No Words

Our cultural week

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Gym

You know, I never thought I would say this, quite this blatantly. But gorram it to hell. I am actually enjoying gym.

Barring the posers who are hilarious to surreptitiously watch and then snort at, most of the people there actually go to zone out either on the treadmills or cycle machines. I did that today for over half an hour - plugged myself into my mp3 player, stuck on Iron Maiden and various other mullet rock favourites and even some Disturbed, spinkled it with some Metallica, Linkin Park and Marilyn Manson and hey presto, Demon Cycling Liz.

It was fab. I cooled off by pumping some iron for the flabby bits, did some hip reducing thinghies (very technical descriptions approved of by several of the instructors), some more iron pumping for the flabby bits then absconded downstairs to the sauna for a few minutes, then into an incredibly long and hot shower in which I almost managed to drown (I am not good in showers, thank you Mr. Bates) and almost lost a contact lens. Thrilling stuff. Hair dripping, with flung on clothes I staggered onto Charing Cross station's concourse, only to discover I had one minute to heave my shaking self to the platform on the other side of the friggin station, which I did (if anyone finds that old lady's walker, I'll happily for the repairs) and got myself a seat too. Which is the most impressive part of running for a Southeastern trains as all trains are running reduced carriages.

So.

Check out these guns baby!

Live Journal

I have been tempted and lured away to use Live Journal as a sometimes posting site - they have thriving writer communities, some of which I have subscribed to.

I feel a bit guilty, but reading some of the short stories / assignments that have been posted in the most recent challenge, I feel hugely humbled. These people have genuine talent. It's real and tangible and out there to see. It is a completely different ball game compared to the writing group I belonged to many moons ago on Yahoo. The moderator was a manic depressive and probably a bit unbalanced, using the writing group as a soapbox to air his thoughts of paranoia and general weirdness and his very bad drug induced writings - I escaped and I know some of the others on the site are wishing they could do the same. Life is too short to pander to strange men in NY suffering too many psychoses.

Back to Live Journal: the assignments are good fun to do and act both as prompts as well as cranial exercise. I look forward to my tenure with musemuggers!

PotterMania

I feel strongly about HP and JKR. Not all of it good. I pity Bloomsbury Publishers for trying to fill the HP gap.

I read the following article online today and it just blew me away.

Amazon UK nets 250,000 Potter pre-orders

Amazon.co.uk has seen pre-orders of the Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows, reach the quarter of a million mark. The UK pre-orders, at an initial
price of £8.99, make up a quarter of Amazon's worldwide reservations for the
final installment in J K Rowling's series.

"The sales of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in the UK and across the
globe are eclipsing those of the previous Harry Potter books by a considerable
margin," said Christopher North, head of books at Amazon.co.uk. "Although the
children's version remains the bestseller, we have seen a strong uplift in sales
of the adult version compared to previous years, perhaps illustrating that
people who have grown up reading Harry Potter are taking their love of the
series of books into adulthood."

Amazon.com said it was confident that sales would outstrip the 1.5 million
pre-orders for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ahead of its release in
June 2005. It took 174 days after the announcement of the publication date for
the retailer to reach the one million order mark with Half-Blood Prince; with
Deathly Hallows the milestone has been reached in 94 days.

I can't help but wonder if the hype is completely OTT? I've said it before - JKR is not the best writer there is but Bloomsbury got behind her after they realised they were onto something. The books started small, it ran to word of mouth, schools picked it up and voila! the marketing gurus stepped in, foreign rights were sold along with movie rights and the whole circus came to town.

I applaud them for making kids read. Fostering the love for a good book at a young age is fantastic. What I disagree with is how many well-thought-of already established authors there were, LONG LONG before JKR came onto the scene. The circus stole everyone's thunder and suddenly these fantastic children's books were being repackaged to ride on the coat tails of a rather whimpy bespectacled apprentice wizard.

"If you like Harry Potter you will love .... " - what rot.

Like the books for themselves - encourage them to read widely and differently in many genres, across the fields. You'll find duds, but ye gods, teach them to think for themselves and not to become sheep to slavishly follow the three for two promotions, but to think outside the box. Even if it is to fall for that awful Eragon drivel. At least it was written by a teenager.

One more thing: thank the gods of kiddies writing and JKR and her publishers' marketing department - it has thrown open the market for a fantastic opportunity to many authors who are unique and driven to tell their stories. Never before has the children's market been more alive with possibilities. And publishers are vying to find the next big thing. It could be you!

Tai Chi Class

Tomorrow night is my first tai chi class in around 4 years. Crazy or what? No doubt I will suffer hugely after the fact. What, I hear you cry! That nambi pambi slow moving stuff, that's easy enough to do. I can do it with one hand tied behind my back, and still be energetic enough to go out drinking afterwards.

Excuse me as I climb back onto the couch which I fell off of. Laughing.

Tai Chi is one of the most brutal exercises you can do. It is v e r y slow, it works all the muscles and it helps your breathing and the forms are beautiful and graceful and it makes you - generally - feel quite good about yourself. I know friends who will read this will be wetting themselves laughing, remember other friends being completely over the top about Tai Chi - swooping crane subdues waterbufalo and all that malarky, but hey, if it works, it works and I challenge anyone to try it and not enjoy it.

I will report back, if I will be able to lift my arms.

MIgraine Attack

Yesterday, for the first time in a long, long, long time, I got my butt completely wiped out by a migraine. I woke up to it. I was immediately sick. I couldn't stomach breakfast, I tried drinking down some asprin with water - it refused to stay down. And the pain. My god, it was excruciating. I was shaking and sweating like someone suffering a fever. Mark took one look at me and sent me to lie down with an icy cold cloth for my face. He rang my boss to tell him I wouldn't be in - I literally couldn't speak - I sounded stoned out of my mind. And that was my day. I was awfully ill in the am, then slept till past midday and that was it. End of day.

I hate them. With all my heart and soul.

Some good news and some mad news!

Today I attended WW and discovered that I have now lost - wait for it - 17.5lbs. How good is that? I was exceedingly proud of myself. To the extent where I celebrated with a single pack, my first crisp in excess of a month or two now...yes, two months. They were scrummy.

Ontop of the above, the other news is:

No, I haven't suddenly become astonishingly pretty and skinny and moved to the seaside. I've joined Fitness First. I know. I am crazymad. I even got a little backpack and a teeny weeny towel to mop my delicate brow. And my first attendance is tomorrow. Our local FF is however still being built. Which means I get to attend any of the others anywhere in the UK. Naturally it will be either Covent Garden or Charing Cross - and I am a bit excited and hugely worried. What if I fall on my face, break open my teeth and cut my lip and break an arm...whilst trying to use something utterly banal like the sauna or something.

Fat Gecko is inordinately proud of me. Beam. He thinks I've joined because I want to get fit, but it is really because they offer yoga, pilates, salsa, kickboxing and spinning all included in the price - as opposed to paying for each class separately from our local Spa - which, at around £7 a class, turns out to be a shitload of money. So, not only am I a rapidly diminishing Betty, I am a clever Betty!