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Time moves more slowly when you spend it with your relatives. It's the theory of relativity joke that I've used for the best part of my career, so you'd think I'd have realised this (talking of which
episode 2 of Relativity is now up on iPlayer- It's the family sitcom starring Alison Steadman that everyone is talking about this Christmas).
I think actually the stretching of time is down to not having a thousand things that need to be done. Even though Christmas has been a lot of work, it's still not work. So this morning I tried to keep myself busy by cleaning the kitchen and preparing all the veg for round 2, Boxing Day meal. But still time dragged. Peeling potatoes carrots and even swedes was pimpsy, but fuck me, getting sprouts ready takes a long time. I am not sure I've ever done this job alone before, but two branches or plants or whatever they are of sprouts took me about an hour to prepare and that doesn't include cooking time. I have never known something to be as labour intensive and for the end result to be so not worth it. Even if sprouts were the most delicious thing on the planet then I don't think it would be worth this time. And they're not. The process of cooking sprouts actually makes them worse. I like them raw (though even then most of the prep would still be required as they still need to be plucked, undressed and washed). They're OK cooked if you like eating damp bags of fetid pond leaves, but they are sharp and tangy raw. And I discovered whilst prepping them that if you eat one and then drink some fiery ginger beer then you get an adult version of space dust (or at least those red hot gobstoppers we used to eat). The sprout and ginger combine to make a brilliant burning sensation that makes you glad to be alive and also glad to have a mouth that isn't on fire all the time. I will be marketing this experience in the new year and expect it to make me a million pounds.
I'd also been out for an early morning stone clear and podcasted it and loads of funny stuff had come up, so I was disappointed to discover that I'd once again recorded it from inside my pocket. I hadn't checked as it's usually only an issue it my EarPods have been connected to another device. I went out to try to recreate the experience just before lunch, but I didn't recapture the magic and incredibly the recording inexplicably cut out after about 15 minutes. I put it out anyway, but if you are amused by the idea of me walking around a muddy field in the rain. talking to myself for no reason, then you will find the lost podcasts amusing.
There is a little Christmas treat at the end of this, not that stone clearers celebrate Christmas, even though Jefuf was undoubtedly a stone clearer.
Liften to the ftones here
It's been a good Christmas, though illness has been hanging over the house (I've largely escaped it so far) so it hasn't been as exuberant as it might have been. I avoided booze and chocolate in favour of raw sprouts and ginger beer (it's a legal and low calorie high as long as it's diet ginger beer), but I am still looking forward to getting back on the road to fitness. I am ending the year 10kg lighter than I started (maybe more if I can get the diet into gear in the next four days) but still 5 kg heavier than I was in the summer, but thinking of seeing if I can cut out (or at least severely cut down on) sugar for a month. I've stopped doing nearly all the things that made me “happy†in the past: sleeping around, drinking, gorging chocolate, so I might as well take out the last few pleasures life has for me, in the hope of extending my joyless life for a bit longer. Or I could just spend every day with my family and thus become immortal.
Hope you had a good one.
