Fitness 3:Afterwards

Cycled a 10k circuit around Richmond Park and, amazingly, I don't feel too bad at all.

I'm obviously not as unfit as I thought. Huzzah!
I feel great!

(more later)

Fitness 2:Practice

I just took the bicycle for a test run.
I'm already exhausted.

This is no surprise of course. I have not gained any new information.

I just wanted to post on the blog using this title.

Fitness 1:Background

HEALTH ALERT: I just got cramp. In one of my legs.

OK so it's not that big a deal, but I was just sitting still in a chair at the time.

I got cramp without even moving.

This is worrying to me because I've agreed to go cycling tomorrow. And I've only ridden a bike once this year. In fact, I've got quite unfit in the last few months.

And the person I'm cycling with is, I believe, a triathlete.


Fortunately, she knows CPR...

Rumbo Airwar

Predictive text is a great invention, apart from a few basic flaws:

- People are idiots. They don't look at what they have written before pressing SEND. And sometimes, one combination of keypresses can lead to several different words.

For example - "rejected" and "selected". Using the wrong one does change the meaning a bit.

Others alternatives are just surreal:
"Smirnoff" = "poisoned"
"Newham" = "Mexico"
"Ask the cool barmaid for nine pints of beer" = "Ask the book carnage for mind shots of adds"
And be careful when mentioning your "dualing aunt"...


- The predictive text dictionary was written by an idiot.

It does contain words that you wouldn't expect to need that often, such as "conjunctivitis" and "infanticide" and the names of every African country (try it).

And yet it sometimes misses words which, I'm fairly sure, are real and in common usage. Like "Claire" (and "penguin").


- It guesses.

Sometimes it helpfully suggests words. Words which no-one in their right mind would try and use because they are not words.

The person whose job it was to program a bit of common sense into the dictionary was off sick that day. So it happily suggests "prioritishmi"and "landfe", because, of course, words are much more likely to end in "-hmi" and "-fe" than "-ing" or "-ed".

It seems to accept that something like "aworntytodelngoglo" is a real word. Likewise "poplilintinsllogekalsilalekokun".
Possibly useful words in Wales or the Himalayas.

Not in Putney.


- My phone has developed some kind of Alzheimers.

It insists that my name is Rumbo Airwar.
I teach it the correct spelling. Yet soon it has forgotten and I have to teach it again.

This happens with a lot of words - I have taught it "Anaesthetist", but after a short while, it refuses to remember it.
Luckily it can cope with "gas man".


I've had the phone very nearly a year now. This has suddenly got much worse the last few weeks.

Coincidentally, my phone service provider (I won't mention the company's name, but it's a colour which rhymes with... er... nothing rhymes with it), has recently started ringing me up offering me a new handset (& more expensive contract).


Suspicious...

Unaccostumed As I Am...

You bunch of sickos!

Thank you for the wonderful (and frankly, disturbing) suggestions some of you made for the Bad Taste fancy dress costumes. The one that made me laugh the most was the one involving Tic-Tacs...

I ended up wearing a pair of theatre scrubs, a handmade badge saying "GINOKOLOJIST" and... um... a prosthesis. As a costume it worked. (Before you say it, no, I was not dressing as anyone in particular).

Other guests at the party included Princess Di (with scars), Mr deMenezezezezez (with wounds) and a fetus. I felt sorry for the people who didn't come in fancy dress - how silly did you look...? Ha ha!

It was all a good laugh except:
- someone else took over DJing from me (surely Chesney Hawkes, Dr Alban & Britney are what you want at a BadTaste party)
- someone put olive oil in the punch
- I fell asleep on the sofa and missed half the party.

Luckily I was not abused in any fashion while I slept...
At least I think I wasn't...

Private Message

If you were wondering, it took me almost 2 hours to walk home from Piccadilly Circus. Thank you for keeping me company on the phone for the first hour - it felt great to chat to you again. So many, many more things we didn’t get to talk about, of both critical importance and of absolutely monumental irrelevance. Plus I wanted to sing you the new Hallelujah I wrote ('cos I know you'd get it).

Thanks for letting me eat into your sleep time. Wish we could’ve talked longer. It was horribly empty after you went.

I got home and nearly fell over Schrodinger’s drumkit. Tomorrow I’m gonna open the box and buy a D-lock for what's inside. Probably - depends on what's in it.

Have a wonderful time on holiday.
Sorry about the broken "present" (couldn't repair it for you in time).
And let's chat again one day.
xSx
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What? It’s my blog…

Copycat

Looks like we're not the only ones who play a burning piano...

Fancy

I'm several posts behind, but that's OK because I haven't got my internet working in my new flat. So you forgive me.

Went to a Hallowe'en party last week. I went to the fancy dress shop to find werewolf stuff (cos I hadn't shaved for a while, and anyway, it's really hard to look like the undead, vampire, zombie pirate, etc when you've got a tan like mine).

Werewolf costumes came in two categories:
1) Shit - totally crap, unconvincing, bit of felt stuck to the jaw. No fun there.
2) Werewolfoplasty - amazing full body transformation into a proper armed psycho-werewolf. But fucking expensive, especially for just one evening.

Luckily (actually, last time this happened I ended up travelling to Africa for a month) there was a really enthusiastic (OK, and cute) shop assistant. Much banter.

I leave the shop with devil horns and enough red body make-up to paint an elephant.

So I go to the party as the devil.

Lots of fun, particularly going up to strangers who've had far too much to drink and telling them that they're "on my list".

But after a while the make up runs a bit in the heat.

You can identify anyone I'd kissed on the cheek by the red stain.

And when I got up the next morning, there were traces of red make-up on the taps, sink, light switches, walls. And I was moving out in a few hours. Bugger.

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I'm going to a Bad Taste Party this evening.


The hostess is going as Maddy.

I was considering going as the hostess's ex, and harassing her all evening. I think the joke would wear thin pretty quickly tho. And I don't want to go as a knobhead.

My physiotherapist friend is refusing to lend me her jumper (so I can cover the "THE" in PHYSIOTHERAPIST)


I've got one idea, but can you suggest anything else? Preferably easy...