The Big Fat Pig Exercise Regime

This being the exercise plan that accompanies the patented BFP cereal/bananas/red wine diet. That being the diet you only do during the week by the way.

Today: two bananas, one bowl of cereal, no wine, forty sit-ups, twelve minutes of rowing, a session on the dumbbells. It's half nine in the evening, not even dark yet and I'm ready for my bed.

Massive plaudits to everyone involved in bringing the Tour de France's Grand Depart to these shores. Absolutely mega and I wish I'd been there.  

Inclement Weather

Action shot live from Benllech

I'm bloody starving - two bowls of cornflakes and a banana thus far. To take my mind off the hunger I have been reunited with my old mate Senor Rioja.

I played nine holes of golf in teeming rain and high winds earlier today at Baron Hill - it's a testing little course and I am still feeling my way into how to play it but it is nice to have a course I can call home. The club defines seniors as beginning at 55 so next year I can perhaps get a little non-strenuous competition. I'll have to resurrect an official handicap from the wreckage of my game (Heaven knows I can't play to the last one I had) but we'll leave that torture for another time.

All in all I'm feeling rather chipper today. I've had a week away from work which definitely helps and I had a great (if bibulous) time in London. And last night I slayed  one of my own ridiculous demons - I emptied my email inbox. So when all is said and done I deserve my glass of the old vino.

The World Cup quarter final between Germany and France is on in the background as I type this. Thus far I have managed not to watch a single match all the way through. I have said it before and, in defiance of the rule against self-corroboration, I'll say it again, football is the best game to watch as a partisan. However my own social engagements and England's mediocrity have meant that opportunities for partisanship were initially limited and latterly non-existent. Now, who does an Englishman choose between the French and the Germans? Beats me.

One thing the World Cup has brought to prominence in my mind is the incident of the plainly bonkers Luis Suarez biting an opponent. First up let's discount the offender's insistence that it was an accident. Was it bollocks. But what it does make me wonder is why is the biting so much worse than the leg-breaking tackle? Suarez has been banned from all football for four months and the instinctive reaction is that this is deserved. But how does this compare to the punishment meted to psychopathic tacklers? I haven't got the answer to this one but it is interesting how this behaviour is so uniquely reviled. Mind you I repeat, plainly bonkers.  

That London (Continued)

Back from that London, in fact now on one of my Anglesey jaunts. I ate so bloody much in London that I have had to have a severe word with myself and consider adopting extreme measures to get my waistline back under control. The answer is in a diet of breakfast cereal, bananas and alcohol. What can possibly go wrong?

On the subject of alcohol, a quick word of praise for the Lowlander Beerhouse in Covent Garden - loads of fun beers and good no-nonsense food - the fish finger sandwich is wonderful to behold. Try their own Wit Beer. I did. Twice over lunch.

OG liked it

Theatre review. In advance of seeing it I had my fears about Handbagged, fearing a republican/Guardianista style piece of Thatcher bashing. Not the case - the play aims its barbs at all sorts of targets, not least that bloody woman, but it does it even-handedly and to good comic effect.It gets a 'worth seeing' from the Overgraduate. 

Pearls Of Wisdom

Thirty years ago today I got married. Wise men will tell you I never did anything better and have done nothing wiser since. So today is our pearl anniversary. So you see what I've done with the title of this entry - clever eh?

Sharon and I are staying at one of the London outposts of our property empire - well Rachel's flat. She is at Glastonbury but doesn't live here any longer anyway - it's complicated.

Daughter number one is not at Glastonbury so has been chaperoning her old parents, mostly from pub to pub. Yet again I have to praise all that London has to offer, though cheap it ain't

So what have we done? Friday night, Sharon  and I had a satisfactory meal at the local pub, the Edinboro Castle (yes that's how they spell it) - decent chicken caesar salad and fairly priced prosecco.  We were back there yesterday with Helen for a very agreeable lunch - fish and chips since you ask, washed down with three pints of Ubu. In between those two visits we had taken a more upmarket excursion on  the Saturday morning to mark Helen's birthday. We brunched at the Gilbert Scott restaurant in the magnificent refurbished St Pancras station hotel. Excellent service and very good food at a predictably elevated price. The Ridgeview English sparkling wine worked very well with my haddock omelette. Rather less pricey was a nostalgic visit later that afternoon to  the Zetland in South Kensington - my local when a student three decades ago. It wasn't all eating and drinking, we fitted in the Victoria and Albert Museum as well. I'm ashamed to admit that I had never been in there before despite having lived in a flat directly opposite for my final two years at King's.

So all in all, having a lovely time. Theatre tonight. Review to follow.

The Godliness Of Growth

Spume is a follower of the blog and his alter ego Ian Marchant has a rather better blog  at Something of the Night . I recommend it because it never indulges in cant. But I beg to take issue with his denigration of capitalist growth in his recent announcement of rejoining the Green Party. The fault in capitalism is not with the system but with the people within it. Growth has lifted swathes out of real poverty. It has also made a hero out of a charlatan like Richard Branson but let's not bung the baby out with the bath water.

A 'rentier' is one who lives off rent or other income from property including intellectual property. In damning the rentier class (and by association the dreaded Tories) an author living off his royalties has to be slightly careful. All intellectual property is theft?  

Lost In Translation

I like owning books. I like to own the books I have read. They don't have to be new books, in fact it is very difficult for me to pass a second-hand bookshop. I already own more books than I am likely to read and that is before the volumes held on my Kindle.

Mais, si amusant comme en anglais?

A gift at Christmas (from my father I think) was a bundle of Simenon's Maigret novels rescued from a charity shop. In between other bits and bobs of reading (I have inherited Dad's habit of having more than one book on the go) I am enjoying My Friend Maigret. All good stuff but it does make me jealous of those polyglots who can read these things in their original language. How does alliteration translate, or that English staple the pun? Does Wodehouse work in French? 

British Values I

Only now I come to write about these fabled values do I realise that they are the stuff of nostalgia. Tomorrow does not belong to me, nor has today, much less did yesterday. I am an anachronism. Oh well.

Saying please and thank you. Holding doors open. Letting ladies pass by on the correct side of the pavement thus sparing them from splashes from inconsiderately driven carriages. Shaking hands - firmly. These are a few of my favourite things.

The Beatles. Shakespeare. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads. My Grandma. Anthony Powell. Simon Raven. Evelyn Waugh. Pete Atkin. Amateur rugby union football. These are a few of my favourite things.