Born and Bread

Well the word learning continues, and they're mostly courtesy of Mr Stephen Fry. I've just finished the book and I have mixed feelings. It does come to an end rather unexpectedly, but then I guess if you're going to split your life up into portions for different versions of an autobiography, that's always going to be the case when you don't suddenly drop out of the public eye. Generally I found it an enjoyable read, as I'm a big fan of comedy, and there's lots of links to other performers and programmes I remember such as Saturday Live, The Young Ones (Stephen Fry is on the opposing team when they appeared on University Challenge, and actually appeared on it properly, reaching the final). Hugh Laurie, incidentally, rowed in the boat race. I'd have thought he was too short, but that's probably because he looks short compared to Stephen's six foot five or thereabouts. Anyway - an entertaining read, although Stephen does get a bit self-absorbed at times. I guess that's inevitable in an autobiography, but he does rather repeat the same point.



Anyway - next step as well as tidying up was to start the baking challenge. I followed this recipe. The nice thing about soda bread is that it doesn't need any faffing with kneading or waiting for the bread to rise. Anyway, here's the story in pictures!

First picture shows all the ingredients, laid out on my newly cleaned work surface. Ta-dah!



After that it's pretty much a matter of mixing everything up, no kneading, no waiting for it to prove or anything. Just mix it all up in a bowl. Those scales are rather neat (gadget freak alert) because you can reset them to zero. In other words, you don't have to measure each thing and then pour it into a mixing bowl, just reset to zero, add new ingredient until it reads the correct amount, reset to zero, add next ingredient, etc. In other words, less washing up. This is a GOOD thing!!


Here's a pic of it all with the buttermilk poured in, all ready to mix in. The whole thing only took about five minutes. Still got to stir that in, then "Lightly blend it with your fingers", whatever that means, but it only took a couple of minutes. All jolly quick and easy.

Next, into the oven for half an hour, not much tidying up to do, then take it out and stick it onto a cooling rack. Then taste it. That was the most frustrating bit. In the end I couldn't, and cut a slice when it was still slightly warm. Nomnomnom! Really tasty, can't wait to eat some more of it. Still got to work out how to balance the diet with the baking initiative!

Swinging My Balls

So - what have I been up to?

Well - for starters, I've been getting on with my word a day task. I've signed up to this website which kindly emails me words, and I've been looking up new words in Stephen Fry's book.

Word a Day

plus I've got a couple of baking books from Amazon - yay! More details on that once I've tried some of the recipes.

A couple of days ago, I went up to town to this shop:

Oddballs

to buy some poi. Now poi are basically just balls on bits of string that you swing around. The ideais that you start with balls and build up to bits of fire resistant cloth that can be soaked in paraffin and set on fire. I decided that these probably weren't the best to start with but that I'd work up to them. Maybe. Once I got any good. If I got any good. Bearing in mind that I quickly managed to whack myself in the back, the head and all other parts of the body within the first ten minutes, this was, I suggest, a good move.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) the shop was full of all sorts of other exciting stuff. I started with some juggling balls (I used to be able to juggle five) but my balls were a bit worn out and I needed some new ones. Hmmm - I'm looking back at that last sentence and wondering if I ought to re-word it.

Anyway - the other thing that I got was this:

I suddenly remembered that I've fancied giving one of these a go for years, but not known where to get one. Now - a friend pointed out that having broken both wrists last year, this probably wasn't the best way to avoid doing that again, but what the hell, you only live once.

I've given it a couple of tries, and it's blooming difficult. As well as the usual side to side thing for bikes, you can also fall forwards or backwards if your body weight gets behind or in front of the base of support. You can alter the base of support by pedalling forwards or backwards, but that's a tricky balannce. Anyway - it'll be a fun skill to develop, although I might just search online to see if there's the unicycle equivalent of stabilisers.

Anyway, on my way back from there, going down the backstreets of an area of London I believe is called Fitzrovia (to the non UCL side of Tottenham Court Road) I saw a group of people taking photos. I thought nothing of it, until I thought I recognised one of them. It was Dynamo, who I've only seen recently but he's a sort of British version of David Blaine. I used to love magic as a kid and I must get back into that at some point.

Since then, I've enrolled on a beginner's course with these people.

Perfect Circle Poi

Had a chat on the phone with the teacher as I was a bit worried about my wrist, talked through a few other things and learnt some techie terms such as fisting (oo-er) and fingering. She seemed hilarious and I think I'm going to have a brilliant time.

The other thing (on a completely different note) was that I've had my blood pressure monitored over the last 24 hours. It's the same as a basic blood pressure machine involving a cuff around the upper arm, but there's a unit that a) has a timer that inflates the cuff every half hour - even at night! and b) records the readings. I was advised to stand still when it was doing a reading, which can work fine but not if you're crossing the road when it goes off. Plus it woke me up quite a lot during the night, although for some reason not every time. Not sure what made the difference.

Right that's it - more news later!

It's Only Words...

...as the Bee Gees said. And Boyzone.

Oh dear, that's not a promising start to a blog entry. I can see my readers heading off in droves.

Anyway - I thought I don't read as many (non techie) books as I used to. Plenty of techie books on gait, amputee rehab and various other specialities, and all jolly interesting they are too, but it's not a way of relaxing from work. So - on seeing the book below on sale cheap with a copy of the Times, I went for it.

I've always liked Stephen Fry - his humour, and above all, his use of words, because I too have a fascination with words. I love puns, and I'm captivated
by stories of the origins of words. Plus I like the way Stephen plays with words on programmes like Qi.

Anyway, I'm about a quarter of the way through so far, and it's all very much what you might expect. Tending to digress at times, but they're funny diversions, at least to me, and he has the ability to paint wonderful pictures with words. He almost had me wanting to try a pipe with his description of pipe smoking, as well as throwing in fancy words like dottle. Plus he's quite happy to coin new words like the adjective "cardiganny", which is perfect for some groups of people

Anyway - what's this all got to do with my bucket list?

Well - it's spawned a few new bucket list entries. I want to read more books, and I want to learn new words. So - one target is to learn new word every day (at least), and read at least one non-techie book every month. Fan-bloody-tastic! (which is an example of tmesis, for anyone interested).

Life in 3D

Morning (although by the time I've finished it'll probably have gone noon).

The last few years have been mad. Studying on a full time course has been great, and I've loved all the stuff I've learnt, but it did take up a lot of time and energy. I enjoyed as much of uni life as I could, doing rowing, socialising with the guys on the course, but now it's over and many of the people I knew there have moved away, and I'd lost touch with a lot of the people I knew before. Plus while the uni life was great, I was so busy with study that I have rather lost touch with a lot of things that I enjoy. Now I've started work so much of life seems to be about work - at work, studying for work, recovering from work (twelve hour shifts can take it out of you and mess up any activities that require a regular commitment, even at weekends) that life has become rather one dimensional - and that dimension is - WORK!


Now don't get me wrong, I love learning new stuff - it really excites my brain, but there's also quite a bit of repetition. In any case - even if I was winning a Nobel prize or something then I think most people need a rounded life, so however brilliant I am at work, life would be missing those other dimensions.

Right - so how to accomplish those other dimensions? Well - my good friend from uni Madhu (see link to blog on right) has got me thinking about bucket lists. Now, I don't quite understand why it's called a bucket list, but I'm starting to do one. And it's really got me thinking. I'm thinking about stuff I used to enjoy, stuff I want to get back to, even small personal stuff that give me a bit of a satisfied glow. Or possibly really sets me on fire with excitement. In other words - gives me emotional energy (heck this sounds poncy) rather than just practical stuff like earning money. Not that I can ignore money, but it's all got me thinking.

Early days yet - but so far I have things like:

• bake something new every month
• cycle Land's End to John of Groats (not every month)
  
• get back into a regular fitness routine
• Learn a new and exciting skill

I may chuck some work ones in too, but I particularly want to get away from work stuff!

Baking
I love to cook, not just baking but all sorts of stuff. I haven't done it for ages though. Too often I've got home from work mentally exhausted and just crashed in front of the telly with beans on toast or something like that, Or possibly sausage in batter from the chippie I unfortunately pass on the way home. Now, of course I don't have to go in, but somehow the aroma of salt and vinegar attracts me like the Pied Piper of Chip Shop.

Now, the Great British Bake Off (or whatever it's called) has been on telly recently, and I've been nomnomming to myself every week, so - it's going to be baking. I'm gathering recipes as we speak!

Cycling
I've got a friend (Heather) who is currently cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats. Another friend did it a couple of years ago. Their tales are fantastic, plus I've always had a fascination with the extremities of the British Isles (and other extremes - I used to avidly read the Guinness Book of Records). Plus having once been north of Glasgow (to Oban) and seen how beautiful that part of the world is, I want to see more of it. And there's a heck of a lot more of it north of Oban, even though that felt like falling off the edge of the world (nearly).

Plus I love cycling, and it's a challenge, rather than just generally pootling around on the bike, although that's fun too.

Fitness
I used to be pretty fit (cue sniggers). I've done the London Marathon four times, and a half Ironman Triathlon (the Vitruvian).. For those that don't know, that's a 1.2 mile swim, 56 miles on a bike and then a half marathon (13.1 miles) run. Plus I used to regularly do spin classes, weights etc. Plus rowing.

That's all gone out of the window now. Being a one dimensional work junkie, I spent too much time outside of work mentally recovering, or missing classes as I had to work, and my eating habits have gone to pot (see above). Busting both wrists when I fell off my bike 18 months ago didn't help either.

Anyway - time to get back to it! Just got to hope all that yummy baking (it's going to be calorific not um - hmm I can't think of any slim type baking) doesn't counteract all this effort. Plus I think exercise improves my mood.

Exciting
Don't want life to get dull (it has lately) so - how about a new skill. I've got several ideas but one that I fancy is this, which a student I used to teach who I'm still friends with on facebook does.


looks great eh? Fortunately you can start without fire, otherwise I'd have the fire brigade on standby!

Anyway - that's just a taste of what's in the big plan/bucket list. I'm still working on it but also need to put it into action and not just plan.

Welcome!

Hello all! Well what's this all about?

I used to blog a lot - possibly too often for my own good, but I enjoyed it. I stopped soon after I started my physio degree and life got busier. Well - that's all done with now, and while I could go back to the same blog, I'm not doing it.

I was going to call this blog "Back on Track" as I wanted to get back to more sport like I used to do, but that URL was taken, so I've opted for this title. It's actually a quote from Cannonball Run, but I came across it when I played volleyball, and it was one of our rallying cries. Plus I'm known as "Bear" on the Runner's World forum. My take on the quote is that it's about being the biggest and best that you can - which sounds good. Not biggest in terms of physical size (I want to lose weight!) but in terms of making the most of life. Anyway, that's how I'm interpreting it, and it's my blog, so there :-P.

Anyway - more later! I'm going to publish this just to get this blog live.