Cheap Thrills

I'm going to confess that one of my secret pleasures is, wait for it...
going grocery shopping.

This may surprise you, given that I spend a good smack of time complaining about having to do it and putting it off until even the suspicious canned herrings have been incorporated into something*,
but I LOVE shopping.

I have to do the grocery shopping alone. Going with someone hurries me up, stops me meandering up and down the aisles, pausing now and then to marvel over some incredible product I'd never known existed. (It also stops me buying stuff I don't really need, like the 6-pack of votive candles or the plastic Christmas wreath with imitation holly and incorporated lights I only just managed to escape without this morning.)

I like to make a considered choice. I may be a sucker for shiny things, but I like to look beyond packaging, consult ingredient lists and places of manufacture and compare quantities and prices. I love picking out fresh(ish) fruit and stopping to smell newly-baked bread. All in all, humble reader, it takes me AGES to get it done. But it's a form of weekly meditation. I get to slow down, lose myself in my own thoughts as I amble along with my trolley (always the one which seems to have been newly released from some halfway house for wayward trollies). I like the nodding culture that develops between fellow slow-shoppers, the ones travelling in the opposite direction who you meet once an aisle and can't help grinning at. Hello again, I'm still here too. I see that now you have some free-range eggs and you went with pineapple juice in the end. Sound choice. I love driving home in a car that smells of new things, full bottles and bananas and milk straight from the fridge, and tucked safely away in their respective green bags.

I like shopping : )

* ..tasted, and given to the cat, who won't eat it either...

Forgive me for excluding you for a moment...

Dear Anika,

Sorry for sending you so many bloody text messages this afternoon when you were trying to work!

Much love,

Trouty

And to bring you all back again...

Dear Everyone Else,

I'm sorry for NOT sending you lots of text messages while you were trying to work this afternoon!

Also much love,

Trouty

Forget the one where he thrashes me at tennis.

This is a gentler dream. His hand supports the small of my back, my head is resting on his shoulder. The fingers entwined with mine are cool and soft. We dance slowly. Though in life I could only ever waltz in one direction (to meet the opposing wall) here we move so closely together that I hardly seem to have legs to move. I could whirl like this forever. But, alas, I am woken too soon in the primeval sunlight by the sadistic constructionists (how long does it take to build a bloody fence?) and their diamond-encrusted jackhammer to find Ziggy curled up on my spine, one eye open as I stir in case breakfast is imminent.

This Week's Band Name

Is 'Bar in Zernobyl' .

After a very unfortunate captioning mishearing that made it all the way to DVD.
(Not mine, for once, thank God!)

The subtitle, should you be unfortunate enough to come across it, reads:
We caught him in a bar in Zernobyl.

Where the hell is Zernobyl, you ask?
The subtitle SHOULD have read:
We caught him in a Barnes and Noble.

!

One at a time, please.

"I'd love to know how much weight you've lost," said Ginette,
as the ego-massager buzzed gently around my cerebellum.

"Hmm," I thought. "So would I. I've been rather good the last couple of months." And I have. No margarine, very little sugar, lots of exercise.

So when I was at the gym on Friday I hopped on the scales.

Now, I may have been rubbish at maths, but I DO think you can
apply the techniques learned in your everyday life.
(Isn't that right, M? Isn't that right, Ms Hertfordshire?) Let's give this a whirl.

This is what happened when I originally frightened myself.

w(4f + 4s)(-e) = x

Where x = weight, f = fatty food, s = sugar, e = exercise
and w = weeks of trying to lose weight.

And when I jumped on the scale yesterday?

12w(1f + 0.5s)(12e) = x + 2, for God's sake!

What's that supposed to teach me? OK, so perhaps the flob is turning to muscle, but if we follow that through I'm going to end up exactly this size but unable to bend!

Film like they're f... No, hang on...

It's taken me all week, Neek, but I think I may have cast the film of my life.
Well, I've narrowed it down to three, at least.

If I had my way (and total chronological licence, obviously),
starring in Troutly magnificence would be...

Miranda Richardson OR Jennifer Ehle OR Pippa Grandison.

But I'd welcome suggestions, either for my film (be kind!) or your own.

Bloody hell, I'm the girl from Aunty!

More later, but as it turns out, through no effort of my own
I'm now an employee of the Beeb! (Bee-Cee)
Talk about the mountain coming to Mohammed...

The Case of the Disappearing Fish

Oh, where, oh, where has my little fish gone?
Oh where, oh, where could he be?
With his gills cut short and his tail cut long...

My fish has disappeared. I fed him last night when I came home from work and when I went in to visit him this morning he was gone. The brandy balloon he swims in is upright, the food undisturbed on the surface of the water. The cat doesn't look any more smug than usual and, anyway, I kept the door shut. He wasn't languishing on my desk, behind the TV or on the floor.

Do UFOs take fish as well as people?
Can there be a rip in the space-time continuum small enough to fit a fish through?
Did I...gulp...ever have a fish in the first place?

Repeat After Me

Beautiful handwriting is not the basis for an enduring relationship.
Beautiful handwriting is not the basis for an enduring relationship.
Beautiful handwriting is not the basis for an enduring relationship.
Beautiful handwriting is not, goddammit, the basis for an enduring relationship...

The Quite Deliberate Tourist

There are tourists in my town now. I wonder what they come to look at.

It can be difficult to see home with fresh eyes, and I love watching visitors to see what they admire and particularly what they take pictures of. On the way to work this afternoon I saw two backpackers photographing their friend rolling around on a carpet of orange and jacaranda flowers.

Strange Sleep

We have strange neighbours.
(Our neighbours have strange neighbours too, I admit.)

However...a few nights ago I was finally making it to bed at about 12:45.
All was still. I crept through the house, breaking the silence only to knock over all the crockery in the draining board and tread on Ziggy, strategically positioned in the kitchen doorway to detect any unforeseen events of food preparation.

I threw open all my bedroom windows and settled down with a book.
All was still again.

Then, an odd noise. A 'chufting', if you will. Chuft, chuft. I put down my book. Chuft, chuft. Like all noises heard from my bedroom, it sounded like it was coming from our back garden. Chuft, chuft. And then it struck me. It was digging. Someone was digging - a grave? - in our back garden.
Why would anyone be digging at 1 in the morning unless for deviant purposes? My heart catching in my throat, I flicked off my reading light and squinted through the window. Darkness...and breathing. I could hear someone breathing. I held my breath and waited. The breathing continued.
It wasn't me, then.

So, let's recap - someone was digging a grave in my back garden at 1 in the morning and I could hear them breathing.

Terrified, I rolled out of bed and snuck back through the house. I wondered if I should wake Ginette. Could I sick the cat on them? Like something out of a dodgy horror film, I saw my hand grasp the handle of the back door and turn it slowly, slowly. The catch caught, the sound ricocheting around my head in the silence like a gunshot. I stopped to listen. Chuft, chuft. I pushed the door open and stole into the back garden, trying not to gasp as the icy dew bit into my feet.

The digging was not happening in my back garden, the digging was happening in the garden of the house diagonally opposite to ours.
The digger was bathed in floodlit glory.
The digger was not digging a grave.

Let me ask you a question. What kind of insane bastard digs
fencepost holes at 1 o'clock on a Monday morning?

The sad prologue to this story is that, having finally managed to get to sleep, I was woken at 6 the same morning from yet another dream of running away from my assassins by the sound of a circular saw cutting...fenceposts.

There is a word I could use, but I won't.

This Week's Band Name

Is 'Semi-Sucre'.

(NOT to be pronounced 'SUCKER', you Antipodeans, you!)

Oh, Divine Hamster...

..or whoever's in charge up there, grant me the strength to always stick up for myself, to not suffer fools gladly, and to not apologise to strangers who bump into me in shopping centres.

That said, in unrelated shipping news, I've a confession to make. I've been watching 'Dr Phil' again. It's bad for my blood pressure, I know - demonstrably so, seeing as there's a rant coming on. Bear with me.

Pageant moms. (Shudders) They make me sick. Almost literally, Knickers.

OK, I'll try and keep this brief and organised.

1. Your child is 4 years old. For the time being, you run their life, not vice-versa.
2. A competitve spirit is healthy, yes...to a point. Past that you're teaching your child they're only valuable if they win and you're sowing the stubborn seeds for all sorts of horrid eating and self-esteem disorders that could last them THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. If you want them to be confident, send them to theatresports or debating or kickboxing or something.
3. No child should wear false eyelashes, eyeliner, fake tan or heels. Nor should they have anything done chemically to their hair unless it's the size and consistency of a hedge or have their photographs AIRBRUSHED, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.
4. Live out your own warped fantasies. Just because you're
   screwed-up doesn't mean you have to take your kids down with you. Pre-verbal children DO NOT have the capacity to make career choices. (I'm 26 and I STILL don't have the capacity to make career choices!)
5. Give your children the most precious gift you can - a childhood safe in the knowledge of your love in which they are free to eat mud, play with Lego, fall out of trees and generally work out who they are...
   ON THEIR OWN.

[RANT ENDS] Thank you. Goodnight.

Haven't-A-Clue

I write in the sun
There the cat rolls over, yawns
It is Wednesday.

I Like Radio Comedy

Daggy, yes, but isn't that quintessentially Trout?
Also quintessentially UK, but I like it because it comes up with gems like this...

Disillusion: to slag off the work of Paul Daniels. (Ross Noble)

Gyroscope: a device for locating dole money. (Tim Brooke-Taylor)

Ladies and gentlemen, I was born 40 years too late.