It’s surprisingly difficult to be a nice person. Sometimes, no matter what you do, you just can’t avoid being a prick. I was at the gym the other day, participating in a company-wide “log 30 mins of exercise a day and we’ll measure it with an unnecessarily elaborate world map graphic” month. I would like [...]
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Archive for the 'Random' Category
Philosophical Quandry: How Much Bread is Enough?
I’ve been a bit under the weather lately, so I’ve spent the last week applying the best folk remedies my mother can recommend: soup and fruit juice. But with all this soup, I’m constantly left wondering if I might be eating too much bread.
As far as I’m concerned, you can’t have soup without bread. I think this is something to do with my overwhelming lack of patience. Soup’s too hot? Don’t bother waiting for it to cool down! Dip some bread in it and eat the pleasantly warm soup sodden bread lump you’ve just created, as you would a ball of papier mache were it so delicious.
I’m willing to admit it’s a little uncouth, but it’s a guilty pleasure. Like dunking a biscuit in your tea, except more savoury and with a spoon permanently on hand in case you drop something in the steaming liquid. I’m sure I’m not the only one. The real problem is that I’ve entirely lost track of exactly how much bread is acceptable.
Once, a single slice of white was satisfactory. Then the soup would have cooled enough to consume the remainder with the spoon, as it should be. Then I got a bit too adept at the art of bread dunking, and two slices were required to reach optimum temperature. Over time, I got used to the side of bread, and it didn’t seem right to eat soup without it. And so yesterday, I found myself getting through an entire foot long roll, at one point realising I’d run out of soup and was just shovelling bread into my mouth. With the spoon.
I know I need to cut back. I know I should limit myself to an amount of bread that will be outlasted by the soup that is ostensibly the body of the meal. I need to choose a limit and stick to it, even if I have to wait a while for the remaining contents of my bowl to cool to a bearable level. But I’m at the point where I don’t know what that limit sould be. So I put the question to all of you, oh internauts, just how much bread is enough?
If we can get this problem solved, we might be able to move on to the far more troubling question of whether or not the bread should be buttered.
Sentimental Hour: Getting Rid of an Old Chair
If you read this blog regularly, you may have guessed, inferred or flat out been told that I’ve recently moved flat. Having finally got most of the decorating sorted, and everything in its place, I was left with a bit too much stuff, and had to say goodbye to an old friend.
Last weekend, the folks were visiting for some final finishing touches, and I finally got a sofa after two months of sitting on the floor and various items of inflatable furniture with punctures of varying degrees. This meant that my big office chair had to go.
This room ain’t big enough for the two of us.
I wouldn’t have thought myself the sentimental sort when it came to possessions, but I have to admit a little twinge of sadness in throwing this chair out. And to being a little reluctant to eat anything crumbly on my new sofa.
As a little background: I bought the office chair with one of my first paycheques from web site building during the dotcom boom, a simpler time when the sky was the limit, and I was a smug 15 year old who didn’t quite know what to do with that kind of money. I procured it for the princely sum of £99, which was worth a bit more a decade ago, but not quite so much that it wasn’t a bargain.
The chair provided a comfy and unnecessarily professional and often cramped working area at my parents’ house, before following me to my last flat in Battersea and finally to my current place where it served as a makeshift comfy seat in lieu of a couch. Albeit one I couldn’t really lie down on properly. So suffice to say, its been something of a fixture of my life for quite some time.
I couldn’t resist sitting in it one last time. Nor could I avoid it, as it was the only way I could get it down in the lift.
So the chair ended its life sat by the bins behind the estate, waiting to be carted away whenever the council sent someone to clear out all the junk left by the surprising number of DIY projects that always seem to be going on in the building.
You come here often?
Or at least that’s how expected it to end its life. Upon returning to the bins with the remains of a similarly unneeded but not quite as well loved desk, the chair was gone!
I’d like to think it went to a good home, filled with other items of discarded, but still usable furniture. And today it is sitting nestled behind a refurbished mahogany effect desk, covered in pre-chewed pencils and recycled paper. While its new owner reclines on a worn, patched, yet excessively comfy armchair, watching a CRT television using a remote with no battery panel and the numbers worn off.
Saved me putting it on Freecycle.