Nik lives in Essex, UK and works in London as the editor of MacUser magazine. The posts and comments on this site do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions of values of his employers.
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A good day, I think. Plenty of PR whoring, though, and an uncomfortably early start. I was in the pool by half six and swam done a mile fifty-somewhat minutes later. It’s a strange time to be there. Full of inconsiderate lumpy women half the time, swimming diagonally, or flailing like spastic starfish so they invariably smack you in the ribs as you cruise past. The rest of the time, it’s pretty much empty.
Oh, and there was an idiot man walking up and down the length of one of the lanes, putting it out of action for everyone else. Why do that when there is a perfectly good treadmill upstairs. Or a cross trainer.
So anyway, it was a good start. I felt springy and bright eyed all morning, and ended up PR lunching across the road. That was a bit of a mistake. What kind of a restaurant doesn’t put chicken on the menu when describing chicken dishes. Roasted red pepper, olives and rocket tagliatellie, it said. What it meant was pepper, oliver, rocket and chicken tagliatellie. I dived in, not having eaten chicken for years and years and thought it was goats cheese or halloumi or something. Ach. It took about three mouthfuls to realise what it was.
I carefully picked at the rest after that, eating around the chickeny bits until it was polite to stop.
Fortunately the food was far more easily identified this evening. A preview evening of a photography exhibition in a poky gallery in Hoxton, which certainly lived up to its bohemian credentials. Not a bad selection, although there was some rubbish mixed in with the decent stuff.
Anyone can take a blurred picture of the back of a woman’s head while she’s using a computer. Or a vault of gold. Or a settee and half an arm chair in a tastelessly decorated front room.
The pictures of Japanese farming communities, Peruvian streets, thunder storms over Sydney and a communist outpost on a mountaintop somewhere several thousand miles east of east London, though, make it all well worth while.
The chicken was clearly labelled chicken. The prawns retained all their prawn-like credentials and the rest looked like what it was: cheese, tomatoes and olives. Precisely what I thought I’d been having for lunch.
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8 Responses to “Food”
I still can’t fathom what possesses people to actually get up before 6:30 and that without anyone forcing them. It is completely unnatural.
Maybe this idiot man was walking up and down the swimming lane because his back is bad and his doctor ordered it. I did a lot of this once, although in a very small pool in a very small town in this very small country - trains your balance, I understand. Or something.
• Posted at 12:48 am on May 26th, 2004 by Krist.‘Spastic’ is probably not the right word, if indeed you subscribe to the sick, creeping, political correctness that has seeped into our society over the last decade.
I am pleased to see that Nik has not joined this PC brigade (in this entry at least), although I am quite sure his non-entry to the club was not a conscious decision. Moreover, I think the point about the swimming pool shows that Nik is in a totally different kind of club anyway; the club that recognise woman can be unbearably illogical creatures in leisure centres (and out, some would say, but not me or I’ll get slapped by Kristin))!
• Posted at 12:12 pm on May 26th, 2004 by kev.According to my dictionary, a spastic is someone ‘affected by spasms’, which is pretty much what I was aiming for with that word, so it’s not a PC issue (you can, after all, have a spastic colon, which you wouldn’t call a ‘right Joey colon’).
As for the man walking up and down, I don’t have an issue with him doing it per se - I’d just rather he didn’t do it in one of the roped off swimming lanes. There’s the whole of the rest of the pool he could use.
• Posted at 12:30 pm on May 26th, 2004 by Nik.I wasn’t suggesting you had an issue with him walking up and down the lane - I was merely offering an explanation of an act which might seem utterly stupid in itself, when, like you said, there are perfectly good treadmills upstairs.
And as for slapping Kev, I’m beginning to suspect that is just what he wants.
• Posted at 10:48 pm on May 26th, 2004 by Krist.Hehe, Kristin, dearest :o)
*leaves the room blushing*
• Posted at 10:19 am on May 27th, 2004 by Kev.Erm…. it were a joke. No PC brigade ideas here just ask NIk.
• Posted at 7:58 pm on May 27th, 2004 by Christopher Brennan.Christopher, no worries, thanks for explaining.
Peace :o)
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“spastic” Are you sure about this? Perhaps “A right Joey” might be a more politically correct way of putting this?
• Posted at 11:36 pm on May 25th, 2004 by Christopher Brennan.