Author: jogblog

We had a quiz in our first fiction seminar. We awarded ourselves points for each timewasting exercise we do. The points are rated:

Fiddling: 1 point each

Stacking and squaring your papers. Cleaning the gunk from your keyboard keys. Cleaning the gunk from your fingernails. Adjusting the height of your chair. Adjusting the tilt of your chair…

Almost work-related distractions: 2 points each

Cutting and pasting scraps into a scrapbook. Reading a page or two of a book or a magazine to ‘get in the mood’. Rearranging the order of the notes in a ring-binder. Counting the words you’ve written so far. Tidying, deleting and renaming the files and folders on your computer….

Stalling: 3 points each

Tidying your work-room. Re-reading your emails. Making lists of things to do later. Making more coffee…

Dreaming: 3 points each

More than ten minutes staring at a window or a wall. More than five minutes with your eyes closed or your head on the desk…

Skiving: 5 points each

Writing emails. Making phone calls. Doing the housework. Tackling minor repairs around the house. Walking the dog to the post box. Doing questionnaires like this one…

Absconding: 10 points each

Gardening. Decorating. Shopping. Sleeping. Visiting…

 

I have an essay due in today. Out of the 2000 words I need to write, I’ve written about 600. So, do I get up bright and early, go straight to my desk and start work? No, I check my emails, write some emails, get into conversations on Facebook, empty the dishwasher, load the dishwasher, do two loads of washing, empty the cat litter tray, make some soup (broccoli, cheese and chilli) and then bugger off for an hour on my bike. That’s a lot of points.

Still, I’ve got until midnight to write the essay, then I’ll have seven hours to read five chapters of Jane Austen’s Persuasion that I need to have read by  tomorrow. Who needs sleep, anyway?

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 9.3 miles
Time: 58:08
Speed: 9.6 mph
Calories: 288
Timewasting points: lots
Essays written: about a third of one
Midnight deadlines: 1
Chapters of boring novels to read: 5

I like to sit at the bar in our local pub, because we always get to talk to people.

Last night we sat at the bar and met a man called Mike. Mike’s not very happy. We know this because within ten minutes of chatting to him he told us that he:

tried to hang himself with a rope, but it broke.
tried to drive off Dover cliffs but his car stalled.
took suicide pills but vomited them up. Three times.
saw an orb going from his car, but then saw it going back 3 hours later (apparently he has video evidence).
only has £60 a week but has been drunk every day for the last 4 years.
he has 400 friends in London and 38 in Ashford.
he got run over and got a broken disc.
he got thrown out of a car at 60 mph.
he hates his brother because he gets given £300 a week from his parents.
went out last night to meet his Ashford friends but none of them turned up. Had they been his London friends, they would have turned up and one of his London friends turned up to meet him once with tubes coming out of his nose as he’d just had an operation.
he has six and a half teeth missing and he’s his own dentist and he took them out with pliers.
he said we couldn’t guess his age within two years. He was right. We guessed 32, but he said he was 25.
he says he can’t stop smoking as he needs to smoke because he can’t take anti-depressants.

I’ve heard of open mic nights, but this is taking the piss. We moved away at this point and left him with his blue drink.

I don’t think I’ll be talking to strangers again.

Today I woke up traumatised but not too traumatised to Janathon and so we went the long way round to the farm shop on our bikes.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 3.61 miles
Time: 34:59
Speed: 6.2 (might have been quicker to walk)
Calories: 150
Men called Mike: 1
Men called Mike I’m going to talk to again: 0

I had planned to go for a run this morning but then as I stayed up ‘til 3:30am that plan was scuppered as I got up late and had to go to the supermarket and work on stories and stuff and so this afternoon I went for a mile walk and asked Shaun if he wanted to accompany me. His initial response was to tell me to fuck off but then he changed his mind and came with me. We got to the half mile point and I said shall we carry on and go further? and he said yes and so we walked down the muddy trail in the dark and he mentioned about Grant and Tom doing the Grim Night Terror and I said that they had been trying to get Adele to do it too and that she was tempted and that I wouldn’t want to do it as I’d fall over and break my leg and then we were back on the pavement and walking down the hill in the dark as there’s no streetlights and the cars were blinding me with their headlights and we got back after exactly 25 minutes.

Stats (walking)
Distance: 1.57 miles
Time: 25 minutes
Pace: 15:53
Fuck offs: 1
Night Terrors: 0
Streetlights: 0
Cars blinding me with their headlights: lots

I walked to the supermarket and bought some food wrapped in cardboard boxes because I fancied some Indian food but couldn’t be bothered to cook it and then I didn’t even need to heat up the cardboard box wrapped food myself as Shaun got too hungry while he was waiting for me to cook and so he heated it up himself and it was very nice indeed and I’m getting very good at buying processed food but I forgot to turn my Garmin off while I was in the supermarket so it looks like I walk really really really slowly.

Stats (walking)
Distance: 1.22 miles
Time: 33:13
Pace: 27:17
Calories: 87
Processed food bought: Aubergine curry, black bean dhal, samosas, pakoras, onion bhajis, chapatis, raita

Janathon today was going to be a bike ride to the station and then from the station to The Quarterhouse in Folkestone (where I was going to see One Day [great book, great film [except for the parts where Anne Hathaway’s non-regional English accent slipped into some kind of spoof Lancastrian or something one]]) and back but then Shaun rang and asked if I wanted a lift so I said yes please and so I didn’t cycle anywhere (and felt very weird on the train without my bike – my purple metal mate usually always accompanies me to Folkestone) so today’s Janathon was a 15 minute walk from Folkestone Central to The Quarterhouse and a 15 minute walk from The Quarterhouse to Folkestone Central (also including a stair exercise from the ground floor of The Quarterhouse to the bar on the first floor.

Stats
Distance: A bit under 2 miles walking and some stairs
Time: 30 minutes
Calories: probably not as many as in the large glass of wine I had in the bar

I heard the post come through the letterbox this morning and went downstairs and there was a red card. I looked at the time on the red card and it said it was delivered at 9:25am. I looked at the clock. 9:27am. I opened the door and tested the doorbell and it dinged and it donged like it’s supposed to and I thought WHY DIDN’T YOU RING THE DOORBELL YOU F*****G C**T? and I thought about running down the driveway and seeing if he was up the hill not delivering parcels to other people but I was still in my dressing gown and I looked at the card and it said it was a parcel from amazon and I thought that must be my new straighteners and the card yesterday must be the book but the card yesterday said it needed a signature and so why would a book that cost under a tenner need a signature and a pair of straighteners that cost about £80 not? and anyway, why couldn’t he just have left the packet on the doorstep like he did last week or in the woodstore like he also does sometimes or maybe it’s a different postie and maybe even the postie who unsuccessfully posted a parcel through the door before Christmas and left it like this instead

and so then I had to do a five mile round trip to the post office and I wanted to stay in and do my assignment that’s due in on Friday and also I have another assignment that’s due in on Monday and neither of them have even been started yet although that’s not actually true as I have started one of them but it’s rubbish so it will have to be redone and I want my old postman back because our old postman was the best postman ever and he had mad grey frizzy hair and a permanent tan and he wore shorts every day even when there was two feet of snow and he used to either hide the parcels under the doormat or leave them in the woodstore and he used to sign for recorded or special delivery ones but then he retired last year and if I was a millionaire I would offer to double or triple or even quadruple whatever he earnt in an effort to make him be a postman again and not once did I have to go to the post office when he was our postie although I didn’t really mind the postie not delivering the one that needed to be signed as I assume they’re not actually supposed to sign for us but today I hate him for not ringing the doorbell and I cycled up to the post office and locked my bike up outside the gym and then wished I’d brought my gym stuff with me and the man in the post office gave me the package and says the other one won’t be back yet and he gave me a package that wasn’t very book-shaped or straightener-shaped and I opened it and it was a pair of headphones that I got sent to review that I’d forgotten about and if I’d have known that was all it was, I’d have left them in the post office until I went back to get my other package and I really need the book that I thought it was because it has a chapter about interviewing people that I need for my non-fiction module as our tutor has set us an exercise where we need to interview someone and I’m going to be interviewing my friend Peggy who will be having her debut novel published next year by a proper big publisher and I’m going to interview her next week in a cafe in Waterstones which is an appropriate setting and then I cycled back 2.5 miles in the rain, cursing the stupid postman.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 5.03 miles
Time: 36:18
Speed: 8.3mph
Calories: 156
Doorbells working: 1
Postmen ringing doorbells: 0
Red cards collected so far this week: 2
Packages waiting for me in the post office: 1
Pairs of headphones I’d forgotten about: 1
Retired postmen that I want to be unretired: 1
Authors to be interviewed in Waterstones: 1

I was going to go for a walk at lunchtime but then I saw that the Johnny Cotter gallery was open, so I popped in to say hello to Johnny and to look at my new picture

then I was there for ages and ages and ages and then there was no time for a walk although my Garmin says I walked 1.97 miles and so that’s good enough for me and also I walked for a bit in the morning as I got to uni early at 8:15 but it doesn’t open ‘til 8:30 and so had to walk round in the freezing cold for quarter of an hour but I didn’t Garmin it.

Stats
Cycling: 6 miles
Walking: 1.97 miles
Unis not open ‘til 8:30: 1 
New pictures: 1

See above.

(In case you’re wondering what I bought, I bought leeks, mushrooms, a yellow pepper, an orange pepper, broccoli, brussel sprouts and pears.)

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 2.2 miles
Time: 14:55
Speed: 8.8mph
Calories: 64
Farm shops visited: 1
Types of vegetable bought: 6
Types of fruit bought: 1

I did a plank.

I got bullied on Twitter by Local Adventures, Running Goth, font {size: red;} and It Ain’t Fast and it Ain’t Pretty to go for a run. Local Adventures even promised that if I did a mile, he’d do a marathon tomorrow. I gave them my best offer of .75 of a mile but then that plan got scuppered when Shaun said I had to go to the supermarket first and so that would mean changing out of my dressing gown into normal clothes and then changing into running gear later which in my mind is a definite no. My order of clothes is dressing gown/running clothes/normal clothes and there is no deviation allowed.

So when I got back from the supermarket (after buying falafel, hummous, halloumi, feta and spinach parcels, stuffed olives, stuffed vine leaves, dips, nachos, breaded garlic mushrooms, pitta bread, artichokes, chilli prawn and squid thing and jalapeno poppers for dinner, it would have been cheaper to go out to a restaurant), I had a Janathon dilemma. What to do? Then I saw someone mention #plankaday on Twitter and thought aah, I can do a plank for Janathon, yay. But Shaun said that wasn’t allowed and I had to go for a run but then I thought, aha! I can walk for a mile, that’ll do.

So that’s what I did.

Stats
Distance: 1.01 miles
Time: 16:18
Pace: 16:10 m/m
Calories: 77
Fellow Janathoners bullying me on Twitter: 4
Supermarkets visited: 1
Deviations from proper clothes-wearing order: 0
Walks in the dark: 1