2024 Round Up: Health

I mentioned in the summer that my over-40s health check identified that I was diabetic. I had a sugar number of 61 (it was explained to me what this meant but I didn't really understand, only that the healthy range is under 42). 

Father Hand had diabetes, diagnosed at a similar time IIRC, as do both his brothers and his dad, so there was no surprise element to this diagnosis. However, given that he died at the start of this year and since, prior to that, Sib and I regularly lamented the fact that he never tried to manage it, so that it progressed to insulin injections, I did think that perhaps I should do something about it. 

Hence, the health kick. The gym was already a habit and not particularly for size reasons but more because it's good for my mental state and helps keeps me fitter for skiing. To this, I added a calorie-tracking app from the start of September. I have been using Nutracheck which is a handy one because it has a barcode scanning section that pops up a picture of the food you've scanned. It's a British one so it knows all the supermarket own labels. It's still not ideal for someone like me, who tends to eat mainly foods made from ingredients rather than pre-prepared food, but I can build recipes in there and sometimes I just track the main calorie sources in a meal, rather than all the veggies etc. 

I also put a massive fruit bowl on my desk at work and stocked it weekly. I pretty much gave up my wanders down the road for a coffee and an olive stick (always two olive sticks, truth be told) - this has happened maybe five times since the start of the year and the olive stick is always a single and the coffee is often black now. 

So, by the time my next blood test rolled around, I'd lost 13kg, which rose to 15kg by the time Christmas came along. I was in the museum last week when the nurse rang me with my results. She told me I was an inspiration, which was a lovely thing to hear. My sugar number was down to 45, she said, in the pre-diabetic range. She told me to take Christmas off (I have enthusiastically followed this advice), crack on in January and come back in three months, and if the number is under 42 they will take it off my diagnosis. 

Isn't this great news?! I realise my health isn't why most of you turn up to read this, it's quite dull, but since I am my most enthusiastic reader, I thought I would share the news, as a reminder of how pleased I was that I was successful. I'd had two dreams about the sugar number by the time she rang; one had it at 38 and the other at 72, so it is a relief that it was closer to the lower number. 

Other side benefits include going down about a dress size and a half; feeling the cold; having a resting heart rate now in the 60s for the first time since I started tracking it, eight years ago; better sleep; inexplicably, food tasting better. The last time I remember being this weight was in 2010. 

Naturally, I'm only part-way there. Having proved that being a woman in her 40s is not the barrier to weight loss everybody says it is (at least, it's not when you weigh as much as me), I'd like to continue. Ideally, I will lose another 20kg. Even writing that down makes me come over all cynical, tbf. But that is the goal. That would get me down to my wedding weight. 

Also, gym, because I noted in an early weeknote a reference to a weight I could lift and it pleased me that the number has gone up over the year. 

So at the moment, for reps, I can do 45kg as a bench press, deadlift 80kg, leg press 200kg and assisted pull up at 70kg. I can force myself through a 20 minute jog-walk on the treadmill although I find this very dull, looking forward to some more light in the world so I can start running outside. 

Here endeth the very self-indulgent post about my weight and health. I very much hope I can revisit this topic with positive news at some point next year. 

Gym selfie to remind us all - there are no bad angles. Also yes I am the person who takes selfies in the gym now. This was after my first attempt at running in many years and I was both horrified and impressed that I survived. 

2024 Round Up: Reads

A year in which I just surpassed the number of books I read last year. I was well ahead of myself after the summer holidays, but then that all stopped when I had to start reading for the Masters. I could have added a large number of academic articles and books about assessment to this list, but I don't think anybody is going to be superkeen to read about the finer points of validity. 

Fiction

The Vanishing Witch - Karen Maitland - I fear I might have run out of Maitland books to read now. They are deliciously creepy. 

The Ottoman Secret - Raymond Khoury - love a bit of Ottomans but when I got it home from the library and realised it had a commendation from Lee Childs, I nearly took it back - not my sort of thing. But it was pretty good. I do like a counter-factual. 

An Inspector Calls - J.B.Priestley - we dressed as characters from this for World Book Day so I thought I'd better read it. Meh. 

Lone Women - Victor LaValle - not at all what I was expecting but very enjoyable. Horror set on the American plains. 

Copper Sun - Sharon M Draper - teen fiction about American slavery. Jarring because the ending is not miserable and therefore feels ahistorical. But it is for teens, I guess. 

Still Life - Sarah Winman - this took me a while (followers of my weeknotes might recall) but once I got going I loved it. I still think about these characters and it gives me a strong yearning to see 1950s Florence. 

Stormbird - Conn Igulden - I enjoyed this more than I expected to. It was given to me by a tutee way back in 2015 and was packed into a crate of books I brought from my last job, that still languish in the garage, 8 years later. I picked it out and thought I'd better read it or get rid. It was a good story of the early reign of Henry VI but it wasn't exactly gripping - I started reading it in May and put it down numerous times to read other things. Still, Igulden has written a lot of historical fiction so it is good to find a new author to work through. 

Wild - Cheryl Strayed - a reread of this one, I really like it. I know it's not fiction but it didn't quite fit on the other list. I've visited a fair few of the places on the PCT and the reread just makes me want to pack a bunch of stuff and give it a go. I'm not kidding myself that I'd make it even more than two days, but it is a nice dream. 

The Family from One End Street - Eve Garnett - a childhood book I wanted to reread. I remembered a section of it where the oldest daughter irons a green silk petticoat and shrinks it but for the longest time, that was all I could recall. Eventually the internet caught up and I was able to find the name of it through searching the story I remembered. 

An Instance of the Fingerpost - Iain Pears - this took me a while but I really liked how the story is expanded in each subsequent retelling. In the final section, there's some consideration of how history is told with a strong nod towards Thucydides, that made me think - if I was cleverer, would I recognise that each section is told in a different historical methodology? 

Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfield - another childhood book I powered through in a few hours. Then Facebook started serving me ads for Ballet Shoes on stage this autumn. I really do find this level of knowledge about my life pretty creepy. 

The Wolf Den - Elodie Harper

The House with the Golden Door - Elodie Harper

The Temple of Fortuna - Elodie Harper - these three make up the Wolf Den trilogy which is set in Pompeii in the years leading up to and immediately following the 79 eruption. It was pretty atmospheric to read them with a view of Vesuvius. 

Weyward - Emilia Hart - I read this in a day, on my way home from Amalfi, and I really enjoyed it. Three lives and how they intertwine. I went back to bits of it to reread in the subsequent days. 

Act of Oblivion - Robert Harris - Harris never misses for me but it was particularly interesting reading this shortly after the Fingerpost book, because both are set after the Restoration. There was some character overlap. I've struggled a bit with a paucity of 17th century contextual knowledge in my A-level teaching, so these books are really helpful - this one particularly provided some good insight into why the relationship between England and its colonies was already a bit stale even in the 1660s. 

House of Odysseus - Claire North - Ithaca was one of my favourite books of 2023 so I was delighted to find it was the first in a trilogy. I haven't got more than two chapters into it yet, though. 

Salt to the Sea - Ruta Sepetys - the story of a group involved in a real-life naval disaster in the Baltic, towards the end of WW2, told from four different points of view. I found the jump in narrator a little frustrating at times, as the chapters were sometimes incredibly brief, but it was a good story. 

A Little Princess - France Hodgson Burnett - a comfort read when I had toothache. I got through it in one evening. I think it's interesting to return to these books now that I know more about the history of the time in which they're set. A dashing young soldier, a diamond mine, brain fever, exoticism from India, etc. 

A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles - there is so much to love about this book. It is taking me a long time to read it but I really dote on the writing, sometimes rereading pages just because I think it's so beautifully phrased. I had it from the library and then had to buy it on my Kindle because I couldn't read it quick enough. 

Non-fiction

The Witness Wore Read - Rebecca Musser - started off the year with a religious cult memoir. Mormon ones always make me think of the series Big Love and this makes me want to watch it again. 

Fearing the Black Body - Sabrina Strings - quite high brow but an interesting glimpse into the way that what is desirable about someone else's body changed as a result of empire and slavery. 

How the Word is Passed - Clint Smith - I think this was the best audiobook I listened to all year. I bought it in hard copy afterwards. If you pick one from my list, make it this one. 

Prisoners of Geography - Tim Marshall - I wasn't really a fan. Some good bits, some bits I didn't really agree with. I guess it is quite old now. 

Uncultured - Daniella Mestyanek Young - I'm running out of books about women escaping from cults (my favourite genre of audiobook) so was pleased to come across this one. She narrates, too. I love those in particular. 

Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain - a bit like listening in to some drunk guy's conversations in a pub. But an interesting drunk man with a lot of good stories to tell. 

Ultra-Processed People - Chris van Tulleken - not preachy at all, in my opinion (though a colleague saw this in my email sig and told me she did not agree). Just common sense and a good advice. 

Leaders Eat Last - Simon Sinek - I should have known better, really - I can't really be doing with these silicon valley self-congratulatory sermons, but since this stuff has leaked quite heavily into educational leadership, it is probably better to read what your leaders are reading, so you know what to expect. It was OK. It sort of fitted what I thought about leadership anyway. 

I will say that I blame Sinek entirely for the current craze, at conferences, for starting keynotes or workshops with an extended explanation of the rationale. Yes, fine, start with why, yes, Sinek is a genius, yes yes yes. But in education, we all know the why already. We are already convinced. That's why we work long hours for meagre pay. Just hurry up and get to the what and how, it's what I came for. 

Exam Nation - Sammy Wright - I thought this would be more about exams so I listened to it in the run up to my first uni week. It was a bit broader than that. He was an engaging reader of his own work and there are many good anecdotes in this book.

Our Island Stories - Corinne Fowler - I've been familiar with Corinne's work for a long time as her interests bump up against mine in the teaching world. This is a real treat. She narrates stories about different areas of the country and their connection to empire - she walked around each one with someone of note, so the audiobook contains clips of her voice recordings of those walks, which is a nice touch. Not finished yet, I am savouring it. 

Fave Friday

Five favourite things I saw in London

We broke up on Wednesday, so I made myself some nice plans in London for Thursday and Friday. When it came to it, I was somewhat overwhelmed by how many nice plans I made, but in the end I found the trip invigorating rather than exhausting - so much so that I wrote this post on my phone on the coach home, after almost a month of not being able to muster the energy to update. 

The lights were, of course, beautiful. London seems to have a thing about doing big decorated doorways that I haven't noticed before and I appreciated that a lot too. I stayed near Kensington Palace and I'm pretty sure I saw the king driving past me - at least, if it wasn't him, it was somebody important enough to warrant 8 police motorcyclists blowing whistles and an accompanying 4x4. And yet these didn't even make it into my top 5, so crammed was my 30 hour stay!

1. The Medieval Women exhibition at the British Library

This one is called 'Medieval women in their own words' and focuses specifically on works that were created by or about women, on the basis that much of this is lost or ignored. It was a very interesting walk around and, even though it is not very large, I still spent the best part of two hours reading through everything. It never ceases to amaze me how long the middle ages went on for - this exhibition covered all the way up to Margaret of Anjou. I was also pleased that there seemed to have been an effort made to include women from Wales and Scotland, as well as England.

Illustrated women's herbal. There was a lot about medicine. 

2. The Mughals exhibition at the V&A

This exhibition covered the golden age of the Mughals, from around the mid-16th century until the early 18th century, which coincides nicely with what I teach at A-level, coincidentally. There were some beautiful examples of calligraphy, jewels and jewellery, glassware and textiles, such as this huge cotton drugget that would have been laid on the floors of the palaces in the summer. 

A lot of this was simply marvellous to behold and I particularly liked the many examples of flower motifs and tiny birds included in a lot of the calligraphy. However, it did make me feel liberal unease. Many of the exhibits, such as highly illustrated texts from the early 17th century, had notes on them such as, 'Donated by Miss Constance Smith, 1921' (I made that name up) or similar. How did a Miss Smith end up with such a priceless artefact, I wondered. Granted, I did not read every word of the exhibit, but there didn't seem to be any effort from the V&A to explain how any of these objects had come to be in their collection. Maybe that would be too much to expect, but it did nibble at my conscience, a bit. 

3. Burhan and Stewart Lee

I met Burhan in 1999 when we were both working the same miserable summer job for the exam board. I see him too rarely (the last time being in 2019) for somebody that I get on with so well. We went for Korean food (excellent restaurant, plus, when I told the waitress in somewhat panicked tones that my phone was about to die, she took it from me without any further questions and charged it, thus saving me from an hour's sad walk back to my hotel later in the evening) and then to see Stewart Lee at Leicester Square. Lee was extremely funny, as I had expected. I booked those tickets when the clips of him ragging on Russell Brand resurfaced over the summer, something he referenced in the show. 

4. My hairdresser

I think I must be approaching 15 years with the same hairdresser, who now occupies a chair at a salon on Park Lane. This makes me feel extra fancy, though tbf I don't really rate the salon. His cuts are second to none, though, and somehow he manages to blow dry my hair so that the grey falls evenly, as opposed to in two semi-transparent stripes. A true artiste and worth every penny. 

5. Two dog owners with their golden retriever in Hyde Park. Said golden retriever was the proudest doggo ever, having caught (or hopefully picked up already dead) a bird. He was studiously ignoring his owners' every exhortation to drop the bird. They had all the treats out, but he was staring into the middle distance with an inscrutable expression that anybody who has interacted with teenagers would recognise instantly as a clear sign that a change of tack is required to move the situation forward. I commiserated with them. 'He had a parakeet last month,' said the man, ruefully. 

I also observed a tourist (I assume) trying to get a couple of well-fed squirrels, spread eagled upside down on a tree trunk, to eat out of his palm while his girlfriend filmed him. I wanted to stick around until he got bitten, but I had to get to my hair appointment. 

2024 Weeknote 47

November has been something of a tricky month, hence my radio silence. I came back from half term with a lingering and a toothache, which absorbed two rounds of antibiotics and now no longer hurts, but there is still a swelling and I'm therefore left with a low-level persistent nagging concern that it's going to resurge at the worst possible time, such as on Christmas Eve or the plane I'll be taking to Kazakhstan for new year. 

Toothache is so debilitating. One evening I just sat in bed from getting home at 6pm, reading The Little Princess in the dark on my Kindle. Other evenings were not quite as dismal but I was not capable of doing anything at all, really. I have to shout out to my amazing dentist, Bianca, who did a big filling repair in the summer that I thought was the cause of the pain. She saw me quickly, gave me antibiotics and insisted I come back in for another appointment before the weekend, just in case there was any pain, then prescribed more antibiotics remotely and followed up with a phone appointment. She would not charge me for any of these appointments because the filling is guaranteed for a year, even though the x-ray suggested that the infection was on an adjacent tooth. 

I think I should probably go back in for the root canal she suggested, to be on the safe side, but I am full of overwhelm at the moment and I just can't envisage how I would fit it in over the next five weeks. 

I spent last week in Oxford, which was dreamy. It was mostly bitterly cold and snowed overnight on Monday night - I thought I had packed enough warm things but it turned out, I had not, so the week was chilly. My coursemates are all really lovely and we had a few dinners together in college. I hadn't quite managed all the reading, on account of the tooth, but I had definitely done enough to get the most out of the lectures. Some of it is a bit over my head. I'm not sure how I am going to manage the essay by Jan 7th, but I guess we will just see how that pans out. 

Really, I think I am worrying too much. I do have other things to do, namely my job (obvs) and also writing the next round of exam papers, but my job has been doing a good job of staying within work hours so far this year and I am almost done with my exam papers, just three more Q markschemes to write, which I might finish today. It's worrying me because they haven't sent out a schedule yet, in spite of contracting us in July, so I can't get any sense of when the pinch points are going to be. Also I am just counting available weekend days as possible essay-writing time when, realistically, I can work on it some weekday evenings as well. I'm sure it will be OK. It's just been a while since anybody gave me an essay title that I just didn't know how to answer. This happened all the time as an undergrad and rational me knows that I just need to read until something coalesces. 

What else has been going on over the past three weeks? I have been listening to Exam Nation by Sammy Wright, which is very funny and a nice foil for the heavier academic course reading. I've been very slowly reading A Gentleman In Moscow, which is truly delightful - one day this past week, I ran a bath and lay in it for 40 minutes reading before lectures started. I love a morning bath. The room I've booked for all the college weeks is cheap because the bathroom is on a different floor, rather than being en suite, but as a result it contains a bath, as well as the main boiler for the whole house, so it is really warm and not one of those dingy plastic cube bathrooms beloved of university accommodation. So, on Wednesday when we finished early, I walked to Lush and got myself a bath bomb. Next time, I will go prepared. 

I've been a bit neglectful of the gym. I am currently sitting in my gym clothes, which I put on as soon as I got up in the morning, but don't seem to be any closer to getting to the gym. The weather is howling today. Yesterday, on a whim, I went to Easy Runner in Bristol and had myself fitted for some new running trainers. I used to do running and I really enjoyed it; now the elliptical has started to get a bit easy, I thought I should graduate to a treadmill. I also really wished that I could go for a jog around the park in Oxford, but was stymied by my lack of suitable footwear. Now I have trainers. I need to go test them for a longer run on a treadmill, though. 

In spite of this, however, and all the toothy troubles and multiple colds (I caught another one last weekend, though it abated quickly), weight loss still seems to have been occurring, much to my delight. I had a little preview on the scale yesterday morning to check that the enthusiastic reintroduction of desserts into my diet whilst in Oxford had not 'ruined everything' and was pleasantly surprised to see that it had not; if that number holds until tomorrow (I do usually gain a little weight over the weekend, hence my usual practice being weighing just once a week on Mondays, but if it does...) then I will be 29lbs down since the start of the new school year. I tried on my old favourite ski trousers yesterday and they are the most comfortable they've ever been. I remember taking them on the school trip in 2020 and being unable to get the poppers to meet, let alone close. 

In fact, there are lots of clothes I can now wear that have not seen daylight for many years. If I thought I had a lot of clothes before, we are now reaching an embarrassing opulence of riches. 

What else, hmm hmm. My friend Kaff came over last Saturday for our annual Strictly and Chinese night. She told me about my old friend Tutt's wedding blessing, and how Tutt essentially seemed to make Kaff her bridesmaid without actually asking or telling her until the last minute. We haven't spoken in a number of years. I'm still sad at the loss of the friendship, but happy she's happily married now. 

I travelled to Oxford last Sunday in the company of my friends Jo and Kath, so that we could visit the Victorian Christmas market there. Mulled cider, chestnuts, strange crafts you only ever see at Christmas stalls. We ate a lovely pie in an old pub. We browsed the horror section of the Blackwells. A very lovely day out. 

I'm delighted at the return of Wolf Hall, love a bit of Rylance-as-Cromwell, and we've binge watched both series of Everyone Else Burns, which was very enjoyable. Second series better than the first, I think - I just think Sian Clifford is hilarious, which gave it the edge. 

I'll end with a snowy autumn tree picture from Oxford. I really can't put off going to the gym any longer.

2024 Weeknote 44

I spent most of this week away from home. I was in Oxford Sun-Wed and then caught the train to London Marylebone (a new experience) and then on to Kingston to see the smalls. We went trick or treating - a new experience for me - and I took Lara to the park for a bit to give SIB in law some time for a rehearsal she needed to go to. The nephew is getting lots of words now he is nearly 2 and, at one point, when Lara was counting up all her sweets after the trick or treating, she said 12 and he said 13. SIL and I looked at each other in surprise, I gather being able to count that high when one is not quite 2 is quite an achievement. 

In Oxford, I spent most of my time in the education library, on Tuesday pulling a 9-6 stint in there with just a brief break for lunch. I got quite a lot of reading done but, wow, some of those chapters are long. I spent most of Monday ploughing through one and even took the book away with me to my college library (open 24 hours, dreamy) so I could finish it. I had to skip about 10 pages in the middle that were full of the kinds of theoretical statistical equations I neither understand nor care to, but I got it done. I returned the book to its shelf happily the next morning, got myself settled and then checked the next book on my reading list. It was...the same book. Sigh. Happily the second chapter was less boring, though no shorter. 

On Wednesday, I ventured into the famous divinity library, part of which starred as the library in the Harry Potter films. I went and had a quick wander but there's no water allowed in that section and all the books are alarmed, so I gave it a swerve and settled for a view of the Radcliffe Camera (the iconic round one) instead. 

I took myself to a nice lunch at the Opera Cafe (site of the cardamom bun I enjoyed so much last time), to Barefoot bakery for coffee (also purveyors of cardamom buns though not quite as good; their pumpkin cupcake was top notch, though) and a couple of very nice early walks, once around University Parks and along the river Cherwell, the other to Port Meadow to see the river Thames. Autumn is really beautifully dressed around there and I enjoyed being near the water and having a tramp around. I had dinner at my college twice and even, the second time, spoke to some other people dining there. It was nice to feel part of Oxford, briefly, and I'm looking forward to returning in a couple of weeks. 

Unfortunately, the end of the week was marred by a toothache, a cough and some really aggressive histamines that kept me sneezing and miserable so constantly that I rebelled and bought an air purifier. Whether it's dust, cat fur or leaf mould, it is really quite severe, but the gadget seems to have helped. The toothache was so bad on Friday that I thought I'd never sleep, but happily I did and it has eased off to the occasional dull rumble. Still, I will be ringing for an emergency appointment tomorrow morning. It's a big filling replacement I had done in August and it just never really settled properly. Toothache is the worst. 

Some autumn niceness to distract me. 

2024 Weeknote 43

I have trudged my way all the way to half term. Deep joy. As usual, this is the longest term and the most sought holiday. Eight weeks is a lot. I actually had a big joy moment this week when I realised next term is only 6 and a half weeks, not 7 and a half as I had thought. 

I've mostly just kept my head down and kept going. I restarted Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys, which is teen fiction and therefore doable in the last week of term. The chapters are all very short which is a bit irritating but, as it turns out, perfect for such a stage of exhaustion. Some uni reading was also done and I bashed out one of the formative assessments I have to submit by 4th Nov. I'm off to Oxford in an hour so this week will be one of much nerding. 

I carried out the usual end of term ritual of going to the good bakery near the station for a pastry and coffee before work on Friday. I had cogitated all week about what pastry I would get, because usually I just get two or three and eat them through the day, hence why I'm on this diet in the first place. I settled on a pain au raisin but then, as I was ordering the pastries for colleagues, a little plate of butternut squash, feta, walnut and parmesan pastries slid onto the counter in front of me. Irresistible. No regrets from me at all. Unfortunately I did then buy the pain au raisin for later AND a millionaires shortbread, but spread them out through the day and will learn from this next time. Order. In. Advance. 

Off I go to be a student again, now. 

2024 Weeknote 42

I can't believe there are only 10 weeks left of this year. It is true that time does seem to pass more quickly as you get older, yet I've spent a lot of time thinking about years gone past this week, for various reasons, and everything feels like it was so very long ago now. Like, it's three years since I had covid. That is the same as the whole time it took me to get my history degree. 

Cue existential worrying about: what have I actually done with the past three years? But there are lots of things so, meh. 

This week has been a smooth one. The meeting I was meant to be at on Monday was abandoned, early in the day but too late to cancel the cover school had bought in for me, so I spent the day at home, doing reading for my Masters. I got through so much that I smugly ignored the reading for the rest of the week so I am now behind again. I start the course in 4 weeks - I matriculated in absentia (love using this phrase) on Friday - so I have a bit of time left. Next Sunday, I'm going to Oxford for three nights to get some library time in. And also to eat a cardamom bun from the amazing bakery I found when I went to Oxford in 2022 - see, I have definitely used the past three years gainfully. 

School was schooling. Meetings were had, classes were taught. I found myself getting irritated by the number of people who just want to talk to me or ask me questions when I'm trying to work, but I think this must be a symptom of it being close to half term. This time last year, half term had already begun. 

I went to a glow swim at the quarry after parents evening on Thursday. I took a new colleague from work (my replacement) who had swum there before but not in the dark, and my friend Rachael. It was 15 degrees, which is the temperature at which I eschew my wetsuit in the spring, so I waded right in in my swimsuit, full of bravado. It was quite chilly. We made it round OK but then, as we were ready to leave, it became clear that Rachael was not OK and special measures had to be put in place (another hot tea with sugar in it, sitting in a car with all the blowers going for 10 minutes) before she was OK to drive home. A sobering experience. I will be wearing my wetsuit next time. 

I had a very enlightening chat with the diabetes nurse at my local surgery, who praised me for my weight loss and told me that she approved of my plan to keep on with it, leave off the meds for now and have another blood test in December. It's not that I think I will be in remission by then (she said I might be, which was a surprise) but if I have made a start on reversing the sugar number, then I know this will encourage me to carry on with my weight loss plan. This week I wore a skirt I have never worn before, because it has never been comfortable enough. It's been in my wardrobe for maybe 8 years. Happy days. 

I also continue to enjoy the gym quite a lot and managed to spend over 90 minutes in there yesterday, though I did also manage to drop a 10kg weight plate on my foot, on its edge, so now I've got two black toes. Can confirm bare feet trainers really do offer the same foot protection you would expect from their name. Today, I went back to do a bit of cardio and thought I would try my nemesis, the stair-climber, again for the first time since the summer. On my last attempt I managed 11 minutes of a 14 minute programme and my heart rate was in the high 140s the whole time. Today, I did the whole 14 minutes and my heart rate didn't pass 140. This is both comforting (yey, healthier heart) and depressing (boo, I have to climb stairs faster to progress from here). 

I do realise people who talk about their diet and exercise regimes are sinfully boring but this is my blog, you know. I did eat a huge mound of hash browns covered in cheese and BBQ beef yesterday at knitting group, so it's not all leaves of lettuce. 

I continued to read The Gentleman of Moscow, very slowly, and then the library wanted it back and I couldn't renew it because so many other people want it. This explains why the copy was so pristine - I'd wager hardly anybody has managed to read the whole thing within a 3 week loan window. I bought it for my Kindle instead. 

I've been watching, in small pieces, Who Killed the KLF? which is a documentary I've had recorded for some time. It's all very interesting and I definitely feel like I get the whole thing better now I am coming into my full middle-aged cynicism and general rage. 

I've started knitting a baby jumper, the usual garter stitch one, for an ex-student. I never taught her but I did take her skiing, and she has built quite the myth in her head about the amount of interaction we had while she was a student, but she was a really nice kid who had a pretty awful home life and I was delighted when she messaged on Twitter in May to say she was expecting. I contacted her at the start of the month to ask if I could send her a gift, intending to pick up a pack of babygros, but when she replied this week she said she hasn't been doing so well, struggling with her own family a bit, so I decided I would knit her something instead. I picked out a peachy-orange shade of Smoothie I had in my stash but, in the jumper, it is decidedly pink (or salmon, as two people separately identified it at knitting group yesterday) so I might have to make another one in blue and wait to see what she gives birth to. Luckily it is a mega-quick knit. I've done the back and am already halfway up the front. 

I'd then like to knit up the Joe's Toes slipper kit I bought at Wonderwool in April (I never did post about my haul, something else to add to the to-do list) so I have a nice slipper to wear while I'm away in Oxford. I wonder how many things I can justify for 'while I'm in Oxford'. I've already got a new dressing gown and today I ordered a new backpack, for all my notebooks and pens. I am eyeing up pyjamas and considering a new fountain pen. 

All this is just a distraction from the reading, of course.