Category: Navel gazing

A small victory

On By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing, Sport1 Comment

This is me:

Ian Thorpe celebrating a win

I swam TEN LENGTHS today. Actually, I swam four lengths followed by twelve half-lengths, because they closed the deep end of the pool so that some burly men could practise diving with all their clothes on and pretending to rescue each other. They may have been trainee lifeguards, or army cadets, or just burly men who like diving in their clothes. I didn’t ask.

Anyway, I could barely manage two lengths when I started a month ago, so although ten lengths of a 27.5-metre pool is barely a quarter of a kilometre, I am pleased with myself, although you’ll be glad to know that I didn’t actually do a fist pump.

Weirdly, in just four weeks of swimming I have become noticeably (to me and the beloved, possibly not to anyone else) more svelte around the middle, too, so although I never intended to change my eating habits as part of my new healthier 2011, I now have the added benefit that I don’t even feel bad about the two croissants I had for breakfast, or the giant bowl of pasta I plan to eat shortly.

Interestingly, if you Google for pictures of Ian Thorpe, one of the first results is this one:

Ian Thorpe posing naked

Which wasn’t appropriate for my purposes, but I felt like I should share it with you anyway.

You dreamed about the same creep I did!*

On By Laura MorganIn Films, Navel gazing1 Comment

Me and my brother and sister have a game. It’s called “In… what… waaaay” in honour of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, although it doesn’t really deserve a name of its own, because it’s just “guess the movie I’m quoting”. But we’ve seen all of the same movies, so it’s more fun to play than it would be with random strangers.

Anyway, there are some films, Ferris among them, which almost aren’t worth using any more because we all know them so well, which means that if you can come up with a line from one of those films which the other two don’t immediately recognise, you are definitely the winner of that round.

In a separate development, I am really enjoying my new job. Really enjoying it. Put those two facts together and maybe it’s not that strange that last night I dreamed that my actual job was coming up with movie quotes for people to guess. As the alarm went off at seven o’clock this morning, I was gleefully reciting the line “that’s the bedroom…but nothing ever happened in there”* and waiting to see who’d guess it first. I can’t remember who was doing the guessing, but – as when we play it for real – it was all very jolly and uncompetitive.

I’m pleased that my brain chose to associate my new job with playing “In… what… waaaay”. I think it bodes well.

Some of my dreams are interesting and many are definitively not. The most interesting dream I’ve ever had, which I can still conjure up perfectly vividly even though I dreamed it in 1992, is a story for another day. The second-most interesting dream was a nightmare which still sends shivers down my spine, although it’s one of those nightmares which don’t sound scary at all when you describe them. I’ve never been able to interpret either of them in a way that made sense, so perhaps I will write about them here one day and see if someone else can do better.

In general, though, I’m not a very cryptic dreamer: most of what I dream about is a perfectly transparent reference to whatever I’ve mostly been thinking about that day. Here are three examples:

1. When I’d been at the Guardian about eighteen months, I was asked to take on a much more technical job than I’d ever done before. It was still project management, but it involved knowing about servers and back-end systems and other things I didn’t really understand. These were projects on which the website would literally stand or fall. In the days before I started, I dreamed that we were all riding in a giant bus, which was being driven jointly by our Chief Technical Officer and our Systems Administrator.  At a crucial moment,  they asked me to come forward and drive the bus. As I took over the steering wheel, I swerved it violently to one side and crashed the bus into the verge.

2. A couple of years later, I was helping  to run a survey of people’s favourite films by collecting lots of data and sending it to a friend, who was mashing it up and turning it into something interesting. Midway through, I dreamed that the friend in question was a private detective (in the dream he was also Sherlock Holmes, and I was Watson) and he’d called me into his office to help with an assignment. “I need you to gather some information”, he said. “I need you to go out and find every example you can of the anthromorphisation of letterboxes in nineteenth-century English literature.”

(I guess my subconscious added a flourish of its own there.)

3. Shortly after the beloved and I became engaged, I dreamed that we were in a large room full of people we knew, eating a meal. Our table was at one end of the room and we were facing out towards everybody else. Our chairs were eight or nine feet tall, and we’d had to climb ladders to reach them. As the meal ended I looked down and realised that the ladders had been removed, and we had to stay in the chairs, with everybody looking at us.

No need for Freud’s help in interpreting any of those, I don’t think.

(On the other hand, the period in my life when I had the liveliest and most colourful dreams was while I was reading On The Interpretation Of Dreams before I went to sleep every night, which is an activity I strongly recommend if you can’t afford hallucinogens.)

*They’re both easy, but please go ahead and guess the source of each quote in the comments. It will make me very happy.

New year’s resolutions for 2011

On By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing

Phew, it feels good to ditch that red and green Christmas design and get back to the clean lines and no-nonsense layout of Kubrick. At some point over the weekend I might even do the same to the flat, metaphorically, although today I’m quite enjoying our cosy little tree.

Looking back at last year’s resolutions I am delighted to discover that one of them was to get the boiler fixed, which I did, at great expense and accompanied by a hefty dose of pain. I can’t remember now whether we got it fixed because it broke or just because we knew it needed fixing, but either way it’s a mission accomplished. I also did some good things that I wasn’t expecting to do, like leaving a job without another one to go to, learning how to make sausage rolls, and getting engaged.

But there are still things I need to do. Here are some of them.

  1. I will keep up with my writing course and actually finish the story I’ve been working on for the last year. It’s already the longest thing I’ve ever written, so it would be a shame to ditch it now.
  2. I will not become Bridezilla.
  3. I will find a better form of exercise than bloody Pilates.

Is three enough? I think three is enough.

Badminton

On By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing, Sport1 Comment

I like to play badminton. I’m not very good at it, but I’m not so bad that it’s not fun. In my last-but-one job we had a badminton league, where you played the three or four other people in your division over the course of a month, and the best player moved up a group and the worst player moved down a group – unless you were already in the bottom group, which I usually was. Occasionally I would make it into the second-bottom group, which was briefly encouraging, but I always went straight back down again. But that was OK, because it was fun, and anyone good enough to mind that I wasn’t very good usually wouldn’t have to play me again.

Then I left that job, and didn’t play for a while, until I noticed that my new workplace also had a badminton group, which played once a week at the local leisure centre, in casual games of doubles whose members swapped in and out over the course of an hour. So I joined, and suddenly it mattered that I wasn’t very good, because I would find myself paired with much better players – usually, I’m afraid, men – who really wanted to win and who would attempt to improve our chances either by shouting at me angrily every time I didn’t manage to follow their inexplicable instructions to the letter, or by creeping up behind me and sweatily showing me how I should be holding the raquet – both courses of action which, naturally, resulted in my playing much more badly than I had already been doing.

So I stopped going. And then I changed jobs again, and eventually I found yet another workplace badminton group to join, so three weeks ago I went along to Kensington Leisure Centre to try my luck again. This was another free-for-all, with two courts booked over two hours and an ever-rotating cast of players, so I was wary of being variously shouted at or molested by people who wanted me to do something other than whatever I was doing. But it was fine: everyone was very nice, and I had a lot of fun, and I ached for two days afterwards and decided I’d definitely go back. And last week I went back, and met the guy who organises it, and partnered him for a game and swiftly realised I was never going to go again. Not only did he shout and tut and sigh heavily at my lack of skills, he also couldn’t tell the difference between my not being able to carry out his instructions, which I couldn’t, and not being able to understand them, which I could. By the end he was speaking the kind of angry, staccato, exaggeratedly loud English popularly supposed to be how British people talk to foreigners, which somehow didn’t seem to improve my backhand at all. But even worse, and I’m almost as cross with myself for not saying anything about it as I am with him for doing it, every time he wanted me to move to a different part of the court, which was often, he would NUDGE ME IN THE BACKSIDE WITH HIS RAQUET.

I know, I should have told him off. I was just so surprised, and so already bowed down with the knowledge of my complete and perfect failure, that I somehow didn’t manage it. But whatever, I’m not going back, so it doesn’t really matter.

But what does matter is that, as I said when we began this conversation (doesn’t it seem a long time ago?), I really like playing badminton. And I feel as though it ought to be possible for me to play it in an environment where I am not told off or sexually harassed on account of not being very good; ideally against someone who, like me, is there for fun rather than because they really want to win, and who won’t mind that I am a bit shit and sometimes need to stop and have a rest. So in a first for gladallover this is a heartfelt appeal: if you are in London and are that person and would like to play badminton with me, please let me know.  But I ought to warn you, I’m a bit shit.

Glasses

On By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing

I‘ve got glasses. I have wanted to wear glasses since I was a teenager (I used to cheat and wear a pair with plain glass in), so I was pleased to find out a month ago that I actually needed them.

I’m only supposed to use them when I’m concentrating on a screen, so I wear them when I’m at my desk or looking at the internet at home, but not for meetings or reading. Except that I really like wearing them, and so I find myself leaving them on when I don’t need to, like when I’m on the phone, or when I’m cooking (last night, I opened the oven while I was wearing them. Don’t do this).

I can’t work out quite why I like wearing them so much. It’s not that I can see better in them – they stop me from getting headaches rather than noticeably improving my vision. It’s more like a layer of protection; something that insulates me from the real world. Putting them on is like putting on my dressing gown.

So that’s kind of weird. And I half-worry that by wearing them too much I’m letting my eyes get lazy and hastening the day when I will actually need to wear glasses in order to see things, except that now I write that down even I can tell that it sounds kind of silly. Maybe I should write down everything I worry about, so I can see how silly it is. Only then – well, we’d be here forever, and I don’t know about you but I’ve got Stuff To Do.

Blossom

On By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing, Reasons to be cheerful

As I left home this morning – not really looking where I was going, my head full of work and the Today programme – I was stopped in my tracks (not literally, I’m not a nutter) by the sight of a blossom tree in full bloom opposite my estate, rejoicing in full sun against an icy-blue London sky. There’s something about blossom, isn’t there? It feels like nostalgia, but I don’t think it is, because it’s felt like nostalgia for as long as I can remember.

I was quite a serious child; my thoughts weighed down by the solemn duties of being the eldest, the complexities of assimilation from my middle-class home into the more robust environment of a Penge primary school, and the ceaseless quest for clandestine chocolate-eating opportunities. So some of my most distinct childhood memories aren’t rooted in the moment, but in the escape from the moment: those few seconds where the world goes away and you feel you’re somewhere else entirely, somewhere all your own. That’s where blossom took me then, and it’s where it takes me now. Snow makes me giddy, sunshine makes me happy, autumn leaves make me wistful and happy at the same time. But seeing blossom is as close as I can imagine to a religious experience.

It’s something about transience, I suppose. The most beautiful things are the ones that don’t last, which is why I’m happier looking at a sunset or a rainbow than I am a painting (because if you’re looking at a painting, how do you know when it’s time to stop? – no, I don’t know why I did an art history degree either).

But it’s also aesthetic. I just can’t think of anything prettier than a blossoming tree. So for all my moaning about the cold winter, I’m still glad to live in a country where the weather changes with the seasons, because sometimes, nothing in the world could make me happier than this:

Taking up space

On By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing

Further to last week’s confession that I feel more important when I weigh more, I noticed an article in this morning’s Metro which says that taller women earn more money. I wonder if there’s something about taking up more of the room that makes women more likely to be assertive? It’s obviously not a hard-and-fast rule (my aunt, who is four feet nine and a third, is very assertive), but there might be something to it nonetheless. And in my experience a lack of assertiveness is the single biggest reason women don’t do as well professionally as they might – a fact which comes to mind as I mournfully regard the number of women (one) working at management level in my department.

Although it is all about context. I might feel more important in London when I weigh half a stone more, but were I to make my living in Hollywood, where the most important women are generally the tiniest ones, I expect I’d look at it differently. Perhaps I will add “Be glad you don’t work in Hollywood” to my morning mantra. Not that I have a morning mantra. I’m not some freaking hippy.

Belly

On By Laura MorganIn Books, Navel gazing

I am losing weight. I think it’s because now that it’s light on my commute, I am walking to and from Brixton tube every day rather than taking the bus. It’s barely a mile away, but I suppose it adds up.

Anyway, looking at myself sideways-on in the mirror this morning (I do this a lot; I am pretty certain I know what I look like from every angle better than anyone else, with the possible exception of the beloved), I noticed that the curve of my belly has shrunk, and that unless I slump a bit, it doesn’t really stick out any more.

Well, that’s OK: I am officially overweight anyway (though I think I look fine), so it doesn’t matter if I lose a few pounds. And yet, I am a bit sad about my belly not being curvy any more.  Not as sad as I would be if my bum shrank, but close.

In my women’s group a few months ago we talked about weight and size and body image, having first read Fat Is A Feminist Issue and Lessons From The Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting And Declare A Truce With Your Body. The subsequent discussion was really interesting and raised all sorts of questions I hadn’t thought about before, including my own realisation that when I am thin, I assume nobody is going to take me seriously, and when I am fatter, I think I seem more important and worthy of consideration. At the time I wasn’t sure what that was about, but on reflection I think it might just be that when I put on weight I wear more sensible clothes, so I feel like a grown-up.

So maybe I should just dress more sensibly all the time! Except that without my miniskirts and heels I wouldn’t feel like me. There was a time in my life when I did dress sensibly, because I thought I needed to be a sensible person – and I hated it (it passed). It’s a tricky one, which I shall put aside for consideration another day, when I don’t have lots of work to do. Meanwhile, the sun is shining and I may celebrate the discovery that I’m not going to go overdrawn this month with the purchase of an unwisely revealing summer dress.

Moving on

On By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing

I was refused entry to a club on Saturday night. A party of six of us made the slightly booze-influenced decision that we’d go to G-A-Y at Heaven to see Jedward perform there. Yes, I know, but it sounded like fun at the time, and it was still early, and why not?

Well, we got there and the two women in our group were turned away by the female bouncer. “She can’t come in, she’s drunk”, she said as she herded my companion down the “rejects” funnel. Then she looked at me. “And you too.” I didn’t feel drunk. “What have I done?”, I said. “I’m not drunk!”. (I was, a bit.) “You’re with her”, she explained, as she sent me down the same path.

The four men in our party had been allowed in, but, gentlemen that they are, they left with us after we were turned away. But the whole experience was absolutely mortifying, and in trying to work out why I felt so humiliated I realised that I don’t think we were turned away for being drunk, or even for being women, which was what we decided at the time: I think we were turned away for being too old and too uncool for G-A-Y at Heaven, and though I know in my heart of hearts that I am too old and too uncool (and, yes, possibly too female) for G-A-Y at Heaven, it’s distressing to have it publicly confirmed.

So here’s my new-month’s resolution: from now on, I will only frequent pubs for grown-ups, where nobody assesses my suitability on the way in, and I’m allowed to hang on to my bottled water all evening. Take that, G-A-Y at Heaven!

Another post about my hair

On By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing

So I went to see Koto the genius hairdresser yesterday, and she took one look at the grey and said “needs colouring”. I explained that I had stopped dyeing it because it looks so awful when the grey grows back through at the roots, and she said “that’s because you’re dyeing it the wrong colour. You need to blend in the grey, not hide it.”

Since she is a genius, I told her to do whatever she liked, and as always she was completely right. She gave me blonde highlights, which have softened the overall effect by diminishing the contrast between the dark hair and the grey. Why this is so clever, apart from the fact that I love the way it looks, is that when the roots grow through they will be darker, and dark roots on fair hair is a much more acceptable look than grey roots on dark hair. Even better, the greyer it goes the less it will need dyeing, which is the opposite of what happens when you try to hide the grey and keep the original colour.

The grey is all still there, it just looks nice now, and less like a mad witch’s hair.

See:

Excuse the severe expression. Taking the photo was rather a complicated manoeuvre.