healthy weekend
friday: 'worked' from home and recuperated from general london-ness. started new urban urban blog, as seen below. in the evening cooked pork chops and veg for Gamma and then made him watch 5 episodes of sex & the city, which he seems to have found most instructive. however, he had brought heaps of momos and chilli sauce to celebrate Momo's birthday, and i had cheated on work all day, neither of which, on the whole, are partcicularly 'healthy'.
saturday: drove to Wales (with Gamma, that useful grown up boy with car). on the way, he suddenly thought it might be a good idea to visit Dhiru and Mrinal (more uni friends) in Bristol, so i called them and invited us over for a late breakfast. a few years worth of catching up, excellent omlettes (by Mrinal), cheese and fruit and bad tea (by me) later, we went on our way with promises of catching up again soon. it may never happen, but we did get to spend 2 lovely hours in their cosy apartment near the uni of west england. onwards we drove through very pretty welsh countryside, to brecon and my great-uncles home of the last 50 years. one evening last year (the day of the notting hill carnival, i somehow remember specifically) he suddenly rang me and reminsced about Patali Gur, a kind of jaggery made from palm juice, typical of west bengal and apparently some places in south india. i'd felt duty bound,on my india trip to bring some back for him, and thought it would be a nice touch to deliver it in person. something weird has happened to me - i have started basking in the presence of older people. really. thursday night i went to see another elderly couple, family friends, this time in clapham south, where i didn't need a long suffering friend to cart me around. i did however take Eva along for some tea and biscuits, as she too was feeling homesick and could do with some grown up affection. anyway, so saturday found me in Brecon, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. after a short but warm visit, Gamma dropped me off at Cardiff Central where i bought an exorbitant rail ticket back to london paddington (still worth it though), and then took a short and freezing walk around the city centre, while waiting for my train to get in. things seemed very dead - only a few instances of drunk english girls in f.m. boots and skirts of alarming shortness*, only a few lads jackassing about on pavements, and only one student bar with 99p drinks. this was much more dead than Nottingham, which is technically a much smaller conurbation. i suppose this is depressive January, and Nottingham was in pre-Christmas October, so it's an unfair comparison.
sunday: i surprised myself and flatmates by going along with Lara to her gym, which has an awesome indoor swimming pool. the temperature was just right and there were very few people, and there was the prospect of cute young doctors coming to use the pool, as this is part of the local (huge) hospital's facilities. much kicking and floating, and some honest-to-god learning of swimming was done. any health benefits, however, may have been nullified by the huge full english brekkie that was consumed afterwards. i tried to power-walk it off again, taking the long riverside route home, but i fear it is not the same thing. am trying to forward the good health, recession-busting, anti-waste, and anti-laziness cause this evening by cooking in, and finishing an open bottle of red wine. instead of say, going out dancing and flirting/ making out with pretty but fuckwitted men. next week perhaps, we will see....
* courtesy Sean Thomas, a novelist i hadn't heard of before i started finding his book 'kissing england' rather unputdownable. the back cover says something about what it takes to be modern Englishman, and i was intrigued.
saturday: drove to Wales (with Gamma, that useful grown up boy with car). on the way, he suddenly thought it might be a good idea to visit Dhiru and Mrinal (more uni friends) in Bristol, so i called them and invited us over for a late breakfast. a few years worth of catching up, excellent omlettes (by Mrinal), cheese and fruit and bad tea (by me) later, we went on our way with promises of catching up again soon. it may never happen, but we did get to spend 2 lovely hours in their cosy apartment near the uni of west england. onwards we drove through very pretty welsh countryside, to brecon and my great-uncles home of the last 50 years. one evening last year (the day of the notting hill carnival, i somehow remember specifically) he suddenly rang me and reminsced about Patali Gur, a kind of jaggery made from palm juice, typical of west bengal and apparently some places in south india. i'd felt duty bound,on my india trip to bring some back for him, and thought it would be a nice touch to deliver it in person. something weird has happened to me - i have started basking in the presence of older people. really. thursday night i went to see another elderly couple, family friends, this time in clapham south, where i didn't need a long suffering friend to cart me around. i did however take Eva along for some tea and biscuits, as she too was feeling homesick and could do with some grown up affection. anyway, so saturday found me in Brecon, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. after a short but warm visit, Gamma dropped me off at Cardiff Central where i bought an exorbitant rail ticket back to london paddington (still worth it though), and then took a short and freezing walk around the city centre, while waiting for my train to get in. things seemed very dead - only a few instances of drunk english girls in f.m. boots and skirts of alarming shortness*, only a few lads jackassing about on pavements, and only one student bar with 99p drinks. this was much more dead than Nottingham, which is technically a much smaller conurbation. i suppose this is depressive January, and Nottingham was in pre-Christmas October, so it's an unfair comparison.
sunday: i surprised myself and flatmates by going along with Lara to her gym, which has an awesome indoor swimming pool. the temperature was just right and there were very few people, and there was the prospect of cute young doctors coming to use the pool, as this is part of the local (huge) hospital's facilities. much kicking and floating, and some honest-to-god learning of swimming was done. any health benefits, however, may have been nullified by the huge full english brekkie that was consumed afterwards. i tried to power-walk it off again, taking the long riverside route home, but i fear it is not the same thing. am trying to forward the good health, recession-busting, anti-waste, and anti-laziness cause this evening by cooking in, and finishing an open bottle of red wine. instead of say, going out dancing and flirting/ making out with pretty but fuckwitted men. next week perhaps, we will see....
* courtesy Sean Thomas, a novelist i hadn't heard of before i started finding his book 'kissing england' rather unputdownable. the back cover says something about what it takes to be modern Englishman, and i was intrigued.
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