December 2007 Archives

'Sometimes I believe in fate, but the chances we create, always seem to ring more true.' - Katie Melua, If You Were a Sailboat

'Resolutely, she stared at the blank screen.

She had stared at it for a day previously, ignored it in favour of the clamour of MSN, ignored it in favour of the flirting on facebook.

Ignored it in favour of downloading music from 7-digital. Ignored it in favour of cleaning up her inbox. Ignored Katie Melua saying it was all in her head.

She talked to Christian in Cologne about African colonial history. She talked to David in London about her childhood.

Her resolve failed.'

It's December 31st people.

What does everyone do en masse on the 31st? They resolve!

They go to the gym, they eat organic, eat no sugar, eat less, cook from scratch; they read more, they watch less tv, they make lists, they go to museums; they try to be better people, they lose their tempers less, they drink less, stop smoking, stop shouting at their kids, make love to their husbands & wives more, stop looking at porn, do their hair every day, wear makeup more often, stop biting their nails, picking their noses and complaining.

Until about January 7th, then they fail and they feel terrible and think 'why the fuck couldn't I do a, b, c, d and e?'

I'll tell you a secret: I've never actually made a New Year resolution before.

In almost 34 years.  So half way through my 30s seems a good place to start.

And here it is, following Christine Kane's wonderful motivational writing:

My word for 2008 is:

CHANGE!

I'll change my life. No more swept away. I'm the one holding the broom.
I'll change my body. No more bulimia & anorexia & exercise addiction. Health & strength and awesome abs.
I'll change my house. Cluttered & overloaded is so last year.
I'll change my future. Directionless no more.

Just one little word and look what it'll do.

What's your word?

--------------------

In 2008 I will be blogging every day with Blog365. I had an overwhelming desire to add my voice to the tidal wave of other people's thoughts, bad writing and self-involvement that overwhelms the internet.

I have one day off, that's February 29th. So if anyone wants my company, that's your lucky day. Applications here please.

'Where I can run just as fast as I can, to the middle of nowhere' - Pink, Just Like a Pill

Reading Post Secret on Sundays always makes me feel a little uncomfortable.

I first discovered Post Secret a couple of years ago and then all the secrets were online, not just a selection like there is now.

I read through them, and like everyone else who ever read Post Secret I was all wow'wed by how many of the secrets felt like they were mine.

That's the secret of Post Secret.

Everyone can find their own secret on Post Secret.

I have secrets. Am I sharing any?

Let's see. A big one? No.

A little one? Maybe.

But not today.

'Take a chance, 'cause you might grow.' - Gwen Stefani, What you waiting for?

... Beef in a bit of pastry with a bit of stuff in the inside to make it taste nice.

We had this for Christmas lunch. It was tasty.

If I were an eloquent food writer I would start off by saying something like 'The British think they invented Beef Wellington, but so do the French, who call it Boeuf en Croute' (which is just what wikipedia or some other online fount of wisdom says).

And then I'd blah blah blah on and on about it and it's origin and it's background and you'd all either be asleep or saying 'wow, Ash knows an awful lot about Beef Wellington/Boeuf en croute/Beef in a bit of pastry'.

Instead, being ineloquent (which actually seems to be a word, thanks spell checker) and neither British nor French, nor apparently a food writer seeing as I used the word 'tasty' above to describe this dish, I will simply give you the recipe.

First of all make the pastry. It uses puff pastry which is both fun to make (yes really) and infinitely rewarding. Do you see my tongue pressed firmly into my cheek there?

This recipe makes 450g and comes from the venerable Good Housekeeping Institute. Which means it's been triple tested. Which is another way of saying 'if it goes wrong it's YOUR fault!'.

How to make Puff Pastry

450g plain white flour
pinch of salt
450g butter (yes, you have to use butter here), chilled
15 ml lemon juice
300 ml chilled water

1. Sift the flour and salt together. Cut off 50g of the buter and flatten the remaining butter between two sheets of clingfilm into a long flat slab about 2 cm thick. Put it in the fridge.
2. Put the flour and the 50g butter into the food processor and whizz until it resembles very fine crumbs. Add the lemon juice and enough of the water in a steady stream through the processor funnel to make a soft elastic dough. Turn it out onto a floured board and then shape it into a round ball. Using a knife cut a cross half way through the dough ball and then open them out to form a star shape (this makes sense when you do it but I should have taken a picture for you). Roll out and make the star points about four times thinner than the centre bit. Put the cold slab of butter (from the fridge) in the centre of the star.
3. Fold the flaps over like an envelope to cover the butter. Press gently with the rolling pin. Flour liberally and then roll out to a rectangle about 16 x 8 inches. Fold the bottom third of the rectangle up to the centre and the top third down and keep the edges straight. Press with the rolling pin, wrap in cling film and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.
4. Take it out the fridge and with the folded edges to the sides repeat the process. Do this sequence five times in total.
5. Shape the pastry as required, then rest it in the fridge for about another 30 minutes before baking.
6. Bake at 220C unless otherwise specified in the recipe. If you want to freeze it roll it out to the size required, then cover it with wax paper and roll it up, then put it into a polythene bag and freeze.

Darlings, that was just the pastry!

Now for the beef.

Beef Wellington/Boeuf en croute/Beef in a bit of pastry

50g butter
1.6 kg piece of fillet of beef. I used a 900g entrecote which was nicely rolled and tied by the butcher. A fillet of beef would be different because you wouldn't have to untie it after browning and cooking it for the first bit before you do the pastry shell. If you use an entrecote or other rolled up beef thing, remember that you don't want the strings in your finished dish!

For the filling:

250g button mushrooms, chopped
2 shallots, peeled and finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped.
1 red pepper
2 tablespoons or so of tomato concentrate
splash of red wine
bit of red thai curry paste, or chilli paste or whatever else you want to put in for zing
2 tablespoons dried thyme or fresh thyme to taste

1. Heat some of the butter in a frying pan and when it foams add the beef (which you previously dried off with a paper towel after bringing to room temperature), and brown it all over. Put the lid on the pan and allow it to cook at a lower heat for about 25 minutes or put the oven on 220 and roast for 20 minutes. Set aside and allow to cool.
2. Using the same pan melt the rest of the butter, add the shallots and garlic, fry for about 2 minutes, then add the mushrooms and red pepper. Add the rest of the ingredients and then cook until you have a thick mixture, it shouldn't be watery. Let it cool down in the pan.
3. Roll 1/4 of your pastry out into a rectangle about 1 inch larger than the beef and prick with a fork. Bake it at 220C for 10 - 12 minutes until crisp and golden. Allow to cool then trim to the size of the beef and place on a baking sheet.
4. Roll out the remaining pastry to a rectangle about 12 x 16 inches. Cut a small square out of each corner. Keep all the trimmings.
5. Place the meat on the cooked pastry square. Season the beef with salt and pepper (take off the strings if you used a rolled cut of beef). Spread the filling all over. It's easiest to use your hands.
6. Wrap the uncooked pastry all around the beef, tucking it under the cooked pastry base. If you're doing this ahead then put it in the fridge until you're ready to cook it.*
7. Make a slit in the top of the pastry and brush with beaten egg. Decorate with shapes cut from leftover bits of pastry. I made little hearts, aren't I sweet? Brush the little hearts with egg.
8. Bake at 220C for about 35 minutes for medium rare, 40 - 45 minutes for medium. Leave to stand for 10 minutes  before serving.

I served mine with roasted butternut and tomato.

*If you want to freeze yours then do it at this stage. Open freeze until solid then wrap in freezer film and then in foil. Thaw overnight and cook as above.

'Turn into, hope I do, turn into you' - Yeah Yeah Yeah's, Turn Into

This week on Monday I had a day off from work, kids and life. Rare, huh?

I went to see the Andy Warhol 'Other Voices, Other Rooms' exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

See, I told you I'd do more things! This is more things, right?

The exhibition was interesting. There was some of Warhol's printed work, letters, pictures, including the famous Queen Beatrix image.

Some of it was a little incomprehensible. Some art is incomprehensible.

I guess that's what makes it art, right, and not just stuff that any somebody can produce?

I like looking at it, but don't expect me to find a huge and deep meaning in everything I see. Only some things.

Nevertheless, the films were interesting. Outer and Inner Space especially.

The discomfort on Edie Sedgwick's face when confronted with her own image was, in turn, discomfiting to watch. The first thing I thought of when I watched this was how desensitized we are to images of ourselves. We see ourselves all the time in photographs. We see ourselves in videos. If we use the web cam we see our own image as we talk to others. We're oblivious to the fact that it's us, it's our essence up there on the screen. Edie Sedgwick wasn't oblivious.

She was clearly uncomfortable, which when you consider her exposure to media and print at the time, just makes me realise even more how over-exposed we all are now.

The other video that grasped my attention was Mrs Warhol.

It seemed so ordinary, so commonplace to watch Julia Warhola (Andy's mother) teach Richard Rheem to iron a shirt. The domesticity of it was touching. I found myself remembering my grandmother ironing. I also realised how much of her is in me, especially the ironing part. I know virtually no other women who iron, and none who iron compulsively, like I do.

Many of the Warhol films seem to centre around domestic life.

Precursors of Big Brother, I suppose.

I think we want to watch other people's domestic life to convince us that our own domestic life is ok. That there's nothing wrong with us, no huge flaws in how we're made. 

Being the ultimate-at-home-voyeur. It's like being a teenager and checking out the other girls' boobs in the shower to make sure that yours are ok. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with it, but it feels a little shameful.

And my ultimate conclusion isn't anything new or astounding: Warhol just did it first, with great aplomb.

For more Warhol stuff, check out WarholStars, and for more Edie Sedgwick (isn't she just bee-yooooo-ti-ful?), watch Factory Girl.

'It's not having what you want, It's wanting what you've got.' - Sheryl Crow, Soak up the Sun

Bzzzz! Over here!

We went to see The Bee Movie today.

I enjoyed it, mostly because it was just fun listening to Jerry Seinfeld again.

The plot has enormous holes though. Enormous ones. You could fit elephants in them.

Be prepared to have lots of mental spackle/wallfiller/polyfiller/glue/whatever you want to call it to allow you to leap from one plot segue to the next.

Some of the moments are cool though. The Bee Larry King skit is pretty awesome.

Funny thing though, a tear slipped down my cheek and disappeared into my t-shirt when the montage of how everything was going to be ok again to the Sheryl Crow song (in the youtube clip up there) came on at the end of the movie.

I guess I'm a sucker for happy endings after all.

'So Eleanor put those boots back on
Put the boots back on and run
Come, come on over here' - Franz Ferdinand, Eleanor, Put your Boots On - watch the clip, fab artwork!

Yes, I know that's a lame title up there, but I just had to had to had to say it.

Forgive me. Please?

A few weeks ago I went to a party in Amsterdam.

The theme was 'nothing says christmas like sushi & wine'. Guess who was a sushi virgin?

Well, not any more! Loved it, really loved it.

Came home, told the man-at-home about it constantly for a few weeks, then bought all the stuff and today we made our own badly-executed maki rolls.

I didn't even know that there was a Asian supplies store just around the corner from my house until my sushi epiphany.

If you need anything Indonesian/Japanese/Korean and you live in Amstelveen then Toko Kaya is there just for you. They speak great English and if you want to make anything just ask them and they'll find the ingredients for you.

So what did we put in our maki rolls?

Too much wasabi!  And there was no sake to take off the edge, and no wine either...

We used avocado, spring onion, mango, yellow pepper, carrot and sweet omelette.

No fish, because the salmon we bought was deemed unsuitable by the cat.

Did the kids eat it? Yes, they did!

Say hurrah for some all-round sushi approval in our home tonight.

'The girl with crimson nails has Jesus round her neck' - U2, Vertigo

The Internet Anagram Server, or I, Rearrangement Server is a wonderfully hilarious thing which I wouldn't have known about if I didn't read Charlotte. She of the Chatter's Bowel and Bloat, Wretches.

So I did mine, as you do.

Ash in Amsterdam comes up with some mighty fine sexual innuendo*.

Here're my faves with added free-association sentence completion:

Ashamed Martin's left the establishment.
Madam Tarnishes everything she touches.
Marinated Smash doesn't taste very nice at all.
Aha! Masterminds at play.
Madame Hart Sins and regrets.
Radiant, Smash Em, and go!
Madam Hears Nits and groans at the idea of nit capes, nit shampoo and combs.
Madam Ash Insert other here.

And from my real name?

A Seemlier High is impossible to achieve.
Geisha Leer Him for a little Dutch-Japanese action.

* Did you know that the word innuendo doesn't not translate to Dutch at all well. The English-Dutch dicitonary translates it as 'insinuatie' which is altogether too strong. Insinuation has bad connotations in English, where you use it for something horrible or dirty, or seedy.

But innuendo? That bantering, flirting thing we do for fun? Suggesting one thing whilst meaning another?

Dictionary.com taking the entry from the online etymology dictionary says:

1678, "oblique hint, indiscreet suggestion," usually a depreciatory one, from L. innuendo "by meaning, pointing to," lit. "giving a nod to," abl. of ger. of innuere "to mean, signify," lit. "to nod to," from in- "at" + nuere "to nod." Originally a legal phrase (1564) from M.L., with the sense of "to wit." It often introduced the derogatory meaning alleged in libel cases, which influenced its broader meaning.

Or alternatively, if you believe it and as a Dutch person once told me, very tongue in cheek, with innuendo firmly in place,

'We don't do that here in Holland. It must be an English thing.'

'Think of all the fun I've missed, think of all the fellows that I haven't kissed, next year I could be just as good, if you check off my christmas list.' - Pussy Cat Dolls, Santa Baby (I really like this version).

Me: An Ipod dock so I can never have to change a cd again, and then nonsensically Fiction Plane, Leaf and The Killers cds (favourite song on this cd is Glamourous Indie Rock and Rock). Tell me why I didn't download?

Him: Guitar Hero Legends of Rock III: So he can pretend to be a guitar god.

Littlest One: A Playdoh clown thing which mama (that's me!) won't know where to put when he's done with it.

Biggest One: A K'nex rollercoastery thing and ditto above.

Forget peace, love and charity. It's all about the gifts! Isn't it?

'I draw a jackal-headed woman in the sand, sing of a lover's fate sealed by jealous hate' - 10,000 Maniacs, Verdi Cries

Sex Without Love

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

- Sharon Olds

This poem has some incredibly interesting interpretations on the internet. Do a search on it and you'll find a million right-wing born-again Christians claiming that Sharon Olds wrote this in favour of their pro-life, anti-abortion, no-sex-before-marriage, oh-my-god-how-sinful-you-are beliefs.

There is the odd voice of dissent which urges the majority to re-read and consider that perhaps Olds envied those who can have sex without love. But those voices are very few and far between.

To me she seems to be mourning for a self that won't confuse the lover with the pleasure, a self that doesn't exist.

I love the analogy to running. The solitude, even when you run with others.

When I run on the treadmill I don't see or hear anyone else. I just hear my music, the sound of my feet hitting the band and I hear my breath in my throat. Pure focus on my goal. No distraction. Perhaps she envies the 'sex without love' lovers for their lack of distraction?

The last line, 'just factors, like the partner in the bed, and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time.' is very real for me, and not about sex. About life.

In the end we're all just running and trying to better our own best times.

'We'll run till we drop, baby we'll never go back.' - Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run. Suzi Quattro video.

I was just reading Tom Venuto's blogpost about holiday fitness and this phrase really struck home.

'Your expectations will become your reality. What are you expecting?'

He's talking about what we expect from ourselves with regard to sports. If you say 'oh it's Christmas, everyone gains weight'  then sure, you'll gain!

It's true for life too, not just for sports. What are you expecting?

Positive thinking and ruthless honesty get you where you're going.

Me, I've just been in the gym and I'll be there again on Boxing Day. I'm expecting to come out of the holidays fitter and leaner than when I went in.

I don't expect any less.

'And so this is Christmas and what have you done?' - John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Happy Christmas (War is Over) - watch the clip!

...the beautiful ice outside, a killer training session with my favourite trainer (who pushes me harder than anyone else and seems to know exactly which way to push me to get that last ounce of determination out), drinks at Nina and Chris which was fun fun fun...

I never used to drink, more out of fear than anything else I suppose, but fear is something best left far behind, don't you think? I took them some japanese snacky things and a very festive bottle of wine.

The name got me. Who doesn't like something called Luna di Luna? Doesn't it sound and look faaaaabulous? Of course, Chris and Nina & Milla are fabulous, which is why they got the bottle. 

It probably tastes a bit crappy, so no doubt it's the wine you open after the other eight bottles are empty... but it looks so pretty. See the pink one? Valentine's Day anyone? Sometimes image is everything ...

Today I'm planning my menu for Christmas Day, baking some sugar cookies* with the kids, going swimming at the gym, trying the new treadmills again. The gym has Technogym equipment but the old treadmills were old and they new ones are new and they are so smooth and they have MTV and TMF! 

The tv channels were limited on the old ones and TMF got kicked in favour of news. So this is the best Christmas present ever. I'm so in love.

Oh, you want the cookie recipe? It's from Nigella, who taught me how to lick a spoon lasciviously and with feeling ... but really a sugar cookie recipe is just a sugar cookie recipe.

Nigella's Cut-Out Sugar Cookies
Makes 30. Double the recipe.

For the cookies

90g butter, (don't shoot me, but I prefer margarine)
100g sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp imitation vanilla extract (yes, I know, it should be real vanilla extract, but what can I say, I grew up cheap)
200g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

For the icing

150g icing sugar
food colouring

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Cream butter and sugar together in the food processor until pale and fluffy.
3. Beat in the egg and vanilla.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and pulse.
5. You could add some lemon zest to the cookie mixture, yum. Or some koek-en-speculaas kruiden, or some gingerbread spice. Whatever you want really. What not add wasabi? ;)
6. Form the dough into a ball and then press into a disc and leave it in the fridge, wrapped in clingwrap for about an hour.
7. Sprinkle surface with flour.
8. Get stepladder and stools for children. Try not to fall over stepladders, stools and children.
   
9. Roll out dough to about 1/2 cm thick and then allow children loose with cutters.
10. Bake on lined baking sheets for about 10 -12 minutes.They should be gold on the edges and a little soft still in the centre.
11. Take them off the baking paper and cool them on a rack.
12. When they're cooled mix the icing by adding about half a teaspoon of water at a time to the icing sugar. Colour as desired. Have m&m's, sprinkles, nonpareils, and all kinds of other decorative things handy.
13. Avoid fingerprints in the icing.
14. Allow to set and then give them to your friends and neighbours on Christmas Eve.
15. Get many many brownie points for being such an organised mother. Heh.

So what are you doing between now and Christmas Day?

I have a free day tomorrow with the kids in the daycare so I plan to do something completely different.

A museum, a day trip, a drive... something different and fun.

'and television is just some weak anaesthetic to numb the senses til you’re out like a light' - David Ford, I'm Alright Now

Today is a beautiful beautiful beautiful day. Sun, blue sky, glittering white trees.

It's -7C outside and the ice is everywhere, like a souvenir.
 

I'm in love with two sisters
Only weapons can decide
Whose bed I share tonight
And the cold mister mister
He has got me in his sights
If he shoots me down
He has every right
- Fiction Plane, Two Sisters

I started thinking recently about the evolution of my musical tastes.

I was a child of the 1970s so I grew up with those compilation albums with the barebreasted and starry nippled women on them.

Other Southern Africans will remember, Radio Jacaranda and 702 anyone? Too lazy to go and look for examples, but if you were there you'll remember.

My mom and dad had a predilection for country singers, who begged me not to take my love to town, crooned that my beauty was beyond compare, with flaming locks of auburn hair, and whined about four hungry children and a crop in the field ....

My aunt was single in the late 70s so she was singing to a different tune... her name should have been Mandy. Abba was telling her to be a Dancing Queen and thanking her for the Music. Later, her boyfriend was a rocker, and she was climbing his Stairway to Heaven and Learning to Fly.

In the mid-80s when I was a teenager I was Thriller'd, Radio Ga-ga'd, Woken up before I Go-Go'd and wanted to be Like a Virgin in my fingerless gloves ...

In the early 90s I was practising my charms on unsuspecting boys in clubs wearing a Black Velvet dress.

Please Forgive Me was the soundtrack when I lost my virginity to my friend's boyfriend.

Fast forward a few years for me to identify strongly with Papa Don't Preach, but that's another story.

It was the Summer of '69.

It Must Have Been Love played when it was all over.

A new boyfriend and Friday, I'm in Love!

Later on Nothing Compared to Him.

I Lost My Religion along with everyone else and I really wanted to be a Shiny Happy Person.

A few years passed and then everything was Ironic. I would have done anything for love (but I wouldn't do that). I worshipped for a while at the Wonderwall.

When I met my husband, Hootie was singing I Only Wanna Be with You and when I got divorced from my ex he wailed 'Let her cry'.

Falling in Love was indeed Hard on the Knees.

I tried Not to Look Back in Anger. I wondered what a Champagne Supernova was. I tried to be One of Us.

Republica had me Ready to Go. Later on I really wanted to be an American Woman. A lot of the time I felt like a Zombie. I wanted to believe I was Gorgeous.

Now I'm Hung Up, crushing on Mr Brightside, I don't feel like dancing, I'm Crazy and I'd like to be telling it like it is to Mr President.

I could slip into a Plain White T, I'd like to Waltz in LA and I don't want to Fall to Pieces. I worry that I might Bend and Break, I want to be Grace Kelly, I wonder if this is As Good as it Gets, wish I had a Crystal Ball, and then I decide to Relax and Take it Easy.

*Oh, you want plain simple instructions? Listen to the Plain White Ts, The Killers, Snow Patrol, Keane, Mika, Moke and Beth Hart, Jeff Buckley and  Fiction Plane and you have my current playlist.

'I could have been someone.  Well so could anyone. You took my dreams from me, when I first found you' - The Pogues & Kirsty McColl, Fairytale of New York

I listen and I think of my childhood. 

Mom on the couch, cigarette in one hand, knees curled up under her, skirt moving higher and higher as the drink kicks in. Dad in his chair, newspaper on his lap making us keep quiet while the news is on. Simmering tension in the room as they wrestle with their choices.

The Christmas cards are all stuck up on the wall. Holly, snow, robins, mistletoe. I've never seen mistletoe before and I wonder if it's magic. If you kiss under the mistletoe will you find true love? My teenage self, desperately romantic, hopes so.

Christmas is high drama. Twenty or more assorted family members and no-one knows if mom will get drunk.

Not just drunk, incapable drunk.

Not just tipsy, but helpless, mascara streaked tears and beautiful blue eyes full of pain.

Until then we'll sit under the bauhinia tree on lawn chairs and dig at each other. Gran will tight-lippedly do the dishes on the back verandah at around four when she disapproves of the conversation.

Dad will complain about the weather. 

Uncle T will tell tasteless jokes to mom in the pantry and try to get her to drop her pants when she's at the cusp of had enough and had too much. My cousins will tease me mercilessly.

The Christmas lights will twinkle in the bright sunlight. We'll all drink tea and eat cake.

We have so much to be thankful for. Let's count our blessings.

Thank god for the servants, even though they have the day off.  Thank god for Gran whose making three different kinds of cake and all the desserts.  Thank god that Uncle T will be bringing his booze and then taking it all home again.  Thank fucking Christ that we'll be playing happy families and pretending we all love each other while the sun beats through the humid air.

And silently we wonder when we'll see a better time? When will all our dreams come true?

The memories bitter, yet so familiar, knife-sharp and clear and I miss it.

I want it back, even with all the anguish. I miss my Mama, but she's 2000 miles away.

So happy Christmas, I love you.

'It started out with a kiss how did it end up like this?' - Mr Brightside, The Killers.

I have a little habit.

Ok, it's a big habit. I'm a gym addict.

I go almost every day and skip very rarely.

I have a personal trainer. Everyone knows who I am. I get my coffee served to me as I walk into the cafe. You know how it is.

But here's the kicker. The fitness (cardio and weights) section of the gym is closed for the next three days.

It's CLOSED people.

I am going to DIE.

I went tonight for my appointment with my trainer. Actually, I went twice today. Once this afternoon for 45 minutes of running and then this evening for the 'let's make you know that you have abs and glutes' workout.

Also known as the 'let's make Ash do so much heavy exercise that her pants fall down' (yes, really).

Tomorrow it's closed!

I could sauna, sure.

I could do a class, sure.

The thing is, I like the solitary, yet comradely thing of working out on a treadmill in a room full of other people punishing themselves equally as hard.

I don't like classes. I have little coordination and I'm always going right while everyone else goes left.

Plus, I like to listen to my own very loud music on my own shiny little ipod. (Yes, you can click the links in the lyrics at the top of each entry, they're meant to be your soundtrack.)

Expect me to be grumpy.

Very.

'I find it so romantic when you look into my beautiful eyes and lose control.' -  Who Let You Go, The Killers.

So just how do you sleep at night?

Is it ritual cups of tea, reading books, plumping pillows, having the blanket just so, having the blind down just right?

How many pages of Miranda July's new book do you read before you switch off the light? Do you have a glass of water next to your bed?

Is it Ambien, meditation, acupuncture, homeopathy, talk therapy, stress relief, no coffee after 12, running 5 km a day, lying staring at the ceiling, turning the pillow over and over to get to the other, fresher side? Is it lying awake not watching the clock while you panic that tomorrow you need to function, need to work, need to be awake?

Is it 12 pm and you know you can't sleep so you don't go to bed because you know you can't sleep and if you went to bed you'd just lie there not sleeping?

Is it a journal by the bed to write down the things that bug you and make you wake at 3 am, heart pounding, adrenaline rushing while you remember dreams you'd rather forget?

So tell me, just how do you sleep at night?

'My sweet indecision, do you think I'd wait around for you?' - David Ford, Go to Hell

Did you ever have one of those destructively compulsive yet ecstatic relationships with someone?

I had one. His name was Nick. He smelled of Blue Stratos.

When I smell that now I remember the taste of it on his skin. Baby soft, the alcohol of the cologne dried against his skin.

It was one of those relationships where you can't bear to be apart, where all you can think about is the next time and the next time.  And the next time.

I remember lying in the park on a blanket for hours, covered in autumn leaves, and while I was with him, already thinking of the next time I'd be with him. I remember booking into a hotel room with him. I remember lying outside, under him, on patio cushions watching the stars move closer.

Listening to the Smiths. Getting high and listening to Learning to Fly and weeping, my tears dripping into his mouth, salty wet, because Pink Floyd were singing just for us.

Lying in bed together smoking pot, while he told me about working in England, which seemed so far away and so exotic to a girl who had never left Africa.

Eventually, as these things do, we broke up.

I ran into him again when I was very pregnant with my daughter and my knees almost gave way. I had climbed to the top of eight flights of stairs in a department store to have tea on the top floor and I was breathless, heavily pregnant and all I could think was 'god, he can't see me this way!'

The last time he'd seen me before was when I left his bed early one afternoon and never went back.

I remember dialling, getting to the last digit of his number and hanging up. Standing by the phone waiting and hoping but never being the one to call.

There was no email, no sms, no internet back then. Just a phone with an intermittent connection.

Sometimes it would ring and  I'd pick up and there would be no-one there, and I would hope the no-one was him.

A few years later my then sister-in-law came by to tell me that he'd died in an air crash. My knees collapsed and I was sitting on the floor but I didn't cry.

The rivers of tears never came. They still haven't.

This song reminded me about how it was. The toxicity of the relationship that makes you keep going back for more. You know you're not suited but there's a chemical romance. You know that you don't work, won't work, but there's something about the touch and feel and smell and taste that makes you go back over and over.

So you do, and then it becomes untenable and you stop. It's hard to tell which is more difficult, the stopping or the carrying on.

Everyone's had one, I guess. Will you share yours with me?

You can read about David Ford, join his group on Facebook here, and if your Christmas spirit got a little twisted, download his song, Have Yourself a Bitter Little Christmas from itunes.

For more Christmas songs to get you in the mood visit Christmas Music Everyday.

'Driving home for christmas, With a thousand memories' - Chris Rea, Driving Home For Christmas

Christmas is late in our household this year.

Usually I decorate directly after Sinterklaas.

Usually our apartment is lit up for a whole month and the lights stay up until my birthday on 11 January.

Not this year.

On Wednesday the children asked, 'Where is the Christmas tree, mama?'

On Friday they asked 'Where is the Christmas music and where are the Christmas movies?'

Today they cried because I have presents from work and we have no tree up to put them under.

Yesterday we had Christmas breakfast at work, complete with silly hats, and finally I seem to have a little bit of the Christmas spirit.

I'll be decorating like a crazy person later today, and visiting some friends later this afternoon to have some grown up Christmas fun.

If you need some Christmas spirit too, go visit Francine.

Her photos will inspire you.

My bones ache, my skin feels cold, and I'm getting so tired and so old. - Snow Patrol, Open Your Eyes

Today, over coffee, we talked about how we would never go home again.

How the living, the living here, has changed us, made us into people we were not.

It has taken the people we were, uncomplicated and naive; and adding age, created tangles from previously unaddled stetches of being and process.

Talk of children, sex and life and Philip Larkin and his Importance of Elsewhere.

Lonely in Ireland, since it was not home,
Strangeness made sense. The salt rebuff of speech,
Insisting so on difference, made me welcome:
Once that was recognised, we were in touch

Their draughty streets, end-on to hills, the faint
Archaic smell of dockland, like a stable,
The herring-hawker's cry, dwindling, went
To prove me separate, not unworkable.

Living in England has no such excuse:
These are my customs and establishments
It would be much more serious to refuse.
Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.

Where is your elsewhere?

'You can't sleep at night. You can't dream your dreams. Your fingerprints on file, left clumsily at the scene. Your own worst enemy has come to town ... ' - Bruce Springsteen, Your Own Worst Enemy

That didn't last long.

9 weeks to be exact.

I started on 22 October and on 31 December I'll be done. So what made it not work?

The combination of not being in charge of my own time anymore. Missing my former life. The salary after tax being much much less than I expected. The kids being restless. The work/home balance being insurmountable.

The hum of office life being more like a listless drone.

One way or another it wasn't my thing. I think I realised pretty quickly that I'm no longer cut out for 9 - 5 regardless of the prestige of the job.

Though it was pretty nice to have some kind of actual worth attached to one's day to day existence.

Being able to watch the response to 'yes, I work for xxx as xxx' was infinitely more rewarding than watching the response when to that loaded question of 'what exactly do you do?' you answer 'oh, I'm a mom and I look after my kids and I work out and I lunch and sometimes I work part time in a florist'.

The response to that is usually some weird combination of,  'wow, you're a spoiled brat' and a look that says 'why don't you get a real job?'.

Things I will miss:
 

• The sense of purpose.
• Of getting up and going somewhere and having a role. Thing is, I think I defined my role so clearly before I started working that it was difficult to redefine myself.
• Having a friend that you see every day and can chat to as you walk past.
  
• Parties!
• Weird things like having your own mug in the cupboard.
• Getting cake and singing on birthdays.

Things I will not miss.

• The two o'clock dip.
• Getting excessive amounts of coffee to ward off the two o'clock dip.
• Water-cooler gossip.
• Endless going to the toilet just to be somewhere else!
• The cattiness.
• Appearing busy because you have to sit in your chair for the 8 hours you're paid for.

So what's next?

I don't know really.

I think I'll write the novel.

Blog more, travel more. Inspect my navel for fluff. Wax my upper lip. Paint my apartment.

Dream some dreams. Live some life.

Visit Paris. Hello David!

Visit Germany. Hello Charlotte!

Visit LA. Hello Neil!

'So mothers keep your girls at home,
Don't let them journey all alone,
Tell them this world is full of danger,
And to shun the company of strangers'
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Kindness of Strangers

The girl walks up the steps, doesn't punch her card. Sits down with one foot on the back of the seat in front of her. Small, dark skin, doe eyes. Straightened hair. Cheap perfume.

She wears a white puffa coat, jeans, a black belt. Nameless sneakers. She eats McDonalds fries out of their paper packet and watches the door. Her mp3 player, (it's not an ipod), blasts nameless music into her ears.

She taps her foot against the chair.

Opposite her a middle-aged woman, shopping bags in hand, lifeless skin, deflated breasts, soul escaped. Bags from Blokker with gifts for her children who are probably just as lifeless as their mother.

Destined for a bleak future.

Then a boy walks in, sits down, kisses the girl for just a little too long for them to be only friends. She leaves the headphones in. They don't talk. His hand rests on her thigh, near the top, just below her crotch. She eats her fries and listens to her music.

The middle-aged woman watches them. She's trying not to watch, her eyes pretend they're looking out of the window. She's not watching. But she is.

If she would speak she would say, 'I was 17. I ate fries while my boy put his hand on my crotch. I pretended I didn't care.'

If she would speak she would stand up and howl. The windows would shatter.

She likes to think she wouldn't be invisible anymore. She likes to think the boy and girl would notice her.

She'd be shaking her fists, roaring into a void.

Screaming, 'I'm here. Look at me!' Her voice would rasp and grate along the words.

They'd keep listening to their music. Their feet would tap to whatever it was.

The girl would leave his hand near her crotch. He would think about how he wanted to get into her pants. She would think about nothing.

The woman sitting opposite them is invisible.

They're only little tears, darling, let them spill
And lay your head upon my shoulder
Outside my window the world has gone to war
Are you the one that Ive been waiting for?
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Are you the one that I've been waiting for.

The tennis ball flips lazily from one side of the court to the other. Tanned, smooth, effortlessly hairless, teenage legs chase the ball. 

Backhand, forehand, volley.

White socks with bobbles above white-washed plimsolls, painted every weekend to keep them white.

Green skirts short, slips of white bikini showing when they dip to hit the ball. White t-shirts pulled tight across suddenly full breasts.

The tennis teacher, Flash, he's called, leaning back characteristically on his heels and surveying the sea of hormones in front of him.

The best player is blond and cheeky. Her C-cup passes her in Maths and advances her in tennis. She has curls, good teeth, and an impish face. Even at 14 she knows how to stand close to the teacher, how to show the most flesh when she swings for the ball.

The ball slams, hits the faded clay, catches in the ancient net. The racquets squeak. Shoes thump.

The sun shines on and trickles of sweat run down the back of the tanned knees.

Circles of sweat start to form in the armpits of the clean white shirts. Beads form on noses. The ball slams.

Mid-afternoon and tennis ends, just as cricket starts.

The few boys, favourites of the tennis teacher, lift themselves from the shade of the hut, where they've been watching the play. Punching each other, horsing around, they pretend not to care.

Lanky and loping, they leave to chase different balls on a different field.

If I don't break a sweat, it ain't as good as it gets. - Beth Hart, As Good As It Gets

The veranda. Wide and low.

Soft darkness in contrast to the glaring October light.

Green gauze over the window apertures to keep out the flies. Whitewashed walls, paint flaking if you rub against it.

Inside, cool oxblood floors, polished to a high shine by the Boy and his polisher. Whirring and whining every morning at 7o'clock.

The electric fan on top of the gramophone, limply distributing the air. The heat pulling the life out of you.

Dad fiddling with the radio to get a station through the static. Eventually giving up and settling for torpid silence.

Ochre plastic leather covered chairs sticking to the backs of your legs where your skirt rides up. A sucking sound when you shift in your seat. You want to fling your legs apart and hook them over the sides of the chair, but that's impolite so you keep them together and squirm in your chair.

You really want to lie down on the cool floor like the dogs, who pant and salivate in the heat.

Kleintje the fox terrier lies on her side, panting, chest heaving, in an effort to cool down.

Tea in a metal teapot. The green knitted tea cosy made by one of the aunts pointlessly covering the teapot. All delivered by the Boy on a tray with four cups, sugar basin, hot water, teaspoons.

'Bloody Boy forgot the milk again. Can you tell him to bring it?'

'Ephraaaaim, milk!'

The conversation drags on about crops, rain, mielies, Boys and their wives, incest, polygamy, the goat herder and his penchant for fucking the goats. Having to call the vet for the goats and why can't he just be normal and keep it in his trousers.

'Jeepers, did you see that Juliet's husband beat her again. These people. Drink and fight. You can't do anything with them. It's not surprising they can't govern themselves.'

A sigh, and then the subject changes.

'Mmm. Do you want another cup of tea?'

Heaven forbid you end up alone. You don't know why. Hold on tight, wait for tomorrow, you'll be alright. - The Fray, Heaven Forbid

Last night I had the good fortune to be invited by a friend to see an English-language comedy improvisation group, easylaughs, at the Crea Cafe Theatre in Amsterdam.

Before we start, let's remember I'm a suburban girl. I live a 15 minute tram ride from central Amsterdam, but it might as well be Berlin.

I'm not renowned for visiting Amsterdam in the daytime, let alone at night.

All that's changing of course, in the interests of beating the inexorable lure of the sofa, the tv, and downloaded portrayals of other people's lives.

Sometimes a mid-thirties crisis can be a good thing.

I lost my train of thought there for a moment, sorry, thirties again. It happens more often than I'd like.

This was my very first time at an improv show and I'm a convert. The easylaughs group is howlingly funny. It's easy to see that they're comfortable with each other, they know where their strengths and weaknesses lie.

The best bits for me were the song improvisation: improvising lyrics and staying in tune is an art. I can't remember all of the skits, but there was one with the words 'pigeon' and 'striptease' as the starting words,  which made me lose most of my mascara.

Go as quickly as you can to see this group. The venue is small which makes it more intimate, the group actually mingle in the intervals, and the price is reasonable.

Oh, and right now Amsterdam is beautiful at night.

It's cold, the lights glisten on the water and the rain smudges through the light from the streetlamps. It can be surprisingly clear or blanketed in fog. Either way, it's an experience.

I can't see any good reasons not to go.