May 2014 Review

Well that wasn’t the month I thought I would have. The bit where I went for the second rep on the bench at 90kgs and lost it, and had the bar bang against my hands (rather than my teeth, or chest, or nose) was not in any plans I made for the month. And it happened the first Sunday morning. By about 10:15 I was in the Soho walking centre, where there were three girls sitting as invisibly as they could because they needed a morning-after pill. The triage nurse pressed and wiggled my hands, and said that since everything was moving and I wasn’t screaming in pain when she pressed or moved anything, I hadn’t broken any bones. She put a loose dressing on it and I carried on with my day.

My fault. Stupidity. The one and only time I’ve been that stupid in many years of hefting weights. No excuses. What with the gym closing for refurbishment, it wasn’t until the second half of the month I could even think about lifting weights. When I tried to heft a 14kg dumbbell off the rack, the tendons in my left hand told me to stop the insanity now. I could only handle 9kg. I could handle 14kg last Sunday. I’m not even thinking about playing the guitar.

Sometime the next week my left hand looked like this…

… while my kitchen mid-month looked like this…

So what with a 60th birthday, damaged hands, and making breakfast in the back bedroom for a week (which was the most irritating thing), I was having an emotional month.

Before going out to the Netherlands, I had a pedicure (really!), a manicure and a trip to the dental hygienist at The Gentle Dentist, where they took photographs of my mouth. Close-ups. You do not want to see those photographs. Nor did I. Teeth, like hands, don’t lie about your age. Still, my teeth sparkled afterwards.

In the Netherlands, I went to Zandvoort and walked along the beach, stopping for a healthy burger lunch at Tijn Akersloot

before wandering around a bit more and making my way to Utrecht. Saturday we walked through the flower market on the way to Utrecht station, went to Amsterdam, visited the Rijksmuseum, had lunch at the American Hotel, raided Art Unlimited for more postcards to make a collage...

and at Concerto I had coffee as a folksinger rehearsed, while my friend looked for DVDs, and we browsed the American Book Centre before making our way back to Utrecht, where we had supper at the Griftpark1. Sunday was a walk round Utrecht, with lunch at the Louis Hartlooper Complex, followed by an afternoon in the garden and supper at Te Koop. Monday was another stroll, lunch and a the journey back to Schipol and so home.

Where the kitchen wasn’t finished Monday evening because (insert unlikely story here), so I went to work Tuesday and took Wednesday off to put my house back in order. I asked the fitter if he could recommend a decorator, and by the time this is posted, he will have come, looked, drawn breath and quoted.

Sis and I had a birthday supper at Merchant’s Tavern in Shoreditch - thank you Sis - and then our regular monthly supper at Tramshed in Shoreditch. That’s our annual trip Out East for this year.

I saw Locke and Fading Gigolo at the Curzon Soho, Pandora’s Promise, Sexy Beast and the Jane Bown documentary through Curzon Home Movies, A Touch of Sin at the Renoir, and Edge of Tomorrow at Cineworld.

I read Black Gold by Anthony Wild, about the history of coffee; Undercover by Rob Evans and Paul Lewis, about undercover policemen in the UK; Tea, by John Griffiths, a history of the Tea industry; Savage Messiah, by Laura Oldfield Ford, a compilation of her illustrated psycho geography zine from the Oughties; King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Doug Gilette, which is exactly as New Age as it sounds.

My left-hand little finger is still recovering but no longer hurts every time it comes into contact with anything.