Ten green bottles

I knew that if Mernie and I went over to Dee's house for dinner, I would come home with something to blog about.

And it was this:

Dee: "I want to join the Virgin gym down the road."
Mernie: "They're bloody expensive, how much is it?"
Dee: "It's seventy quid, which even if I don't go, is seventy quid not spent on drinking."
Me: "How many calories would you get for seventy quid?"
Dee: "Well, seventy quid would get you, what, ten bottles of wine?"
Mernie: "Ten bottles of good wine."
Dee: "So that's ten bottles of good wine..."
Mernie: "750 calories per bottle... 7500 in total. You need to eat 3500 over your base rate calorie intake to put on one pound, so ten bottles equals two pounds."
Me: "So you can join the gym and lose two pounds a month, without even going?"
Mernie: "Correct."
Dee: "Excellent! Who wants cream on their sticky toffee pudding?"

That theory again, broken down by Dr Mernie
Cost of gym: £70 per month
Drinking saved: 10 x bottles of quality white wine
Calories in said not drunk wine = 7500
Number of calories over base rate needed to put on 1lb = 3500
Therefore, £70 spent in gym = 7500 calories saved = 2lb lost without even getting off armchair and watching telly
Snag: Sitting on armchair in front of telly boring without wine

Ankle biting

It's getting to that time of year when bobbling opaque tights are pushed to the back of the knicker drawer, leather boots migrate under the bed to hibernate snugly beneath a thick layer of dust and long-sleeved jumpers sink down to bottom of the ironing basket until October. Socks are no longer required on a daily basis and the cardigan comes into its own as whispy clouds over the sun send mercury plummeting in seconds.

This is also the time of year when I find myself wishing constantly for legwarmers. Clearly it is too warm to struggle into ridiculous nylon tubes and encase the lower leg in leather, but the sudden blast of hostile April wind and relentless puffing of overly-optimistic air con up the linen trouser leg is a twice-annual misery that I wish there was a solution to.

There is an answer, but I just don't get on with pop socks. The time I have ever worn one was on my head when pretending to be a burglar as a kid. I don't know why I hate them, my mother thinks they are wonderful. Even my old flatmate - gorgeous, pouting, stylish and Corsican with eyes far bigger than her overdraft when it came to fashion, loves pop socks. I got her drunk once and made her ceremoniously burn them in a bowl. But within the month, I caught her sheepishly slipping out of her heels after a day at work and propping her pop-socked feet on the pouf.

I think I may well resort to stealth legwarmers under the trousers. I've done it before when shopping at the weekend, although smuggling 80s dancewear into the office is a whole different kettle of badgers. When I used to ride horses, we'd wrap carrier bags around our legs under our boots and that worked a treat, that might do. Or I could just sit and shiver until summer, when I can finally complain about being too hot.

Death to unhealthy people!

Anonymous said...

in response to wrong un, the reason you shouldn't be able to get your teeth fixed for free is cos it's usually entirely your fault that they're messed up and need fixing!unlike most diseases, dental decay is entirely preventable. If you snack on sugar, knowing full well the harm it's doing, and don't bother to brush your teeth reguarly, why should other people pay to fix your mess?

12:55 AM  

So I "snack on sugar" and "fail to brush my teeth regularly", do I? And there's me thinking I ate pretty healthily, flossed, cleaned my teeth for three minutes at least twice a day with an electric toothbrush and went for regular check-ups. If I'd REALISED that I was a sugar-shovelling, plaque-toothed, floss-dodging freak, I would never expect to receive the dental care that I hand over chunks of my salary to pay for in national insurance contributions! I admit it, I had a Creme Egg last week and totally didn't clean my teeth for, like, four hours afterwards! *blush*

If you think about it, lung cancer victims who smoked should probably pay for their own treatment, and as for fat people! Let 'em keel over in the streets! Pah. Keep the NHS for the healthy! Hurrah!

PS. I am only teasing ;o)

Toothache

I have toothache.

I've had a toothache for a few days, and was hoping it would go away - the hurting tooth has been drilled and filled before, and sometimes it has a little twinge for old time's sake. I've cleaned it, flossed it, poked it, swilled Corsodyl around it and prayed vaguely to anyone/thing that the pain is just transferring from my bank account or something. But five days later, it's starting to look grim.

I don't really mind the whole jaw-cracking, injecting, dribbling, scraping, poking, whirring, clamping, sucking, drilling, crunching, prodding and polishing (now wash around and spit please) dentist experience. In comparison with having half my face crumpled in raging agony, it's a fun day out. As the nerve pings and wriggles, I'm getting kind of desperate for my nice lady dentist to shove a needle into my gum and plunge the biggest drill bit into the offending filling. So I phoned up yesterday to make an appointment.

But they're not doing NHS anymore. A check up is £22 and a filling is £45. I can't afford it. NHS dentists are oversubscribed as it is, and one in ten didn't return the unpopular new contracts due back in April, meaning they've effectively left the service. So, in a nutshell, it looks like I am going to have to try to find a new dentist, whilst working, when I'm about to move house and don't know the new area, with toothache. And the chances of finding a new NHS dentist who will take me on are pretty slim. So what am I supposed to do? Wait until the tooth rots and falls out? Hope it gets so bad that I can be admitted through A&E?

Apparently there's a walk-up place in Angel with fit Aussie dentists that I can try, so jangling nerve-endings crossed.

I've never really had much of a cause to really hate the Labour Government. I haven't forgiven them for the tuition fees thing and the blowing the shit out of innocent Iraqis sucks the big one, but they didn't seem to be doing any terrible thing that wouldn't have been done anyway if another party was in power.

However, as I sit here with a throbbing ache pulsing through my jaw and into my eye and ear canal with little hope of anything being done about it because I don't have enough money, could I just say that YOU sir,



yes, YOU. You are a c***. Shame on you

Queen of darts

Queen of darts
Originally uploaded by LizzieCatt.

I'm having a bit of a slow afternoon....

Blurry clebs - Kylie

Kylie
Originally uploaded by LizzieCatt.

I think this is my favourite.

This was taken at the same event as the Cate Blanchett one, but Kylie didn't even get paraded around the velvet rope to spill forth her shimmering pearls of wordy beauty into the waiting, trembling microphones. No, Kylie came, Kylie stood on a box and said something, and Kylie went away.

I don't think any of the blur in the photo is even actually the tiny songbird herself. But rest assured, even if it isn't, she was somewhere quite close to one of the edges.

Blurry clebs - Cate Blanchett

Cate Blanchett
Originally uploaded by LizzieCatt.

This is one of the clearest photos in the collection. I have to say I am very proud of my technical achievements with this effort. You can almost actually tell that it really is her. Amazing.

The photo was taken at an awards ceremony where I was forced to sit outside in a tent, watching the "action" on TV screens. Not only did we not get to go inside, we also got packed lunces instead of canapes. Even the ethereal presence of Blanchett could not warm my cockles. Also, I thought she was a bit sniffy.