Long, hot days

Training is ticking along nicely - I'm learning so much, particularly in the clinch, and my kicking technique has improved a shitload, it's fab. I didn't make it along to training this morning because I was feeling pretty rubbish with a sore throat and a sore stomache, so I'm hoping the throat will clear up quickly and not develop into anything too sinister. I actually managed to sleep all night, too, which was both big *and* clever, as usually I wake up every hour or two to switch the air conditioning on, then off, then on, then off....

At about 7am what sounds like a convoy of articulated lorries appears to roar through my bedroom, but it's just the Thais starting to head off to work outside on their phalanx of mopeds and trucks and cars, but it's pretty bloody loud, so that acts as an effective wake-up call. Today, however, I slept (with difficulty, but someone's gotta do it) until about 10.30, then took a wander up the road to find tesco, buy some fruit and rent a DVD to watch in the afternoon. I lay around drinking OJ, eating Chinese pears and watching an o.k. sort of Robin Williams movie (The Good Guy - doesn't warrant a review), ate lunch, collected laundry and went to training. So it's not terribly exciting alot of the time, and this is why I don't have many pictures. So far, I've taken 3 pictures of geckos, and 5 pictures of what my room looks like......sad.

Anyway, I'm going to try and force innocent bystanders to come and do touristy things with me, like ride an elephant or something, so I've got some good pictures - I'm very selfless like that.... or incredibly selfish, not sure which...

In other news, I went to watch some fights last night - Pedro from the gym was having his first fight and we all went along to support. It's alot different from fights at home: weight disparity doesn't seem to be much of an issue, and neither is experience by the looks of things, since Pedro, for his first fight, after training for only 3 months, fought a Thai with over 60 fights, and there were several wildly mismatched fights throughout the night. Makes a good show for the spectators, but it's not much fun for the fighters...

Also, they don't seem to care nearly as much about who actually wins - the ref seems to decide, just holds the winner's hand up and that's that - no big fuss like at home, with build ups, and 3 judges, and trophies for the loser, or even the winner. Mind you, they do all get paid. About 30 quid.

But it was a good atmosphere, and interesting, and when Dave fights on Monday I'll take my camera along and get some good pictures for the sharing thereof, have no fear.

Now it's the late hour of 8pm, and time to go home, eat a pear and read my book until I fall asleep, ready for training in 12 hours time.

Take it easy, speak to you soon

Aarayan x

Sawatdee Ka!

Hey guys,

just a quick update to let you know that I've arrived safe and sound in the land of smiles, I'm set up with a place to stay, and I've started training at the gym. I've not got time just now to upload any photos, and to be fair I don't have many yet - I've mostly been sleeping and training today and yesterday, so I've only got pictures of my room.

The journey here was pretty epic, and I'm glad I'm only going to have to do that once more - it took a full 27 hours from waking up on Monday to arriving in Chiang Mai, and I didn't sleep for any of it. On the plus side, Qatar airline who I flew with from Gatwick to Doha and Doha to Bangkok do a decent range of fims and you can pick what you want to watch. I just hope they've changed them by the time I head back since I watched just about all of them.

So I arrived in Chiang Mai and got a taxi to the gym where I was met by Noom, who showed me a guest house just opposite, I got unpacked, had a shower and had a wee nap for an hour before heading out to training for the evening.

It's completely different from the way we do things at home, obviously- you start out with a run which is supposed to be about 5k, but I only did 1 lap yesterday, so about 1.5k, since I was knackered. Then you go with one of the trainers in the ring for a few rounds of doublepads, which is thoroughly knackered but really improves your technique no end. Mind you I'll have to stop doing half of it when I get home since some of it's wildly different from the way we do things, but anyway. Then either shadowboxing or bagwork, and back in the ring for grappling and technique work. Technique is bloody hard, becuase they're asking you to body kick their hands without pads, so you can't go hard, but they want me to relax - I find it very hard to relax when I'm kicking a Thai stranger and trying to be gentle about it.... Then it's situps in the ring and you're all done. If you're me, at some point someone will also weigh you and then laugh/look disturbed/tell you you have to weigh 55kilos (What?! Lose 10k in 3 weeks?!) - we'll just have to see about that, I'm only human.
So, All that takes about 2.5 or 3 hours and then you go an eat something from one of the many little outdoor restaurants. There's one near where I'm staying and I just go there because the food is amazing, and the nice man understands I don't speak Thai and just cooks me something different every day.

Today's training was mental - it was really quiet so one of the trainers just took my in the ring for literally about 2 hours - one on one training: exhausting but fantastic.

This evening Dave of Hammerhead Gym very kindly came and picked me up on his moped and took me for a ride into town to have a look around the night market and change my traveller's cheques. The Thai's are insane when it comes to driving - think "traffic lights are guides, not rules", marry this with a lack of speed limits and you've got some fun conditions. I'm definitely going to have to bring home some nice gifts from the market (once I learn how to barter - Paul knows how badly I suck at this), lots of pretty, touristy tat :)

Anyway, it's been a very long day, and it's time to go to sleep, so I'll bid you adieu and I'll get some photos uploaded when I have some to show.

Fann dee

Aarayan x

Here we go...

Hullo to those of you who I've just informed about my blog so you can see what I'm up to in Thailand! I'm very embarrassed to have written most of the crap I've written, so please don't mock me too mercilessly, or at least wait until I'm out of earshot.

And Mum? I'm sorry, but I do swear- a fair bit. Please forgive me.

So, it's now officially the day after tomorrow that I head off, and I'm well on my way towards being prepared - I have piles and piles of clothes on my study floor which I'm going to pack tomorrow, and carefully tick off the list I made earlier in the week so I don't forget anything vital. I've got my tickets, I've got my money and travellers cheques, I've got a whole bunch of stuff I'll never need but seems important now, I've got travel insurance, at a whopping £62 for 3 weeks cover. I rang up the company and said:

Me: I need comprehensive insurance. I'm going to Thailand to do Thai Kickboxing

Her: That's fine, you're covered for that with this package.

Right, but just so you know, I'm going to be training full time. I intend to be getting into a ring on a daily basis and potentially volunteering to get punched in the head. Am I still covered?

Yup, you're covered.

So you're saying that if I deliberately get smacked in the face, doing a martial art, and need hospital treatment you'll pay? And further more, if I accidentally mortally wound someone else, and *they* require hospital treatment, you'll cover their treatment *and* my legal costs, even though I was doing a martial art, on purpose, for fun?

Yup, pretty much, and if you die we pay out £5,000,000


....and you'll require *proof* of death, I suppose.....?


So, if I don't make it back from Thailand in one piece, don't mourn too much- I'll probably be "dead" on a beach somewhere on a tropical island. Either that or Paul will have bumped me off, he'll be on the beach, and I'll expect you to avenge me.

I'll update the blog and get pictures up for you regularly, here, so you can all reflect regularly on how much you hate me, and how you wish you were in Thailand instead, whilst looking at handy visual aids to really make the jealousy burn ;)

On second thoughts, I'm starting to think I shouldn't have told you about the insurance pay out.... not before I mocked you, anyway. Bugger.


Keep in touch, leave me comments, and I'll see you in three weeks!

Love,

Aarayan

Many Happy Returns

Tomorrow it is my birthday. I've forgotten quite a few times already over the past few days and gone "...huh?" when Paul mentions the party on Saturday. However, I'm not as dense as Paul who has accidentally convinced himself that it is he who is going on holiday on Monday, and is in for a very disappointing morning, silly billy.

I've never been a huge fan of birthdays, to be honest. Other people's are usually great fun: everybody gets a bit pissed, has a good time, the birthday boy or girl has a fab night and doesn't feel awkward or embarrassed at having gathered all their friends together for such a patently self-centred reason, because it's absolutely fair enough, and nobody considers it to be egotistical or presumptious - including me.

When it comes to my own birthdays, however, I've never quite got the hang of this, and always feel.....apologetic at having thrown myself a birthday party. Kind of like I've forced people to reveal their hand and throw their friendship cards down on the table. For this reason, I haven't actually had a birthday party since I was about 7.

This is very silly. I know this, and tomorrow evening I am going to not be such a paranoid idiot, and do the birthday thing, and a lovely time will be had by all. I will eat Jamaican food and not, even once, complain that I am fat. I will meet friends at the pub and not, even for a nano-second, look at their shoes instead of their faces to avoid seeing an imagined look of "When can I go home?".

Most importantly, I will get quite pissed, have a laugh, say some ridiculous things and will not, under any circumstances torture myself for weeks afterwards by constantly thinking "Oh, God! Why did I say [insert drunken comment here] - what a twat!".

This is my pledge as I enter my 25th year. It's a dramatic pledge, I know, and very out of character - check out the reaction of this chipmunk who I told earlier on today:





It's about bloody time I grew up.


At least a little bit. Happy birthday, me :)

The end of an era...

Thank Fuck.

Ding Dong, Moray House is dead! I've finally finished the course after a mind-bogglingly awful 9 months, and I am most, most pleased. (I passed, by the way)

My final placement went very well, thank you, the school was lovely, the kids were lovely, the teacher was.....very helpful... and the management were friendly, competent and approachable- what more can you ask? Obviously, what with the fight training and the ridiculous work-load for uni, and teaching full time as well I was mostly made out of stress, and it's nothing short of a miracle that I still have a husband in tow (bless his little, antibacterial cotton socks which my Gran gave him for Christmas. Two years in a row. Insulting, much?).

I developed a habit of crying at entirely random moments in the evening, throwing childish tantrums about ridiculous things, like having to go to the shop to buy dinner because Paul had forgotten ("It's just not bloody fair - why is life so shite?!"), and becoming hysterical at movies which should technically be, if not funny, not actually psychologically scarring...

We watched "Click", that Adam Sandler movie about a guy that gets a Universal Remote and, guess what, it remote controls....THE UNIVERSE! Surely a recipe for comedy japes and misunderstandings, but in a calm, controlled, non-perilous way. And it was, unless you're quite nicely teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, in which case the whole moral of the story about a guy who wishes his life away a died, alone, unfulfilled and regretful (and fat) in the rain is just a bit....too close to the bone. So I had a proper, wailing, uncontrolled crying fit for about half an hour, emitting strange snorts, squeaks and mangles "I don't want to die!"s so that in the end I was laughing as much as crying and laughing at the crying and crying at the laughing in a horrible, snotty cycle of stupidness. Paul, however, thought it was hilarious, which is pretty handy.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that the placement went as well as could be expected, my final presentation went quite a bit less well than could be expected, (doing me out of an Distinction which I wasn't really bothered about but felt like I ought to try for) and the fight didn't happen at all.

Which I was naturally not too pleased about, in light of the whole working-myself-into-the-ground thing I mentioned above, but sadly that's just the way it goes sometimes. Remember I said there were many reasons not to get overexcited about a fight, because at any moment it just might not happen... well the most common reason happened, and she pulled out at the last minute. But, thankfully, she pulled out for a reason which at least makes people go ".....huh?!" when I tell them. She became "unfocussed" (just all of a sudden, apparently...) and decided to elope to the States with her girlfriend. Plausible *and* fun! I acted like a mardy cow for the day, had a shitty time and, showing my stylish nature, encouraged everyone to join me in my lovely pit of self-pity - nice.

However, there will (presumably) be other fights, and I will certainly get pulled out on again many more times, and I'll just have to get better at dealing with it, because that's the way it works sometimes. With a bit of luck I might get my first fight in Thailand, which will certainly be an experience (don't, for God's sake, tell my travel insurance people...)

So that's the next big thing - one week from today I will be merrily winging my way to Thailand, and by "merrily winging my way" I do of course mean that I will be terrified, self-doubting, and constantly checking that I have my passport, I'm on the right flight, and I am actually who I think I am - I usually am, but it's prudent to check from time to time.

One week and counting guys - yipes!

Back to School

I started my final placement recently, so for the next 5 weeks I'll mostly be pretending to be a teacher, and trying to look like I know what I'm doing. (This is a running theme in my life - I pretend this alot. Alot alot.)

During this year at uni I've been to several schools on placement - the Headteacher (HT) at this most recent school described my experiences as ranging "from the sublime to the ridiculous", and I'm pretty much with her on that. I've taught in a very poor area, a very nice area and somewhere in between, and seen various ranges of resources, types of social and economic backgrounds and issues which go along with them.

This new school is, however, by far the "best". It has a flawless HMIe report, Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) up the wazoo, a body of pupils entirely made up of middle-class, pretty well-behaved children, a young, energetic, innovative staff, and a brand new school building choc-a-bloc with brilliant ideas and resources for the kids.

Obviously I can't tell you which school I'm at, any more than I can tell you any of the other schools I've been to - for starters I might decide I want to say something rude about one of the children, and then where would I be? Up Shit Creek with no paddle, that's where... (And obviously all that confidentiality stuff too, etc etc, yadda yadda).

So, I'm feeling very lucky, but don't think for a second that this means everything will be fine and dandy: all children have issues, all jobs have downsides: one school is much like another in that sense, it's just a question of how much easier or harder the situation is made by external factors like money, colleagues and parents.

Placement proper begins on Monday, which is also when the teaching (blagging)and working (panicking) really begins, and I am looking forward to it in a way. It's nice to be in the classroom again, and not at bloody, bloody uni (sorry, I literally can't help it - I've developed Moray House related Tourettes Syndrome), and the kids are lovely, as is the teacher I'm working with, so I'll be sure to share all the good stories I'll inevitably collect over the next five weeks...

...'Cos kids just say the funniest things, don't they? Funny, cute things? You know, all the funny, cute, not at all terrifying and inappropriate things 11 years olds say, ask, repeat?...

Watch this space.

Curse of the Golden Flower

You have to hand it to Chow Yun Fat: he deserves a Nobel prize, or a humanitarian award, or maybe one of those awards you get on ITV, presented by the likes of Carole Vordeman, for being a very special, heartwarmingly helping and kind person, for the fact that his movie has a cast which consists of EVERYONE IN CHINA. That is employment on a massive scale - I can only assume that that's all of China's problems sorted now, everyone is famous, rich and in Hollywood...

Anyway, the film. Well, we went to see it on a Friday night, at 9.00, and there were a total of 7 people in the screening. This could be for one of two reasons, either:

A) Everyone is out having fun, getting drunk, or watching it at another, more central cinema

B) Everyone who has already seen the film killed themselves as soon as it ended or before, thereby making it impossible for them to recommend it to anyone else. (In this sense, you could describe the film like a particularly virulent disease which succeeds in wiping out an entire species, and then itself.)

I'm plumping for B) on this one. It just seems more plausible.

I don't want to spoil it for you, so I wont give you all the twists and turns, but the upshot is this: everybody dies or goes stark raving bonkers.

EVERYbody.

And since the population of China is 1,313,973,713, and they're all in the film, this takes quite some time, not to mention an inordinate quanitity of fake blood. Do not be fooled, however, by a death-count which would put Pol Pot to shame, nor by the trailers which show many interesting Ninjas leaping about the place excited/ingly. No, no, you fools. Yes, there are Ninja types, and a ginormous battle, but these scenes are the exceptions to the rule of slowness which controls the rest of the film.

The plot is good though - it is essentially a Greek tragedy in Chinese (in a number of ways) but I was somewhat let down by the woeful lack of fancy-ass Wing Chun, and deeply put out by many of the highly irritating details of the film, like why the Emperor (who appears to be the richest person in the world) would actually pay people to wander round his huge palace banging gongs on-the-hour-every-hour, shouting stuff like "Heaven and Earth collide, giant wombats fall from space - Now is the hour of the terrapin!" or words to that effect. Just buy a clock....showy bastard.

The film has its good points - the costumes, the sets (comedy factor if nothing else -what is the point in see-through bamboo doors?), the acting, the plot and, if nothing else, the sheer scale of it.

Nevertheless, if you recommend it to a loved one and they commit suicide soon after, well, its probably going to be your fault. That's all I'm saying....

Think about it.

Holy Mother of God

Ok, ok: it was *my* idea. I *asked* to be allowed to do it - I even pestered to be allowed to do it. I know this. However, now that I am definitely on for my fight at the end of May I am, how shall I say...shitting bricks. On Sunday 27th May, I will be having my first ever Muay Thai fight, down in Manchester at this 'ere show:



(I personally think each and every one of you who reads this should come and shout me on. Or form a protective barrier around me so I can run away in safety...)

It'll be a C-class fight - the lowest of the low, apart from amateur fights where they wear padding - and it'll consist of three rounds, each lasting two minutes (C Class 3x2, in case you ever see that written down and wonder what the hell it means). I'll be wearing probably 10oz boxing gloves, and a mouth guard for protection and that's all. Well, obviously I'll be wearing Thai shorts and a sports bra, otherwise it's just porn, but you get my drift.

So now comes the Rocky-style training montage, because I've got 4 weeks, I've been out of training for 3 weeks, my fitness is down, my weight is up and I'm a big, fat chicken... Running and weight loss = things I hate to do, but I'll be doing ALOT of this over the coming month, and just you wait, I might even post some technicolour pictures of my bruises. But only if you're very, very good.....

In addition to this, anyone who is in Edinburgh and who wishes to be my friend MUST come to this show - it is compulsory and will count towards your final grade in my Friendship exam:



Do it!

The Life of a Cyclist

I have always had a bike, and until recently I used it just for getting to and from training for a wee bit of extra exercise, but after getting a new one a couple of weeks ago I've taken to cycling everywhere...EVERYWHERE. Since Tuesday evening I have cycled......wait for it......62 miles, and I must say I'm *rather* proud of myself :)

The downside of cycling so much in so short a space of time (aside, of course from the permanent bike-seat impression which has been left in my butt, and the windscreen effect of bugs splattered all over my face) is that it's all too easy to begin to take liberties with fate, and get a teensy weensy bit over-confident.

For example, I am normally not the kind of person who relishes confrontation, but cycling 20 miles in one day will erode your patience for spotty-faced, tiny-dicked, wimpy little men who drive sporty-looking-but-cheap-and-cheerful red sportscars.

So, when the little snot-stain pulled out of a juntion without so much as glancing left, nearly tranforming me, magically, from the wonderfully unique human I am into so much road-kill (I can see the headline now: Young Newlywed Primary Teacher Killed in Tragic Accident by Waste of Space) , I was more than happy to catch up with him at the next set of traffic lights and give him my best Primary Teacher "you should be ashamed" row. Ok, I didn't say that, but I did demand an apology, and would happily have dragged him out of his car and spanked him in front of a crowd, forcing him to repeat, with every stroke, "I", "Will not", "Be such", "A dick".

However, this is apparently forbidden by law, both inside the classroom and out (who knew?), so I didn't. And that's the only reason why not.

So, as you see, cycling lots: good for the thighs, bad for the soul ;)

The Final Countdown

I have an essay due on Tuesday - 3000 words on Curriculum, Teaching and Assessment, theory and practice of Environmental Studies and Expressive Arts. Yep, it's pretty boring. And, as usual, I'm procrastinating like nothing on earth, so it is for this reason that I set the following challenge:

I want to create an Ultimate Cheesy Training Soundtrack, filled with the sorts of tracks which you'd expect to accompany a Rocky training montage. So far I've got:

Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
The Final Countdown - Europe
Hero - Bonny Tyler
Gold - Spandau Ballet
Going the Distance - Rocky Theme Tune

So, come on guys - rise to the challenge.....Your country needs you!

Sarah xx

Normal(ish) Service Resumed

Finally, after a whole lifetime-long 23 days away from training, I'm finally back at class! I'm suffused with a warm, glowey all-is-right-with-the-world sense of bliss.

This is in direct contrast to the presiding emotion of the last few days, which has been one of "AAAAARGGGGHHHHHH! BLARGYBLARGHYBLARGHHHHHHH!!!!"

It's not something I have any place writing about, except to say I think things are looking up and I think I probably have the best friends in the whole world and I am very, very lucky.

You guys rock

Cellulitis? Just the beginning....

Sounds ominous, doesn't it? Well, it may not be quite horror movie standard, but things did get worse..... much worse.....a bit worse, at any rate.

My cellulitis improved with the ingestion of FUCKLOADS of antibiotics (2 kinds, 4 times a day), but I was left with a very angry, purple, hot lump right where the very first sign of the infection had a appeared. Rather than get, say *smaller*, the lump got bigger, and hotter and angrier and I finally realised, with the help of the internet, that it was a big abscess and determined to take myself to the doctor on Tuesday and go "Look! It's an abscess! Fix it!". This I did, at 15.40 and was sent, posthaste to the hospital to have it drained.

I thought they would just make me wait for ages, then stick a syringe in it and make it go away, but i was wrong.

I was seen by a doctor at 17.00, had x-rays to check the infection hadn't gotten into the bone, and blood tests to check the infection hadn't gotten into my blood by 18.00, and was admitted to the orthopaedic ward by 19.30 to have surgery first thing the following morning, which I really wasn't expecting.

The orthopaedic ward is an interesting place to be, since it is largely populated by old women and men waiting to have hip-replacements, and I was easily the youngest patient by a margin of about 50 years. I was in a room with 3 little old ladies: one was lovely, sparkly and articulate (and referred to the other patients as "old women" despite the fact they were her age), one was fast asleep for the first day, but after her surgery the following day cried almost non-stop, and the other was stark, raving bonkers - totally unaware of who she was, where she was and what was going on, and as such was utterly terrified and prone to screaming for long periods for no reason. As you can imagine, this was conducive to both rest *and* relaxation...

Anyhoo, the first night in the hospital was one of the longest of my life and I didn't sleep at all, mainly because I was a bit scared of what they might find when they opened up my leg the following day. There's something very isolating about being awake in a hospital at 3am or 4am, with the nurses chatting, or marching around and you with nothing to do but worry or listen to Regina Spektor on your headphones. I gave up pretending to sleep about 5am and got up for a shower and watched the Clangers on the cool wee personal TV things by each bed.

About 8am a woman I now know to be an anaesthesiologist appeared and asked some questions about allergies and whether I "fancied a spinal" as opposed to a general anaesthetic, but I had a general in the end. Sadly, when the surgeon rocked up with his entourage shortly after this I was utterly brain-dead from not sleeping and couldn't understand his Irish accent, which earned me a very stony glare, and I reckon I'm lucky I still have my leg.

They took me to theatres about 9am, and got me all prepped including giving me pain killers through my veins and it really hurt and kind of made me panic because I was woozy and it was all really scary and nasty, but after that I don't remember anything until I woke up after surgery (which only took half an hour). I was seemingly a bit cold after the operation so I had a cool blanket thing full of hot air, and also lots of morphine (which was lovely), spent a bit of time trying to talk to the nurse and failing miserably because I was too drugged up, and then spent the rest of the day sleeping, really.

After that it's mostly sleeping, pain killers, waking up for hospital food, more painkillers and bucket-loads of IV antibiotics and blood pressure and temperature monitoring, and aside from a bit of low BP dodginess all went very smoothly and I got out on Thursday in time for getting Lewis on Friday, which I'll post about a bit later.

I'm on the mend and looking forward to getting home and weighing myself and finding out the true damage I've inflicted on myself over the last week (feeling *very* heavy*!) and having abit of fun :)

The 300

Xerxes: what a tool. My credentials as a historian may not be quite as respectable as David Starkey's (also a tool), but I still feel justified in making that bald, unsupported and general statement. I mean really, if you've got anywhere between 500,000 and 2,000,000 soldiers, why would you send them against 300 soldiers in relatively small waves, with plenty of time in between for the opposition to clean up, have an apple and take a wee snooze? No, you'd send them *all at once* and then all they'd have to do is squash the Spartans.

Anyway, I'm glad Xerxes was a tool, because the Spartans rocked, and deserved to take out around 50,000 Persian soldiers in 2 days with only 300 soldiers with spears, swords and shields - wooo! Gooooooooooo Spartans!

The film itself was fantastic - beautiful cinematography and easily identifiable as having been inspired by a graphic novel. At first I wasn't sure whether I'd enjoy it, as it did seem like it was going to be a little bit OTT, but I was wrong, very wrong. Any qualms I had were squashed when the 300 soldiers appeared over the brow of a hill, wearing nothing more than a pair of pants, boots and a cloak each - I felt like Columbus, laying eyes upon a beautiful New World for the first time...I felt like applauding. Six-packs like those take dedication - 300 beautiful six-packs, that's 1800 abdominal muscles, carved and cut to perfection...

Anyway, that is obviously not what the film is about (shame ;p). Don't be fooled by the monsters in Xerxes's army - the descriptions were taken from actual descriptions of the battle, the monsters aren't added for fun. However, this doesn't mean that the rest of the information about the battle is unreliable - historians and archeologists have uncovered the remains from the battle and proved that there were indeed only around 300 spartan soldiers, and anything from 500,000 Persians upwards, so it is an epic story.

It was beautiful to look at, enjoyable to watch and left me with a lasting interest in the Spartans and the battle which inspired the film. I've even got a book and everything (my dad would be so proud), which Paul got me after the following conversation:

Paul: I'm in Waterstones trying to get you that book about the Spartans, there's one here about the Persians though, the same battle.
Me: But I don't like the Persians
Paul:......well....it's the same battle though, it ends the same
Me:But....Xerxes was a tool
Paul: Yes. Xerxes was a tool. He loses in this book as well, though.
Me: Well.....so long as he loses, I guess that's ok
Paul: Yeah. He loses.
Me: Cos he was a tool.
Paul: Yes, honey, he was a tool. Shhhhhhhh.........

Go watch the film. Because Xerxes was a tool :)

Cellulitis: as icky as it sounds

Soooooo, on Friday morning I woke up at 6am, and went....."Owwww - my leg hurts", but there wasn't anything to see, so I took some Ibuprofen and zonked out again until noon. At noon, I woke up and went "Shit! I was supposed to meet Kal to try out Buddhist meditation!" (which seemingly wasn't that much of a loss for me) , closely followed by "owwwww, my leg hurts still". This time, there was a little something to see - just a little red welt about the size of 2 thumbs together, but very hot and very sore.

Anyway, it was an interesting day: I went to meet Kal and we looked around the Pixar exhibition, which was excellent. Go there, find the xoetrope, which is a fabulous spinning thing (which is waaaaaay too complicated for me to understand, let alone explain) and watch it at least twice, preferably three times - twice to go "WOW! How the hell.....?" and once to look at the expressions on the faces of everyone else as they go "Wooooooaah! How the hell......?", which is good fun :)

We had yummy sandwiches, naughty flapjacks, saw the exhibition, and then went back to Kal's for a bit. By this time, I felt officially like crap - I was thinking "oh, lord, what luck: I've probably got DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis) and will die, *and* I've got the flu. Harsh. So we went to Kal's: he played videogames, I watched Peepshow and drank vast quanities of tea, occasionally going "Owwww", *goan*, *whimper* and generally was quite pathetic. I didn't want to go home, because Paul, the husband, was supposed to be away for the weekend, and fearing a gruesome death or, worse, having no-one to make me tea, I was not keen to go anywhere, but all good things must come to an end, so I headed home about 6pm. Fortunately for me, Paul wasn't able to go away, which just worked out dandy in the end, but did kind of involve him being defrauded out of £100, so I am *pretty* selfish for thinking that's good (don't worry, he got it back - I'll tell you about it another time). As the evening wore on, my shin got bigger...and bigger..... and bigger and began stabbing me and throbbing, so about 9.15pm I gave in and rang NHS24 for advice. They were, eventually, and against all the odds, very helpful and got me an appointment within 45 minutes at the out of hours, drop-in centre at the hospital... but only after *this* conversation:

Me: Hi, yeah, my shin is really sore and swollen - very angry and painful
Nurse: Ok, has anything happened (etc etc, fill this bit in yourself)
Me: No, I just woke up this morning and it was sore, and it's just been getting worse all day
Nurse: Right, does your foot hurt all the time, or just when you move it?
Me: Well, it's my shin that hurts, but yes it hurts more when I move in general
Nurse: Ok, so the foot has been sore since 6, and is just getting more swollen?
Me: No.... no, my *shin* is swollen and sore, sore at 6am, now very swollen and red and sore
Nurse: So it's not your foot?
Me: No. It has nothing to do with my foot. It's my shin.....
... and so on and so on, until the message sunk in.

So, I jumped in a taxi (for jumped read; limped, was half carried, stumbled and lurched, with many exclamations of pain and distress) and was at the hosital for 10.20, with my appointment due in 10 minutes. But.... they saw me straight away, I saw a lovely, friendly "practitioner" (what does this mean?) who diagnosed cellulitis straight away, gave me useful information and free medication and sent me on my way. We were back in the taxi by 10.30 and on our way home, with the advice that should the swelling progress above the line on my leg (which the practitioner drew in biro) or if my fever got worse, my glands were to swell, or I began vomiting, then it was straight back to hospital for me for IV antibiotics.

So long LONG story short, Saturday was awful. I felt like crap, was running a sweaty, smelly temperature, looked like a zombie, couldn't stand or walk alone, had to be taken to the loo by paul, didn't want to eat, and was regularly in so much pain that I was crying like a wee girl. Sucks. To. Be. Me. I wanted to go to hospital, except that the thought of trying to get dressed, get downstairs, get bumped around in a taxi and actually try to *tell* someone what was wrong was just not on, so I stayed home, and I'm glad, because by Sunday things were much improved. I could hold a conversation, watch telly, read and, get this... go to the loo alone! How much do I rock!

Today finds me still largely incapacitated - I can hobble about without Paul (which is good since he's at work!), I've eaten, and my temperature is much more regular, even though I have a nastily insipid cough that stops me from breathing deeply. My leg looks *revolting*, I wont bore you with the details, or even a close-up picture :p

But in spite of the ickyness and the pain and all the rest of it, there have been a few shiny, comedic moments:

The discovery that if I wear fluffy socks Paul can push me around the house like a trolly instead of having to carry me, and it is *damned* hard to steer with only one foot on the ground.

The classic moment last night when Paul, after a long day of helpfulness, went to fetch my laptop so I could email uni, and dropped the battery pack for the laptop directly on my sore shin, resulting in a few minutes of near-hysterical tears of pain and shock, closely followed by a few minutes of actually hysterical tears of laughter as he desperately apologised. Bless him :)

So, here's hoping that soon, very soon, I will be able to get the FUCK off this sofa and do something. Anything!

The Number 23

I went to see The Number 23 today with my lovely friend Kal and I must say, it was absolutely spine chilling. Call me suggestible, call me impressionable, call me credulous and I'll call you a cynic but I'm sorry, there's something just.......wrong about that number:

"Oh, oh my God! Look at the date - it's the 15th of March, 2007! 15.3.07....15 plus 3.....18. Add 7......25.....erm......25....that's 2+5, so that's 7, take that away again, which is 18 again, but 1+8 is 9 and 18 add 9 is 27 and then multiply that by 5, which is the number of letters in the word "MARCH", which is....135. Now, 13+5, that's 18 again.....*shit*.... No! Wait! 18 + 5 (which we already established was the number of letters in the word "March") is 23!! OH MY GOD!!! It all fits......."

Spooky.

Teaching Reading Comprehension

This (see above) is what I am supposed to be giving a presentation on at uni on Thursday morning. Oh Lord. As you can probably tell, by the fact that I'm here rather than working on my presentation, I am not exactly filled with excitement and joy at this prospect. "Clueless" would be one way to describe me on this subject. Another way would be "hopeless". Without hope, even. So, given that I am "without hope", you'd think it'd be a good idea to be working my butt off to try and get on top of this task......

You'd be wrong. The best thing to do is ignore it and hope it goes away, somewhat like a big spider, or a monster. Perhaps if I stick my fingers in my ears and go "lalalalalalalalalalaaaaaaa" with my eyes closed, when I re-open them it will be Friday, the presentation will be over and I will have blown everyone away with my perspicacity. What does that mean...? I dunno. But it sounds good - an ideal example of obfuscation ;p (look it up).

So, in a pretty flawless example of how to procrastinate (and use long words so that updating your blog takes even longer, another good way of procrastinating) here is a link to the funniest thing I've seen all week (if anyone knows how to embed video links and could tell me, that'd be great):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvul3DC4l4E

Now back to my presentation....... Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalaaa..........aaaargh!
Go away big, scary, spider-monster!

A period of inactivity

Following my recent and sustained period of blogging inactivity, I've decided to start writing more regularly because now, ladies and gents......I've been matched for a fight! This means that although I will have plenty to talk about, it will probably all be about bruises, weight, more bruises and my all consuming fear.

Being matched for a fight is an interesting process because there are alot of factors which need to be taken into consideration and which can throw you off course.

Weight, for one. You have to be the same weight as your opponent, so you agree a fighting weight before-hand and then both do whatever you have to do to make sure you're that weight on the day. Now, on the 1st of January I weighed 73.7kgs (which is 11 stone 8.2 for those of you still on imperial, like me), and I'm fighting on the 27th May at 63kg, (which is 9 stone 12.6). Now, whichever way you look at it, that is alot of weight to lose. ALOT.
So this is Issue number one: Being the right weight. If you are not this, you will probably not fight. Today, inexplicably I am 10 stone 8, even though on Friday I was 10 stone 5. Bastards.

Assuming, then, that you're doing OK on the soul-crushing calorie-controlled diet, there's no guarantee that your opponent is as well...

Issue number 2: Pull-outs
Pull-outs happen all the time especially, for some reason, in female fights. I've been matched once before and she pulled out, apparently due to weight, and my friend Ann has now been matched 3 times for the same fight, which has failed to happen twice for various reasons, so there's no point getting too excited until a bit nearer the time.

Of course, not getting excited doesn't mean not training like a crazy-lady, you have to do that anyway, but that's another thing which can go wrong...

Issue number 3: Injury
I get injured alot. Often, even. With monotonous regularity. All over. I've only had to miss training twice because of injury, and only because I physically couldn't train, but nevertheless, a broken hand or foot, a dyslocation, something along those lines would be bad news. So far I've torn the ligaments in my ankle twice, hyperextended my elbow, trapped a nerve in my back, had a sacro-illiac strain and broken a toe, and haven't even fought yet. Also, I bruise like a peach. So much so that I look more like I enjoy baiting Neds on a Friday night before helpfully handing them a baseball bat each than that I practice martial arts in a safe, controlled, consenting environment.

Last, but certainly not least:

Issue number 4: Getting the screaming heebie-jeebies.
This is not a medical term. I've never fought before, so whilst I *think* I want to, I don't *know* that yet, never having done it. Most of the time I'm like "Yeah, bitch, bring it on!" and other, not very Edinburgh-sounding phrases. However, occasionally I get an utter pasting at sparring class, can't lie on my side for a week because of poorly placed bruises and I do wonder to myself if it's really such a good idea. Yesterday being a prime example of this "utter pasting" I mentioned above. I graduated up to the Fighters Class for the first time yesterday (this, as the name suggests is a sparring class for people who are fighting soon, so it's harder work, harder contact, harder in general) and whilst I was pretty apprehensive and pretty much expecting to take a beating, I did somewhat under-estimate the situation. Think "baptism of fire", think going with the chief instructor's incredible brilliant wife for the first round and having her go heavy so they can see what happens.

Well, this is absolutely fair enough, and I'm glad to say I reacted like any hard-as-nails female Thai boxer should....

....that's a complete lie. I cried like a girl.

Nevertheless, I'm glad I went, and I'm glad they did that, because you've got to learn sometime. Nobody had ever hit me that hard before, and it hurt like a motherfucker, and I've got bruises (little ones) on my face and bruises (giant ones) all over my legs and hips, but I'd much rather I got used to that in the privacy of the gym rather than got completely taken my surprise for the first time in the ring and made a total arse out of myself.

At the very least, by May 27th I'll be able to take a punch, even if I do look like Rocky.

Erroneous George

Erroneous George

Poyem.

My friend, Kal, got a book of poetry:
It made him question his literacy.
For him I write this, posing as a bard
oh shit, iambic pentameter is
difficult.

Well

Broken umbrella, lying defeated
and dripping in the hallway,
legs akimbo like some grotesquely
broken daddy-long-legs.

Silence, broken only by the intermittent
and unrelenting drip-drop-tick-tock
of rain on winter-hardened soil
forces me back, unforgivingly,
to a time when I had little else to listen to

and liked it that way.

Like the buzzing of a small fly in a
hot summer room invades
the peace of sleep, so my reflections are
distubed by ripples of now, washing over,
and over, wearing away
the gentle sandstone facade of nostalgia.

My eyes fix, unconsciously, unwillingly,
on the invisibly twitching and ludicrous vision
drying slowly and painfully on the floor,
as I fumble with numb and leaden fingers for my keys.