I was writing about this over on the new weightlossy group-bloggy thing, but I did - halfway through - realise that it was less about me being on a mission, and more about me being a complete and utter klutz, and as such, mostly belonged over here.

See, what happened in the last 48 hours was this (please do not be alarmed if I go into point form at some point for brevity, there is a lot to cover)

It all started when I got a bit low in the old blood sugar department, had a leeeetle tiny weeny bit of a hunger-Hulk temper tantrum (very brief, very mild … turned out to be very much the beginning of the end) because I forgot to eat and dinner was an hour or two late and things.

So during the mild grump, I scooted my handbag across the room with my foot, in a bit of a light ‘kicky’ kind of way, and it disappeared under the table, and then I ate and felt better, and everything was alright again and I completely forgot about it..

ButButBut.

I continued to completely forget about it until just after bedtime, when I realised I had forgotten some pills that were in my bag, crept down in the dark so as not to disturb my dropping-off beloved or my sleeping mother, stuck my hand in my handbag and suddenly remembered a large glass jar of Malt Extract & Cod Liver Oil that had been placed there for safekeeping only hours before.

Placed there hours before it had, unfortunately, hit the radiator, having been kicked into one. I peered into the handbag containing my hand. As well as my hand, there was an ungodly sticky smell. And an inch of syrup covering the bottom of my bag. And my diary, several cables and other various things.

Many of the ‘various things’, of course, were shards of glass, which had shattered into a bajillion pieces, and were the third thing I noticed, due to the one that had bitten my thumb.

“Bobbie” I whispered, urgently but in a very small voice to keep from alerting my Little Mother, sleeping upstairs. “Canyoucomedownstairsplease?”
“Hm?”
“Ambleedingbobbie! Help! Help!” I said, calmly and quietly, in a happy whisper, in case she had woken up.

I held a purse in one hand, I think, and a bleeding thumb on the other, running around, looking for some kind of blood-stemmer.

My Beloved comes downstairs. And stares, slack-jawed, at the carnage.

Together we pull my belongings from the inside - which don’t, miraculously, include my camera, ipod, phone. Just a bunch of other stuff instead.

The bag is ruined. The diary is dead. The cables didn’t respond very well to washing, and everything else is simply dead, apart from my thumb, which keeps bleeding to let me know it’s there.

Seriously, I always told my mum that Malt Extract was the devil’s work. Now I know it to be true.

Fast forward…

a) My thumb doesn’t stop bleeding for hours
b) I realise that my diary contained an important receipt I needed to claim on expenses. So far, this one little bag-booting has cost me approximately £140
c) Though I remember having my purse at some point in the proceedings, for the next day, it remains resolutely lost. Completely. I spend hours looking.
d) All my work gets behind. Nothing works.
e) I by accident discover that my purse has become Widget’s favourite toy. She has, therefore, carried it to her favourite hidey hole. I have now lost my favourite handbag AND purse.
f) Etc etc, break another glass by accident,
g) Another snowglobe by accident
h) ipod breaks even though it was Nowhere NEAR the danger zone, it’s just doing it in sympathy. And
i) there appears to be kitten urine. Somewhere.

So I thought it might all get better. Like I did the night before.
And then I woke up with a cold.

WAH. Does anyone have a time machine, please?

Sorry, I thought I should make it sound all impressive and forefront of social-media-ness, but as it isn’t, and I’m not, I’m not sure I should have bothered, really.

Anyway, it was such an important sounding phrase in order to explain the complex thinking process behind the fact that … well, that some bloggin’ biatches (Non-Working-Monkey, Katy, Wendy and Me, obv) have decided that though losing weight, improving health, changing eating patterns and stuff are things we may all be doing separately, it wasn’t something we wanted to bore people to tears with on our own individual personal blogs, because they are generally for other things, more. Like silliness, and stories, and more general everythingness.

So we have diversified and will be pouring it all into a whole separate, new, different blog instead, called A Lard Off My Mind, which will be all about different kinds of weight things, and exercise things and food things and recipe things and silly things too. But that way is people are interested in that sort of thing they can read it, and if not they can not.

Diversification, see?
I might start a TV one as well, if anyone’s interested.
And maybe a kitten one. No, not really.
Maybe a community one. Or a cleaning one. Or a hard-right political one focusing on how much everyone should hate Europe and wear tin hats just in case of the sudden eruptions of the Germans/Sharia Law/Feminism etc etc ad infinitum. They are always popular.

And then one of these days, I’ll try and make some time to write in this here one.
(sorry - honestly, I will, I promise, just NOTHING has happened, apart from me going away for the weekend and that isn’t interesting, that just sounds like this … … … So you see? All quiet)

As always in January, because I am one of those vile competitive types who tries to pretend they are not even vaguely competitive at all, I found myself trotting obediently over to the Bloggies to indulge in my annual self-flagellation-with-the-non-award-winning-stick. Annoyingly, I got there too late to even nominate. (Myself, at least eight times). (I’m kidding). (Mainly. I mean, I did get there too late to nominate, but I’d never nominate myself eight times). (Maybe five times). (I’m kidding).

This inability to be join in the process didn’t, however, stop my whinging, and I took the opportunity to whinge at the first friend I saw online about why oh why I never ever won a Bloggie and how everything wasn’t even vaguely fair and wah wah wah.

At which point I was told sharply to shut up, stop whining, count my blessings, look at my achievements and, most importantly, stop living in 2004, for the love of fuck.
I do very much like my friends.

So that is what I have done. I will whine no more. Well, not until next year, and then probably not out loud.

However, there are a certain number of people who HAVE been nominated who I … oh! No, there aren’t, not really. Not lots that I want to endorse. I want to endorse Diamond Geezer, but do not know many of the others very well, although I’m sure they are all very good and worthy of prizes, because otherwise they wouldn’t be there. There are an awful lot of extremely talented writers and bloggers and photographers and cooks and longstanders missing, of course, but aren’t there always?
So go and vote for Diamond Geezer. Please, because he is there, and good.
Thankoo.

sorry sorry sorry.

I am still alive. Just in case you, you know, thought I wasn’t.

Will post something absolutely proper later today.

In the meantime. Um.

If you could only … If you had …

Oh god, now I can’t even think of an insightful question to ask you to pass the time.

Um…. Does anyone know where my gym towel is?

“Yes, I can speak, of course, go ahead.”

I clasp between the phone and my shoulder as nice, important, particular editor type person starts talking, and I continue to tie the corners of the litter tray liner as quietly as I possibly can.

“Yeah, so thanks for sending that over, it’s great. Can you just tweak it a li …”

I thought I was all fixed and filed for the moment, was going to take twenty minutes, heat up some soup, do a couple of necessary household things (litter, laundry hanging, lunch) then get on with a new task. I was halfway through changing the litter tray when the phone rang.

“…love the joke at the top, but maybe we lose it? Straighter intro, I think, maybe move the gag further dow…”

The kittens are sniffing around the bottom of the cabinets as I quietly stealthily open a drawer, silently pull out a binbag and then shut it with a bang as I notice Squirrel disappearing into the cupboard from whence I’ve just pulled a bag of litter.

“…le more statistics, and …”
BANG! says the drawer.
“… are you sure now’s a good time to talk?”

“Oh, of course, go ahead!”

I place the bin bag on the floor near the bin and the litter tray, in preparation for adding the used litter bag to it, as soon as I’ve saved …

‘Rorw? Rooooo? Meeeeeeeeooooooo-uuououo…‘ a plaintive noise fades back and forth under the kitchen units. I put my hand over the phone.

“Yes alRIGHT Squirrel, I’m COMING…” I hiss.

This is her favourite game at the moment. Run into the cupboard, which is rarely opened, but whenever it is: whoosh. Once in there, sneak behind all the rarely used pots at the back, disappear … and then be completely unable to get out. Luckily last week I discovered the skirting under the oven is a little loose. I lie on my stomach and juggle it.

“…at sound ok?” Comes the tinny voice from my ear.

“Yes! Oh yes, marvellous, certainly. So it’s bring the top joke down, bring the info up, and ….”

Squirrel runs past my head, and over toward her sister who is, I notice, sniffing around the empty bin bag lying near the empty litter tray.

” … and you want it written through, rather than in point form? Yes? Or noooooo…” I trail off, as Widget squats down over the binbag and starts gleefully releasing urine onto the crinkly black surface.

“Yes, not point form, I think. And less points abou…”

KitchenRollKitchenRollKitchenRoll. Actually, do we have any? ToiletPaperToiletPaperToiletPa…
I run into the bathroom and back. Widget is still weeing. How such a small cat can contain a pool of liquid the size of Lake Windermere, I have no idea, but have no intention of lifting her midstream.

” …et that back to me by quarter past, yeah?”

“Oh yeah, no problem” I say, dabbing at hot cat piss with my non-phone-holding hand. “Sooner! It’ll be with you in ten minutes.”

“Thanks!”

“No problem. Anytime.”

I have, of late - though wherefore I know not - lost my ability to sleep without listening to the radio. I mean, I listen to the radio anyway, generally, while working. But for the last couple of weeks I have been listening to it also all night, very quietly.

Partly, yes, because I miss the snuffling semisnore of my missing bedfilller fella, but also because … no, that’s mainly it. I mean, also due to living in a highly-pubbed area, just a little white noise means I sleep straight through jolly people wending their way home, powered only by their own shouting and the much vocalised need to wee.

It’s just no station seems to specialise in the perfect white noise. Interestingly, my fancypants alarm clock DOES feature a white noise facility, but since I have discovered that it’s actual white noise that I need so much as ‘really quiet boring music I can sleep through’, it just won’t do.

It is annoying, then, that I cannot find Really Boring FM.

I have tried several things;
First, Easy listening stations, but I couldn’t get to sleep for trying to sing along;
I tried Jazz ones, but there always came a moment where everything would get a bit modern and freeform and Bee-doodly-WAH-WAH-SQUEEEEEEE and frankly, that does not a restful night’s kip make;
I kept coming back to a couple of Stations where People Talked all night in drowsy and dull monotones about incomprehensible things like international crop relations and personal finance, but I either kept waking up freaked out that I was hearing voices, or I started thinking about scary tax things and couldn’t get back to sleep.

So I settled on a Nice Safe Classical Music station, seeing as I quite often have their world music show thing on as I’m reading anyway before sleeps.

In the last few nights, then, I have discovered that relaxing overnight classical music is Not As Relaxing As They Say It Is, frankly. You’ll have to bear with me, while I try and describe this:

I’m alright on the classical music that I really like (very pedestrian - some Bach cello gubbins, fractions of Mozart, selected hits by that Beethoven guy, some of that Handel shit and random other things as and when I happen upon them) it’s been a while since I last studied it as a genre, and I’m a little rusty.

So here’s what’s going to happen - I’m going to have to describe them the best way I know how. And no, I don’t need any help, thank you, this way is fine. I know nothing, and I’m fine with knowing nothing, in this particular instance.
Which is funny, because there’s some woman who’s quite the expert on classical music who has almost exactly the same name as me but writes for another paper, and sometimes I get her mail. No, sorry, it’s not that funny.

So. it is not as relaxing as classical music ‘through the night’ would seem to suggest it might be. I mean, it is for a bit, generally going on with the strings and a bit of soft, smooth wheedaw-wheedaw nyooze nyooze wah wah neeeeeee, which is fine, because it sounds a bit like walking through gentle moonlit valleys that smell of cedarwood and contain babbling brooks, but then they’ll suddenly realise that they’ve done that bit for a while, and move on to the cresendo into the passage which sounds a bit like angry giants coughing in a giant tiled toilet while farting, and goes BUUUURM-BIIRRRM-Booooorm TACH TCH Phumph PHA!, and while the ‘cedarwood’ bit was very quiet, this bit is not, because it wouldn’t be so sodding dramatic that way, and oh no, those classical musicalists wouldn’t like that At All.

Those Classical Musicalists, in fact, would say the shouty Rum-FLUMP-MEEEEEEH bit was, in fact, the best bit.
Which I completely disagree with. I mean, I know they’d be all ‘it has an intrinsic worth above and beyond Being *snort* Your Lullaby, MUZZ Pickard, and I think you’ll find people want to listen to to it rather than IGNORE it while they get their SLEEP, young lady’.

To which I would say ‘Well thank you, as being 30, I don’t nearly get called young lady enough anymore. In fact some little bastard in the shop held the door open for me and called me a polite and respectful name one would usually bestow on a Victorian Schoolmistress the other day, the wee toad, so really thanks for that. And re: the other thing - I totally get what you’re saying, but seriously, it’s loud, and it’s shouty, and really - can’t they play that shit during the day?’

By which point the Classical Musicalist either would have walked off in disgust or made that disgusted ‘HUFF!’ noise so many times in a row they’d hyperventilated and passed out.

So anyway. I should go to bed now.
But, just in case: I need something ’soothing not shouty’ to listen to as I sleep. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Any suggestions of things that are available on digital radio in the UK, I mean.

[Any suggestions about how I should get a fucking clue about classical music, meanwhile, will be entirely and completely wasted on me.
Save your breath. You may need it for going HUFF...]

Hello. As some people mentioned in the comment box below, I was filling in on holiday cover for one of the regular columnists in the Weekend magazine of the Guardian today.

I am most proud of this - it’s where I eventually want to get to, and being asked to fill in for someone is a damned good start. I hate the photo, of course, because I hate ALL photos of me, generally. But I don’t care in this instance, because I’m so damned proud of myself. You will notice, particularly if you happened upon it in the magazine itself, that I am wearing a particularly odd pair of sparkly silver princess slippers. This is because I am, at heart, a seven-year-old who likes playing dressing-up.

If you read it already, yay, I hope you liked it - it drew on some material from this here blog, because a) it was short notice
b) I put all my best stories on this blog, so it’s a bit inevitable and
c) Fuck all of any interest has happened to me lately.

If you didn’t read it already, or happen to be in the wrong country, you can also find it here.

Yay!

Now I will get on with finishing answering those damned questions, yes.
Later Oh thank fuck, I’ve actually finished them. Phew. I always forget how long those things take… Anyway, thank you, and phew. Done.

So here is a thing I’ve done before, as have many of my personal blog peers - when I had loads and loads more readers, admittedly - but today, because I haven’t got much work I can’t do over the weekend instead (having no beloved, and thus nothing to do) I would very much therefore like to answer any questions you might have. If I can.

One question per person, although since I think I have about 31 readers now, you can probly ask one each iffoo like.

Ask me a question. I will answer. The project demands it, in fact:
[But not any more because I have enough, thanks]

I will keep a running total here:
I have currently answered ALL THE QUESTIONS!!! which, as it turns out, was 57 questions!

Phew. done. Thank you, all.

(more…)

… jog at a reasonable pace, interspersed with walking at a strident pace. Apparently. Or that’s what The Boss would have said if he was 30 and overweight and on a gym-mission.
Or if he was 90 and old and infirm. Which, let’s face it, he probably is.

Anyway. Bruce Springsteen says I need new trainers.

I have been going to the gym regularly for about 18 months. I’m going to be going even MORE regularly in the next five or six - and don’t worry, you will be hearing about that, like it or not - months, and the problem is this:

I’ve kind of had the same trainers the whole time I’ve been going to the gym. And they’re not even real trainers.
They’re pretty fashion Gola trainers. ALL the time I have been going to the gym, those have been my gym shoes.

And that’s a while.
And in that time I’ve progressed from ‘plodding as slowly as my flab and tar-encrusted lungs would allow me’ to ‘Walking!’ to ‘jogging a bit every now and again’ to ‘walk/run/walk/run’ and that works for me.

But not for my shoes.

The soles, by now, are about as thin as Ritz biscuits.
And not the kind with the two biscuits with the cheese spread in the middle, just the regular biscuits. In fact, in places they’re thinner. Like Water Biscuits, maybe. Or some other kind of really thin cracker. And what is left is mostly the consistency of the cheese filling if they HAD been Ritz Cheese Sandwiches. You know?
[I'm not being paid by them by the way, I'm just on a diet, and so fantasising about stupid unattractive foods.]

I’m not using the ‘cheese biscuit’ thing to insinuate that my feet are cheesy, by the way. My feet are in no way cheesy.
God forbid my feet should be like cheese.
Seriously, because I would eat them, if so.
I really like cheese.

Anyway. What I was coming online to ask before I got led off into what may have been an ill-advised … not triage. not trident. What’s the word? When you get led off on a … it’ll come to me.

Anyway - does anyone know a particularly good site for buying trainers online in the UK?

And no, don’t anyone come at me with that “You have to try them on in the shop” bollocks

Because let’s face it, the only thing more scary than hairdressers are … well, actually, the only thing more scary than hairdressers are beauticians. But coming in at .1 below hairdressers? Sports clothing shop assistants. TERRIFYING. I’ll go in there and ask for shoes, and they’ll just look at me like ‘HA! What’s the POINT, fatso!’ - so no. No, there will be no real live shops, thank you.

So, online shops where they might sell a comfortable size 7 for a wide foot, and …

Oh! I have wide feet, did I say? Too much of a barefoot hippy childhood, I’m sure. Anyway. I have wide feet, and …

Actually. I have some Adidas I bought a couple of years ago but they were way too tight. BUT … I’ve lost at least four stone since then. So, you know, do feet lose weight? Might I have lost weight off my feet, so they’ll fit perfectly now?

Do you lose weight off your feet?
God! Imagine if you lost ALL the weight off your feet and nowhere else. That would be dreadful! You would have tiny weeny feet, and…

Um.

So! Trainer-brilliant Online Shoe Shop Tips?

Imaygotobednow.

There’s a thing I wrote here about that work trip to Austria I mentioned in November. (November? October? I am not sure)

Anyway, it is more little.red.boatish than some things I write for proffesionally-reasons, so I thought I would crosspost for once.

I may expand on some of the experiences I had at a later date. MOST surreal. Mostmuch.

I bought some shower gel, right, and on the outside, it says that it’s “Regenerating Shower Gel”.

But I’ve nearly reached the end of the tube, and it doesn’t seem to be filling itself up again.
Should I take it back and complain?

[A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. A ha ha ha. Hahahahaha. I'm really sorry, I thought of that in the shower at the gym, and it made me laugh, and if I don't write it down somewhere then I'm just 'that weird woman that laughs in the shower cubicles for no apparent reason'. Sorry.]

It is, at the moment, technology conference season. No, hang on, that’s wrong. As far as I can work out, it is ALWAYS technology conference season - but right now, they’re really big, and they’re all at once. Of course, my beloved is a technology correspondent type, so. No, actually, not ‘type’, that’s just what he is. It’s a title, rather than a type.

So I have lost my beloved to some Monster Tech Rally. Geekstonbury Festival. Spods of Rock. LOLlapalosers.

Ach, I’m just being bitter, because if my beloved goes away, a whole bunch of people go away.
I don’t JUST lose my beloved, and my lover, and my partner.
I also lose my best friend or a couple of weeks. And my business partner, my in-house subeditor, my ideas board, my confidante, my personal chef (what? I do the baking of goodies, souping of soups, I clean bathrooms and hoover, he makes dinner, amongst other things - it’s fair), my sparring partner, my laughtrack, my IT support, my dining companion, and the only person in the world who knows when to give me a hug because I’m going to cry within the next half hour otherwise, and when to let me cry.

Still. I also enjoy spending time on my own - more, usually, when I’m not so down already, but even so, I enjoy it. I can build a neat little routine, I can indulge in some monastic self-discipline and, if I’m honest, I get more done when he is away. Probably because I’m So Fucking Bored.

But that is the wrong way to look at these things. Positive, me: being positive. So. I get more done. Everything stays cleaner.

And other good things I would not have noticed if my beloved had not gone away:

1. I have clearly been sleeping on the wrong side of the bed for ages. This has now been remedied.

2. I have time to make all that soup I have been meaning to make, but only when there is no one here to eat the bloody stuff. The freezer is full of individual bagged portions of soup. Very prudent, I know. But also a leeeetle Tragic.

3. The more bored I get, the more crap I order online. There are several books, a dvd box set and a hand-blender winging their way to me. I also joined an online film club service thing. And I’m sure there’s something else

4. I have always been one for talking to myself, but had forgotten how much more acceptable it is when you have cats. Because, you see, I’m not talking to myself. Nonono. I’m talking to the cats.
I’m just talking to them about things that they have no comprehension of. Without needing an answer.

5. I go to the gym a lot more often when there are no other fun things to distract me. I also don’t order takeaway, because what’s the point, if you can’t pick at someone else’s? Also, they have a minimum order. Bastards.

6. Other things. We are not yet a quarter of the way through the time yet, I think. Or perhaps we are. I have lost count. Booooooooo. No, it’s good, I do enjoy being on my own, really. And I’m getting LOADS done.

Oooooh, the phone’s ringing!
YAY!

I and my large plastic box stare disconsolately out of the window as, behind us, a woman tries to explain to a confused receptionist just how long the piece of string coming out of her dog’s bottom is, and just how fervently she believes this length to be directly proportional to the emergency appointment she needs.

As great as tales of puppy bum-string aside, I need to get back to work, and glumly press the redial button on my phone.

“Hi? I ordered a cab half an hour ago? You said it would be ten minutes? Erm?…”

The bored lady on the other end of the line informs me that there is no cab. They hadn’t yet been able to find a cat-friendly driver.

“Friendly? Oh, he doesn’t have to be friendly. He doesn’t even have to like cats that much, I just need to get home, and it’s raining”

The bored lady doesn’t care. My attempts to convince her that it’s not, after all, a tiger with diahorrea, but two tiny kittens in a box does no good whatsoever. Apparently every minicab within the greater Brighton area is driven by a misanthropic allergist.

Grumbling, we set off into the rain. Me in my ‘we’re just dashing out for twenty minutes by cab for your second dose of immunisations and we’re going to get a cab both ways so I don’t need to wear a proper coat’ coat (it’s important to have a coat for every occasion, although I do worry that mine are becoming slightly too specific) and two kittens in a box.

I worry about the kittens getting wet. Though I realise that they’re probably not made of anything TOO water-soluble, unless they are some of those clever effervescent aspirin-kittens that you only really see at the more novelty end of the cat-show circuit, it surely cannot be good for them.

I lift the box up and glance in. The kittens are staring, wide-eyed back at me. In terror? Or just because they’re kittens and that’s the default expression? We cannot tell, but instinctively, I feel it to be a) bad and b) all my fault.

Avoiding traffic so as not to scare the tiny diarrhoetic tigers in my box, we take the road less travelled. Interestingly, the road turns out to poorly travelled for very good reason. Mainly because it is up a suicidal hill, ends in a dead end and contains several gangs of youths who are clearly on the lookout for kittens to kidnap.

I lift the box up again, to check the they are still there. They are. I try and work out if their wide-eyed stare is more or less traumatised than it was mere minutes before. Definitely more. We reach a busy main road and I hoik the box up to check on them at every crossing to check on their trauma levels. I start to wonder if they might be more disturbed by the hoiking than the roar of the cars, chastise myself roundly and power up the next hill toward home, worrying and wet.

I run through possible scenarios in my head. Perhaps the shock of it all will lead to tiny kitten heart attacks, and I will open the box to discover two dead critters. Perhaps they will be too traumatised, and refuse to emerge until I am safely in bed, and never forgive me, and this simple taxilessness will have ruined our relationship for the next twenty years.

I fumble with my keys, home, and place the box on the floor. Opening the flap, I sit nervously on the sofa and wait for the bad news.

Within seconds, one is standing on my cleavage and purring idiotically. The other has wandered off to find some food. My poor little troopers, they are hiding their pain so very well.

We were talking about noodles while drifting off to sleep last night. It’s stupid, I can make any food I desire now I’m working from home, but I still occasionally lust after a particular cold noodle salad from a shop near my old office. It’s just noodles, with some sliced raw vegetables, and a sauce which is like just lemon, and a little rice vinegar, which I know sounds like nothing you would want, but I don’t care, it’s what I want. And try as I might, I cannot reproduce it.

So, listening to my beloved breathe deeper, shuffling toward snores, I suddenly had a brilliant idea. I have written it down in my diary, which was by my bed for EXACTLY this kind of occasion - but it’s just in random words, so I will have to reconstruct the thought process:

Ahem.

You know how there’s some service to help you when you hear a piece of music and you really want to know what it is? So, say, you’re in a bar or a shop, and there’s a piece of music being played, and it’s driving you crazy because you know what it is, but you can’t identify it, so you text this number, and you let it hear a snippet of the song, and it texts you back with what the name of the song and the artist is?

Well, there is such a service, anyway.

SO.

I thought you should be able to dip your phone in any food, or just, like smear it on the microphone hole, send it to a particular number and BOOM! Full list of ingredients get texted back to you! Isn’t that brilliant? Yes! It’s Brilliant!

So the foodstuff or sauce or whatever it might be would be smeared on the business end of the phone - if it was really crispy or crunchy like a Rice Crispie you might have to really smoodge it quite hard into the hole, but whatever - and then it would end up at a tiny little lab …

(and here in my diary it says ‘tiny chef monkeys? Spiders?’)(And no, no drinking last night)

… And they would immediately analyse it with their highly technological machines/sense of taste, and send back a list of ingredients so you could reproduce it - boom!

Of course Colonel Sanders, therefore, would not be keen on this. Once this service was perfected, there would be no such thing as the Colonel’s Secret Recipe any more, for sure, so he’s likely to be behind the slow progress of this kind of technology coming to market.

There are other problems, of course, one of the main ones dating back to the romantic notion of text messages I’ve espoused on this site in the past - the idea of them as real, physical tiny things, envelopes with wings, flying from phone to phone, carrying whispered messages and bad grammar. You might need to read the original post at this point to understand that. Sorry.

But that, of course, leads to the problem - if these dainty little messages, white envelopes on white wings, buzzing past our ears on the way to other people’s phones, if THAT’s something I can imagine … then surely the little bits of food carried in the same kind of messages might also be truly airbound. And that might just lead to people getting hit in the face with fast moving bits of salad dressing. And that’s not nearly as romantic.

Over all though, even though it might have been a half-conscious idea, even though I might not have the developmental laboratory process OR the tiny spiders in lab coats at my command *right* now, I still believe it’s an idea that really, honestly could work and should, and will (or will now, probably) be incorporated in the next roll-out of the iPhone. It has wings.

You know, someone referred to me as ‘a technology expert’ the other week. My, we did laugh.