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!
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