The unfortunate potato incident

I'm a bit of a maximiser. Or an optimiser. One thing I am good at is efficiently organising lots of activity in to a short space of time. When it comes to time management - quantity is the winner, quality is often the runner-up.

Recently, I've been doing an exemplary job of eating economically AND healthily, green living and exercising every day - I feel like I deserve a reward. On Mondays, I walk everywhere, food shop (with my bag for life), go to the pool, do pilates and go the gym. Isn't that an organisational achievement?

However, yesterday the plan went awry. On returning from pilates to prepare dinner for myself and boyf, I discovered that my enormous, super healthy potatoes which had been in the oven for over two and half hours (in tin foil - M's suggestion), were not even remotely cooked and nor were they crispy.

Trying to make the most of the situation, I microwaved them, and served them up - but they were REALLY undercooked - mine was inedible, and this annoyed me on many levels:

1)See aforementioned description of Mondays. I was very hungry.
2)We now had reduced time to digest food pre- gym (imminent indigestion).
3)Flat mate had just brought in a deliciously unhealthy curry (tasty)
4)Boyf must think I am incapable of cooking something as straightforward as a potato. This annoys me the most.

So, predicatably, I rant about tin foil, poor culinary advice, rubbish ovens, useless rented accommodation, ruined timescales etc etc. Boyf, predictably, gets angry because he thinks I'm taking it out on him (I'm not)- says I'm reacting utterly disproportionately and chastises me.

We eat in silence. Afterwards, he refuses to sit with me (I have been childish etc), and instead vegges on his macbook in the other room - unwilling to speak to me. Once again I'm 12 and I've just been sent to my room ...

We walk to the gym, work out and walk back and he drives home.

I still feel irked. Misunderstood. Why can't he see that this has become less about the potato and more about the fact he wouldn't listen to my rant and empathise, more about his subsequent reactions? Why can't he humour my 2 minute rant and then I'd be done?

Tears, texts and tempers. I'm thinking about how this looks to an outsider and I'm not coming off well... So the next day I decide to email him:


















Sheepish apology made. I can't quite believe we got this far. He emails back:













Evil potato.

A walk in the woods

It began when I expressed less than the required amount of faith in boyf's financial intentions for the future. This quickly snowballed into mistrust, and before I knew it, we were standing in an Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty shouting unpleasantries whilst passers by admired the view. Woops.

Unable to concede to an apology and entering damage-limitation mode, I suggest we postpone our lovely autumnal walk, so as not to let the mood taint this beauty spot indefinitely. I set off in the direction of the car park. Boyf follows, at a distance of several paces, and we walk back to the car together but alone.

I attempt reconciliation, but mess it up but now there are more present to overhear our wranglings. I am excruciatingly embarrassed, and suggest we get into the car, hoping that half an inch of metal and glass all round will provide adequate sound insulation for the ensuing barney. Boyf however, does not want to get into the car. I reason. He is unrelenting. I warn him that I will have no option other than to drive off. Boyf does not get into the car. I retrieve his phone, keys and wallet, deposit them on a bench where he is sat and drive away.

This is quite unlike me. I wouldn't describe myself as stubborn (yes, but who does? Its unflattering), but with a sense of irony, I realise that's exactly his current perception. I pride myself on ability to think, discuss, reason and persuade. Debate. Cajole. Concede when in the wrong. But not this time. I drive off. For 15 minutes I circle the country lanes, thinking about what I have done... abandon my boyfriend in a wooded car park in the middle of nowhere, with no phone signal, no coat and no idea where he is.

Guilt overcomes me. I drive back and look for boyf. I head off in the direction we originally walked, wondering if he has done the walk without me.I pace out the entire walk and return to the car park. 1 hour and 15 minutes have now elapsed and no sign of boyf. I think about the non-existant phone signal, his complaints if he has to walk further than a mile (only previously tested on shopping trips - I am extrapolating from there). I am worried.

Then a text squeezes through to my mobile on less than 1 bar of signal. Its is from boyf who seems repentant. I reply, telling him I'm in the car park. Boyf says he is walking home. "Home" I estimate is a good 25 miles. I drive to find him, but can't, so I text back, asking for further identifiers (a 6-point grid reference or a SatNav in his pocket would both be of assistance at this point). He is silent.

30 minutes later, I receive another text, "Meet you in Costa". I am puzzled. The nearest Costa is in town. Almost 2 and half hours have elapsed since the abandonment. I drive past then park and when I reach Costa myself, he is standing in the queue.

He smiles. I smile. "Did you get the bus?" I ask. "No, I didn't", he defends, sounding slightly hurt. I do the maths and make it around 5 miles between the abandoment point and Costa. "I walked here. 5 miles. I followed the road signs and walked through the lanes, up the hill and eventually over the common. Then I recognised where I was and headed for town", he volunteers. I am very impressed.

Number 1: Boyf walked 5 miles.
Number 2: Boyf navigated from literally the middle of nowehere, to Costa.
Number 3: Boyf is buying me a coffee, with a smile on his face and shows no signs of damage after the aforementioned journey (other than extreme thirst, judging by the size of his drink). I am moved on several levels.

But what comes next moves me more. We spend an hour talking like adults over a coffee, in the manor we should have tackled all this in the first place. We're still in public, but this time nobody is overhearing us, and if they could, this time I'd be more than happy for them to overhear our sensible, mature, adult discussion.

We make up, talk about what lights each other's fuse, and work out a plan to reduce the likelihood of it happening in future. With a mature sense of satisfaction having eventually worked it out, we leave, hand in hand and walk back to the car.

He is vociferously proud of the 5-mile achievement. I calculate the distance involved in two laps of Bluewater shopping centre... 4.9 miles. Well there's a goal for the future :o)

Destruction of good body image in easy steps and how to reach size zero

Why is it that every time I go to the doctor - no matter what the ailment, the solution aways boils down to one thing - lose some weight.

This time, doctor Googles my symptons (some kind of medical Google I hope, otherwise I'm asking for a refund on my National Insurance contributions, cos I could do that.) He then Googles the medication I'm requesting - something a friend got prescribed for identical symptons.

Doctor declines to give me the drug, explaining I'm at risk of DVT. This is especially likely if you have a family history of it (I don't), or if you're a smoker (I'm not) or... if you're overweight... at which he looks me in the eye.
The word "overweight" and eye contact. I wait for it, oh and there it is... "Can you get on those scales please?"

Step Number One Complete - Uninvited Confrontation About Weight.

[Unlike the waifs who look in the mirror and see Vanessa Feltz - my self esteem has always been unnaturally healthy. I always look in the mirror and see a size zero.]

Mercifully, the scales are in kilos and being an imperial child, I've got no idea at all what the conversion to stones and pounds is.

Step Number Two narrowly avoided (Let Me Shock You: This Is What You REALLY Weight).

Dr looks up my "ideal weight". I'm watching the screen as he does it and I can see a label which says 'Weight to lose' or something. Although I can't work out the conversion, I can see that the computers is suggesting I need to lose almost half my body weight.

Step Number Three begins: Where Do I Even Start With You.

I am not happy. Dr establishes that I am looking at the maximum weight I could lose before I would enter the dangerously underweight zone. Right. Well thank goodness for that.

He starts to talk about how I should "try and lose some weight, because that is bound to help my symptons and anyway its much healthier, blah blah blah...". Not rising to the bait, I say; "I have been watching my weight actually, but nothing I eat and no exercise I do seems to affect my weight much in either direction".

Dr retorts with, "back in the old days when we were allowed to lock people away in rooms, they always ended up losing weight - you're eating more than you think, I'm sure".

Step Number Four (You Have An Unrealistic Perception Of The Situation).

I know doctors must encounter hudreds of pie-eating, donut-inhaling, virtually inert and brought-on-by-self-diabetics in their working week, however I don't number amongst their ranks.

However, in the same way that it's pointless telling a psychiatrist who's trying to section you that you're mentally OK, I can see no point in attempting to prove this to the doctor, so in a mature moment, I agree to "try harder". Dr tells me to try and lose 5 kilos and come back in a month.

Step Number Five (You Haven't Tried Hard Enough).

I convert 5 kilos - 11 lb. When I was back-packing and contracted my own version of amoebic dysentry (I couldn't eat much and what I did either got thrown up or went straight through me... for 8 weeks) - even then I'd only reduced by 7lb.

During the next week, I've forgotten the inital reason I went to the doctor and how much weight he's asked me to lose. Primary goal is to prove to doctor that I'm not a Pie Eater. After his Dickensian starvation comments, I decide that starvation is required and this time I will keep a perfectly honest food sheet for a month and PROVE HIM WRONG. For a week I survive on about 1000 calories a day exercise by swimming a mile every other day - fairly Dickensian conditions.

Size of me after 7-day pointless starvation exercise? Unchanged. Self esteem? Size Zero.

Beware of The Warehouse...

"Eee hee!" in the words of those kids off the Simpsons... Chez SH HQ, today has been designated warehouse day. A charming occasion when most members of the team are dispatched to our cold, isolated warehouse to rifle through poorly labelled cardboard boxes covered with at least 5 years of packing labels, searching for items to be packed up and taken to site this Easter.

Most members of the team that is... apart from ME!

And how do I choose to exercise my freedom? Attempting to ensure that *I* will be the first customer to purchase a coffee from our town's latest premier coffee house - a new branch of Costa Coffee which opens today :o)

[My Costa fascination is well recognised. The mug on my desk is a Costa mug, and regularly people give me disapproving looks and ask if I stole it from a franchise. As if! I paid good money for it! I'm not sure that raises me much in most people's esteem though. I have been known to calculate the value of things (like my salary) in the common unit of currency... the price of one medium, black, Americano.]

In our office, I am in the fortunate position of curating our tuck shop. Hence, my desk is the equivalent of the kitchen at a good party. Lots of people coming and going, finding what they came in for and dispensing pearls of wisdom to me in return.

Come the afternoon, the wanderers return from the frozen wasteland of our warehouse and I await news of the day's efforts from which I was so pleasingly excused.

R enters. I'm guessing she's after a Cadburys Caramel. I ask for news. Apparently M (who is quite small) has been designated "ledge-monkey" and has spent the morning high up on a ledge that no-one else could stand up on, peering through boxes nobody could reach.

At ground level, R has had an equally fascinating time. I hear how unrelated items returned from previous events have been discarded in mixed boxes. Several unusable and filthy plastic beakers, random items of lost property and my favourite (and potentially most useful item)...

R stumbled across a range of international plug adapters stashed in an unlabelled box. "Why on earth do we keep these?" she enquired to G - person supposedly in charge of warehouse looting chaos.

"They're international plug adaptors - we keep them so we can give them out to any international speakers if they turn up at the main event without their own", he justified.

R is not convinced. G has been known to hoarde a host of pointless items in the warehouse in the past. Previous victories include convincing him to dispose of about fifty 4'x6' cubicle dividers in a state of extreme disrepair and occupying much needed real estate on the warehouse floor.

"OK," she conceded "These could be quite useful, I suppose...". [Pick your battles.] She continues rifling through the armoury of adaptor plugs in the box. "Isn't it a shame they all convert english appliances to US sockets"...

Tech-chivalry -- coding for hankies

Something sweetly reassuring happened to me yesterday. I was the recpient of some tech-chivalry. What is tech-chivalry you ask? Well let me explain...

In days gone by, ladies were cocooned within a benevolent, patriarchal society. Comforted by the knowledge that should something disastrous and otherwise unanticipated occur, the men in their world would admirably leap to their rescue; an offer of an umbrella, perchance it should rain; provision of a hanky, should something provoke them to tears.

Now let's be realistic here. These days, my coat has a hood. Rain is annoying, but rarely does it discomfort me more than the sheer annoyance that I wasted 20 minutes straightening my hair. My bag is large. It always contains an umbrella AND a pack of tissues. I'm reasonably self-supportive should a mishap occur, so previous opportunities for chivalry would be lost on me.

So what happened to me yesterday?

In the way that only a distracted, multi-tasking female can, I broke three pages of our [live] conference site which I'm responsible for editing. I deleted the main navigation and overwrote the original pages. No going back. Compounding my fury, I was mid way through explaining to a colleague the supporting arguments for my assertion that I should NEVER have been entrusted with responsibility for editing sites outside of our content manager... when the phone rang.

I answered it, noting from the caller display that it was one of our service providers. He was returning my call, to tell me about a bug fix for something I'd reported earlier in the day. I tried to listen as he told me what he'd fixed and why it had happened, but all I could focus on was the clock ticking by as more and more people would notice my evidential muck-up on the conference pages.

"Are you OK?" he said, and I mumbled that I was fine, not to worry. "Are you sure?" he said again, "you don't sound it".

No pain, no gain I thought. So I confessed to him the nature of my nice little mess. "OK", he said, "let me see the code, I'm sure I'll be able to see the problem".

Less than 5 minutes later, he'd identified the problem (a script referencing the wrong website) and showed me how to fix it. What's more, he offered to stay on the line whilst I dutifully copied and pasted his correct code on to my duff pages and uploaded the correct code to my site. It was all good again. Perfect.

And that was it. When I really needed someone to rescue me from my lame, girly predicament (let's not even pretend it was particularly complicated), along he came to offer the proverbial hanky. Simple yet effective, like producing an umbrella when it started to rain. How modern though - that little gesture from a techie said more to me about chivalry than any crisp, white hanky offer ;o) Thanks C!

That pigeon has it coming....

How is this fair? Flat mate returns home to another (obviously sleeping) flatmate who's room is next to the bathroom. Flat mate decides to embark on mobile phone conversation at 12.37 a.m., in said echoey bathroom, at no small volume thus effectively WAKING THE DEAD.

Now I'm left with nothing to consider except how fast the wind speed is outside (hard to tell, our shabby double glazing doesn't fit the window panes so anything above a breeze conjures up an image of a tornado) AND how many ways there might be to kill the cooing pigeon sat on its feathery nest outside my window in the middle of the night.

Do birds not usually sleep at night? Why must it coo when its dark? I did think at first that it was the rusty gate or the pizza shop sign blowing in the wind, but after closer investigation (poking head out of window, clapping and shouting at pidge) I have discovered that he alone is the culprit responsible for the prolonging of my sleep deprivation.

A few weeks ago, M was in the supermarket, talking about my pidge dilemma, when someone came up to her with a solution... apparently you have to mix up some bird seed with milk and some ex-lax. Pidge eats, pidge gets ill, pidge dies. Easy as.

Now, I'd like to say that I'm pro all forms of wild fauna, but that would be a lie. I could kill the pidge with my bare hands, if I could only reach it from my window sill. Alas, the ex-lax option is looking like a viable solution.

Flat mate is back in bed, several slams of door later (ably assisted by the draft from poorly fitting windows - the best friend of all teenagers making dramatic door-slamming exits during a strop). I wonder what was so important she needed to call someone at 12.37.

Now there is a _slight_ problem with my pidge-murdering master plan... I live in a busy commercial area of town, near shops and restaurants, several floors up. Whether I were to select the ex-lax version of the plan or the BB gun alternative, I couldn't say for sure I could control precisely _where_ the pidge may plummet to its death... which means it could be on the head or at the feet of some unassuming pedestrian, out to buy their milk.

Given the illegality of my intended action (all wild birds are protected), it could be difficult to conceal the fruits of my labour and the evidence of my crime. Even if I did manage to kill an ambitious 35 of the 40 or so pidgeons behavingly like cast members of a Hitchock film, the only place to dispose of the bodies is a commercial dumpster our flat shares with the other restaurants and shops.... eew.

17 minutes past 2. I've just remembered that someone told me you can actually hire a sniper in my town - to pop off the pidges... he's licensed and comes with a gun dog, police protection and a letter of authorisation from environmental health. I love it when a plan comes together ;o)