Bathroom orienteering and stubborn fizz

Those of you who know me will know that I suffer from a formidable stubborn streak, this is not something that the nefarious Ms Nature gets along with. When I awoke this morning, after the ritual “ouch” caused by sleeping on a shoulder that I cannot sleep on without generating said exclamation, I realised that the knee was not in best of shape.

My knee not wanting to play is very common and I am used to it so I went about my morning without straightening that leg, well almost. Whilst brushing my teeth my mind wandered and I felt compelled to straighten the leg out and see ‘if it was that bad’ after all I am firm believer in mind over matter. The result was, I guess, inevitable and found me collapsed on the floor in pain. I would like to say that I have learnt from this experience but I think that we both know this is not the case.

In other falling over related news I can tell you that in the early hours of Saturday morning I awoke for a toilet break and was most proud that I remembered the presence of an acrow prop outside of the bathroom door. With my mental map fully updated I headed to the bathroom and avoided the gaping hole in the floor only to stub my toe on the board that the acrow sits atop before headbutting said steel pole. I think that this is what they call suffering for your art!

In other Ms Nature alerts the new movements associated with cutting and splitting wood have given her the opportunity to play up but I think that she is weakening. The current sensation is a continuous ‘fizzing’ in both wrists interspersed with occasional stabbing pain. I appreciate that fizzing is not the most descriptive of explanations but it really is the most accurate that I can come up with, it’s just like the fluids in the wrists are churning continuously. This is, of course, just posturing from Ms Nature and will subside once I beat her into submission and she accepts the new movements required.

It would be wrong of me not to take this opportunity to update you on the works at the Plough, this week is a slow week while we await the delayed steel but things are still looking pretty good….. terrifying but good.

Below is one of the two loads of rubble that have been removed to make a lighter, fitter pub.

This little guy didn’t spot the impending doom of a chimney being sealed up.

Starting to take shape.

Can you see what it is yet?

Nearly through.

The new room with temporary skylights !

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Single groceries and party bathrooms

It is often said, by others, that I have a ‘bad relationship with food’ although I am not sure exactly what that means. Having spent the majority of my adult life working away from home and single I think that it is simply that I have no romantic attachment to food, no love for the task.

For me food is a chore that, by default, brings with it other chores. So eating a meal isn’t the end of it there is all of the preparation and clearing up, in honesty the actual eating of the meal is the shortest part. I rarely feel hungry and can merrily go for days without eating but that said I am pretty healthy so must be doing something right.

I wanted to share with you my shopping experience the other morning because, contrary to popular belief, I think that a lot of you will find something in common with it. To set the scene, so to speak, I should establish that I am a single man with a very small kitchen so on any given day my entire food stock will amount to bread, butter, some baked beans and a bag of pasta. On this particular day I was at work from 11:00 until probably 01:30 which meant that the shopping trip was preparatory towards having dinner ready when I finished.

The day stated well with various ideas of what I could variously put in the oven or the slow cooker and even some back up plans if those ideas didn’t make it to fruition. We have two supermarkets in town and I boldly strode off to the larger of the two, after all if you are going shopping you may as well go large.

My first frustration was met as soon as I got inside the door, no traditional baskets in sight just those monstrous deep things. Not for me the embarrassment of a few measly items languishing so far down the basket that I need a crook to pull them up with, where were the normal baskets? I wasn’t going to let this small issue set me back though, after all I was on a mission, I only needed a few items so I would make do without a basket*

The first thing that I am presented with is fruit and salad so these are readily discounted. I am not adverse to a salad but producing one at 1 o’clock in the morning isn’t happening. Next up is the fresh meat and it is here that we will make big gains. A chicken perhaps? thrown in the slow cooker with some seasoning a full bird will result in succulent fresh chicken for dinner so it looks good. But then there is the hassle, remember its at 1 am, of stripping the carcass, clearing up etc. BBQ shredded beef, again slow cooked to my own recipe, sounded good until I concluded that all I would do with it is put it in a sandwich. What is the point in cooking if what you end up at the end is a sandwich?

Having pretty much discounted all of the meat products for various reasons I hit upon a stunning piece of smoked cod. It was, almost inevitably, a short meeting because the lingering smell of cooked fish has long ago consigned the activity to restaurants only.  Next up was the ‘ready to cook’ style meat products which had been on my mind previously. An oven cooked chicken perhaps or a beef joint? Pre-prepared so just throw it in the oven and they even come in their own tray. The choices of honey glazed ribs or stuffed chicken breast all seemed to either need accompaniments, and their associated hassle, or were more like snacks.

I rapidly passed the ready meals because I refuse to acknowledge publicly that I am only really eating for one. There is something deeply ingrained in me that finds it embarrassing and somewhat offensive to purchase meals for one. Next up was chilled pizza, I don’t mind a pizza on occasion so this could be lucky….. but then there is the fact that if I cook a pizza I will invariably eat more of it than I need to eat and just end up feeling bloated. The challenge of discarding uneaten pizza seemed a step too far so I turned on my heels and left.

I stopped on the way home at the smaller of the supermarkets, although I have no idea why I couldn’t have made the purchase in the store that I had just left, and purchased a loaf of bread. At half past one in the morning I ate dinner, whilst going through some paperwork, yes you guessed it I had a couple of slices of toast.

I don’t believe that I am the only person that has this type of relationship with food, one where the simple act of food shopping can turn me apoplectic and see me returning empty-handed. I am sure that I am not the only person who can cook and then decide it’s too much or too heavy or just can’t be bothered and trash it before moving straight to washing up. So if you recognise anything in this post please let me know that I am not alone.

I will finish this post with an aside that occurred to me the other day after a sudden bout of social media. On this particular day there were no end of posts from mothers lamenting the fact that they don’t even get to use the toilet on their own. On the face of it this seems like a reasonable complaint and one justifiably voiced but is it really? The complaint is that there is no solitude to be found in the bathroom yet women always attend in packs. Girls always go the bathroom together and indeed I watched a lady shepherding her young teen daughters into the ladies with her the other day. So what’s the problem?

 

*In truth I think that this was an early indication of failure

Secrets, snacks, bedsits and orbits

Today’s post is brought to you by two unconnected items both of which were incidental conversations. The first conversation was around the complexities of working away from home and the fact that corporate governance limited this to 5 years. Apparently those of us that work away, it is not for all, should be limited to 5 years in order to minimise the risk to home life. The second was a conversation with a friend that alluded to the ‘secret’ life that I lead when working away, this friend had concluded that I had some second life that was kept isolated from home.

Before I embark on this post I would like to make it clear that I do not suffer from any conditions, neuroses or incapacities, well no more than is normal anyway. I am 40 years old and have worked all of my life, the majority of it working away from home. I have had some brief spells of returning home every day but they have been coupled with a minimum of 4 hours commuting just to take the edge off it.

Lets hit the ground running, there is no secret life. Rarely are two weeks the same and even if they were the ability to operate a Monday to Friday life is far beyond my talents. I am sure that there are cases of super lotharios who have kept a weekday partner secret but it really can’t be easy. Imagine a partner that never sees you at weekends? who only experiences the ‘school nights’ of late evenings and early rises, I can’t see that as a seller to be honest. So weekdays are filled with work, the ‘advantage’ of a hotel is that one can work late, work from ‘home’ and start early in the morning, this isn’t just work its immersion.

Hotel living, as I have explained before, is not like a holiday there is no luxury to it. With rare exceptions I don’t dine in hotels, the menu is something that would result in an athlete gaining weight and I am no athlete to start with. I always depart hotels before breakfast and am no fan of that particular meal anyway, evening meals are never more than a snack. A hotel room is, in reality, little more than a badly equipped bedsit; a bed and a bathroom is not the largest environment to live in. You know when you leave your house like a tip on the way to work? I don’t, that is simply not an option. I tidy the room because one thing you don’t want is an annoyed housekeeper. Those mornings when you can’t find your wallet and just leave it to hunt down later, not for me I am on my hands and knees looking for it. In short after I leave my ‘home’ in the morning several strangers will visit before I return, there is no privacy.

When you come home and get that eerie feeling that something has moved? I don’t get that because stuff moves all the time, it moves to where the housekeeping staff thinks it looks best. A change in housekeeper midweek is given away by a new location for my toothbrush or a different arrangement of shampoo bottles. In some hotels I get a fridge but in most every meal has to be a single shot and hot food doesn’t happen, well if you exclude powdered soup that is. I enter the hotel at night and say good evening to reception, the next human interaction I get is when I say good morning to the receptionist on the way to work.

Even when I was driving the risk of a sudden flight meant that my entire life was packed into a small rucksack, I don’t do hold luggage, everything. I am not a sportsman but hobbies, clubs and associations do not suit working away from home. I actually find it very difficult to fill my time when I am not working and am always grateful when the occasional quiet periods at work come to an end. If there is not enough work to fill the day and the evening then it all becomes a bit of a struggle, there is only so long you can spend in the shower after all. Currently I have Rachel’s story and a sketch pad full of the next tattoo to keep me entertained in the evening and fill in the gaps between work.

I don’t keep up with birthdays or other occasions and rarely attend leaving parties and the like. For me the whole world is a series of transient events, if you are not in front of me or involved with me today I wont chase and nurture that relationship why would I. We are all moving in different orbits and when they coincide we interact, when they don’t that doesn’t end it simply gets paused until the next time.

There is of course one major benefit to being a single man working away from home, yes that’s right I can’t have pets and so wont suffer from mad old lady syndrome that is apparently brought on by cats!