Maths

Numeracy tests and data interpretation. All the rage these days with online applications.
I've never really been one for maths.

So I've been trying to put maths into my everyday life. Chiefly, this means keeping a running total in my head around the supermarket.

I get to the checkout, hand over my basket and watch as the checkout lady scans the barcodes, one-by-one.

Then she says, 'That's 7 pounds 38 then please love' and a tiny voice at the back of my head says

'I know!'

Cheat

The makers of the Guardian G2 crossword, take note.

You have reduced me to cheating.

No more will I be frustrated by clues pertaining to Oscar winners in the year of my birth, or before. Never again will I fumble for synonyms to words which I don't know in the first place. You won't catch me out with any more obscure legal terms neither.

No no. I've got the internet now.

Behold -

Spoon boy:

http://www.impactlab.com/2008/04/04/spoon-boy-breaks-world-record-by-balancing-16-spoons-on-his-face/

A-mo-zing

I became a Mo-man on the 1st November.

The premise of Movember (the month formerly known as November) is simple; the execution, dangerouly open to interpretation and the results until last night, miserly (I am of course speaking personally - I am certain there are far better Mo Men out there than I).

So, the premise. Shave at the start of Movember and grow a moustache in aid of men's charities, in particular prostate cancer charities.

And the results... until last night my wispy toffee-apple tickler had barely attracted the attention of my flatmates. In fact, it hadn't at all. After 10 days there was some semblance of a shadow of a Mo developing that I then carefully sculpted into what I like to call a 'lip-winger', reaching all the way down to my chin line. Except it didn't reach all the way and had bits missing in between.

So I scrapped that plan and had another go with the razor, redesigning my lip-winger into a cute, fledgling 'che' (after the famous Cuban revolutionary and celebrated Mo man). Last night I met a friend and two of his friends, one of whom commented without any prompt,

"Is that for Movember or what?"

My Mo, finally given the recognition it deserves, after 12 days of semi-existence.

Now I'm a proud Mo-man.

Year of the Ex-

We had a bridge we called ours back then, when I briefly went out with Mareike the German while living in Amsterdam for a year. It was one of those bridges that collapses fifty times a day to allow canal boats through.

Last night we walked to a Sam Smith's pub an American friend Sebastian knew and I didn't. I've got a lot to learn about the city of my birth. Sebastian led me and Mareike and a stranger wolf-whistled. Her hair is dyed bright blond, shorn on one side and chin length on the other and I guess she's always attracted attention. She bumped into people and we three talked as we drank bad beer Sebastian had swiped from work - a posh bar-restaurant by St. Paul's. Later Mareike said she's sleeping with an Irishman or a Frenchman. Nothing seems to have changed.

I'm ploughing back through a past I thought I'd left a distance behind. One friend once said he returned to England from Japan and the most overwhelming feeling he had was relief. But sometimes I find myself wanting to tug at my hair and scream out in frustration at having landed right back where I worked hard to move on from.

London recently

I stepped up onto surface from the underground on the other day and looked around Oxford Circus and the first thing that came to my mind was, 'Is that it?' I remembered the buildings being so much taller. It had such a provincial feel to it. Maybe I just got used to all those skyscrapers in Shibuya and Shinjuku. That said, even in Yamagata they built up, and they had all the perspective of the mountains from the basin to fight with there.

I'm on Queenstown Road, near Battersea Park, after a relatively brief period as itinerant floor space occupant in Stoke Newington (North) and Vauxhall (South). I can see the overland train rattle past from the 2F kitchen window. 10 years ago I stayed on this road a few doors down, in my sister's place. I walked to Harrods and back every day for a month for a summer job. One day it rained hard on the way back so I waited out the wet under a railway bridge. Now I ride the train over that bridge to work.

Streets here have precious few convenience stores, or electric stores, or jidohanbaiki vending machines. Rows of residential even right in the centre of town. I met an old friend in the pub on last Saturday and we took a walk later on across the bridge sandwiched in between the Eye and the houses of Parliament. I don't know the names of the bridges yet.

As we walked along, my friend said to me, 'People spend a lot of money to come here. And here we are'.

Today

I saw a dog running towards Hampstead Heath with his own lead in his mouth.