar Puffs into their mouths and watching Friends re-runs. 

I am now entering a phase of life where less gravity is placed upon the type of underwear I chose to put on each morning, largely because I believe I have reached a point in life where I am more comfortable in my own skin than I have ever been. And my own skin says miniscule g-strings are not a good idea. Men are becoming blessedly forgiving creatures, so really you could get away with wearing a Gregg’s paper bag with leg-holes torn in it, and it wouldn’t put them off. The demented level of self-preparation that you undergo before each outing to Arena is beginning to wear off, and is being replaced by a violent feeling needing to come across as ‘serious’ and ‘capable’ in the workplace. My hair has emerged from its ‘wilderness years’ - I wore my graduation cap without hair-related tragedy. I do not feel the need to EVER WEAR FALSE EYELASHES EVER AGAIN (largely because the first and only time I tried them, I glued my eyes shut). 

Having just lived through my last week as a student - and the closest I ever want to be to hobo-man’s lifestyle - I’m very frightened at the prospect of having no clear-cut ‘plan’ for the future for the first time ever. Luckily, I’ve moved on from my childhood conviction that I was destined to be a princess. A goddess. An air hostess. But I have managed to create a more concrete form of who I think I am as a person, and this includes my complete intolerance towards dirt, and an unhealthy Facebook obsession. Now the real world looks very frightening, but in another ten years, when my eons of chocolate abuse have caught up with me, and I weigh 20 stone, I bet I’ll be longing for the uncertainty of today once again. I will be craving to be ‘politically incorrect’ and keep up my enthusiasm for cocktails at any time of day. We’ll all be longing for that infamous duvet day. 

Congratulations Class of 2011; here’s to the mini hobo-man in all our student-selves...and here’s to the road to adult responsibility! 

"I am in heels! I am woman!"

Having spent the past few weeks searching for a suitable pair of heels for my graduation ceremony, I have accepted that my ability to look ‘professional’ might be somewhat compromised by my deep-seated hatred of high-heeled shoes. This is somewhat at odds with the stereotype that women are supposed to adore heels, more than their own bodies or thoughts. One feature in Elle even concludes that a woman in heels possesses the “greatest weapons in the style wars”. A woman in five-inch platforms can easily dominate in the boardroom and achieve her aims. In fact, womens’ magazines generally have an unequivocal stance about heels: they form an exclusive and specialised part of a woman, along with the potential to lactate. 

My first pair of heels were hideous specimens. They were purple, and made from that cheap, plastic-y leather that makes your feet sweat as you walk. I had to wear them as part of a summer ball outfit, and the moment I put them on, I was only too painfully aware of the notion that each step I took, I was demonstrating what it would be like to have dying mice as my insoles. I also remember them being quite painful in that sort of itchy pinching-toes kind of way - but no matter! I was in heels, I was a woman! What a privilege. Instead I spent most of the evening sitting or leaning against various objects and people in order to relieve the unrelenting pain in the balls of my feet. For the days that followed this discomfort, I refused to wear anything but slippers.

If we lay aside the fact that heels are the source of much discomfort, we should consider the potential they have in ruining an evening completely. I have had too many heel-induced accidents to count. One was when I was mistakenly assumed to be drunk, because I overbalanced on my heels (platform black boots) in front of the bouncer. The result was that I was denied entry to the club, because in the bouncer’s eyes, I was so intoxicated I could not stand up properly. In fact, I had been trying to transfer my weight away from the balls of my feet, and was understandably unsteady. My explanation that my shoes were inflicting eye-watering amounts of pain on me were waved aside, as were my claims that “No one messes with a woman in heels. I am a woman”. I had no option but to go home, heels in hand.

However, I am not one to give up easily, and three years on from that night in front of the bouncer, my wardrobe is testament to the amount of faith I placed in the ideal that women belong in heels. And of course, along with many more pairs, I also have many more anecdotes about various outings at which I have humiliated and/or exposed myself, unable to compete with my female peers, by falling over. The fact that I am already developing a bunion on my right foot says it all: we do not belong in heels that could be used as a murder weapon. I can only conclude that the ability to walk effortlessly and without periodic wincing in six-inch heels lies with a select group of around ten people in the world. Six of them are run-way models. 

So why do women keep on buying - often spending considerable sums of money - and wearing these torturous items of footwear? Was Germaine Greer right when she claimed that women wear heels to catch the eyes of men?  Did Freud have a point when he claimed that the shoe is an object of fetishism as it “crystallizes the moment of the undressing, the last moment in which the woman could still be regarded as phallic”. 

I would not agree with either of these theories. I base my judgements about female footwear on the experiences of both my contemporaries and myself. We wear heels because they make your legs look thinner: end of. There is nothing more that can be said on the matter. This is why we endure countless hours of bone-crushing pain, risking premature arthritis of the feet and broken ankles. There is nothing more important to a woman than whether or not she feels good inside, and more often than not, heels come to the rescue in making us appear taller, thinner and as a result more confident. Brushing aside the fact that we are subscribing to society’s prescribed expectations of feminine beauty, I for one keep buying the heels because I like their ability to stop my ankles looking like pig trotters. However, reflecting on this further, I’ve decided that even this idea that heels are flattering is a lie that every woman invest in. I too, have done the same. I think of a new pair of heels as the most flattering, slimming things in the world...at least this happens for the time it takes for me to try on the heels in the shop, take a few paces and exclaim: “They’re actually really comfortable!”. Lies. Such self-deluded lies. 

Anyone only has to open the page of any celebrity magazine and find photographs of Victoria Beckham’s bunioned feet to see evidence of what thirty years of high heels can do to a woman. I, personally, do not wish to have toes that look like thalidomide pasties. 

Of course, despite me declaring that women’s shoes are ridiculous, dangerous, pain-inflicting torture contraptions, I will continue to buy new pairs of heels to accompany various outfits and ‘slim-line’ my figure. However, I now go out shoe-shopping with one specification in mind: if I am going to part with a substantial amount of my student budget on a pair of designer shoes, then I demand the following. I want them a) to be a pair that i can dance to the Black Eyed Peas in and b) to be a pair that will allow me to run away from a murderer, should one suddenly decide to give chase. That is now the minimum that I ask for in a pair of shoes - I should be able to dance in them, and escape a murderer. 

In the meantime, I realise that my views on heels are a minority interest; most girls my age have more bottle than me and are more than happy to dance through the pain. However, I have the mentality of a 60-year old. I watch Antiques Roadshow with interest, and enjoy Radio 4. I am a fan of comfortable, good quality clothes, but I don’t think style necessarily has to be compromised. As for shoes, who knows how long the after-effects of Sex and the City’s decade-long Blanik-wank will continue to rumble through society. 

Who would want to eat like a celebrity?

Favourite foods of mine... succulent beef Wellington accompanied by every possible trimming (namely, mashed potato with lots of butter..) followed by a decent helping of apple pie and custard.

       This meal choices makes me many things - British, greedy, and happy. But what it also means is that I would be a hopeless celebrity. My dietary choice leaves me amongst the ranks of the Unremarkable, my choice to consume many, many carbohydrates banishes me to the realms of the Distinctly Rotund.

If I had Madonna-esque status, my favourite foods would be wheat grass, grape-seed extract, bee pollen, warm algae infusions and bancha twig tisane. If I'm feeling like a treat, I'd lose myself in a hard-boiled egg. 

      Mercifully, I might not have Madonna's unbelievable figure, but I do still possess the ability to appreciate good food. I often consider the wonder-woman of the music industry at breakfast time, tucking into her fermented tempah and collard greens. Indeed, I am willing to make the assumption that it has been positively years since Madonna has been confronted by the sight of of a Hob-Nob. I have it on good authority - zealous celebrity food bloggers, naturally - that Madonna sticks to a strictly macrobiotic diet that consists of 50% wholegrains, balanced by a brutal exercise regime. All that yodelling, all those conical bras and morphing hairstyles, and what does she have to show for all her hard work? A plate of macrobiotic sprouts and a cup of laxative tea. 

      Speaking of 'detox' teas and their various counterparts, I am entirely unable to fathom why people pretend to enjoy the refreshing and restorative properties of green tea, of white tea, of kukicha tea. The only 'refreshing' properties stem from the fact the tea is usually so foul-tasting, that it kick-starts your brain into activity. Such teas veer between being so very bland its like drinking a cup of stale hot water, and being so cringingly bitter you cannot bear to gulp down the final dregs. Manufacturers claim bitterness only occurs when it is left to brew for too long. Excuse me for playing the part of dim-witted, ignorant consumer, but I never asked for my tea to demand so much of me. 

    Returning to Madonna and her various A-lister peers, we see evidence of celebrities discounting vital food groups all together. Take the actor, Tim Robbins, for example. According to my reliable source - another blogger of celebrity food - everyday out there in sunny California, Robbins starts his day with a bowl of organic oats with almond milk. Because, apparently, "nobody does dairy out here anymore". If you fail to pick up a carton of almond milk at your local branch of Tesco, then see if you can get your hands on any coconut water. It is The Drink of Choice, according to macrobiotic followers Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson. And to me, another way to ensure that you go about your day in a state of self-induced delirium, half crazed with hunger and misery. Any of form of fluid should definitely be un-cow milk (including rice, soy, macadamia, breast...). Suddenly, milk is no longer confined to the productive - and we can assume, to macrobiotic followers, polluted - abilities of the cow udder. It is my suspecting belief that somewhere near L.A is a high-tech lab facility, in which the scientists are employed soley to provide celebrities with another commodity that is unusual and laced with controversy, which us mere Distinctly Rotund won't get to taste for years. For now, the likes of sardine milk will remain firmly in the capable hands of Madonna's personal chef..

      Even snacking has moved beyond the realms of a packet of crisps. Instead, you can indulge in lotus root, umeboshi plums, daikon and wheat berries. If in doubt over how to eat any other normally inedible food stuffs, such as aloe vera, parsley and powdered flaxseed, just blend them. After all, protein shakes are the primary food group in Hollywood. But of course, they're no longer 'on trend' for A-listers because the rest of the world has discovered the benefits...and the side effects of flatulence.. 

     All of this strikes me as maddeningly complicated. You could drive yourself insane, living a life that requires an extensive memory of what is considered an "enzyme inhibitor". In all, such a dietary lifestyle adds up to a truly miserable existence, where half the joy of life that comes from discovering, preparing and eating food is reduced to something limited and as dull as a few pieces of lettuce and some aduki beans. I'd rather be fat and happy any day. 

Coping with a dissertation.

I remember a time in the near-distant past, when Mac computers were those hideous turquoise bubble-machines, and E-numbers were an expected phenomenon in crisps. This was the time when the Easter holidays were actually a time of fun and frolics and plentiful chocolate. Boredom would only arrive when your Gameboy ran out of battery. 

The reality of university holidays - no, let me be more specific - the reality of university holidays for a third-year English student involves soul-destroying amounts of boredom. For the past two weeks, I have been confronted by my dissertation (on Catholicism in Graham Greene novels, don’t you know) everywhere I turn. This is because there is nothing else to do, no distractions other than traipsing after my mother around the supermarket. The situation is made worse by the fact that all of my chums are sinking in mires of revision and essay-writing; home instilled within me the unavoidable need to do work, probably because I have never been able to stand libraries. For one thing, I have never been able to produce anything decent in a room full of brains that are all fizzing with intense, work-focused thought processes. Libraries are useful for one thing, and one thing only: observing odd people. Contemplating examples of undisputed abnormal behavior is an arresting enough distraction all by itself. I once watched a man of about thirty remove his shirt (this was mid-January, might I add) and kneel upon what can only be described as a prayer cushion, instead of using a chair. He then proceeded to get out a pad of paper, and drew hundreds of circles upon one page for the next forty minutes. All the time I was transfixed by this phenomenon - meanwhile, no progress was made with Ulysseus. 

I’ve had almost two weeks off so far, and it has hardly flown by. Each day is the same, sitting at my computer, surrounded by books, attempting decent thought. A few days ago however, I reached something that I suppose can be described as ‘breaking point’.  Yet, by 11am, I had drunk fourteen cups of tea, read all the newspapers and then...and then what? Catholics. 

By lunchtime, I was so bored that I decided to mop the kitchen floor. So, I found a mop, and later my mother came along to mop over all the bits I’d missed - the whole floor, in other words. I then tried to fix my chest of drawers, which broke the day we bought it. And later, my mum came along only to put the drawer back together again. Days like this went by in slow succession. I am now at the point where I find myself staring at the day through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Each morning, bed and the blessed relief of unconsciousness seem so far away. 

I half suspect that I’ve begun to wear a groove in the kitchen floor with endless trips to the fridge, hoping against hope that I have somehow missed a plateful of apple pie on the previous 4,000 excursions. 

I decided, following the chest of drawers debacle, that the next day should involve visiting the bookshop, to buy books to read for pleasure. This is now an alien concept to me, after two and a half years of being bored to death by various catastrophes of literature - primarily Austen, Defoe, Donne, Joyce, Beckett, any of Chaucer’s contemporaries... it is amazing that I still like reading at all. Having selected my light reading, it occurred to me that my choices are somewhat reflective of my own present situation in life. Namely, if it involves my dissertation, life is dire. I chose Karen Maitland’s medieval murder-thriller-mystery-thing, in which the lives of the characters are so wretched, so full of unfettered, unrelenting misery, that it makes you feel thankful that you were born in an age of sanitation and sewage-systems. A few weeks of dissertation torture is preferable to death by plague before your 20th birthday. 

The next stage in combating my boredom requires some effort. It now seems appropriate that I develop some kind of illness. This is a good idea when you are at a loose end, because everything, up to and including herpes, is better than being bored. It is hard, I know, to summon up a bout of genital sores at will, but what with it being unseasonably warm at this time of year, pollen is about. And if pollen is about, it is more than possible for me to develop hay fever two months early. If I whimper enough, it could easily pass for a “summer cold”, as my mother would say. And yes, even ingesting enough anti-histamines to place you into a state of self-induced drowsiness is preferable to spending days on end contemplating the nuances of the Catholic attitude towards felix culpa. 

The Catch-22 of taking exercise.

Given the fact that I am fastly approaching the age in life where the expansion of my thighs is no longer prevented by force of mind, I have unfortunately begun to turn into one of those poor souls I used to stare at incredulously from the safety of my gym’s jacuzzi: an exerciser. As such, considering that the gym is a place charged with social tension, I feel pressured to ‘fit in’ with the steady stream of twig-legged lacrosse players and gym regulars. Of course, not being a Mancunian drug dealer, I don’t actually own any tracksuit bottoms that are suitable for physical exertion. I have plenty that are suitable only for lounging and slobbing, something I am well-practiced in. Indeed, such ‘lounge pants’ as I believe they are now known, give the most unflattering, unshapely behind imaginable. If I happen to pass a mirror on such slob-days, I equate my bottom half to resembling something not unlike a blimp in appearance. I would not even dream of venturing to the gym in such apparel. 

So, upon a recent trip home, I visited A Sports Shop, which, being an emporium of sports equipment, was naturally, rammed full of discounted footballs and piles of K-Swiss trainers. Happily, these gave me something to hide behind as I approached a corner containing far too much uncomfortable-looking lycra. 

I grabbed the first tracksuit I saw and was asked by a salesman what sort of sport I’d be doing. “I won’t” I was tempted to reply. “I shall be selling cocaine to schoolchildren in it.” This sounded a lot better in my head. Not meaning to scandalise anyone, in reality I muttered “notsurethankyousomuch”. And no, I did not want to try it on, because I was never planning on wearing such a garment in a public place, so it didn’t matter.

So now, equipped with my in-keeping tracksuit and new, springy trainers, not to mention boob-squashing sports bra, I instantly felt revived in my need to Do Exercise. I returned to my gym a few days later, into a room that contained many implements of torture on the walls and a woman called Mary in the middle of it all. Mary, the former body-builder and all-round fitness freak, the very antithesis of anything I could ever want to aspire to in the gym world. All I could hope for was to prevent my thighs from expanding to The Chafe Stage. 

The Stretching Room in the gym is an alarming place for me. I found myself standing in front of a mirror, looking at my tracksuit bottoms, whilst people all around me were gyrating their hips. Now I’ve seen elderly people in Florida doing this, so I know it is humanely possible. I could not help finding the whole situation absurd.

The main problem with my new exercise ethos has been the sheer complicatedness of it all. I’d rather prance around a ballet studio for 2 hours than “strengthen my core” with a gigantic bouncy-ball. I am struck by the sheer mind-numbing boredom that comes with a gym routine. The monotonous creaking of the treadmill, the incessant whirring of the rowing machine. And the slow-rate of improvement brought about by each breath and each stretched limb! So, as you’re stood there, strapped into some ridiculous weight machine in some uncompromising position, in your silly trousers, stultified by the tedium of it all, I start to intellectualise the process. 

And I have reached an alarming conclusion, the "Catch 22" if you will: if I fail to spend several hours a day lifting things up and putting things down again, strapping by bosom into what can only be described as scaffolding, and testing the limits of my knee joints, I’ll be back in a world of of self-revulsion, plagued by thoughts of “THIGHS. THIGHS. THIGHS.” Once again, I will look upon the twig-legged Lacrosse girls with silent hatred. And if I do spend several hours a day lifting things up and putting them down again, nothing will happen. Nothing other than the certainty of having to wear my ridiculous trousers all over again. 

The Art of Swearing

Those of us who are daring enough to use the c-word need it to be socially risque. Or it ceases to have a point. 

Today, there are bare-naked ladies in the newspapers, sexual perverts in inner-city woodland, and sexually perverted, bare naked transexuals on the internet, and I’d like to bet you have no plans upon visiting a church any time soon. It is all part of the larger picture of time moving on and the habits of a nation changing. And of course, what would once have shocked the country to its core is now considered entirely normal. 

As a nation, it is now perfectly reasonable to sit down, tune into Channel 4, and watch a televised autopsy, hosted by the creepiest man to emerge from the television of recent times: Gunther von Hagens. Yet, contrastingly, we would be astonished and amazed if Nick Clegg suddenly burst out from his position of political lap-dog and made a speech tomorrow morning in which he describes David Cameron as a fuckwit. 

And why is this so shocking? We use the f-word all the time of course. It has entered the common vocabulary of the everyday. Buzz Aldrin definitely used it on the moon and I just know it nestles in the vocabulary of Prince Philip. We think Peter Mandelson used it too, when addressing Jeremy Paxman and the rest of the Newsnight panel during last year’s election campaign, but we can never be entirely sure because a) Mandelson is a slimy, reptilian human manifestation of Lord Voldemort and b) because journalists can’t use it in print. 

We are far removed from the day when the word was first ever used on British television - by the critic Kenneth Tynan - and at the time, it caused national outrage, with one Tory MP suggesting the foul-mouthed perpetrator should be hanged. The f-word was practically taboo amongst the media, despite the fact it was in common usage by most of the country. 

And yet now, just forty or so years later, the status of the f-word as the worst swear word has diminished and dwindled to almost nothing. So why, if words move in and out of common parlance so easily, has the f-word been the ultimate in dirty speech since the dark, muddled dawn of the English language? 

One could easily argue that this is not at all the case. People with pipes, bifocals and v-necked jumpers will claim that it in the not too distant past, words of an anatomical or scatological nature were not frowned upon at all. Because of the general greater influence of the church, all swearwords of the time were religious: Jesus Christ, goddamnit and so on. So they would argue, as a result, that there has been a gradual shift in the nation’s choice of profanity. 

But I really do disagree. And to illustrate my point, I take the worst word in the whole entire world. You know which one I’m talking about, and you’ll know why I can’t even attempt to camouflage such a thing behind a mask of asterisks. 

It can easily be seen, in varying forms, in our literature of the distant murky past, since before the Norman Conquest in fact, although I am basing my historical knowledge on..well, assumption. But to base it in something I have a bit more of a solid understanding of, when Orphelia says Hamlet cannot lie in her lap, Hamlet replies “Do you think I meant country matters?”. These are not the words of delicate innuendo, but a clear example of Shakespeare having a chortle out of the worst word in the world, same as he does in Twelfth Night too, come to think of it. This is something he couldn’t have done without any conviction if it wasn’t still the worst word in the world back then. 

To go back even earlier using my patchy knowledge of our country’s literature, even Chaucer wouldn’t write it bare upon the page, or parchment, or velum, or whatever. He dodged this issue in The Miller’s Tale, infamously full of shameless smut, with the line “Pryvely he caught hir by the queynte”. Mind you, this is pretty obtuse to the modern reader, as to the untrained eye, it just looks like a lack of standardised spelling was causing Chaucer a few issues. 

Following a brief spate of Googling, I now know that the worst word in the world was entered into the dictionary in 1961, but it remains a massive no-no amongst the tweedily decent. The Guardianists and foul-mouthed have crossed the moat, scaled the walls and traversed the bailey of the morally upright, but so long as the keep is held up by the c-word cornerstone, all is not lost. 

Frankly, I’m delighted by this trend, despite the fact I personally despise the worst word in the world. It means that those of us who use it still can with emphasis, because it remains socially risque. 

My own mother is a stickler for no bad language in the house at all. When my dad once exclaimed “bloody hell!”  after dropping a can of paint on his foot when I was nine, it excited a kind of tremulous awareness of all the bad words we could never say. I remember my mother saying to me that those who swear are simply demonstrating that they have a limited vocabulary, at a time when I was very keen to impress my command of the English language. But that simply cannot be so, because for me personally, whenever Piers Morgan appears on the television, I feel postively naked and underequipped if I don’t have some choice of profanities in my quiver Sometimes, only the c-word will do, I suppose.  

Here goes..

I write when my depression is bad. It is a pattern I have just identified, so this post is going to be appropriately reflective and personal. Probably too personal.

It has been a decidedly long while, because life has gotten in the way. Since last posting, have experimented in the borderline illegal, seen in a new year, ensnared new romantic interest and once again feel like self is on the brink of some form of a minor nervous breakdown. So I thought I'd start off 2011, and my resultantly stressful existence, with really cheery subject matter: existential angst.

Coming to the end of three years at university, I am trying very, very hard not to panic. I am also trying to ignore the fact that I would feel completely lost in the world of responsible adulthood, and positively baulk at the idea of selling my soul to a 9-5 job in some nameless corporation at the age of 20. Resultantly, I feel that I have not experienced nearly enough of life to even begin making any kind of life-altering decisions beyond what I am going to wear today. I find the process of feeding myself each day more than I can handle sometimes.

It is strange, because I look around, and see people of all ages trying to find their own way through life, as if there is some manuel that we are all supposed to adhere to and follow. We all seem caught up in the illusion that we all know exactly what we're doing. And I'm starting to realise that maybe it is better for my own sanity that I admit that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. It is the whole process of falling off a cliff and thinking that everyone else knows just how to 'do' life. I can't help but consider the whole 'job-marriage-babies-death' idea so restrictive and bland. I'm desperately attempting to find some kind of meaning in my existence already, and I've not even landed a proper job yet, or done anything that could count towards being a responsible adult, beyond paying some bills. 

The idea of GETTING A JOB induces something akin to a mild panic attack in my brain. I am positively enraged by the likes of today’s celebrities who have afforded such success from being what my father would call ‘turkey exhibitionists’. It is not that I envy their lifestyle, or their fame, but the freedom that comes with the financial security.  This is despite the fact that a large proportion of today’s celebrities seem entirely unable to cope, and so instead spend their fortune on white powder and Priory treatment. I stare vacantly at gossip magazines in Boots and have to resist the urge to tear the pages out, saying “Die, die”. I have to check myself because I know such behavoir is hardly socially acceptable, or normal for that matter. At least I can recognise that.

I was looking at the Dissertation Handbook the other day - a mistake in itself, as it induced more private brain panic - and reflected upon how keen we are as a culture to ascribe manuals and explanations for everything. Ruby Wax of all people observed recently that “household appliances have manuals, but we don’t.” She identifies this potential lack of control and lack of guidance in a culture so used being guided as the root of her own problem with depression. We have a name for it, it is recognised as a medical condition, but the attitude of society differs hugely. 

I suppose I’m waxing lyrical on this subject because I am in a bit of a hole myself, and writing is supposedly a form of cathartic release from the eddying storm of thoughts in my brain at the moment. I’ve become increasingly anxious of the past year that I am not getting any better, and it is not something I can control either. This is what scares me; anyone who knows me can pinpoint my borderline OCD and my need to be completely and totally on top of everything. I am possibly one of a handful of students world-wide who thinks it is entirely reasonable to write an essay the day after it was set, three weeks before the deadline. No overnight jobs for me: I cannot handle the threat of it spiralling out of my control. 

It is not like you can fake depression either. It is almost like your personality goes on leave and you’re replaced by something very dark, very alien. You’re no longer you, which is the most frightening thing. When you’re in the hole, you truly are in the hole. I didn’t plan to try and fight it but I did anyway, and anything would have been better than that pain - it is indescribable hopelessness that seems to permeate every level of your life. In fact, it is bigger than that. And it goes on for months and months. 

And I don’t mean this unusually candid blog post to be some pathetic emo-plight to the world, sorry AHEM, to my three loyal readers. I just want to bring up the fact that it is ok to feel completely overwhelmed and out of control. I’m not even sure I am convinced or accepting of this idea myself, but if none of us have instruction booklets to life, then doesn’t it make sense that we’re all a bit mad in our own little way?