Next race

I’m doing the Hornsey YMCA 10k on 20 May. I am. I just need to write out a cheque and fill in the entry form and put both in an envelope and write the address on the envelope and put a stamp on it and remember to post it.

Online entries would be much easier. I’m not very good with a pen anymore.

I wonder what the t-shirt will be like.

Oh and I entered the Crisis Square Mile Run again. I sent Dave, Gary and Kate an entry form but they either didn’t get my email or they’re ignoring it. I think they’re ignoring it.

Last night I went to see Bobby Conn at Bush Hall. Here he is in all his Bobby geniusness.

And while I was there, I bumped into someone who’s going to be reading this to see if I mention him. But I’m not going to. Ha.

And Bobby plays again next week in Elephant & Castle. Yay! I’m so excited I’ve even used an exclamation mark.

My pizza

When I started my blog, I didn’t think it would lead to getting recipes from men in Wales but here’s my pizza created from Phil’s recipe.

And what did I put on my creation?  Leftover veggies in the form of asparagus, artichokes, mushrooms, olives, chilis and mozzarella.

And because I’m the only one to post a pic of my pizza, that means I’ve won the competition. Yay.  What do I win?

How to spend £105 without really trying

Although I usually keep this blog to posts about running and ranting about B&Q, Joggerblogger has asked how I got locked out of my house so here is my tale of how to waste a perfectly good Saturday afternoon and spend £105 at the same time.

As mentioned on Saturday’s post, I needed some more compost so I could do garden stuff and so I went out to explore the local pound shops to see if they sold compost which would save me a trip to Woolworths so I went out and my front door didn’t want to shut so I used brute force and it eventually shut and I thought, I bet I have trouble opening that when I get home, but I continue on with my hunt for compost and hooray, the first pound shop I come to has compost so I get a couple of bags and go into another shop on the way back to get essentials like cat food and wine and I get home and my key goes into the lock but it won’t turn. Waa. It’ll turn one way but not the way I need it to turn to open the door so I go across the road to see if my neighbour can come and kick the door in for me but he’s not in and so I go to my neighbour two doors away but they’re not in either so I knock on my next door neighbours’ house while trying to remember the Polish for can you kick my front door in please and they’re not in either so I leave my shopping by the front door and go and look for a phone box so I can phone someone to come and help me, as my mobile’s inside the house, and then I think there’s no point going to a phone box as I don’t know anyone’s numbers anymore, unlike the olden days when I knew everyone’s numbers off by heart but now you just scroll for a name in a list on your mobile and so I go back home and think I’ll wait for someone to come out of the park and ask them to kick my door in and a man comes down the road and I say to him, excuse me, can you do me a favour? My front door’s stuck, can you kick it in for me please? He says no, I’m not doing that. I say please, it is my house, honest, I can show you that the keys don’t work. He says no, I’m not doing that. I say ok then. I see a man coming out of his house a few doors away but I’m thinking he doesn’t really look strong enough to kick a door in and another man comes down the road and so I say to him can you kick my door in please? He says really? I say yes, my keys don’t work and I give him the keys and he tries and he says do I really want him to kick the door in? I say yes please. He says is anyone in? I say no, if they were, I could get them to open the door. He tries to kick the door in but the door’s not budging and he says if he does manage it, he’ll break the door frame. I say do you think it’s best I get a locksmith? He says yes.

I go to the pub and get a bottle of Becks and ask the barmaid if she has a Yellow Pages I can look at. She says no. I say have you got any phone books? She says we did have a Thomson Local but I don’t know where it is. I say can you look for it please? She says ok and then comes back three seconds later and says sorry, I can’t find it. I say have you got a call box? She says no. I say can I use your phone to call directory enquiries, I can’t get in my house and I need a locksmith. A man standing next to me at the bar gives me his mobile and I say thank you but do you know the number of any locksmiths? He says no.

The manager comes out and gives me a phone and a Thomson Local and I ring a locksmith and the locksmith says what’s your contact number, I need to ring you back to say how long it’ll be. I say I haven’t got a number, my phone’s inside the house. He says what about the number you’re calling from? I say I’m in a pub, I’ll ask the manager if it’s ok to give the number out and the manager says it’s fine and I give the locksmith the number of the pub and he rings back five minutes later and the manager gives me the phone and the locksmith says someone will be round in an hour and it’ll cost £105.

I have another beer and thank the manager and the barmaid for their help and go and sit on my doorstep and wait for the locksmith and my neighbour across the road comes out and says are you ok? I say I can’t get in my house, my key’s not working, I’m waiting for a locksmith. He says do you want me to have a look? I say yes please and he goes to his van and says I’m just getting a sledgehammer out and he comes back and squirts some oil in the lock and tries it but it’s still not working and I say can you kick the door in? He says that the door frame will bust if he does that and I’m probably best off waiting for the locksmith. While my neighbour’s trying to get the key to work, the locksmith turns up and does something with a thin piece of plastic which doesn’t do anything and then he gets some kind of metal rod/mirror thing and wedges open the letterbox and sticks the metal rod/mirror thing through and puts up the latch and opens the door and he says the latch was down, you shouldn’t shut the door with the latch down. I say I didn’t put the latch down, I only use the latch when I’m putting the rubbish out. He shows me how to use the latch on the front door and I resist saying I do know how to operate a front door thank you very much and I pay him his £105 and by that time I’ve gone off the idea of doing any garden stuff and just open the wine instead and go and sit in my garden in the sun.

Cold turkey

I know why I got the lurgy this week, it was cold turkey brought on by my no shopping for non-essentials in February thing. 

Although last weekend I forgot and bought a DVD on eBay but if I don’t watch it ’til March, then that’s ok I think. 

And I can’t even remember why I was on eBay looking at things that I can’t buy due to me being on a no shopping for non-essentials in February thing and I really don’t know why I’ve been perusing amazon but I now have a nicely restocked wishlist waiting for my debit card’s reappearance on 1 March.

Also on my is it 1 March yet list is a stripy top I’ve been eyeing up in the window of Oasis that caught my eye on the way to work a couple of days ago and this morning I thought to myself, hmm, I might pop in on my way to work on Monday and get it if it’s still there, and it was only 1.5 miles later when I got near work that I remembered that damn, I can’t spend anything this month and I’m not sure a new stripy top is an essential, even if it would go really well with my skinny jeans.  But it’s not likely that they’ll still be selling it in two weeks though, is it?  Aarrgh.

And surely the hairdressers is an essential isn’t it?  Although I hate going to the hairdressers but at the mo, my hair’s a bit of a stringy mess so needs a chop, plus I want to dye it and it’ll be quicker to dye it if it’s shorter but I’m a bit scared to dye it in my new bathroom as I make a load of  mess and usually get hair dye all over the floor and the walls and the blind.  I haven’t yet got any on the ceiling but there’s always a first time I suppose, especially considering I got bits of tomato stuck to the kitchen ceiling once.  (The bits of tomato are still stuck to the ceiling, what with it involving getting up on a chair to unstick them.)

And I need gloves for the gym, as the rowing machine gives me blisters.  That must be an essential, right? 

And I want to get my carpets cleaned, now that those tossers from B&Q have stopped stomping up and down the stairs.

I had a cunning plan today though and in an attempt to stop me going home via the offy and buying wine and chocolate I left my wallet at home and only brought out £2 so I could buy some soya milk and after I’d bought my soya milk, I had £1.20 left and spent 15 minutes wandering around Holland & Barrett trying to decide what to spend the remaining £1.20 on. 

I am in complete agreement with anyone who’s reading this and thinking “WTF?  Wine and chocolate is of course an essential!” but I spent all last weekend hungover and didn’t get to the gym or out for a run and due to having the lurgy haven’t done anything this week either, so this weekend I want to redeem myself.  And now that I’m feeling better, I’m going to the gym tonight and may even go on the treadmill and try not to fall off.

My no smoking anniversary

Phil asked me to do a write up about the agonies of stopping smoking. Well, agony’s the right word, it was BAD! My first attempt lasted all of oooh, 20 minutes. I’d finished the Allen Carr book on the Friday night some time in late November, all excited about waking up a non smoker on the Saturday morning. So up I got, put my tobacco and lighter on the shelf, put the ashtray in the dishwasher, made myself a cup of tea, then retrieved the tobacco and lighter from the shelf, the ashtray from the dishwasher and rolled myself a cigarette. Oops, well, I was going to the pub that night, obviously I couldn’t give up that day. But I’d been up for 20 minutes, so it was a good practice run.

I read the Allen Carr book again a couple of weeks later and finished it on the train to work one Friday morning (3 December, not that the date’s ingrained in my head or anything) and decided that was it, I wasn’t going to smoke anymore. It’s only a couple of minutes’ walk from the tube to my building and every step I took I was thinking “want a cigarette, want a cigarette”. I paused outside the building and thought, oh, just one last one? Then I decided that if I really wanted one later then I’d have my usual mid-morning one. My boss went out for his usual cup of tea around 11-ish and again I thought, hmm, shall I go and have a cigarette? Na, I’ll wait until lunchtime. Lunchtime came and I thought I’ll see if I can go all lunchtime without having one. Walking out of the building at 1 o’clock and not immediately lighting up was HARD! I’d left my tobacco and lighter in my desk so it wasn’t too easy for me. I came back from lunch and resisted my end of lunchtime cigarette, feeling very pleased with myself. Mid-afternoon came and went and still I hadn’t given in. I was meeting some friends in the pub that evening. Fuck, how am I going to go a whole evening drinking and not smoking?!! Eek!! I left my tobacco and lighter in my desk and went off to the pub and announced that I’d given up smoking. When, they asked? Today. Yikes, you’re brave they said. Although I don’t think they said yikes, as I don’t think anyone actually says that in real life, only on blogs. I breezed through the pub although I did get some strange looks when I started sniffing the ashtray and felt very pleased with myself. This giving up smoking’s quite easy really I thought as I went home feeling smug.

Saturday morning, eek! I WANT A CIGARETTE!!! I spent most of the day pacing around the front room and lying on the sofa biting a cushion chanting I want a cigarette. Blimey, could have sworn Allen Carr said something about no withdrawal symptoms. Lying git. (Shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, I know.) I spent the whole weekend obsessed with smoking and reading smoking cessation websites. Monday morning I said to my workmate that if I was acting a little strangely it’s because I’ve stopped smoking and feel weird.

The next couple of weeks I suffered from severe insomnia, waking up at 3 and not being able to get back to sleep ’til just before my alarm went off at 7. Not good. I found though that instead of lying there feeling pissed off because I couldn’t sleep, that if I got up and made a cup of tea, then I could drop off a bit easier.

I continued being obsessed about smoking/not smoking until Christmas Day when I ponced a roll up off the barman and kept it in my pocket while I pondered over whether to smoke it or not until I thought fuck it, I’m smoking it. And I went outside in my friend’s garden and smoked it and bloody hell, that was good!

Then I smoked on and off for a couple of days until I was back to my usual 15/20 a day (although more at the time because it was Christmas and a lot of drinking going on) and decided that I would stop again when I went back to work on 3 January. Every cigarette I had in that week I hated but I couldn’t stop, I was addicted again. Bollocks. But I got a feeling of deja vu when I was on the train on 3 January and thought right that’s it, no more smoking. And this time I didn’t obsess over it, I didn’t make a big deal of it, I just got on with it and apart from a few very minor cravings (which still happen now and again) it was surprisingly easy, I must have not undone all the good work I’d put in by stopping for three weeks before Christmas.

So thank you Mr Carr for writing that book and motivating me to stop smoking. Apart from the cravings, lightheadedness, dizziness, insomnia, feeling like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and not being able to think about anything except for smoking, I can now breathe properly, don’t cough all day, have no nicotine stains on my fingers (yuk!), have cleaner teeth, brighter skin, get a huge kick out of asking for a no smoking table in a restaurant, have the freedom to go anywhere I like and not think “can I smoke in there?”, hangovers are 95% better, I now have a sense of smell after being convinced that I was born without one (it’s not always a good thing though!) and I am going to do a half marathon this year.

Oh yes, I recommend stopping to all smokers.  In fact, I recommend that smokers take up smoking, just so you can feel the benefits of stopping.

Happy no smoking anniversary to me, yah!

I have been quit for 1 Year, 13 hours, 50 minutes and 2 seconds (365 days). I have saved £548.36 by not smoking 5,483 cigarettes. I have saved 2 Weeks, 5 Days and 55 minutes of my life. My Quit Date: 1/3/2006 08:45

Yes I’m sad, I’ve still got my counter going, but I’m not obsessed, honest 🙂

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