Yesterday, I entered myself for the Cancer Research Race for Life 10k at Tatton Park in June. Nothing much unusual about that, you might think - unless you know me.
I don't run. It is one of several things I don't do, the others being: apologise, be unecessarily cheerful, drugs, and public transport. I drive past people out jogging on a Sunday morning and I pity them that they clearly didn't drink enough alcohol the night before. I avoid conversations with people who run in the manner that other people avoid smokers, in the fear that some of their get up and go might rub off on me like a viral infection.
And yet, I am about to become one of Them. I should point out that I haven't knowingly run a single step since my schooldays, and have still yet to do so. I'm already imagining myself winning next year's New York marathon without ever having pulled on a pair of trainers - not that I'm mildly delusional or anything. Short of discovering hitherto unknown Ethiopian heritage, that's not likely to happen. And yet, I'm already feeling cheerier (notice cheerIER, not actually cheery) than I have done in months at the prospect of a personal goal to get my teeth into. Factor in the purported anti-depressant qualities of running and exercise in general, and I imagine in a month or two, you could wrap me up and send me off to Pontin's as a redcoat.
I'll confess now that I was actually in the school athletics' team. But this was entirely down to unfortunate circumstances; these being that at the 400m trial, everyone else misheard the gym teacher and stopped at the finish line on the penultimate lap - I was the only one who kept going. More fool me. Humiliation at the hands of Manchester High School followed soon after. And it wasn't just the humiliation that made me go red - I've developed new tones of luminous day-glo pink over the years due to exercise. Some people just turn a pleasant healthy pink, but many's the time I've had to plunge my head into a bucket of cold water after an hour's horse-riding lesson, or risk having my head explode. So I can pretty much guarantee that 5 minutes into any run I do, I'll be able to light a whole street with my face.
So why do it? I can't put it better than Mark Twain, who said: 'Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones that you did do. So throw off the bow lines, Sail away from safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.' I might hate every second. I might puke up half way round in front of the official photographer, or do a Paula Radcliffe and get caught short. But I won't know till I try.
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
Back to the drawing board
Quite literally. After my recent work's been reliant on imagination and composition, it's been nice to switch off a little bit and complete this commission from an old junior school friend. He asked me to do a portrait of his two young daughters for his wife's birthday at the end of this month.
I have to be honest, this is the first childrens' portrait I've ever done (I may have neglected to mention this to Brian). Before I had a baby myself, I used to avoid kids like the plague, and stuck stubbornly to painting pets and adults, but actually I've really enjoyed this project. Childrens', and particularly babies' faces, are so soft and unformed that you really have to have a light touch with the pencil. Their hair tends to be wispy and fly-away, and eyebrows and eyelashes are barely there either, so you definitely need to exercise subtlety and use the harder pencils to capture them. The photos were supplied by the girls' dad, and were great and numerous, although indoor, flash-lit photos aren't brilliant to work from because the flash really flattens facial contours and bleaches everything. The older girl's photo was taken outside, and was much easier to work from - gave a really easy light to work with.
Have taken it off to the framer's, just hope Brian & Michelle actually like it when they get it next week! Ughhh, I hate that bit - get really nervous.
I have to be honest, this is the first childrens' portrait I've ever done (I may have neglected to mention this to Brian). Before I had a baby myself, I used to avoid kids like the plague, and stuck stubbornly to painting pets and adults, but actually I've really enjoyed this project. Childrens', and particularly babies' faces, are so soft and unformed that you really have to have a light touch with the pencil. Their hair tends to be wispy and fly-away, and eyebrows and eyelashes are barely there either, so you definitely need to exercise subtlety and use the harder pencils to capture them. The photos were supplied by the girls' dad, and were great and numerous, although indoor, flash-lit photos aren't brilliant to work from because the flash really flattens facial contours and bleaches everything. The older girl's photo was taken outside, and was much easier to work from - gave a really easy light to work with.
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Things I Have Learnt This Week
1. Inflation is a dirty word.
Now possibly I missed the lesson in General Studies at school that explained the British economy in a nutshell, as I did with telling the time in French. I was pulling a spectacular sickie to avoid a Chemistry test and coincidentally shot myself in the foot with regard to ever being able to tell the time whilst in France. Fortunately I can still manage to direct myself to and from Charles De Gaulle airport to Monsieur Bertillon's house in an emergency, so all is not lost.
Anyway, I don't get it. The vagaries of inflation and interest rates are to me what class and decorum are to Kerry Katona. It's no good. I've had it explained to me more times than I care to remember, and still it's as clear as mud. I've long since consigned it to the list of Things I'll Never Understand, along with cricket, Poker, and cats' mood swings.
2. Men learn the art of deception at a very young age.
A stark illustration of this concept was shown to me today. As I watched my 16 month-old son inverting himself on the kitchen floor in a slightly alarming example of the well-known yoga position 'Upside Down Delinquent Crab', whilst emitting the noise of an industrial-strength fire alarm because I wouldn't let him have the pack of chocolate mini rolls he'd just found in the cupboard, I was reminded of the lady at nursery who'd remarked, less than an hour previously as I picked The Ginger Prince up, 'We can't wait to have him in our 2nd year class - he's so placid, isn't he?'
3. However blonde I am, my friend Jade will always beat me hands down.
This evening she is juggling with the problem of having sold a pasta maker to a lady from West Yorkshire, who is on her considerable way across the Pennines to collect said machine from Liverpool as we speak. Not, in itself, a problem, if it were not for the fact that Jade has just realised she sold the pasta maker over six months ago to someone else whilst she was pregnant.
I add the fact that she was pregnant since obviously it's a well-known fact that women can be a little forgetful when they're about to push an elephant through the eye of a needle. In Jade's case, however, it's a fairly terminal condition. I can list, without any sort of cerebral effort: the time she left her grill on for 3 weeks while we were in Australia, and couldn't remove the twist-off petrol cap from the motor home because she was pulling it; and the time she arrived at Silverstone race track ready for a day of work team-building, only to find everybody else was waiting at Brands Hatch.
I love you, Miss Jade, you're ace. Although if that pasta woman's arrived, it could be RIP, Miss Jade....
Now possibly I missed the lesson in General Studies at school that explained the British economy in a nutshell, as I did with telling the time in French. I was pulling a spectacular sickie to avoid a Chemistry test and coincidentally shot myself in the foot with regard to ever being able to tell the time whilst in France. Fortunately I can still manage to direct myself to and from Charles De Gaulle airport to Monsieur Bertillon's house in an emergency, so all is not lost.
Anyway, I don't get it. The vagaries of inflation and interest rates are to me what class and decorum are to Kerry Katona. It's no good. I've had it explained to me more times than I care to remember, and still it's as clear as mud. I've long since consigned it to the list of Things I'll Never Understand, along with cricket, Poker, and cats' mood swings.
2. Men learn the art of deception at a very young age.
A stark illustration of this concept was shown to me today. As I watched my 16 month-old son inverting himself on the kitchen floor in a slightly alarming example of the well-known yoga position 'Upside Down Delinquent Crab', whilst emitting the noise of an industrial-strength fire alarm because I wouldn't let him have the pack of chocolate mini rolls he'd just found in the cupboard, I was reminded of the lady at nursery who'd remarked, less than an hour previously as I picked The Ginger Prince up, 'We can't wait to have him in our 2nd year class - he's so placid, isn't he?'
3. However blonde I am, my friend Jade will always beat me hands down.
This evening she is juggling with the problem of having sold a pasta maker to a lady from West Yorkshire, who is on her considerable way across the Pennines to collect said machine from Liverpool as we speak. Not, in itself, a problem, if it were not for the fact that Jade has just realised she sold the pasta maker over six months ago to someone else whilst she was pregnant.
I add the fact that she was pregnant since obviously it's a well-known fact that women can be a little forgetful when they're about to push an elephant through the eye of a needle. In Jade's case, however, it's a fairly terminal condition. I can list, without any sort of cerebral effort: the time she left her grill on for 3 weeks while we were in Australia, and couldn't remove the twist-off petrol cap from the motor home because she was pulling it; and the time she arrived at Silverstone race track ready for a day of work team-building, only to find everybody else was waiting at Brands Hatch.
I love you, Miss Jade, you're ace. Although if that pasta woman's arrived, it could be RIP, Miss Jade....
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
Sod's Law
It occurs to me, on this cold, dank January afternoon, that aside from the law of gravity, and the law of offside (although I'm convinced this law is mere mythology - every person you ask gives you a different version of it), the law that plays the most important part in our day-to-day lives is Sod's Law. Alanis Morrisette wrote a song about it - a complete arse, those black flies in your Chardonnay. And even the 'unsinkable' Titanic fell foul of Sod's Law. Imagine finding the only thing in a huge chilly ocean likely to rip a hole in your nice shiny new boat...a ruddy great iceberg. What are the chances??
Sod's Law decrees that when you prise your way into your car of a dark, icy, mid-winter morning, after grating your fingers getting the ice off the doors and virtually gassing yourself with the anti-freeze, the first thing you hear when you turn the ignition on (aside from the asthmatic mutterings of the engine) is an advert for some far-flung exotic holiday on the radio.
Sod's Law also says that the shortest queue for anything is always the slowest. Always. This law is carved somewhere on a boulder at Stonehenge, it's so ancient. Queueing at check-in? Quick, get behind this tiny queue with just a couple of old people in it. Then stand there for light years as they shuffle over to the desk with a suitcase that seems to be rammed with some kind of heavy furniture for a two-week stay in Tenerife, and is twice the normal baggage allowance. Listen with disbelief to their conversation with the delightful easyjet lady, who is shouting and using her limited knowledge of signing, because they are tone deaf. To change queue or not? Change queue. Now find yourself behind a shouty family of fifteen from Liverpool, none of whom is claiming responsibility for the fact that they haven't got a passport between them.
Queueing to pay at the petrol station? Pick the shortest queue behind the nice lady without a basket full of grocery shopping (remember when petrol stations used to be manned by mechanics? You could buy fuel. And that was it. Genius, no?). And yet, find that she's being served by the delightfully camp but desperately slow man who looks like Joshua Rosenberg, the BBC news reporter with the unfortunate lithp. Er, lisp.
He asks her how her son is, tuts at the price of nappies (I wouldn't worry about it, there'll be an effing sale on by the time you've finished scanning them through), and debates the wisdom of altering daylight saving time (well, it was light when I came in...). Meanwhile, you're turning a virulent shade of scarlet, and wishing you'd gone, for the first time in your life, for the pasty-looking silent teen goth on the next till.
Queueing at the bar? Here's a near-space between the rows and rows of people waiting. You get your little finger actually touching the bar, which is practically as good as being served, no? No. The woman next to you has a cleavage that could swallow whole streets, and after being served within milliseconds of getting to the bar, she is now ordering a round for 27 people.
I could go on. But I won't. I'm watching my cheese on toast under the grill, and Sod's Law says if I take my eye of it for one single second, that'll be the window in Time where the temperature of the cheese reaches ignition point, the grill explodes and my whole house burns down. Sod's Law, you see?
Sod's Law decrees that when you prise your way into your car of a dark, icy, mid-winter morning, after grating your fingers getting the ice off the doors and virtually gassing yourself with the anti-freeze, the first thing you hear when you turn the ignition on (aside from the asthmatic mutterings of the engine) is an advert for some far-flung exotic holiday on the radio.
Sod's Law also says that the shortest queue for anything is always the slowest. Always. This law is carved somewhere on a boulder at Stonehenge, it's so ancient. Queueing at check-in? Quick, get behind this tiny queue with just a couple of old people in it. Then stand there for light years as they shuffle over to the desk with a suitcase that seems to be rammed with some kind of heavy furniture for a two-week stay in Tenerife, and is twice the normal baggage allowance. Listen with disbelief to their conversation with the delightful easyjet lady, who is shouting and using her limited knowledge of signing, because they are tone deaf. To change queue or not? Change queue. Now find yourself behind a shouty family of fifteen from Liverpool, none of whom is claiming responsibility for the fact that they haven't got a passport between them.
Queueing to pay at the petrol station? Pick the shortest queue behind the nice lady without a basket full of grocery shopping (remember when petrol stations used to be manned by mechanics? You could buy fuel. And that was it. Genius, no?). And yet, find that she's being served by the delightfully camp but desperately slow man who looks like Joshua Rosenberg, the BBC news reporter with the unfortunate lithp. Er, lisp.
He asks her how her son is, tuts at the price of nappies (I wouldn't worry about it, there'll be an effing sale on by the time you've finished scanning them through), and debates the wisdom of altering daylight saving time (well, it was light when I came in...). Meanwhile, you're turning a virulent shade of scarlet, and wishing you'd gone, for the first time in your life, for the pasty-looking silent teen goth on the next till.
Queueing at the bar? Here's a near-space between the rows and rows of people waiting. You get your little finger actually touching the bar, which is practically as good as being served, no? No. The woman next to you has a cleavage that could swallow whole streets, and after being served within milliseconds of getting to the bar, she is now ordering a round for 27 people.
I could go on. But I won't. I'm watching my cheese on toast under the grill, and Sod's Law says if I take my eye of it for one single second, that'll be the window in Time where the temperature of the cheese reaches ignition point, the grill explodes and my whole house burns down. Sod's Law, you see?
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