A.E. Shaw's Blog, page 2

Vegetables: My Journey to Dinner

-In the scheme of journeys, it’s hardly self-discovery. It’s not a voyage down the Yangtze or anything. It’s more like, say, driving from Reading to London. Tricksy and a bit tiring if you get caught in traffic, but a relief once you’re there.

In the metaphor of this, I already have a car, inasmuch as I like vegetables. I like them very much. They weren’t really optional when I was little, and it never occurred to me to complain about them, or not to eat them. I don’t remember ever refusing fo...

Winter Games are GO!

Image enthusiastically purloined from Google. Because it’s brilliant.

I love the Olympic Games. Winter, Summmer, whatever. I remember every single one since I was born in 1982. I’ve teethed during Winter Games, tried to replicate Torvill & Dean’s Bolero by wearing socks and scooting about on a piece of shiny hardboard, tried to move further than two feet when lying on a teatray on ever-so-slightly-snowy British ground, and found myself and dozens of others, post-night-out, accidentally captiv...

The Streak Ceases

So, after 33 days of running 2k every day, I have stopped. And I confess, after looking out the window at the branches snapping from the trees and the rain whipping itself into tiny vicious circles, I am relieved about the decision. Although, although, I quite happily ran in the same conditions earlier in the month.

There are a few things I’ve learnt from the running streak times, though.

1) It’s perfectly possible to exercise every single day. Indeed, it’s easier, because there’s no question a...

Tell Me, Are Violins For Real?

Because, honestly, having had a violin for years and been too scared to do anything with it because in our old flat I could hear the lightswitches of upstairs and downstairs being flicked, never mind everything else, when I finally, finally unpacked and strung it, was it foolish of me to hope that it would be possible, within two hours, to have all four strings in tune at the same time?

Perhaps it was. Perhaps. I know from guitars that new strings take a bit of time to settle, but then with gu...

Greetings, from the morning…

Following on from last night’s post…I went back to sleep in the end, and had some strange dreams, about things I can’t really remember. But! Then I got up, and within an hour, I’d done my run, showered, made coffee, and collected together some of the many things I’d meant to. I’m quite pleased with that, even if I missed parts of the mornings I love. There’ll be other opportunities to see mornings.

Now we’re three days into January, I feel it’s time to admit one of my more hopeful resolutions....

Greetings, from the night…

I write in bed, on my phone. It’s five in the morning, and I’m so very awake. This often happens to me, for precisely an hour around four and five.

I sort of want to get up. I’m a great morning person – I love early mornings, and can get five times the stuff of an afternoon into them – but tomorrow (today) is a day off, and I don’t think it’s worth the hassle of being hungry and tired at the wrong times of day. I also plan on getting up earlier and going to bed earlier in the near future and d...

HIS NAME IS NOT ‘THE DOCTOR’.

Christmas TV was the WORST. I hate to start New Year with a rant, but it’s bubbling up in me and I fear it’s starting to spoil 2014 TV so I figured, hey, maybe I should get it out.

The first and, perhaps, saddest offender was the Christmas Top of the Pops. I have always, always insisted on the watching of this in my house, regardless of my feelings on the Top 40 or the State of UK Music. I’ve just always watched it. With TOTP no longer existing, Christmas TOTP is my only chance to have some Ch...

2013: Highlights, in brief.

2013 was a glorious year for me. I’ve always said 13 is my lucky number – I grew up at No. 13, and it’s always seemed auspicious, so 2013 felt like the year to do the big things. And I did.

In 2013 I:

Shed the weight I didn’t want, and, with it, a far heavier weight of issues with food, self and negativity. It sounds so strange, so cliche, but there’s no other way to put it. I learnt a lot about my body, and my brain.
Moved not only house, but home, home home, to London, where I grew up, to a p...

Watching A Girl On Fire

We went to see Catching Fire today. I am a big fan of the Hunger Games novels. Big fan. I’ve read them multiple times, and each time I get to them again, I finish all three in 18 hours, tops, because they’re so damn compelling and readable. Every time. Every time I know what’s next, there are other layers, other thoughts, all the feelings. They are the heart-and-mind successor to Harry Potter, to all manner of great literature, but recently, at least, to Harry Potter, because they take hard t...

Getting Over The Hump

And so we slide fully into Week 2 of NaNoWriMo, and perhaps your journey is going considerably better than mine (if you have written your daily words, or even if you just don’t regret picking the thing you chose for NaNo, then yes, your journey is vastly improved upon mine). But perhaps, even if this is the case, you’re still wondering how the hell you’re going to get another 30-odd k out of your tale, or you’re still not at all certain how you’re going to finish this, even if you’re full of...