Take a minute out of your busy day to do this little exercise: pause in the middle of all you have to do, all that’s going on around you. Close your eyes, and sit still. Breathe in, and breathe out, and pay attention to your breath as it comes in and goes out. Just sit still, for about a minute.

Zen Habits

A great meal at Brio tonight celebrating the birthday. Son 1 wound me up by eating carpaccio. I guess I haven’t won the vegan argument at home yet.

You.

<3

Vegans must be considered a particular threat to carnivorous cohesion (and the very future of the cheeseburger) as they eschew dairy products as well as the flesh of dead animals, and it is frankly a disgrace that such diets have been allowed to go unchecked in private family dwellings for so long. It is surely time for an urgent inquiry into dietary deficiencies in the vegetarian community so that compulsory support can be imposed on all those who are identified as being “service resistant” as they obviously have something to hide.

Read more here.

13.2 miles of tarmac and dirt roads with a little bit of grass thrown in. (http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3995922)

Feet have held up really well, only a very small blister on the left. So now I know that if the urge takes me, I can safely enter a half marathon and run it barefoot.

Some of the scenery around here is amazing, it sometimes feels like running through a rain forest. The weather was great on the way out with cloud cover keeping the heat down but on the way back it really started cooking. I don’t like taking water bottles and food with me but if I want to go further than this I think I will have to.

Oh, and to the know it all jogger, weighed down with all the equipment in the world, who I passed in the last mile, “No, I won’t hurt my feet running barefoot but you probably will with that crappy running style you have. Gobby t#@t!”

So I am at the pharmacy stood under this big sign for twenty minutes whilst the pharmacist filed her nails or performed some such important task.

Pharmacist: “Are you picking up?”

I left.

Isn’t amazing when something so simple can save you so much money?

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be.

Here are some facts about the1500s:

These are interesting…

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children.. Last of all the babies.
By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water..

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath.

It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying It’s raining cats and dogs.

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, Dirt poor. The wealthy had slate floors That would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying a thresh hold..

(Getting quite an education, aren’t you?)

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old…

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off.. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, bring home the bacon.. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat..

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell, or was considered a ..dead ringer..;

And that’s the truth…Now, whoever said History was boring ! ! !

From the earliest moment that our firm purchased Cypress Gardens and Splash Island Waterpark, our highest priority has always been to maintain the park’s beauty and protect its proud traditions as a mainstay of the State’s history and natural treasures. It is with these ideals in mind that we must announce that the park will be closed for business as of Wednesday, September 23, 2009.

During the last two years, Land South Adventures, LLC, has explored numerous management frameworks and exhausted every possible approach to keep the park running in its traditional form. Now, we are in the process of negotiating with several potential purchasers and lessees for all or part of the property, and do not feel it is fair to our employees, the guests, or the public to continue operations heading into the fall with the future of the property in flux. We are optimistic that the outcome will be in the best interests of both the park and the residents of Polk County and the State of Florida.

I hope someone does resurrect it as we have had some good times there.

I never really knew Keith Floyd other than to look down on him with the arrogance of youth when I would go for a drink at (among others) The Greyhound Pub in Clifton, Bristol. Back then I was at the top of my yuppie game with an, on the face of it, thriving financial services business and all the accoutrements that went with it. I felt I was the man at the time.

Keith would occasionally be propping up the end of the bar with a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He would invariably be with another chap in a similarly merry state and would be holding forth about all the things he had been famous for in years gone by. I have to be honest and say that I formed an opinion of him as a bit of a loser who would spend the rest of his days bathing in the faded glories of his previous successes. Not because I had spoken to him or anything  you understand, but because I was obviously on the way up and he was so obviously on the way down. I was young and the future, he was old and the past.

He would probably have been all of 42 or 43 at the time.

Going back even further in time, my dad’s second marriage brought me and Mark Hix together. We are step-brothers. Again we hardly knew each other. Mark lived with his grandparents and his younger brother whilst I had the joy of switching my time between boarding school and living with his mother.

Mark speaks very highly of his grandparents and I can confirm that his grandmother was a great woman. (She once caught me stealing change from the charity jar at her work and never told a soul.) Top lady!

Mark went off to London where he made a great success of himself in the restaurant trade. He owns his own restaurants, writes books and articles in national newspapers and is an authority on English cooking.

I only really know that he has been so successful because it has been in the news this week that Keith Floyd ate his last lunch at Mark’s restaurant in Lyme Regis before heading off to Bridport where he died on the sofa in front of the TV, his stomach full of oysters and partridge (Which should have been Grouse apparently but Keith saw the funny side with the misplaced order and didn’t complain.)

I have not really thought about either Mark or Keith for at least two decades but today I sit here thousands of miles away in Florida and offer a toast (and an apology of sorts) to Keith Floyd and then another to Mark on his success. Best of luck to both of you!

PS. Whilst reading up on Mark I have discovered he has spent many a drunken Sunday afternoon in his bachelor pad, and is good friends with Tracey Emin. That makes me just a little bit jealous.

PPS. A big hello to my Sis in Bridport. It all goes on down there, doesn’t it?