Tuesday 29 August 2017

Moved on

I've moved to mavisdee.wordpress.com.

Saturday 26 August 2017

Eternal youth

The simplest way to avoid looking or feeling old is to spend time only with people older than yourself. It's easy.

My parents are kicking 80 and so their longest serving friends are of a similar age. One of these friends got married recently and their circles were all a-mutter about this flighty young thing that was marrying one of them.

Indeed. She was a mere 65 years of age at the time of marriage.

This totally inspires me. When I am 65 I fully intend to be surrounded by 80 year olds that see me as a slip of a girl.

My recent job involved my visiting of a lot of retired people. They made me feel youthful and it was rather nice. One woman exclaimed "oh you're a young girl! I was expecting someone older" and when  I'd checked all around me and established that she did in fact mean me as there was nobody else to be seen, I was immensely flattered. Had I been younger I'd have probably been offended but I'll take that.

I have noticed my own lack of lines compared to my peers. Well, apart from the Line of Disdain that I've ironied into my forehead. It's where you crease when you sarcastically raise your eyebrows. The look that accompanies "really???!!'". I have a fringe, I don't have crow's feet.

So to recap, to remain young, simply don't smile, and hang out with old people. Who are generally brilliant anyway and you could always try and distract them so the don't vote. Do your bit for the country and all.

The dumb blondes jokes make more sense if you consider that it is the very, very young and the getting-on-a-bit dyed blondes that have blonde hair. The haven't learned it yet, versus the forgotten it all.

Supposedly sleep is good for maintaining youthfulness. I can't possibly comment.




Tuesday 22 August 2017

Deep fried cow

I've been arguing with a friend a bit about being a vegan. Yes, really, hard it may be to comprehend me being argumentative, but yes. And even more astonishingly, this argument is on Facebook. Shocks abound!

Anyshoes...

At this point in my life I eat pretty much everything. Mostly pizza at the moment, but the important thing is that my diet contains dairy, fish, dairy, meat and dairy. There's nothing missing. In the several decades that have passed since this blog began (all of its own accord, I rarely have control) I have gone through eating no meat (I'd say vegetarian but I never - NEVER - gave up jelly babies) at all, past not eating fish, through a brief hiatus on dairy (very brief, because cheese).

         NB I know that's not good grammar. I am On The
         Pulse but I feel the need to say that I KNOW.

I have no idea what I wrote here previously on the subject of NEVER EATING FISH and MEAT IS AWFUL. It was then and I was younger then and I have very little in the way of remembering what I thought and what I actually wrote down and nobody from then still reads it (apart from you, of course, but you are insane AND imaginary).

Now I think we probably all ought to be more or less vegetarian. Not completely, and by that I don't mean "oh I'm a vegetarian but I eat fish because they are not sentient and I'm a moron", I mean eat a little meat, from good sources, and some fish, that's sustainable, occasionally, but to have a primarily vegetarian diet.

That's my crap version of being a vegetarian where you cheerfully eat gelatine and rennet containing foods and the odd portion of black pudding or haggis. (Neither are meat as you'd know it so when you are vegetarian because meat makes you boke, they are fine. And black pudding is a superfood, which was the best news ever, ever).

These tangents are being terribly invasive today. It's 6pm so I don't have the free mind and writing prowess of 3am, but neither do I have the self hatred, feelings of persecution or depression that appear at that time. I'm simply procrastinating just now.

Back to the animals. Awww. Cute things. We shouldn't hurt them unnecessarily and I'm generally not in favour of sacrificing animals or people or anything really in the name of maximum profit.

So in this ideal world, we only eat small amounts of good welfare sustainable meat and fish. Or if you  must, no meat or fish at all.

However, if we are being saints, we would also not do any of the following:

- drive a car
- wear clothes made by badly paid children
- own items made by badly paid children
- pay children badly
- wear leather shoes
- throw anything in the bin
- shop at many places, including Amazon
- have needless materialistic possessions
- ever eat a McDonalds or drink Coke or in fact give any money to The Man at all.

There's lots of other things, mostly exploitation to give us cheap crap, or vanity, or Big Money talking.

Are you still here? Well done you.

Anyway. I could keep going on that train of ponder for a long time. I shall attempt to disembark at the point shortly.

There's a number of documentary things doing the rounds that tell you that all food which isn't vegan is bad for you, and for the animals, and for the planet, and yada yada, spread the word, shout about it, and it's almost as scary as the predominately Muslim society we now have.

Breathe.

So I don't think we should be vegan. Not just because I'm currently an omnivore. That's me being crap, just as I eat in McDonalds, shop in Primark and basically keep Amazon in business. No, because I don't believe it is healthy or right. A diet which relies on supplements is not a nutritionally complete diet. And supplements are the stuff of many hideous things that are epitomised by (shudder) Holland and Barratt.

I was curious as to where the non plant vitamins that are in supplements come from. Dr Google tells me that they come from bacteria. So not technically vegan then.

Yes I know. They're only bacteria. Fla fla fla. Vegetarians (real ones)  get in a schtoomie over cochineal beetles so maybe we should care about bacteria. Don't dismiss them the way you all dismiss fish.

I love fish. We have pet fish. I object to the lack of fish love people have. Yes, I am sad when a fish dies. Yes, I think mass fishing is cruel and not just because of the (awww) dolphins. I can only eat fish if it has been filleted and bears no resemblance to the fish. I'm crap, yes, I do mostly eat fish because it's good for me rather than a genuine desire for it. Also the fish van man stops specifically outside my door and I feel bad if I don't buy from him.

I make a lot of excuses.

The cuteness thing reminds me of one of the vegan videos I've seen, where the person was asserting that the reason we eat dead cows and not dead kittens is that we have been conditioned to eat meat. No, actually, in the West we have been conditioned not to eat cute things and we happen to think kittens are cute.

I don't like being bombarded with things. I unconnectedly HATE Michael Moore, although I generally agree with what he says. I don't like his sensationalist approach. He doesn't promote veganism as far as I know, he promotes being decent, but I hate his way.

Relevantly, in contrast, I won't be going vegan any day soon. Maybe vegetarian again, but that was meant to start this week and I accidentally had a McDonalds breakfast today.
Diet starts tomorrow.

         *****irony klaxon*****

Monday 14 August 2017

Autumnal ponders

Hello dear imaginary reader.

It's been almost a year again. I expect Blogger probably has no actual readers now. It's just imaginary me and imaginary you floating around in a corner of cyberspace pretty much ignoring each other. Or maybe we are friends and we meet for virtual coffee regularly and chat about what's been going on in the last year.

I am real however, not virtual, but I can't actually prove that.

Indeed.

Shall we talk about cheese?

Cheese is good. For some reason when I type that I end up typing "food" instead of "good" which makes out I'm at toddler level of observations.

But it is true to say that cheese is good. All cheese, except Wensleydale. Wensleydale tastes wrong and it is often riddled with fruit. Fruit has its place and that place is not in cheese. Nor is it on my pizza, which is a fruit free place. There's so many things you can put on a pizza and there is no need to forfeit any of them and then replace it with fruit.

Cheese of the day is...

Cheddar. Oft overlooked and damned good.

So that's all. I had a gazillion good things to write in a blog yet when I got here it had all gone to sleep. I'll see if it wants to come and be shared another day. Maybe next year.