Igenlode Wordsmith

I ran a few figures on the conclusion of the "Ration Book Experiment":

I spent £106.30, of which £83.76 was on fruit and veg and £13.04 on meat, although this doesn't really reflect the cost of what I was eating, since all the dried goods and the lard and butter came from store (and, conversely, it includes money paid for chocolate and a bottle of oil that I didn't open during this period). I used 4oz of cheese, most of it very stale, 8oz butter, 4 eggs, 4oz lard, 4oz dripping, and 500ml of oil in lieu of the 1lb margarine I should have had.

In terms of dried goods, I consumed 8oz dried beans, 6oz dried fruit, 5oz lentils, 8oz oats, 1lb rice, 8oz split peas and about 4lb of flour during this period -- and around 6lb of potatoes! I still had 3oz of lentils left over despite my panic at the beginning of the final week. In addition, I had six portions of leftovers in the freezer and another one-and-a-half (half a portion of ratatouille) in the fridge, i.e. meals for another three or four days without cooking anything at all. So I really wasn't short of food.

( Read more... )

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/what_is_ultra-processed_food

An interesting way of classifying food intake -- and which would seem to suggest that I'm currently eating a diet of well over ninety percent non-'ultra-processed' food, depending on whether you count things like butcher's sausages and white pasta (sole listed ingredient durum wheat, but made in a factory; definitions appear to vary). So far this year I've bought three packets of chocolate biscuits (and eaten two), and been given an Easter egg, and just about everything else has been cooked from scratch.

( But... )

The concert went off quite well, the main issues being that (a) I forgot part of my costume and (b) didn't leave enough time to warm up my voice before I left home -- I was assured we would be able to warm up after the safety talk at the hall, but in fact we weren't!
Both of these were largely a result of the fact that I spent the final hour before the concert working feverishly to get This Mask of Death successfully uploaded for the fanfiction.net challenge, which I'm afraid probably says something about my priorities; ultimately, I'm a writer, not a performer.

In the event I managed to sing adequately 'cold', probably due to having been doing a lot of practice in the days beforehand; this time, however, the wobble did convey itself from my knees up into my voice, and I'll never know if that was the result of inadequate preparation or the stress of being billed as a solo performer with weeks of rehearsal rather than simply stepping in to take an emergency solo after a couple of days' intensive study, as in my previous experiences.

Some surprise was caused when I turned out to be the only performer to want to sing without a microphone (I've never been expected to sing with one), with some surprise being caused to me when I was asked nonetheless to step up and perform just six inches away from the object, despite having been informed that it wasn't switched on! I honestly wasn't sure if the result was due to the hall's being extremely resonant, or to my voice getting amplified, but I was assured that the mikes weren't in fact on. In which case I dread to think what it would have sounded like with them on...
(And it's not, so far as I'm aware, that I have a particularly loud voice, so the other students clearly weren't projecting at all; a totally different technique.)

Unfortunately I turn out to look like Eddie Izzard in stage make-up ;-p
Still, I managed to get back into my old concert clothes one more time, with rather less difficulty than last time in fact. Internet tensions have an unfortunate effect on my digestion, which does have a significant effect on my waistline :-(

Since I'm now half a stone over my 'normal' weight (though age has a tendency to redefine normality) and am having trouble with the waistbands of my current clothes, never mind fitting back into old ones, I've managed to get myself onto another 'diet'. Having done the Gremlin Diet (no feeding after midnight!) and the SHorthand diet (you write down everything you eat... in shorthand...) I'm now running an experimental Reading Diet -- no reading while you eat. This is surprisingly frustrating -- if you can't read the newspaper over breakfast, you tend not to have time to read it at all! -- but has the side-effect of making food into a boring activity that keeps you from the interesting stuff, i.e. reading, rather than an accompaniment to entertainment. The motive for finishing is much higher :-)

Feeling better after a week of this, but no noticeable effect on the 'pregnant' belly (which I suspect is simply the result of poor posture and aging abdominal muscles) or the roll of fat over it, which would probably take rather longer than that to shift, anyway.

Ooops, I need to lose some weight - or at least some waist, I haven't got a lot of weight to lose - if I'm going to squeeze into forty-year-old concert clothes by the 26th of May...

I can still get into them... just ... but it's putting a bit of strain on the zip, especially when I sit down to play. Sadly I haven't actually required formal black-and-whites for rather a long time!