Gig #8 At Comedy Car Crash, Lion's Den, Shaftsbury Avenue, all new material, rude about Jeremy Clarkson

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Tonight's Routine (gig #8) Tesco, Waitrose, the Chris Grayling Post Box gag and the Jordan bridge

I was in Tesco's the other day – and then I thought “Hang on a minute – they're a bunch of slave-labouring bastards.” So I turned around and went to Waitrose.  That's the kind of rebel I am. Also, Waitrose has a better selection of chocolate biscuits.

Waitrose is nice isn't it? Not only do they actually pay their staff, but they have lots of those Duchy Originals chocolate biscuits, you walk down that aisle with all those crests and coats of arms and you feel like royalty. Each biscuit has been individually licked by Prince Charles. And they're a bargain at £4000 a pack. Of course they'd be £8000 if they'd been licked by Kate Middleton. There are a few things about Waitrose that are annoying though. They don't seem to be able to leave it alone with the adjectives. It's not enough to have lemonade, they have to have Lemonade with Moroccan lemons. What's Moroccan about this lemonade exactly? Beyond the delicate aromatic tastes of lemons is there also the delicate aromatic taste of a bucket bong? And my least favourite example of gratuitous addition of adjectives (I think it might actually be an adjectival phrase) “tree-ripened apples!” Where else are you going to ripen them? Up Beyonce's arse? They couldn't actually ripen apples up Beyonce's arse, that would be a logistical nightmare.

Anyway, back to the Tesco slave-labour thing. Did anybody hear about the Government Minister who's responsible for these welfare to work schemes? Chris Grayling his name is. He went on Radio 4 at 7:15 in the morning, when all of the grown-up people are listening and claimed that his email had been hacked by the Socialist Workers Party. But over the course of the day it emerged that the minister had got a bit confused as to the nature of “Hacking”. What had actually happened is that someone from the Socialist Workers Party had – guess what they'd done? Can you believe this, the bastards! They'd sent him an email.

These are the kind of super-intelligent beings that are our rulers. A man who can't tell the difference between brutal and uninvited penetration and message delivery. You know the Tories are in power when you start feeling sorry for their wives. My guess is that if he's this confused he isn't a great lover. He doesn't actually fuck his wife he just writes messages on her bum. And you know that some time in the near future he's going to get arrested for aggressively fucking a postbox.

I think there is a way back for this government though. And I think it's to go back to their core value of fairness. Apparently that's something we British think is really important – fairness. So for example, when David Cameron needed a new job and wanted to get into politics he got someone from Buckingham Palace to ring up and say “Despite all my efforts to persuade him not to go into politics, he is determined, you should certainly employ him.” I think we should all get one free phone call from the palace like that. I mean we could have that instead of waiting for a telegram from the Queen when we're 100. I mean lets face it, when you get to that age, who cares.

No, I think everyone should be entitled to one phone call like that, so someone's looking at your CV and the phone rings and a posh voice says “Despite all my efforts to dissuade him Mark has decided to persue a career on the night shift at Argos. You should certainly employ him, the man is a phenomena around a cardboard box.” We should all get one of those calls.

And there other things that aren't fair that the Conservatives could put right if they really wanted. For instance, there was a guy who lived in Cheshire, who when the riots were on last year, posted some message on his facebook page something like “Yeah, lets have a riot.” He only had 200 facebook followers, nobody took any notice. There wasn't a riot in Cheshire. But this guy got 4 years. 4 YEARS in jail. But at the same time Jeremy Clarkson – is alive.

That can't be fair.

One fantastic story that's been in the news this week is that the good people of Slovakia have decided to name a new bridge “Chuck Norris”. I don't exactly why, maybe because it's strong and compact and leans very heavily to the right. So I was thinking which bridges could we rename in the UK after famous people. Well, the Forth bridge. It's mighty, it's Scottish, it's world-famous, but it's getting a bit old and bits are dropping off – The Sean Connery Bridge? Maybe the millennium bridge, it was so wobbly it made people sick and needed to be taken out of service and given a backbone – the Nick Clegg bridge? Of course he still needs the backbone. And finally the Humber suspension bridge. It's legs are so far apart that because of the curvature of the earth, even though they're pointing straight up, they're actually pointing in different directions. The Jordan bridge?

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Sleep

Sleep.

This is a tricky one because I'm not conscious when it happens. That's one of the most difficult things about snoring. I do it, I know I do it, but there's almost nothing I can do about it, except of course, surprise, surprise, lose weight. What can you do about snoring, well, apparently playing the didgeridoo helps, but it's done nothing for me.  Apparently the next step is to find out if I've got "sleep apnoea" - stopping breathing when you're asleep.  If you do have this, they give you something called a "Continuous Pressure Machine" which means you get to sleep in a mask. When the machine notices that you've stopped breathing it re-inflates you with a sound a bit like Ivor the Engine (sorry foreigners, look it up on youtube).  Now doesn't that sound sexy?  

I don't normally have problems sleeping, but my wife is a really light sleeper, which means that if I'm having an even-slightly-restless night, every time that I turn over she tuts. That's one of the thing that you don't expect from marriage, to find out that you're a poor sleeper. Not that you don't sleep a lot, but your technique isn't very good.

I realise that Shakespeare must have thought a lot about sleep because two Shakespeare quotes – actually three now have come to mind immediately as I think about the subject of sleep.

“To sleep—perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub! For in that sleep of death what dreams may come” Says Hamlet as he's thinking about topping himself.

And rather awesomely, ruining it for anybody else who wants to try to come up with a better description, as was his way, Shakespeare, through Macbeth says:

Me thought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!

Macbeth doth Murder sleep”—the innocent sleep,

Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,

The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,

Chief nourisher in life's feast

And also Prospero at the end of the Tempest “We are such stuff. As dreams are made on; and our little life. Is rounded with a sleep.”

And I think what we can take away from these quotes, is that on the whole, sleep is a good thing, the “Balm of hurt minds” and “Chief nourisher in life's feast.” You get the idea that Shakespeare wasn't an early riser and you wouldn't get an answer at the weekend if you rang before 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Yeah, sleep's a good thing. But it's also a bit weird. Because when you go to sleep what happens? Well sometimes, you dream. I actually don't dream that much. For some reason whenever you say that, somebody in the conversation has, by natural law to say “you do dream, you just don't remember it.” Now, apologies for having paid attention for a few minutes during my philosophy degree, but this one is a lot easier than that one about the tree falling in the wood when there's no one walking their dog or jogging. If I have all manner of crazy dreams but I don't remember them, then as far as I'm concerned, they didn't happen. Quite what point people are trying to make when they claim I had been dreaming frantically I don't know. They might as well claim that I'd spent the entire night singing the canon of Leo Sayer songs. In the absence of any memory of that, any complaints from the neighbours and any ginger afro wig, I'm going to go with it never having happened.

I do remember a few dreams, and they tend to be such obvious anxiety dreams that they'd probably have made Freud laugh out loud (if he'd ever wanted to do anything other than talk about sex to Jewish chicks). But I'm not going to tell you about my dreams because one of the most important things for anybody to understand is that their dreams are utterly tedious to other people. Actually, this is far more important for you to understand than it is for me to understand, because I don't bore myself, I am fucking fascinating at all times, but you, you need to understand this. If you talk about your dreams. That is going to be very tedious. Most of the time when you tell people that their speaking nonsense, you're exaggerating. But when they talk about their dreams, they are, actually, speaking nonsense.

In fact, I can't think of a better “help you get to sleep” DVD/CD/moody MP3 on Pirate Bay than a collection of people talking about their dreams. There surely can't be anything that sends anybody to sleep quicker than listening to other people describe their dreams. Actually, this is forming into a genuine product idea. Can you imagine a recording of a bunch of really spacey undergraduates talking about their dreams? I'm yawning just thinking about it.

I vaguely read in the newspapers this week that there's been some research that shows that we don't need 8 hours sleep. Some people, who only get three or four hours, I've seen them on Twitter rejoicing. The tone has been “see, I was right all along. “Me and Margaret Thatcher (who famously slept less than 5 hours a night) we're the super beings. All you people who need 8 hours a night – YOU'RE the weirdoes.” The article probably had some evolutionary justification for why we sleep like this at the end – if it was the Guardian, something about how when we were on the Savanah, we were always scared of being attacked by Lions, moving with our herds, disturbed by natural history documentary makers and so never slept through the night. Or some such shit. Without having read the study (and don't for one moment think the journalists who wrote the story did either) I can tell you this. It was done by psychologists, who, as a group, I wouldn't trust to deliver pizza, let alone tell me how long I should sleep at night. It's also important to note that almost all psychological experiments that aren't done on a man who has had an iron spike put through a particularly interesting area of his brain are done on supposedly “normal” people. But these “normal” people are undergraduates, normally in psychology. If you saw these people in a group you would not think “a yes, whatever these undernourished, over-neurotic, narcotically over-stuffed twenty-somethings do, I shall take that to be the norm and my guide for life. Even if they're only doing this subject because either they couldn't manage the maths of a proper subject or they aren't allowed to fuck their Daddy.”

Guess what. I like sleep. I really like it a lot. Lots of it. If I don't get it I'm grumpy. Truth be told, everybody who doesn't get a lot of sleep is grumpy. They didn't call her “Margaret Easy-going Iron Tits Thatcher” did they? And actually, even when I'm awake, most of the time, I'm sort of asleep and that's the way I like it. When everything's going swimmingly and I don't have a cold, I'm not upset about anything and I have had a good 8-9 hours of proper sleep, you can get about 1-2 hours of genuinely useful conscious thought out of me before I need a bit of a lay down. Between about 3:30 and 5:30 most afternoons you could hack bits off me with a rusty chisel and I probably wouldn't notice. I go into a caffeine over-dosed lunch digested coma, gently ascending the Glasgow coma scale towards tea time. Even if my eyes are open and I'm surfing websites, it's not a good time to ask me to make crucial decisions. Not that I put that in big type anywhere on my CV, but it is the truth.

So actually, I'm going to finish with another quote, from the daddy of all philosophers and another crazeee Austro-Jewish feller Ludwig Wittgenstein.

‘We are asleep. Our life is like a dream, but in our better hours we wake up just enough to realise that we are dreaming.’

OK Ludwig have it your way, you're the brainy one. Being wide awake is OK, but you tend to notice an awful lot of things that need doing. Personally, I think some of the better hours might be curled up under the duvet blissfully having dreams you won't remember, or not having them, or staring fish-eyed and open-mouthed at the 3^rd DVD of a Columbo box set.

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Gig: Wednesday 26th April, The Alchemist, 225 St. John's Hill, London SW11 1TH, 8pm, FREE!!!!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Comedy-Bin-at-The-Alchemist-free/170138053084918

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Gig: Monday 16th April, Zetland Arms, 2 Bute Street, Kensington, London SW7 3EX, 8pm

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Gig: Monday April 9th, The Bowery, 36 - 38 New Oxford Street, 7:30pm, FREE!!!

 http://www.facebook.com/pages/Comedy-Bin-at-The-Bowery-Free/300805333284119 

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Gig tonight at Comedy Car Crash, Shaftsbury Avenue http://www.lionsdencomedy.co.uk/comedycarcrash.html

Can't make it tonight?  Check out my other gigs...

http://mumbly.posterous.com/tag/gigs 

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Someplace more sensible...

When stress is the problem, slack is the solution. From this perspective, organisational stress looks like nothing more than a sign of deficient slack.  For want of needed slack, organisations become frenzied, fearful, and risk-averse, and their key employees wander away, looking for someplace more sensible to work.

Tom DeMarco - Slack

Posted via email from What Stringer's Reading

Time and Money

Managers are under enormous pressure to do everything much faster and much more cheaply, to minimize both time and cost.  Logically absurd or not, that is the charter given to them and they have to work with it.

When you're torn between mutually exclusive goals, when there is no room  for give in either one, the result is stress.

Tom DeMarco - Slack

Posted via email from What Stringer's Reading

Invention

The principle resource needed for invention is slack.  When companies can't invent, it's because their people are too damn busy,

Tom DeMarco - Slack

Posted via email from What Stringer's Reading

Slack

Slack represents the operational capacity sacrificed in the interests of long-term health.

Tom DeMarco  Slack

Posted via email from What Stringer's Reading

Control

But people never really "Do as they're told." [...] people do get paid, so they are willing to give up some control to the boss, to accept a least some direction.  But they don't give up all control.  You couldn't pay them enough for that.

This was a great revelation to me as a manager.  Without ever coming to grips with how much control workers were willing to give up to their manager, I had always assumed that I nonetheless had it all; that is was my job to control everything and their job to do everything.  It took me a long time to see otherwise.

Tom DeMarco - Slack

Posted via email from What Stringer's Reading

David Cameron

I read this morning on Wikipedia that when he got caught for smoking dope at Eton he hadto do something called a Georgic as punishment which is five hundred lines of Latin. From what I hear from friends of friends when he was at Carlton Television he carried on doing pretty much the same every Saturday night.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

5 minute routine on being fat.

Hello, my name is Mark Stringer and I'm fat. This is my first meeting.

See, sometimes when I say that, I get people saying “oh no! You're not fat.” Especially Americans, you've got to love them, well you don't have to, but I've decided it's safer, if you don't want a visit from a drone. Anyway, I know I'm fat. And I'm fat - from the air I'm a big target.

How do I know I'm fat? Well one way is that the doctors tell me I'm fat. Whenever I go to the doctor, the minute I get in the door he's saying “You fat bastard!!!”. You know when you go to the doctor and you've got your little spiel worked out what you're going to say because you know you've only got a few minutes. Well I get my foot in the door he's saying “You fat bastard!” Even if what I've come with has got nothing at all to do with being fat. You know, I could be coming in with a fractured skull and as soon as I'm in it's “you fat bastard”

“But Doctor, it's my head, I've hurt my head.”

“I'm not surprise you've fallen on your head, I'm more surprised you can stand up at all, you fat bastard.”

I don't think it would matter what it was. I could go in there with bubonic plague.

“Doctor, I think I've got bubonic plague.”

“You haven't got bubonic plague – you're just a fat bastard.”

“But I've got these bubons in my armpits.”

“You haven't got bubonic plague – you probably just accidentally ate some ping pong balls while you were stuffing your fat face, you fat bastard.”

So I know I'm fat. And thanks to the doctor, I know I'm very fat. My BMI (anybody know what BMI is?) sounds like a sofa showroom near Birmingham, but it's Body Mass Index. It's a ratio of your weight to your height. Yup, my body mass index is 37, and – anybody know what it should be? Less than 25 is good. So basically, what the medical establishment is saying to me is that half of me has to go. And this is one of the problems that I have, when I hear things like that. I don't think the doctors have come up with a special name for it, but I've certainly got this condition – I have a fat mind.

Let me give you an example, when the doctor tells me my BMI needs to be 25, first thing that comes into my mind is. Not, right, yeah, better start eating more sensibly and maybe do a bit more exercise, no, the first thing that comes into my mind is - “Maybe – chop off a leg? That'd do it, that'd get the old BMI down. I'd still be the same height – I'd be a lot lighter.” That's pretty fucking serious isn't it? I have a fat mind.

Let me give you another example. I had a job working at Cambridge University as a research assistant. Please, nobody think this was in anyway interesting or glamorous. It's exactly like working in a mental hospital – except the nutter is your boss, and you can't strap him down and make him take his fucking pills. Anyway one of the compensations of the job was that I worked next to the physics department, not that I'm passionate about physics, but it had a fantastic old-style canteen. You know, where you could get lasagne AND chips AND rice for about two pounds fifty, big dollops. And every “salad” they sold included a scotch egg and forlorn piece of iceberg lettuce. But fantastic puddings. Proper treacle pudding and jam roly poly with custard. See I'm starting to froth here. And when they had chocolate pudding they had chocolatey custard! Ah – it was awesome, it was hard doing that job without a Tazer and a sackload of Lithium, but the canteen was great.

So I was reading the Cambridge Evening Standard, the local paper – and there was this story about the Physics laboratory. Apparently some of the boffins there were thinking about doing one of these particle collision experiments, you know like they were doing in Switzerland, where one of the theoretical outcomes was a black hole would be created for a fraction of a second and swallow half the universe. And of course, in the local paper, they were worrying about what effect that sort of thing might have on property prices, whether any immigrants might get in through the black hole, that kind of thing. Do you know what my first thought was? THE CANTEEN!!! See? Fat mind. Although my second thought was I'd love to see the look on the faces of these nerds as half of the universe and all of Cambridgeshire disappears into a temporarily created black hole. It's like that moment when you press return and realise you've deleted the wedding video! But a lot worse. Although I don't think many people would miss Wisbech.

But this is a problem. Someday I hope it will be recognised as a medical problem. I have a fat mind. But seriously. Sometimes it really does cause me problems. I mean. Everybody feels this, fat or thin. You know when you meet someone and you realise maybe not straight away, but very quickly that this is someone that you want to spend a lot more time with. And you begin to recognise those signals in your body that let you know you're really attracted to them. I don't know it's different for different people. Maybe it's butterflies in the tummy. Maybe it's when you see them, they seem to be clear, more vivid, more brightly lit. Some people even here music. But you know. You know that this is the one that you have a special connection with, that you want to wrap yourself around. You want to keep warm and safe for the rest of your life. But if you're me. You have to admit to yourself that this (smacks belly) might get in the way. That this (smacks belly) might mean that you can't have this relationship, that it might be wrong. Even dangerous. And that's when you have to say to yourself - “Mark! It's just a pie.”

See. I have a fat mind. Thank you very much. Good night.

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Untitled

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Gig: Thursday 31st May - Comedy Try-out Night, Kings Head Crouch End, 8pm, £4

This is supposed to be the "Rolls Royce" of open spot nights.  Booked up months in advance.  Also apparently lots of genuinely famous comics try out their material here.

http://www.downstairsatthekingshead.com

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Gig: Thursday 5th April - New Act Night, Piccadilly Comedy Club, 8:30pm, £5

Life isn't a competition - but I think this is:

http://www.piccadillycomedy.co.uk/new%20act.htm

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Gig: Wednesday4th April - Pear Shaped Comedy Club, Fitzroy Tavern Fitzrovia, 8pm, £5

This looks interesting - not just stand-up, lots of other craziness.  Also in my favourite part of London.

http://www.pearshapedcomedy.com/home.htm

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Gig: Thursday 29th March - Brand Spanking Comedy at Arch 635 Clapham 8pm

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brand-Spanking-Comedy/229111673823565

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Gig - Stand-up Comedy Course Showcase Tuesday 13th ( Entry £5, starts 7pm

This is the end-of-course showcase for all half of the people who did the stand up course. The other half are on show on Sunday 11th It should be a riot...

http://www.ourblackheart.com/
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Gig Golden Jester Competition at Belushi's in Fulham Wednesday 7th March 7:45pm £5

http://www.belushis.com/bars/london/fulham
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Gig Monday 27th February Comedy Virgins at the Cavendish Arms - Stockwell

http://www.thecavendisharmsstockwell.co.uk/comedy.html
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Stupid

I've got a confession to make. I'm 43. No that's not the confession. I'm 43 and I've been self-aware now, for a good few years and I've been observing myself. I think I might be an idiot.

You know that look people have on their faces when you've done something really idiotic - it looks a bit like they've stepped in some stupidity - I've seen that a lot.

Let me give you an example of why I think I might be an idiot. I get all annoyed and excited about politics get really annoyed about this coalition yelling at Newsnight, shaking my fist at Question time, calling people a "cunt" on twitter - it does feel good though doesn't it? Then recently I just realised, in the last 3 years, all the way through this torrid political time, I've voted in zero political elections and 3 Eurovision song contests. You see the trouble is, Eurovision, I really feel I can make a difference.

And another thing, you know you see on the telly somebody's being accused by the police of something? What do they do? They clam up don't they? "No comment, I want to see my solicitor." What did I say when I wrote off a company car, during daylight hours, on a crystal clear day, no other car involved, what did I say when the police washed up?
"It's my fault, I was going too fast, I was probably speeding."

And there's another thing. My television viewing habits. My tele

I think somebody might have left a really powerful magnate next to my moral compass - you those really powerful ones that if your keys get stuck them you're never going to get them off? One of those you get in scanners at the hospital? My moral compass has been left next to that.

So I think it only fair at this point to give you a warning.

Do not operate heavy machinery, well actually, I can't think of any better advice for life. Actually, what I really mean is - don't let me operate heavy machinery. The most awake I ever get is the state most people are in after a bottle and a half of Benylin.

Things can go down as well as up. Well that's just true isn't it. I mean not enough really in my sex life, but on the whole, that's true.

And finally, and this is most important, tragic consequences Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Today's topic - Cardigans

Today's topic is cardigans. I have been known to wear the occasional cardigan. In actual fact, I have been known to wear the same cardigan until it drops off my back in frazzled woolly remnants. This is something that drives my wife crazy. If I find a particular piece of clothing that I like, I like to wear it – all the time. Not quite to the extreme of my you nephew who wanted to wear his new turqoise Crocs to bed, but very nearly. Also, if you've bought something you like, well why not go back and buy half a dozen of them?

It's funny (I might mean, peculiar, or just odd) that people tend to read so much about people's personality from their knitwear. Polo neck? Psychopath. Anybody who can wear one of those things and not sweat, or wear one of those things and not care about sweating is in some fucked-up state mentally. Crew neck? Open, relaxed, a sailor maybe, for some reason I want to say alcholic. V-neck? Boring, boring, boring. Sorry what kind of insurance are you in? I just nodded off in my porridge.

Then there's the big-knit brightly coloured Playschool presenter, whole food and hessian underpants jumper. I have one of these and I don't think a T-shirt that had the phrase “You are a cunt, please hit me” would cause more trouble. It's very, very warm and you're supposed to think that it's authentic because it has strands of the hair of whatever woman wearing a bowler hat knitted it. Apparently the position of the bowler hat on a Bolivian or Peruvian woman's head can indicate her marital status and intentions. I wonder if one of the positions is “I'm knitting this jumper for revenge for all the wrongs done to my sex.” I once got heckled by a big issue seller while wearing this jumper.

You tend to not get such a strong read on people's personality from the kind of shirt or T-shirt that they're wearing. There are a few kinds of cardigans. I mean there's a kind of thick-knit big-buttoned kind that apparently is fashionable at the moment in London. And then sometimes I've notice gay guys wearing really thin ones with all the buttons done up. London's a bit weird when it comes to fashion. Even if you neither know nor care a single thing about fashion. You get to know what's fashionable really quickly. Because you get to see thousands and thousands of people every day.

For example, you might see some woman go past you in a beige cape – this happened to me a few weeks ago – and think “Wow, that lady must be quite fashion leader, I don't remember girls wearing capes since I was about 6 and going to Sunday school.” But then while you're standing there – this happens especially somewhere like Victoria or Kings Cross, another couple of dozen women walk past wearing slight variations of the same cape and they start to go down a little bit in your estimation because you realise that it's just a new fashion and all they're doing is wearing what's on the racks in Top Shop and in the pages of Grazia. I vividly remember the day that ponchos hit London in the mid nineties.

You see? I'm not totally oblivious to fashion. Although you wouldn't know it to look at me. I suppose part of the reason is that I don't look at men's fashions. Why not? Because where I grew up, looking at men resulting in you getting your head kicked in. Because if I'm in a crowded tube carriage with nothing to read, on the whole I'll look at the women for entertainment. I don't mean to brag, or crow, nothing like that. But I am very straight. Desperately, painfully so. Also, I think there's another reason that I don't check out well-dressed men. Because I actually believe that apart from homosexuals, who've got their own obvious reasons, well-dressed men tend to be cads, wife-beaters or estate agents.

Whenever I get the chance I wear pretty much exactly the same kind of fine-knit lambswool cardigan that I first wore when I was an undergraduate at university. Why? Well, it's very practical and comfortable, and for me, those really are the most important things about clothes. Practical? If it does get cold, you can button it up. If it's not so cold, you can leave it unbuttoned. Comfortable, because if you're a fat bloke like me, jumpers can be a bit tight across the chest (belly). Whereas a cardigan gives you room for manoeuvre. It also makes a statement, about as clearly as the polo neck and crew neck. It says “I'm no threat physically or sexually, but I might have read a book.” And I suppose in my case that's not crafty camouflage, it's just the painful truth.

In fact, its effect is so powerful, I wouldn't surprised if you went through a polo-neck wearers wardrobe you'd find a few blood stained cardigans hidden at the back. Maybe the reason is, that if they did wear a cardigan for a while, they wouldn't be so hot and sweaty, they'd feel a lot more relaxed, and wouldn't be so tempted to go out on a killing spree or to build the world most successful and least ethical electronics empire.

For some random job that I was doing a few years ago I was interviewing artists in their homes. One lady who made amazing glassware that I was interviewing had a day job working in a women's refuge. Quite legitimately, she was a bit worried about inviting a strange man come to her house and so we made rather elaborate arrangements to meet in a nearby pub. When I rang to confirm the appointment she said

“Is that your picture on your website?”

“Yes.”

“You're the one in the cardigan?”

“Yes.”

“Oh that's all right then – you can come straight to the house.”

Actually, writing about cardigans has made me resolved to buy more of them and wear them more often. I realise that they are the fashion equivalent of a white flag (but can you imagine what I'd look like in a beige cape? Or a poncho).

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

My second ever stand-up routine - 5 minutes

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Shoes

I'm probably going to get in trouble with my wife for this. Actually, before I get in trouble with my wife I'm going to start with a little vignette from Yorkshire. Because I seem to spend a lot of time knocking Yorkshire and this is a rare opportunity to celebrate our famous directness.

I was buying a pair of shoes in Huddersfield (you see the sophisticated jet-setting life that I lead?) and while I was trying some shoes on, another customer had taken his to the checkout. Of course you can't go to a shoe shop, pick some shoes and leave – that would be far too simple. When you get to the counter, they have to go into this big routine about how if you don't use their special shoe cream and NEVER EVER use ordinary polish, your shoes may crumbly to dust in days. If you're a bloke and you've just bought a pair of dress shoes they try to sell you shoe trees with nightmarish stories of how shoes that aren't kept in shoe trees will curl up like river trout that have been victims of a toxic spill. So most normal people have a box, or a cupboard, or a small room full of over-priced “Shoe balm” and the bottom of many a blokes wardrobe is a nasty tangle of unused shoe trees. What the don't tell you about shoe trees is that without special training it's impossible to get them in and out without losing a finger. Plus they make your shoes get bigger, so by the time you take them out to use your dress shoes for that wedding or that award ceremony you're flapping around like Bim Bom the clown.

Well anyway, I was trying on a pair of shoes and this other bloke was buying a pair. And the shop assistant went into her little spiel about how his shoes were going to crumble to dust if he didn't buy the special badger cub placenta-based shoe cream that she was hawking, but before she could even get started he said.

“Don't start wi' that, there's nowt more annoying! Here's thi' money now give me mi shoes.” Awesome. Just awesome. The famous Yorkshire directness put to proper use.

Talking of shoe trees and stretching shoes actually reminds me of a bit of shoe shadenfreude. A mate of mine went and got some shoes hand made by Churches and he was so full of praise for these really comfortable shoes. Oh the joys of deploying yourself around town in hand-made shoes that fit like a glove for the mere price of five or six of your piffling plebian shoes. And then his feet got bigger! Oh you shouldn't should you but ha ha! Ha, ha!

Shoes aren't really a big thing for me. I'm looking down at the ones that I'm wearing now. An extremely scuffed and dusty pair of DM's. I tend to wear one pair until they're actually dropping off my feet and then I have to go through that awkward phase with another pair where they aren't comfortable and they're rubbing my heels and I feel about three hundred years old. I have one handy tip here though. If you polish them before you put them on for the first time (with real, old-fashioned shoe polish, sorry that Qtip Regenerate Leather Serum Balm Sputum that you bought at the shoe shop is fucking rubbish).

But I am vaguely aware that women think of shoes a bit differently. Apparently, one of the reasons (or one of the reasons that I can understand) that women get very excited about shoes is that you don't have to have the right size body to fit into them. You don't have to slim to fit into them. Also, high heels are sexy (and some of course say, hideously sexist) because they unbalance you and in order to regain your balance you just happen to have to stick out your bum and your chest. The bit that I have difficulty with when it comes to women and shoes is that in the mind of many women, they don't seem to be things that you should walk around in. I've often observed this with friends and relatives of my wife, who's from Greece. Which has lead me to wonder about the existence of Agios Manolos Blahnickos – the Greek patron saint of inappropriate footwear. For example. It's not uncommon for female friends and relatives of my wife to come and visit us in London in shoes that can't be worn in the wet! Where did you think you were coming? Or to come with us on a walking holiday in the lake district with a selection of six pairs of high heels. Actually that's just as likely that it'll be a male friend who has nothing but a selection of two-tone winkle pickers, and maybe even spats. So it's quite a common reaction when I propose any kind of activity to my Greek friends and family “But Mark – we only have ice skates.” But just as I'm warming to my topic and getting all self-righteous about how stupid these Greek people are, I'm remembering that, when left to my own devices to pack for a fortnight's holiday in Paros at the height of Greek summer, I arrived with two pairs of boxer shorts and three pullovers – one of them a heavy pullover. A ridiculous multicoloured thick-knit thing that gets me abused in the streets.

So, just as when I'm packing for a searingly hot fortnight in Greece, all my experience of holidays in England is whispering in my ear “It might snow, it might rain, you might run out of calor gas in the caravan and have to set fire to the relatives you don't like to keep warm.” So maybe something similar is happening when the Greeks pack - “The lake district can't really be constant rain for nine months of the year. There might be a sophisticated cocktail bar at the top of Cat Bells”

Oh, and talking of inappropriate footwear. I went to see “Shoes! The Musical” which was actually a lot more interesting than I thought it would be (free tickets). And I did learn that Uggs are isothermal, which I think means they maintain your feet at the same temperature. And that appeals to my nerdy little man's mind. Ooh yes. Isothermal. I like the idea of getting some shoes that are guaranteed to keep my feet at just the right temperature (that's not actually what they're saying, I mean they could actually keep your feet constantly too hot and sweaty). But there's a bit of a problem with them isn't there? They're not waterproof. So the the kind of time of year when you're going to need to keep your feet isothermally warm – the winter – you're going to have a bit of trouble wearing them. Ok, this is the time to pull out another nerdy fact about wool, that it works to keep you warm, even when its wet. But there's a bit of a price to pay in that it involves heaving around 8 kilos of grey slush on each foot.

Just finally – the Greeks have really cute words for shoes. The Greek word for shoes is “Papootsia”. But that isn't anywhere near as cute as their word for slippers “Pandoofles”. I seem to spend about half of my life walking around my house trying to figure out where I left my slippers. Some how it seems less futile, and slightly more exotic, if I think of them as “Pandoofles.”

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Money

At the top of this as a final afterthought, I should include this warning – I know nothing whatever about money. For fuck's sake, please don't take anything that I write here as financial advice. Erm things may go down as well as up. Your home may be at risk if you leave the gas on while you go to Munich for the weekend (yes, I really did that). The only piece of sound financial advice I can offer is “don't listen to anything that I say about money.” If you are in any doubt about this or want to see a grown woman cry and brandish sharp objects, ask my wife.

Money. Somebody wanted me to write about money. This is a tricky one because I really don't know anything about money. I'm not sure anybody does. But everybody thinks they do. I've got a mate who I bump into here in Caffe Nero in Muswell Hill who is a prof of Economics. And he was saying to me - “Hey, you know this money, it's really weird stuff!” That's probably why he doesn't get too many of those lucrative pundit spots.

So this could go anywhere, it go ranty, it could go very, very, preachy. It could go dull. Here goes.

Can I just ask – we all hate the bankers. Can anybody explain why? What have they done exactly that's so bad? Is it because they seem to be getting a lot of money for not doing very much? Surely there are a lot of people who get paid a lot for not doing very much. Are we really saying – they really deserve their money less than – say footballers?

OK, the banks needed bailing out. But was it obvious to everybody else that collateralized debt obligations were going to turn out to be so problematic to value and this was going to cause a massive surge in the LIBOR which in turn was going to cause a credit crunch? Were you warning them of this?

Oh and for Christ's sake. Don't use the G-word. Who's greedy? Well that's just about anybody who isn't you who's getting more money than you are. And, even sometimes, I know it's hard to fucking believe this. Even poor hardworking people who are actually earning less than you, they're greedy as well. Did you see that FRONT PAGE headline in the evening standard complaining that the poor, literally (yes, I'm actually allowed to use it in this context – and if you see Lynn Truss, kick her in the fucking shins, pedantic bitch) benighted tube workers, who are going to have to work through the heat of the Olympic fortnight when the whole of the tube network will have twice the number of confused foreigners pausing at the top and bottom of escalators and getting on the tube before everybody else gets off. They reasonable want an extra 500 quid for this. Which the Evening Standard seems to think is blackmail. How could we pay for it? I dunno, maybe take some money out of Sebastian Coe's big sack of fucking money given to him by the “Committee-to-dedicate-the-London-Olympics-to-giving-Sebastian-Coe-a-Big-Sack-of-fucking-money” (I told you this might get ranty). And their logo's shit.

I must admit the bit that really made my head spin was an article I read in the Economist (shortly before I had to stop subscribing to it because it kept on insisting that waterboarding was a good idea). They were talking about when the Swedish banking system nearly collapsed in the 1980's and had to be bailed out by the government. That article had one of the most amazing sentences I've ever read in it. “Most banking systems require about 5% of GDP bailout to rescue them when they fail.” I think I was sitting on the toilet when I read that, and it's probably a good job. I was thinking – hang on a minute? I though you shiny-headed glinty-eyed Michael Gove-a-likes believed in this capitalism stuff? You're saying that this is likely to happen every now and again? That's like buying a volvo for the safety record and the salesmen casually mentioning.

“this is a great car – the very best there is. We don't know of any safer. Of course every now and then, when you're travelling at 90 or so in the fast lane, you'll lost all ability to control it and get mangled in it's bare-recognisable wreckage. But don't worry, most times when that happens, you only lose and arm or a leg or an eye.”

What writing this has reminded me is that I have almost no fucking idea what happened in the credit crunch. The one book that I've read about this that makes any sense at all reads as if it's been written by one of those guy's you find in police stations with silver foil hats on their heads so that the aliens can't control their thoughts. It's written by one of my favour spoonerisms Buckminster Fuller and it's called Grunch of Giants when you find out that Grunch is a word that he's made up, you get and idea of the kind of ride you're in for. His central story is a pretty interesting one though.

At sometime around the renaissance, somebody, probably a Venetian came up with the idea of limited companies. Before that if you sent your boat out full of whatever Venice had to offer, whatever that was, hand-blown glass, blinds, cornettos and it either came back full of silks and spices and all sorts of other wonders and you made a mint, or it sank and you were ruined for life. So some smart geezers decided they'd invent the LIMITED company. What was crucial was that the company was responsible for the risks, not you individually. And if the company got into trouble, well you could just shut it down and start another one. Truth be told, this was a fucking genius idea because it meant that lots more people were willing to gamble on sending out a boat, ok which meant that most of the time, the boats came back full of good stuff. Ok, every now and then a boat sank, and some people who were owed money didn't get paid. But on the whole, these crafty bog-dwellers had come up with a scheme for distributing risk where everybody benefited and the people in Venice got so rich that their money actually started sinking the fucking city.

And so I think – to extend Buckminster's metaphor. What happened just recently was that the merchant banks started taking the piss. They started to set up funds where all the boats that got sent out were made of papier mache – or were actually sieves and the captains of these boats were like that bloke who kept having to be rescued because he was trying to circumnavigate Britain in a bathtub using and RAC road atlas. And if anybody dared to mention that maybe this was a bad idea the bankers would say “who cares – if the boats come back full of loot then we're quids in, and if they don't – good old limited liability, we don't give a fuck. And if you dare to try to regulate us, well, then you're an enemy of capitalism.” Actually, I think I've figure out why we should hate bankers.

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Taxidermy

Taxidermy is an interesting word because it's derived from a Greek word and a latin word – rather like the word television. Something that not many people know about television... No, I could try to get out of talking about taxidermy in that way – but why would I shy away from such a fascinating subject. No, when you actually deconstruct the word taxidermy etymologically you get the latin word for “touch” and the Latin word for “skin”. And hey – suddenly it's sounding a bit sexier! Until of course you realise that all the skin that a taxidermist touches is going to be dead skin.

It's not the title of an erotic novel is it? “Touch of the Taxidermist.” Lets get serious now. For a long time, before the cruel chimerical Latin-Greek experiment of television, if you wanted to see an exotic animal and you didn't live in an exotic country you would struggle. Yes, you could maybe look at engravings in books. But that wasn't quite the same as the three dimensional experience of seeing the animal arrange, with some moss and twigs in a glass case. Some people, ecological-critics, detractors and other twats. Like to point out that these static tableau are the absolute opposite of realistic. The often point to the look of utter surprise and confusion on the faces of the animals in these glass cases. This is actually a misunderstanding of the taxidermalogical art. The taxidermist, as part of a ceremony shrouded in mystery has sworn, out of respect for the universe and all the living things in it, which at some point he might be compelled to fill with sawdust to preserve the last expression on the animals face. Of course, when you've just been shot through the gizzard by a handful of buckshot, the first emotion to run through your tiny little bird mind and flash across your face, probably is surprise.

Anyway taxidermy is a really important thing for local museums. If they didn't have endless cases filled with stuff muntjacs. All the would have is a watercolour painting of the town by a local artist and heavily corroded Anglo Saxon spoon dub up by a boy called Kevin.

Some people get stuffed. I mean avail themselves of the taxidermatory art after death (of course). Famously the philosopher and economist Jeremy Bentham had himself stuffed and put in a cupboard at University College London, hopefully in that order. Apparently they get him out occasionally. At not just to help unimaginative medical students who can't think of anything else to steal for a prank. They actually have him join them for college dinners and stuff. Well say what you want about dead stuffed people. They're a cheap date.

Some people think that taxidermy is “a bit weird” - in fact it is a kind of special weirdness that is recognised by science and has it's own special term “the uncanny valley.” Now, to me, that sounds like exactly the kind of holiday camp that my parents took me to when I was a kid, but what it signifies is that we really like drawings and representations of humans that don't look very much like us – for example the Michelin man, Mr Blobby, why am I think of these examples? But when these “pretend” things start to get too real we get a bit spooked. Sometimes. Some of us. Because the huge success of Madame Tussauds would kind of indicate otherwise. Maybe there's some kind of higher rule that applies you would get spooked if, say your mother was stuffed (especially if she was alive when they did it – ha!) but if that's the only way you can get near David Beckham, well, you'll settle for that. I think that was the principle that was going on when I talked to a woman on a train on the way to Vienna.

Her: Where do you live?

Me: London?

Her: London!!! They have a waxwork of Angelina Jolie there don't they?

Me: Erm. Maybe.

Her: Oh you are so lucky living in London, where you can go see the waxwork of Angelina Jolie whenever you want. Do you see it often?

Me: Erm well actually, I've never been to Madam Tussauds.

Her: Really?

Me: Yes

Her: Oh.

[Awkward silence for remainder of four hour journey to Vienna]

But I am of course digressing away from taxidermy into the equally fascinating (to some) field of Angelina Jolie wax effigies. I want to come back to taxidermy in a big way. I know, because I've seen a documentary film about it (that I'm going to find after I've finished writing this and post a link to), that contrary to what you might expect, taxidermy is a competitive sport, with its own world championships. I can't remember much about the film but I can remember the woman who had a freezer full of animal penises (no Sigmund, sometimes it isn't just a cigar). I also remember the Swiss man who had been world champion and who had pioneered the discipline of stuffing minnows but who wasn't allowed to compete any more on the advice of mental health care providing professionals.

I also remember the interview with the mum of the former world taxidermical champion (retired). The minnow stuffer.

“At first, I thought it would be a good thing,” she said. “It would get him out of the house and get him to meet people.” Yeah, like the woman with a freezer full of cocks. “But I hadn't bargained on the smell.”

Ah yes, the smell. You need some pretty stinky chemicals to preserve the rotting flesh of dead animals. Which is why historically tanneries – and fake tanning salons - have always been kept to the poorest parts of towns.

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Writing for an hour on a random subject - breakfast

Breakfast. This is supposed to be the only meal that the English can actually do. Somerset Maugham is supposed to have said that there's no problem with the food in England, all you have to do is eat breakfast three times a day. It's one of those weird things though. The English breakfast is one of those things that is supposed to be really English, but in fact almost no English people ever eat it. One of the great tragedies is that some of the few occasions where you can actually get a good breakfast are in “traditional” English bed and breakfasts. And by traditional, I of course mean, insane. I don't know quite how this happened, but sometime after the Falklands war, some bright spark careers adviser decided that the best thing for all retired sergeant majors to do would be to run bed and breakfasts. The first result of this is that breakfast in these establishments starts just before dawn - about 4:30, so you can get a good meal inside you and still get the jump on Jerry/the argies/ charlie/ the towelheads are still sleeping.

The second result of this is that you will have an unnerving conversation about how you would like your eggs with the scariest looking man you've ever seen, yes, he's writing down your order, but he's also scanning the horizon for snipers, who is wearing a floral pinny and carrying a fish slice.

I have to say though, that, even though I really like the English breakfast, the Scottish breakfast is actually even better. Mainly because of the addition of a few crucial extra crazy ingredients that no-one else would have thought of to calling breakfast. Slicing sausage? This is a kind of credit card made out of bread offal and pink food-colouring, which is surprisingly less tasty than that might sound. Black pudding – this is actually health food. Pig fat, blood, oatmeal. But what I used to do when I was a waiter in the highlands was not actually tell the Americans who asked me this until they'd had their first mouthful.

“Excuse me sir, what is in Black pudding?”

Just watch the fork. Yes, it's in!

“Pork fat, cows blood and oatmeal.”

“Is there are rest room around here?”

But actually there are another couple of Scottish ingredients for breakfast that are even weirder than that. White pudding? I have no idea what's in that. It looks and tastes like congealed tile sealant I think it might be a Scottish re-imagining of vegetarian food might be. Fruit pudding. This is a lot like spotted dick, but it's served right there, next to the bacon and the beans and the fried egg. I think this is part of that weird Scottish thing of wanting to reclaim for the savoury everything that we thought was safely categorised as dessert. My feeling is that right now as write, some Scottish fucker is hunching over a red-hot tank of lard trying to figure out how to batter and deep fry a trifle.

Of course the only time that English people actually want to eat a “Proper Full English” breakfast, what with dietary regimes and barely having time to let out that fart before you get on the tube, let alone sit down for a full meal before you go to work. The only time anybody really has the time and the inclination to have an English breakfast is when they're hungover. Which is of course about 6 hours after the sergeant major's are serving it in the bed and breakfasts. So most people end up eat the kind that's only available all the time – supermarket cafes. Service stations.

And for me the bit that does all the good. Is the fried bread. It's amazing. Every diet book in the world would say this is an evil food. The low-card Atkins lot - “That's a piece of bread. Carbohydrates. Evil, evil. That's wheat! The devil's seed.” and the low fat high fibre lot “Ah! Ah! Ah! He's got a piece of fried bread! It's probably been fried in lard!!! That's nearly rape!” Fried bread. It is the motherless child of dietary society. But the weird truth is, it tastes utterly fantastic. I'm sorry, I can't share with you the biochemistry. I think it's messing with your blood sugar and cholesterol levels. But I also have to admit that I've never had cause to eat piece of fried bread in a state where I wasn't also a little bit worried about keeping it down.

But, then, if you do keep it down, there's amazing lull isn't there? You know, when all the blood has gone to your stomach to help out with the lastest gastronomic emergency and you're lolling.

Lets face it English people will eat just about anything. Come to think about it, we'd probably fuck, anything as well but that's a different rant. I mean I'm not saying we're not discerning about some things, accents, class, grammar, the off-side rule. But if you've every been in a self-service supermarket cafeteria and ordered the breakfast, you know we'll eat just about anything. I'm no vegetarian, but you have got to wonder what the point is if when it gets to the table it's in a worst state than the stuff you fed the pigs in the first place.

I don't know quite what happened. I think it's got something to do with rationing. I suppose 10 years of eating powdered eggs and slow-cooking cardboard and calling it “poor mans mutton” will do that to you. My parents generation seem to have had their taste buds shot off in the war.

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly

Sigh. OK, I admit it. I AM FAT

Hello, my name is Mark Stringer – and I'm not an alcoholic. But I am fat. I'm so fat now that it's starting to be a problem in all sorts of ways. I snore so badly that most nights either my wife or I has to go sleep next door. I don't know yet if I have the problem called sleep apnoea – where you stop breathing in your sleep. But I'm going to have to go to a clinic to get this checked out. If I do, there's a good chance that I might have to use a machine that I keep by the side of my bed that pushes air into my lungs when I stop breathing – sexy huh?

I don't know if I do have sleep apnoea – that's not proven yet. But what I do know is that for the most part I've lost that marvellous clear-thinking couple of hours that I used to get first thing in a morning, immediately after I woke up. Who knows if this has got anything to do with not sleeping as well as I used to, but I think there might be a link.

I was reading this article about being an alcoholic (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/27/health-and-wellbeing-alcohol?newsfeed=true). Which There are some things that I find really interesting about alcoholics anonymous. I'm particularly fascinated by the idea that you have to admit that you're powerless over alcohol. Because I think that's part of what I need to do. I need to admit to myself that I'm powerless over certain kinds of foods - cakes, sweet drinks, sausages, burgers, biscuits, chocolate, and butter. Oh god, butter, food of the fucking gods. And I'm interested in the alcoholics anonymous idea that every day that you spend “sober” is a good day, even if you backslide. Incidentally, one of the things that I don't think I'm powerless over is alcohol. It makes me so ill now that after a moderately heavy night like last Saturday, I'm still struggling. And it fuzzes my head for weeks after. I did stop drinking for three years. And after the first six months, I told my boss in the politest way possible to take her job and shove it. And then I spent the next two years in a fantastic whirl of reading, writing, thinking and occasionally working until the money ran out.

Another thing that I find interesting about Alcoholics anonymous is that is was founded by a Doctor and a Lawyer ok, professionals, but working men, who I'm guessing had jobs that involved a lot of stresses and strains. I didn't have anywhere near such a problem with overeating (and eating fatty sugar-filled crap) when I wasn't working for the man. But a long commute to a long day of pointless toss will give you a craving for a chocolate bar – or a double whisky. Unfortunately, I'm about to start another job and I realise that I can't do what I did in the last one. I can't comfort eat my way through the stresses and strains. It might kill me. Besides, I feel I'm just, finally starting to find my stride in life. The last thing that I want is to be dead, or because some stroke or a heart attack, be forced to take it easy.

So here's my plan. I create a list of banned foods. I'm certain someone is going to instantly mail me or message me and tell me that it's a bad idea. But that's what I'm going to do.

• Any kind of booze
• Any kind of sweet baked thing
• Any kind of pie
• Any drink that has sugar in it
• Sausages, burgers, minced beef (real cuts of meat are OK). There's a couple other kinds of meat that are probably a bad idea: Beef rip joints (that fat!) and Pork Belly joints (that fat!) and crispy aromatic duck (guess what?).
• Fried onions on their own (a weakness of mine)
• Anything deep fried, chips, onion rings. Kolokothakia (batter deep-fried courgettes).
• Crisps, monster munch, skips, quavers (Yes, they still sell those, yes I still eat them).
• High calorie snacks that might fool yourself into thinking are healthy and not count. All dried fruit (unless it's in something like cous cous). All nuts (unless they're in something).
• Chocolate bars masquerading as breakfast cereals i.e. any cereal that has added sugar or honey.
• Cream, double, single, clotted.
• Sweet drinks
• Any kind of sweets
• Any kind of refined sugar, including (this is going to hurt) tea and coffee
• Butter
• biscuits (sweet and savoury)
• Jam
• Mayonnaise
• Hollandaise
• Peanut butter
• Bacon

The other thing that I'm going to do is that I'm going to do Astanga yoga at least twice a week. This isn't a new fad. It's something that I've tried before and it makes me feel better – I'm not making any fancier claims for it than that.

But another thing that I recognise and approve of from alcoholics anonymous is that I can't do it alone. I certainly need help from my friends and family. But I can't expect them, necessarily to understand. I think I also need help from other people who are struggling with the same kind of problem. So, are you fat? Are you not happy with it? Is it causing you problems? If it isn't, and you're happy with it, then fine. But if it is, if you find yourself snacking on random sugary, fatty crap for absolutely no reason, well then, I'd like to hear from you, and I'd like to meet you, and I'd like us to help each other get slimmer and healthier.

What's the harm in trying that and seeing what happens? Who knows what kind of job I will tell somebody to go and shove?

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly