The Hangover

Three Drunken Women', by Torii Kiyonaga, Wikimedia Commons

It’s four o’clock in the morning, or some other ridiculous hour, and, having fallen into an instant stupor when you first got in, you are now regrettably, hideously and painfully awake.

Boom - thoughts of regret and embarrassing memories begin to assail you straight away. This is closely followed by a stark assessment of where your life is going. The spirit of regret takes on a multi-coloured plait of attack, twisting together in a spiral of malevolence (like one of those weird, pastel-coloured marshmallow sweets you used to get).

Firstly, there is the strand of thoughts concerning your physical well-being.

Why did I drink so much? Why didn’t I eat first?

Then, sometimes, there are the rather more murky feelings of personal, spiritual regret:

Why did I say that? Why did I do that? What’s wrong with me? I’m (insert age here), why haven’t I learned by now? I am doing this job which is going nowhere and trying my hardest to become a trapeze artist but what if I'm kidding myself? I'm only mediocre, at best, as a tightrope walker...
In my case, it’s not so much my advanced age that makes the regret so bad, after all, as a colleague once said; ‘Age has nothing to do with maturity, darling.’
It’s the fact that, with all the years of self-examination, I really should know better by now, I really should be 'doing better'.

So, with that in mind I have decided - drum-roll please - to give up alcohol for a month! September will be completely wine-free. This will come as something of a challenge as September has a few momentous occasions to see through without booze. There is our wedding anniversary, my other half's birthday and one of my best friends has her birthday then, too. I will be raising a glass of sparkling mineral water to them all! I also have book club at the end of the month, which my husband refers to, disparagingly, as wine club, so you know, a few hurdles to negotiate. As a side-note, I always think that January is the worst month to stop drinking: It's the most depressing month of the year - (like or loathe it) Christmas is over and you are broke, bloated and Summer seems a million miles away. You may be broke and bloated in September too, after a Summer of excess, but September is a soft, muted month with golden evenings and crunchy leaves. You can go on long walks, still bathed in the afterglow of Summer. January has no redeeming features.

I'm not saying that by giving up drink, I will instantly become more productive and successful (or am I imagining this drink-free super-ninja me, chopping through challenges and leaping from treetop to rafter...?), I just want to see if it has any effect on my state of mind (and waistline). Of course, I had to give up the sauce when I was pregnant but that was for a concrete reason. (Perhaps it would be easier if I just pretend that I'm pregnant this time and see if it helps my resolve - perhaps I can replicate the sensation of pregnancy by eating rotten food to induce projectile vomiting and grate my nipples with a cheese grater...)

So, I will see you on the other side of September, a newly svelte figure with glowing skin, a firm sense of purpose and a bronze certificate in trapeze-artistry under my arm.

And for the physical symptoms of the hangover, I can offer the recipe for the famous hangover smoothie:

Take

• Half a pint or so of milk
• A banana
• Some honey (at least a teaspoon)
• A sprinkling of ground cinnamon (optional)

And blend.

It’s supposed to help settle your stomach and ease your head. For the really nuclear hangover, though, you may need pharmaceutical help.

P.S Don't those three 'drunken women' in the painting above look elegant? I wish I could have such poise (whilst getting trashed).

Men who look like vegetables

Following on from the popular, 'Animals who look like famous people' strand, I give you you men who look like vegetables.

Now look, I'm not claiming to be immune from any root vegetable comparisons myself, in fact, I'd say most photos leave a distinctly spud-like impression, but do you ever see a picture of a film star and think - 'wow, that person really reminds me of a spring onion?' No?
Well, don't bother reading any further then. For those who do, here are some examples of men who look like legumes/allium/potatoes:

1) Bit of an obvious one, this: Vin Diesel

and a King Edward potato

2) Next up, a very fine actor, surprisingly good dancer and a menacing presence in many a good movie: Christopher Walken:

and, one of my favourite vegetables, the (not so) humble leek:

3) Villain of the piece, Trump:

You'll never view them in the same, 'alternative-to-standard-chips' light, again: 

The Sweet potato

4) Gorgeous posh boy and, if reports are to be believed, current consort of the T-Swizzle, Tom Hiddleston:

and,

a runner bean.

No, really, have a good look, as lovely as he is, there is something distinctly bean-like about Tom, especially when he plays Loki in those superhero movies.

5) Squashy-faced actor, John C. Reilly:

A Beetroot:

6) 

And finally, good humoured polymath and all round good egg, John Sergeant:

and a delicious vegetable with far more subtlety than celery, Celeriac:

Now, I don't know about you but looking at all these vegetables has made me hungry, so I'm off to have lunch. Ttfn.

Animal lookalikes

We all know what it's like; you go to the Safari Park and someone says:

"That Golden Lion Tamarin looks just like Noel Edmonds", thus prompting a long and tedious discussion, where you try to explain to the kids who Noel Edmonds is.
Let's face it, we're all animals anyway so there are bound to be some cross points of resemblance. (I always think that when my highlights have been bleached by the sun and are growing out, I start to look like an Alsatian).

So, here are some animal/celebrity lookalikes.

A Llama

Michael Fabricant

A Rock hopper penguin

The late, great Sir Patrick Moore

An Emperor Penguin

Stephen Segal

A Seal

Seal

50 Blog posts: from the microcosm to the..er...microcosm

I have now written 50 blog posts! Happy milestone anniversary to me!

I started writing this blog two years ago, I can’t remember why - probably something to do with being advised to have an online presence, if you were serious about being a writer. I didn’t have a remit. My first post was about the rather mundane, yet painful experience of going to the dental hygienist. I knew that some people treated blogs like diaries and I didn’t want mine to be quite like that - not a ticker tape of revelations and emotional outpourings. After all, who would want to read that?

Also, wasn’t there something rather shameful about writing about and sharing your feelings? We were all supposed to present a serene face to the world, crack the odd joke and keep calm and grind our teeth to a fine powder, weren’t we? And sneer at those attention-seeking Facebook posters who shouted all over social media ‘Could my life get any worse!’. That was the equivalent of mooning your teacher, wasn’t it? Tempting as it was to try and garner a bit of sympathy and attempt to grate away at the isolation that modern life created, it was seen (in my circles, or maybe it was just the nagging voice of the inner critic) as deeply vulgar and exhibitionist to shout about your problems. So I wrote about diverse things; there wasn’t really a unifying thread. I wrote about films and books and music. I touched on feminism and gender politics. I didn’t write particularly frequently and I didn’t have a particularly large readership (unlike the legions of followers that I have now).

That all changed when I wrote a piece about depression: when I wrote about that, I crossed over the invisible line that I’d set. I’d never written about it before and hadn’t talked about it very much, especially not in recent years when it hadn’t really been an issue. It was the most honest and revelatory thing I’d ever written but straight after I posted it, I thought - Fuck! Why the hell did I do that? I felt hideously, horrendously exposed. This was not how I wanted to be viewed, and for me, who considers myself to be a *private person, I felt that I’d left myself intensely vulnerable. However, that post had the most views I'd ever had and it had the greatest response because the thing is, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues are extremely common; the majority of people will experience them at some point in their lives, but there is still a real stigma around talking about them.
*It may surprise you to learn that I consider myself to be a very private person. I’ve written about depression, ectopic pregnancy and made (oblique) references to *cough* masturbation and that doesn’t seem like something that a private person would do, does it? I wouldn’t have open discussions about those topics with most people and yet I’ve put them out there for anyone to read.

Key trends from the Samaritans Suicide Statistics Report 2016

• There were 6,581 suicides in the UK and Republic of Ireland, in 2014.
• In 2014, 6,122 suicides were registered in the UK. This corresponds to a suicide rate of 10.8 per 100,000 people (16.8 per 100,000 for men and 5.2 per 100,000 for women).
• The highest suicide rate in the UK in 2014 was for men aged 45-49 at 26.5 per 100,000.
• The male suicide rate decreased in the UK (by 5.6%), England (by less than 1%), Wales (by 37.6%), Scotland (by 17.6%), Northern Ireland  (by 10.2%) and Republic of Ireland (by 6.4%) between 2013 and 2014.
• Female suicide rates increased in the UK (by 8.3%), England (by 14%), Scotland (by 7.8%) and Republic of Ireland (by 14.7%) between 2013  and 2014. Female suicide rates decreased in Wales (by 38.2%) and Northern Ireland (by 17.7%).
• The female suicide rate in England is at its highest since 2005.
• The female suicide rate in the UK is at its highest since 2011.

And perhaps, as the statistics from The Samaritans show, mental health needs to be talked about as much as politics, history, travel, disease, education, baking, athletics, football and Taylor Swift.

I’ve become aware that other blogs, ones which are less personal, are tackling wider issues and it makes me rather ashamed of my own narcissistic little journal. I’m constantly abashed by the fact that I don’t really talk politics (I don’t feel qualified) or human rights. Some people might perceive it as a privilege of the affluent West to have preoccupations with things like vaginal perfume http://msmuddles.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/but-seriously.html when, in parts of the Congo, women, young girls and baby girls are being systematically raped. But I think of gender inequality as a continuum where, what we experience in the West is at one end of the spectrum and the horrendous abuses that happen elsewhere are at the other. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t protest against the milder stuff, it still comes under the umbrella of misogyny . After all, you wouldn’t not report a theft because in other parts of the world, people were having bombs dropped on them, would you?

So, this cheery little post started out as a celebration, turned into reflection then, almost an apology piece. Some people see all social media as the elevation of the mundane: Beryl gets 90 Facebook ‘likes’ for posting - ‘At home, chopping a cucumber’, type thing. But is that really so bad? Perhaps, with all the hideous happenings that are beyond our control, it’s better to take time to smell the roses and appreciate other people’s cucumber chopping …

So, the next time I prepare a salad, I’ll be sure to write about it, OK.

Bekonscot Model Village

Why being a grown-up sucks

Happy Max by makelessnoise, Flickr

You’re lucky, reader, you nearly got a blog post about Spring cleaning; about going through my children’s toy collection and clearing out all the old stuff that they’ve outgrown. Having to even think about this is just one of the many things that makes being an adult a bit shit. There are many other things and they are all magnified when you have children and are expected to know what you are doing. In no particular order, here is a list of the worst things about being an adult.

1. You’re expected to take all sorts of insults and aggressive lash-outs (from your kids) in your stride. You are supposed to be the rational, sensible one and they are little bombs of emotion, passion and a very strong sense of (perceived) injustice. Thus, when you are told that you are mean, a witch and that they hate you, on a regular basis, the correct response to this is either a sanguine silence or an expression of stoic acceptance. Something like “whatever you say.” To offset this negativity they will occasionally threaten to incinerate your heart by telling you that they love you or, saying extraordinarily flattering things like “You look beautiful”. They are quite clever and devious at disarming you.
2. You have to make decisions.
3. Staying up as late as you want loses its appeal when you have to get up at 5.30 in the morning.
4. Pensions, bank accounts, banking fraud, tax returns….are you asleep yet?
5. No…? Well here’s another lot: Cleaning, washing up, scrubbing mould off tiles, knowing what kills mould. Researching how to get rid of moths. Owning a copy of How Clean is Your House, the companion book to that programme with Kim and Aggie. (Owning a copy but never actually referring to it - if you’re a bit of crap adult, like me…)
6. You have to cook dinner for a mostly unappreciative audience. (Even if you don’t have children this may still apply to you. The point is that as an adult you are expected to provide your own dinner.)
7. Do you remember that bit in Home Alone when Kevin realises that he can eat whatever he wants and nobody will stop him? This is a really appealing thought when you are a child and feel that you could eat the entire contents of the experimentation rooms in the Wonka factory. In reality, regulating your food intake is tedious and fraught with emotion, sometimes it would just be easier to let someone else think about it for you. Yes, you can eat anything and everything you want but we all know that this is not actually a good idea. I came back from holiday recently, craving vegetables and fruit and never wanting to see another scone. (Happily, it hasn’t put me off wine though).

And to balance all that negativity, some plus points:

1. You don’t really have to go anywhere you don’t want to (barring work). If you tell someone that you can’t go dry slope skiing, to a sticky-floored nightclub or to a new restaurant that specialises in offal because you can’t afford it/are ill/have been bitten by the tsetse fly, people have to accept your excuse and not challenge the veracity of your statement. The older you get, the easier this seems to be.
2. The element of choice makes most things more appealing - thus if you are choosing to practice your piano playing or go for a 10K run, you can tell yourself that it’s because you enjoy it.
3. Eating loads, all of the time is sickening but once in a while it’s fun.