I got into the lift on the fifth floor. At the fourth floor, a man joined me. At the third floor, two men entered.
Suddenly, I noticed that they were all wearing blue striped shirts. The stripes were of different thicknesses and the blues were of different shades. Nonetheless, there was a clear mega-pattern amongst the three men.
Even more curiously, one of the man was carrying a plastic bag… full of what looked like striped blue shirts.
My housemate Aoife bought the wrong cream for her cake. She needed whipping cream and had accidentally bought 600 grams of ‘extra thick cream’.
I don’t usually cook with cream of any kind. I wondered if it could somehow be turned into ice cream. So I bought some frozen berries and milk.
It wasn’t until I searched for ‘how to make ice cream’ on the internet did I realise that ice cream is more complicated than I thought. Depending on the recipe, you have to cook it, whip it, use egg yolks, use milk powder… In the end, my brain couldn’t handle it so I decided to ‘cook with my gut’. (This coming from a girl who feels guilty about varying recipes slightly.)
I put the 600 grams of extra thick cream and the 400 grams of frozen berries into a blender. Then, because I felt like it, I added around 100 mL milk and two tablespoons of sugar.
It blended nicely on the ‘ice cubes’ setting then the ‘milkshake’ setting. On tasting, I found it wasn’t quite sweet enough. So I added two tablespoons of cherry jam.
Blend, blend, blend.
The flavour was perfect. Just like my favourite berry yoghurts but more fatty.
It’s now in the freezer. I stirred it a bit after two hours and found it was getting firm around the edge of the box without going icy.
I am hopeful this will turn out well. The end product may bring to mind frozen yoghurt rather than an ice cream, but maybe that’s because yoghurt is where we usually experience these berry flavours.
It seems that everyone had the same idea. I’ve been at BBQs all day, as friends have tried to grab the last warmth of summer.
The final BBQ, hosted by Wolfgang and Rosangela, was a true gourmet affair. I ate trout, chicken, steak, fat sausages, spicy skinny sausages, juicy hamburgers, the most delicious home made tzatziki I have ever tasted, couscous and vegetable salad, Greek salad, salmon and potato salad, spinach and halloumi salad, grilled mushrooms, courgette, aubergine, peppers and onions.
Even taking half servings of everything, I was stuffed.
‘Are you ready for dessert?’ they asked. ‘We have home made ginger cake with chocolate chips, pavê (a Brazilian tiramisu-style layer cake), and grilled banana with chocolate and ice cream.’
‘Gulp,’ I said. How could I manage this? There was no way I could miss dessert.
I excused myself and went to the washroom where I moved my belt clasp back three notches.
My first home in London was in a relatively deprived part of the city south of the river. I now live a more lively, more fashionable northern borough.
Moving between gyms, I can see the differences in the community profiles of the two areas. At my old gym, most people looked like they were there to lose weight. There were Afro-Caribbean people, Asians and White European.
At my current gym, there are only White Europeans. By and large, my fellow gym-goers are more svelte.
There are a lot of men with massive muscles. I don’t know how those muscles get that massive. The men must drink protein shakes. I also reckon they don’t have full time jobs. How else can you find the time to do enough weight training?
Men with massive muscles make me think of pillow-shaped people.
I reached up to the top shelf of my closet, where I keep a plastic bag of plastic shopping bags. I needed to re-line the bin in my room.
Suddenly, a shower of plastic confetti rained on me. For about five seconds, I stood still with my hand up-stretched.
Huh?
I pulled the bag of bags down and watched further disintegration happen. Nervously, I reached in to pull out the largest chunk of plastic remains.
I was thinking that insects might have invaded my closet for food. If so, they would be insects with poor taste, forgoing the tasty woollen jumpers on the bottom shelf for plastic bags from Tesco.
However, I soon discounted this theory. Poking around in the bag, it was apparent that only one plastic bag had fallen apart. The others were untouched.
My current theory is that it had been biodegradable plastic bag. I am surprised that I’ve been able to witness the degradation in action.
I held in my two hands a cardboard box of card and paper. As I crossed the street towards the recycling bank, I spotted two tall young blokes heading towards me, also carrying cardboard boxes.
What a coincidence. Must be a clean out weekend.
I knew I would get to the dumpster first and worried about making awkward conversation.
At the dumpster, my hopes for a quick getaway were thwarted. My low profile cardboard box was still too tall for the opening. It was stuck. I mashed it uselessly.
‘Punch it!’ said the first bloke who reached me.
I whacked box with my palm. It slipped a little further in. Encouraged, I jumped up and used the momentum to power my next pound. Jump-Pound! Jump-Pound!
‘Punch it! Punch it!’ the guy urged, grinning.
His friend had caught up with us and admired, ‘I love the violence.’
Fwoomp! The box fell in and this short jumping Chinese girl gave a triumphant, ‘Ha!’
I then scurried away, missing out on seeing how the boys would get their larger boxes into the same bin gap.
I believe I’m still a stair climber of escalators in the Underground. However, I can’t provide the evidence. I now walk to work so there is no Tube behaviour to cite.
I wrote in my last stair climbing post:
‘I’ve finally bitten the bullet and resolved to take the stairs to the fifth floor, where my desk is at work. I did it every day last week. I hope I can keep it up…
‘I’ve avoided taking the stairs because (I know this sounds weird) I felt embarrassed walking past the crowd waiting for the lift. I felt especially embarrassed if someone in that crowd knows I work on the fifth floor because they, too, work on the fifth floor. In that context, being a shown to be a stair climber seems self-righteous and snobbish.’
Since that post, I relapsed and started taking the lift again. I couldn’t get over my embarrassment.
However, there has been a development. For the past 6+ months, I have climbed the stairs to the fifth floor every day. I have discovered a set stairs at the back of the building, hidden away so that I can do my shameful stair climbing in peace.
There are 90 steps all together, enough compensation for a third of a square of dark chocolate.
Today Plinky asks me, ‘What keeps you up at night?’
It’s the mundane, really. These days, I don’t worry about global crises and whether or not I’m making an impact. (Well, I’ve stopped worried about it regularly anyway.)
Still, it’s worry that keeps me up, rather than excitement or ideas. I know people whose brains buzz with such interesting thoughts that they can’t get to sleep. That’s not me. No, I’m afraid my mental resources are lower.
I’ll struggle to sleep if I’m very worried about deadlines. This week I have four deadlines. I began the week with one. Once again, I’ve taken on too much. It’s so easy to overshoot.
I often console myself with ‘At least I’m interested in all this work I’m doing.’ It’s true. I’d rather be stressed and stimulated by the work, than stressed and bored.
Another thing that keeps me up, but which happens infrequently, is when I’ve offended someone. When I think that someone is unhappy with me, I mull over it almost obsessively. It’s all I can do to not throw myself at his or her feet and apologise, even if I’m not sure what I should be apologising for.
Today, I will sleep easy. Today, there is nothing to worry about.
