Monday 5 January 2009

Monday 05/01/09

For the first time in my life I awoke feeling genuinely depressed over the prospect of returning to work. I hate my job with a vengeance – although it’s not actually the job itself I hate. I don’t usually do New Year’s Resolutions, but I’m determined to get another job that I actually enjoy, even if it means less money.

Hay said I was muttering and shaking in my sleep last night and she wanted to know what I was dreaming about. For the life of me I couldn’t even remember dreaming, let alone the subject matter. We agreed that on the basis of the noises I was making that I must have been dreaming about chasing a stick, or gnawing at passing car hubcaps.

A contributor pointed out my mistake in yesterday’s post about the Liverpool vs Preston match, or should I say Carlsberg vs Enterprise match (whoever Enterprise may be), or even the Very International 11 vs the Mainly British Isles 11. The score was 2:0 and not 2:1 as highlighted in my posting. Just goes to show that my level of interest in football is only slightly lower than my interest in the mating habits of the duck-billed platypus.

Right – after having my TV scheduling trashed by a damned football match, I’ve decided to start a movement to demand that televised football matches last a finite period of time. No more injury time and no more extra time for a tied match. A football match should start and end at a guaranteed time. Either that, or all televised football is moved to a completely separate channels dedicated solely to people whose knuckles drag on the ground while trying to walk upright.

While channel surfing yesterday I alighted on World Darts. How the hell do these athletes maintain such peak fitness? Wigan kebabs? Copious quantities of lager?

Hay and I were discussing how some people get by living on perfectly useable food salvaged from supermarket bins that is a day or so beyond its sell-by date. I think I’m right in saying that almost a third of all food ends up in the rubbish bins due to going beyond the sell-by date – which obviously results in the remaining two thirds of produce being priced so much higher to compensate for the associated wastage. However, when you think about it, sell-by dates apply only to pre-prepared foods where there’s the possibility of the manufacturer or seller being sued for poisoning an entire community. While it’s rather difficult to ascertain whether pre-prepared food is dangerous (hence the sell-by date), unprepared fruit, veg and meat that have gone off are instantly detectable by the average human – either by squeeze, sight or odour. So the secret to avoid poisoning your family is to buy fresh ingredients and cook your own food. It’s much cheaper too.

It’s ironic that all the sell-by date legislation, which is designed to protect us, is incredibly self-indulgent due it pandering to the hoi polloi’s reluctance to buy fresh ingredients and actually cook and results in wastage on an enormous scale – a scale sufficiently large to adequately feed all the poor in our country, and more beyond. It simply reinforces rampant consumerism and our throw-away culture.

Apropos of food, I managed to get Hay to look at some Dutch recipes on the Interweb yesterday. To her delight she discovered that much of what the Dutch eat is freshly cooked from fresh ingredients and is really healthy. As a consequence, I can look forward to Hutspot, Stampot, Zuurkool and Erwtensoep at some time in the near future. Some of what the Dutch eat made her shake with laughter, such as Oliebollen – literally translated as oil balls. It’s a pity my mother is incapable of sensible conversation, as (despite being English) she was an excellent cook, having learned Dutch cookery from her mother-in-law. She could have taught Hay much about the nuances of Dutch cookery.

I see Lord Andrew Lloyd’s-Bank has been hired to pen the UK’s Eurovision song. God alone knows why – he can’t be short of a few bob and it usually means the kiss of death. Don’t know about you, but I only ever watched the damned thing to hear of Terry Wogan’s caustic and very enjoyable commentary, and even that’s going to be missing now.

For some inexplicable reason Hay and I were galloping around the grounds on Saturday – in the manner of the Knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When galloping I tend to lead with the left, whereas Hay leads with the right. While Hay is ambidextrous when it comes to galloping, I found it difficult to lead with the right, although I did manage to get the hang of it after several attempts and a quick gallop around the field.

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