Thursday, 15 September 2011
Wellies
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Gorgeous Scotland
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| Arran - from the ferry |
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| Above the Saddle |
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| Our stag - we rounded a corner at the top of a mountain and there he was. Awesome. |
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| Looking towards Goatfell |
Never let anyone tell you that you have to go abroad for fabulous, dramatic scenery - or a bloody tough hike. Scotland has it all.
Monday, 5 September 2011
Wheel of death
A couple of news stories today have given me pause for thought.
First off, the announcement that McDonalds and a host of other food chains are going to put calorie counts on all their menus. I've suffered from seriously disordered eating and am only just beating it after a number of years. In all that time, I was obsessed with calories and this measure would have made my life even more painful and difficult. I spent so much time denying myself nice food - I would often find myself in tears in Sainsburys desperately wanting the tasty ready meal or chunky soup but feeling forced to have the bland low fat option because I couldn’t ignore the calorie information - "the wheel of death" as it's known in our house. Going out to a restaurant was the only time I could pick something to eat without stressing about the calories. Of course, I knew that the pizza was more caloriific than the salmon, but that was fine. What I didn’t want to know was the precise value of every single dish. I'd have found it so hard not to always pick the lowest one - or if I'd picked a higher one, I'd have suffered greatly because of it, feeling enormous guilt about my choices. People with eating disorders already find stress in every single food decision so this just seems like another way of making things worse for them. Eating - especially eating out at a restaurant - should be a pleasure. It's a bit of an indulgence and it doesn’t need to be quantified.
However, I accept that as someone with eating issues, I'm in the minority. Another minority is the batch of people who we're told don’t know that a Big Mac has lots of calories in it. I guess there must be some of those people, but I'm not sure whether they should be the driving force for legislation either. One example that's been used to justify the move is the fact that apparently people underestimate the amount of calories in a latte and a muffin by about 300. My response to that is, so what? 300 calories is very little. Obesity is generally not caused by the odd underestimate a couple of times a week - most people who like their latte and muffin don’t care about the calorie count and if they're overweight, that's certainly not the only reason why. Anyone who wants to can find out the calorie count of their muffin by using the good old internet and then make their eating choice accordingly. They don’t need it thrust in their face at the checkout.
On balance then, if you don’t legislate for me, or for the Big Mac denier, what difference will this make to the majority? Probably not much, although I suspect it will take a small amount of the pleasure out of eating out for quite a few people and make no difference to the vast majority of others who order a Big Mac in the full knowledge that it's a little bit bad for them, but what the hell, they want to do it anyway. I think there's a real misunderstanding that people who are fat would be thin if only they had a bit information. We're drowning in information and yet we're getting fatter.
I guess I don’t really have a definitive answer, maybe it's soemthing I'll come back to, but all I know is this move makes me uneasy and it seems, somehow, pointless. Perhaps it would just be better, if you have to do anything at all, to do what some restaurants do and have a "light choices" or "healthier choices" section so people have the option if they want it.
Secondly, free schools. For anyone reading this outside the UK, these are the brainchild of the coalition government - although they are common elsewhere in the world. They are state-funded but completely independent, set up by parents, charities, private bodies, teachers and so on, and able to operate their own timetables, curricula, etc. I heard a TV news correspondent say in rather judgemental tones that the government was being forced to deny that they wouldn’t just benefit "pushy parents".
Merits of free schools aside, surely that begs the question, what is wrong with being a pushy parent? We're not talking about the kind of parents who force their children into Hollywood auditions aged five - what the media and the critics mean are basically parents who want the best for their kids and are prepared to move hell and high water to get it. What's wrong with that? Surely that should be the definition of a good parent. Adults do know better than kids - aged 10, I kicked up months of almighty fuss because I didn’t want to go to a good private school. I wanted to go to the crap comprehensive instead (btw I don’t think comprehensives are in any way crap by definition - they're not - but this one was demonstrably rubbish) because my friends were going there. If my parents hadnt been "pushy", I'd have gone to the comp - and I can say for absolute certainty that my life would have panned out very differently. Even if I'd got to where I am now, I wouldn’t have enjoyed the journey as much - and that's just a fact.
My parents urged me to try every sport going, to pick up an instrument, apply to Cambridge, do all those things - but they also respected my decisions to drop certain things or take choices they didn’t agree with. Pushy is a good thing, pushy shows you care and gives your kids a fighting chance. To use pushy like a swearword just sums up so much of what's wrong with the UK - we seem to love mediocrity, or at the very least, we fear ambition, brilliance and success. In America, striving is a national pasttime - here, it's like train spotting or pornography, something you have to do under the cover of darkness. Hooray for pushy, I say, we wouldn’t be in half the mess we are if there was more of it about.
Sorry that's such a long post, but I felt like there was a lot to say! What do you reckon?
PS: I really am going to post some Scotland pics soon - work has just been very busy!
First off, the announcement that McDonalds and a host of other food chains are going to put calorie counts on all their menus. I've suffered from seriously disordered eating and am only just beating it after a number of years. In all that time, I was obsessed with calories and this measure would have made my life even more painful and difficult. I spent so much time denying myself nice food - I would often find myself in tears in Sainsburys desperately wanting the tasty ready meal or chunky soup but feeling forced to have the bland low fat option because I couldn’t ignore the calorie information - "the wheel of death" as it's known in our house. Going out to a restaurant was the only time I could pick something to eat without stressing about the calories. Of course, I knew that the pizza was more caloriific than the salmon, but that was fine. What I didn’t want to know was the precise value of every single dish. I'd have found it so hard not to always pick the lowest one - or if I'd picked a higher one, I'd have suffered greatly because of it, feeling enormous guilt about my choices. People with eating disorders already find stress in every single food decision so this just seems like another way of making things worse for them. Eating - especially eating out at a restaurant - should be a pleasure. It's a bit of an indulgence and it doesn’t need to be quantified.
However, I accept that as someone with eating issues, I'm in the minority. Another minority is the batch of people who we're told don’t know that a Big Mac has lots of calories in it. I guess there must be some of those people, but I'm not sure whether they should be the driving force for legislation either. One example that's been used to justify the move is the fact that apparently people underestimate the amount of calories in a latte and a muffin by about 300. My response to that is, so what? 300 calories is very little. Obesity is generally not caused by the odd underestimate a couple of times a week - most people who like their latte and muffin don’t care about the calorie count and if they're overweight, that's certainly not the only reason why. Anyone who wants to can find out the calorie count of their muffin by using the good old internet and then make their eating choice accordingly. They don’t need it thrust in their face at the checkout.
On balance then, if you don’t legislate for me, or for the Big Mac denier, what difference will this make to the majority? Probably not much, although I suspect it will take a small amount of the pleasure out of eating out for quite a few people and make no difference to the vast majority of others who order a Big Mac in the full knowledge that it's a little bit bad for them, but what the hell, they want to do it anyway. I think there's a real misunderstanding that people who are fat would be thin if only they had a bit information. We're drowning in information and yet we're getting fatter.
I guess I don’t really have a definitive answer, maybe it's soemthing I'll come back to, but all I know is this move makes me uneasy and it seems, somehow, pointless. Perhaps it would just be better, if you have to do anything at all, to do what some restaurants do and have a "light choices" or "healthier choices" section so people have the option if they want it.
Secondly, free schools. For anyone reading this outside the UK, these are the brainchild of the coalition government - although they are common elsewhere in the world. They are state-funded but completely independent, set up by parents, charities, private bodies, teachers and so on, and able to operate their own timetables, curricula, etc. I heard a TV news correspondent say in rather judgemental tones that the government was being forced to deny that they wouldn’t just benefit "pushy parents".
Merits of free schools aside, surely that begs the question, what is wrong with being a pushy parent? We're not talking about the kind of parents who force their children into Hollywood auditions aged five - what the media and the critics mean are basically parents who want the best for their kids and are prepared to move hell and high water to get it. What's wrong with that? Surely that should be the definition of a good parent. Adults do know better than kids - aged 10, I kicked up months of almighty fuss because I didn’t want to go to a good private school. I wanted to go to the crap comprehensive instead (btw I don’t think comprehensives are in any way crap by definition - they're not - but this one was demonstrably rubbish) because my friends were going there. If my parents hadnt been "pushy", I'd have gone to the comp - and I can say for absolute certainty that my life would have panned out very differently. Even if I'd got to where I am now, I wouldn’t have enjoyed the journey as much - and that's just a fact.
My parents urged me to try every sport going, to pick up an instrument, apply to Cambridge, do all those things - but they also respected my decisions to drop certain things or take choices they didn’t agree with. Pushy is a good thing, pushy shows you care and gives your kids a fighting chance. To use pushy like a swearword just sums up so much of what's wrong with the UK - we seem to love mediocrity, or at the very least, we fear ambition, brilliance and success. In America, striving is a national pasttime - here, it's like train spotting or pornography, something you have to do under the cover of darkness. Hooray for pushy, I say, we wouldn’t be in half the mess we are if there was more of it about.
Sorry that's such a long post, but I felt like there was a lot to say! What do you reckon?
PS: I really am going to post some Scotland pics soon - work has just been very busy!
Friday, 2 September 2011
Blush tones and hushed tones
This picture is actually a couple of weeks old, which I know is probably cheating in blog world, but hey, who's checking. I've worn this fab colour a couple of times since though, so hopefully that helps. Also, in very bad blogger form, I don't even know what the colour is or who makes it because it came free with a magazine and I don't have the bottle with me. All those things aside, isn't it cool? I don't have the world's best nails - or whole hands for that matter - but I love wearing funky colours. I painted this on a three-hour train journey, which is perhaps the only time I'll actually sit still long enough for it to dry properly. From what I see elsewhere - namely Emily at Cupcakes and Cashmere who frankly, I'd trust with my fashion life - muted pastels, blush tones, greys, soft pinks and the like are key this season.
On a completely unrelated note, I just thought this post by Kate at eat the damn cake was so, so spot on that I had to mention it. If you believed the conversations my friends and I have 99% of the time, you'd think we had the most perfect lives imaginable. Of course, we don't. But we just don't talk about the imperfect bits much. I firmly believe there'd be a hell of a lot less mental illness - or at the very least, a lot less stigma around it - if we were all just a bit more open about our problems. But no-one wants to be the one who's struggling, the one who's husband/job/ovaries/parents are annoying/boring/dysfunctional/sick. That can't be right - surely problems are secrets pathologised. The phrases "I just want to be alone" and "I don't want to talk about it" should be banned.
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
Back to school
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| Emma Bridgewater - the connoisseur's stationery choice |
It's that time of year - time for a new pencil case. The summer holidays are over and term is starting... or it least it would be if I wasn't staring my third decade in the face, rather than my second. Nevertheless, it doesn't matter how long it is since school days, I can't help viewing my year on those terms - literally.
I love autumn anyway, but that feeling of a fresh start you get at this time always gives me a real boost.
The other thing it does is make me want to book a ski holiday. Staring ahead at an indefinite period without any trips or fun planned will do that to a girl. So I'm on the case (non-pencil variety) as we speak.
On other matters, we had an amazing time in Scotland this past weekend. I'm definitely going to get round to posting some pics from there shortly.
Thursday, 25 August 2011
Mini-break
Just a quickie today. I'm running the show on my own at work and heading off to Scotland tonight with friends so not much time to write. There's no profound reason for this pic except that I loved the colours so much - so took a second to snap it. The weather was appalling here this morning, but I'm hoping the emergence of the sun is a good omen for the next few days. I mean, it never rains in western Scotland right?
We're planning to do lots of walking, a bit of kayaking and sailing, and plenty of drinking. I know it should be whiskey, given where we're going, but I hate the stuff, so mine'll be a red wine. Wednesday, 24 August 2011
Gym bunny
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| My go-to top for a beasting! |
One of the things I'm going to end up posting about a lot is fitness. Exercise is a passion of mine, I love it, it keeps me sane and lets me eat cake. I was a hugely active teenager, doing every sport going. At university, I did less but still some, although not enough to combat the Freshman 15 - the library I worked in during my first year actually had a cake shop inside it... After uni though, my physical activity ground to a halt. I had to give every ounce of time and energy to my job, plus I moved from office to office every few months so could never take out a gym membership. Also, as someone who'd only ever done team sports and dancing, I actually thought I wouldn't like the gym. But, eventually, when my life was a bit more settled and the thought of being totally unfit forever more got too much too bear, I signed up for a gym. It was frighteningly expensive - I earned so little at the time - but it was worth every penny 50 times over. It's no underestimate to say it transformed my life. It cheers me up when I'm down, keeps me sane when I feel I'm going mad, and gives me a purpose on aimless days.
For five years now I've been going three or four times a week, sometimes to classes, sometimes just me, the weights and the machines - I absolutely love a good beasting, the harder the better! I was prompted to write about it today - although I'm sure it wouldn't have been long otherwise - by this great post from Sally at Already Pretty. It's already one of my favourite blogs but she's so spot on. I agree totally about never feeling body conscious at the gym, strange as that might seem - in fact, I never feel better about my body than when I've got a good sweat on! And describing it as feeling badass is exactly right - it reminds me why I wouldn't want to be a skinny waif. And the more things in life that can remind women of that the better. Strength and power are not words often used in a positive way about us, but gosh, they should be.
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