shadows of echoes of memories of songs

I can't cope with writing a blog post a day. The days just run out too quickly & by the time they get near the end I'm too brain-tired to do anything except household chores. Yes I know I'm supposed to do it in the morning like my morning pages ahahahaha. I'll tell you about my morning routine some other time but let's just say there isn't much space in it for writing.

Anyway I've been trying to do stuff with food tonight. I got a 10p cauliflower & a 10p bag of new potatoes from the Co-op's reduced bin last week and was meaning to use them for something, & then I was away at the weekend & got tonsilitis & suddenly found I couldn't eat anything that wasn't basically a liquid. Yesterday there was only about a 2mm gap between my tonsils & I could hardly move my mouth because everything hurt, & there weren't any GP appointments for a week but the receptionist took about 15 minutes of rudeness and patronisingness to tell me this, so I took the kids to school/nursery, got home, had a bath, thought "I'll just have a lie down" & then slept (waking occasionally from weird & disturbing dreams which I fortunately forgot immediately) until 3pm, so basically forgot about food entirely until the evening at which point I tried to eat some tinned ravioli because that's quite slippery but I forgot that it's all grainy inside & the graininess got stuck on my tonsils & it was horrible. I did however accidentally invent an excellent drink: aiming for hot honey & lemon, realised I had no lemons, thought "what else is in this fridge", ended up with hot honey & garlic+ginger paste. IT IS EXCELLENT. It makes you smell of garlic but who cares. I was thinking well garlic is good for colds or something, and ginger is good for sickness, so it's all healthy stuff, & then I started feeling guilty about being so fucking stupid & went & looked up Cochrane Reviews on health benefits of garlic and ginger, expecting them to be all like "don't be so fucking stupid" and actually it was more like "eh, maybe" on garlic and "actually good for nausea, maybe good for other things" on ginger, so there we are.

This morning I felt more human & managed to eat some of the stuff from my Brexit stockpile: tinned rice pudding, tinned peaches, and a spoonful of malt extract (because I am either a) Tigger or b) from the 1950s). Felt much better. This evening I actually felt more or less normal but with a sore throat, but a throat with an ACTUAL GAP in it again, so had a baked potato with cheese & pineapple DON'T JUDGE ME, I have fond memories of baked potatoes with cheese & pineapple for £1.80 from the spud van in Loughborough town centre. I have now eaten all the rest of the tin of pineapple though, after realising it was best before some time in 2017 so I thought I'd better not keep it open long, & I'm not sure that was a good idea at all, because I think it has tried to eat my throat.

ANYWAY THOUGH, the 10p cauliflower. I thought I'd have a go at making it into some kind of cauliflower-based curry in the slow cooker, so googled for some likely recipes to follow a bit & ignore a bit, but when I went to the Co-op they didn't have half of the things that were listed, and what is red curry paste anyway? Not the Thai sort I think. So then I started googling for recipes for red curry paste, standing in the veg aisle going "sorry - sorry", and ended up buying some things that would hopefully help, and also some 10p leeks and some 10p corn-on-the-cobs, because really for 10p you might as well buy anything you're even remotely likely to eat because they'll only throw it away at the end of that night. Made something approximating a reddish curry paste based on three different recipes & a vague memory of how I used to do this 15 years ago, only that was Thai curry paste which is different, so who knows, really. It tasted OK anyway so let's see how it goes.

I used one of the 10p leeks instead of some of the onion I didn't have for the curry, & then chopped the rest up and froze it in the hope that you can freeze leeks, because by then I was so tired of googling uselessly for all the things I don't know, my search history is like

red curry paste recipe
red curry paste recipe -Thai
simple red curry paste recipe
even simpler than that red curry paste recipe
substitute for garam masala
can you use leeks instead of onions in curry
2 cups in grams
OK then 2 cups in ml
what the fuck is a cup anyway
29 ounces in grams
29 american ounces in grams
what is wrong with you people

and so on. My mum used to make leek & mushroom pie and it was lovely, maybe I'll have a go at that one day. I also sliced up all the green bits off the outside of the cauliflower & froze them because you can fry them up like winter greens with a bit of bacon & it's edible. I would freeze some bits of bacon too (bacon is always on BOGOF but I just don't use that much of it) but I'm getting to the point where I need another bloody freezer and there isn't room unless I get rid of the filing cabinet, which I don't really want but where else would all the stuff in it go?

The problem with food is the same as the problem with stuff, though. Between the internal(ised) voice saying "you've got to get rid of everything because you're a dreadful hoarder & everybody hates you & nobody could possibly live with you & your house is a tip & your children will die of germs from the filthy kitchen floor if they don't die of stuff falling on top of them first" and the other internal voice saying "you've got to store as much actually-useful and actually-edible stuff as you can because things are going to get harder & harder & more expensive & nobody is going to be there to look after you", I feel like I'm being ripped in two, giving stuff away with one hand & buying it with the other. I'm not sure there's a fix for this, though, I think this is just the two modes you have to oscillate between because capitalism.

Time for a mug of Bovril & a bath. Got to go back to work tomorrow.

I tweeted about this last night but it's so rage-inducing that I think I might have to post about it too. Here's the text of the latest email from Bounty (these are weekly emails for "Your baby at n weeks", but after about the first 10 weeks they stopped being about baby's development and started being about why you need to start waxing your legs again... OK, so you can probably guess I'm not the target market for this stuff anyway, but here goes):

Eat, drink and be merry

This week, we're focussing on food.

You

We're talking about both you and your baby's tummies. So first, here are some superb tips on how you can get a yummy mummy tummy.

Your baby

We've got some great advice on how you can help your baby to eat sensibly and enjoy their food. But if your baby's refusing food, or eating less, the chances are that everything is absolutely fine and there's no need to be frustrated.

Your baby's first teeth are either here or well on the way. Which is perfect timing for their developing taste for lumpier food.

So we start with "Eat, drink and be merry" (yes, I know this is just a sub-editor's autocomplete tic from "Eat", but still: let's be happy about food), but immediately go on to "how you can get a yummy mummy tummy": that is, obsess about your figure. Bit of a contradiction here, maybe? OK, so they don't actually mention the d-word, but let's face it, if you tell people their figure is all wrong, they're likely to think about dieting.

Having tried to make mums feel bad about their figures, they then remind them that they're supposed to help their baby "eat sensibly" and "enjoy their food". Now, this may be a bit of a radical suggestion, but: maybe one way to help your baby eat sensibly and enjoy their food would be to eat sensibly yourself, enjoy your food yourself, and generally model sensible behaviour?

Now, in fairness to Bounty I should point out that while in my opinion they clearly imply dieting, they don't actually say anything about it: the "yummy mummy tummy" article is actually about muscle-toning exercises. So that's OK then, surely? I mean, doing your pelvic floor exercises is sensible, right? (At least, if you don't want to spend the rest of your life doing a little wee every time you cough, sneeze or laugh.) So here's the beginning of the article:

Exercise for new mums

Size zero A list mums may be all over the front pages, but in real life your tummy might not spring back to its pre-baby state easily.

However, the good news is you can get trim and toned without getting a personal trainer or going under the knife.

Fortunately, nature can be kind as well as miraculous, and your muscles will regain a lot of their tautness naturally, especially after your first baby and if you’re reasonably fit and a healthy weight. However, for the rest of us, a bit more effort may be required.

Targeted exercise is the only way to de-flab your abs without resorting to surgery (and better for you all round, not to mention a lot less painful and non-invasive).

There's a lot of subtle linguistic sleight of hand going on here, a sliding and eliding of subjects that I'm strugging to put my finger on. Let's see if I can pull it apart a bit.

So, we start off by invoking the "Size zero A list mums" and then pretending we're not talking about them at all; we're talking about "real life", where you can "get trim and toned without getting a personal trainer or going under the knife". These are things that the celeb mums might do, but because we've stopped talking about them by this time and started talking about "real life", they're presented as realistic options that "you" would have thought of already -- that is, options that you should have thought of already, because your body is All Wrong -- had Bounty not come along and told you the real solution.

Then we're told that "nature can be kind as well as miraculous, and your muscles will regain a lot of their tautness naturally" -- two references to nature, to make it clear that this is all nice stuff they're talking about -- "especially after your first baby and if you’re reasonably fit and a healthy weight. However, for the rest of us" -- because most of you aren't fit enough! And you're TOO FAT! -- "a bit more effort may be required." Just a bit more effort, that's all. What kind of lazy person wouldn't put in just a bit more effort (that's more than 'doing nothing because miraculous Mother Nature will sort it all out', I guess?) to look good?

"Targeted exercise is the only way to de-flab your abs without resorting to surgery (and better for you all round, not to mention a lot less painful and non-invasive)". Silly you for thinking about surgery! You were thinking about surgery, weren't you, because you're THAT UGLY. What? You hadn't even considered surgery? Oh dear. Well, don't worry, dear, you don't really need surgery. You just need to do "targeted exercise". That's not targeted at getting you healthy and active again, it's targeted at giving you a flat tummy. The sort of flat tummy that 17-year-old girls WHO HAVEN'T HAD BABIES have.

So it's a funny definition of "good news" they're using here: as far as I can work out the "good news" is that you need to be "trim and toned" (why?), you need to "de-flab your abs" (why?), but it's OK, you don't need to have surgery (surgery! for fuck's sake!) to get there. Well, hurrah! Break out the bunting!

Even worse, look at the comments on that article: people are going to Bounty for medical advice:

"Whens the best time to start doing sit ups after giving birth? I'm confused because my family and friends are telling me different things! One told me you can do sit ups more or less straight away and another told me not until six months as your stomach muscle don't recover from pregnancy till then. Any one got any tips? xx"

"how do i tone my belly after having an emergency c section...? Or atually when can i start toning after an emergency c section? I had my baby son 13 weeks ago. Please advise needed........ xx"

"Anyone got advice on how soon after the birth I can return to running and / or circuit training? I ran up to 12 weeks pregnant and did body pump and walked for up to an hour right up to the birth. I have had episiotomy and stiches which seem to be healing well. I am also breastfeeding."

It's frankly terrifying that people are trusting Bounty -- who exist solely to sell shitloads of plastic tat to mums by making them feel guilty, by making them feel that if they don't buy all the plastic tat then they JUST DON'T LOVE THEIR BABIES ENOUGH -- with questions like these, rather than asking e.g. the NHS. Ask your health visitor, ask your doctor; even ask your mum or your friends -- at least if they're wrong they'll probably be innocently wrong rather than trying to sell you dieting aids or exercise equipment.

You might well ask me "why did you sign up for these emails then, you silly moo?" Yes, you might well ask. I signed up with Bounty for the packs of freebies and the special offers, because I STUPIDLY FORGOT that free stuff which wastes your time and makes you angry is NOT ACTUALLY FREE. While we're on the subject of those freebie packs, let's remember that Bounty have somehow wangled it so that Important Government Information on how to claim your Child Benefit is stuffed in the pack of advertising and marketing samples that they give you when you're IN HOSPITAL, ie probably still woozy from being stuffed full of drugs and confused from being SHUNTED AROUND LIKE A PIECE OF MEAT, and therefore not in the best frame of mind to go through a bagful of rubbish and filter out the Important Government Information; but obviously it's as important for women to be aggressively marketed at by the makers of unsustainable disposable rubbish as it is for them to collect the benefits to which they're entitled. Yes.

Oh, the Bounty freeby pack also included a can of DIET COKE. I thought this was nothing do with mums/babies but now I realise OH WAIT they mean you can have caffeine again but YOU'RE FAT! GO ON A DIET EVEN THOUGH YOU JUST GAVE BIRTH 2 HOURS AGO!

If I'd seen this stuff before giving birth I'd have pushed that baby out in 10 minutes flat, with no drugs except RAGE.

Sorry about all the CAPITAL LETTERS. I blame coffee, lack of sleep, and Caitlin Moran.

Saw the doctor and he was slightly more helpful than they usually are. He agreed that while stress is probably making things worse, being uncomfortable and in pain tends to make people stressed, so let's try to fix the problem or at least the symptoms.

Booked in for blood tests next week, but in the meantime he wants me to cut the following things out of my diet for two weeks: ( foods, gushy and otherwise )

Anyway, at least it's something concrete to try, which is better than sitting on my arse feeling sorry for myself. We'll see what happens.

( things I have eaten, things I haven't eaten )

So I make that 55 out of 100 -- over half, but still plenty of things to try! -- and it appears that most of my eating exploration has happened in the far-off land of, er, Cambridge. And I can't think of anything that I wouldn't consider eating, except things you really can't eat unless you're a crazy Frenchman, like glass or hair or unicycles or tambourines.

I wonder if you can mix All-Bran with Bovril to create a tasty low-fat high-fibre snacky soup experience? There's no punchline here, I'm just bored.

(And when she got there, the cupboard was full of tea.)