I did some things on my list, and I added some more things. Let me tell you about them so that I can feel some vague sense of achievement in my life! Thank you.
New things:
93. Go to the Half Moon in Putney.
94. Make a Christmas pudding (or possibly some mincemeat).
95. Get some damn curtains in my damn living room, dammit!
96. Drink the following: bubble tea; dandelion and burdock; a lager shandy.
97. Make rye bread.
98. Do a thing with my dad.
99. Do a thing with my mum.
So I just have two brand new things to think of, plus a replacement for going on the Duck Bus (RIP).
Completed things:
12. Go swimming in Waddon.
Done! I have checked out my local leisure centre and it was quite nice! Though its opening hours are deeply mysterious, so I haven't managed to make a return visit. I suck at swimming but should probably give it a go once in a while.
27. Get my sewing machine taken away by the charity who send tools to Africa.
Done! Well, my mum did it for me in the end... I inherited my granny's excellent sewing machine but didn't have the skills to use it, so it has now gone to
Tools For Self-Reliance to find a better home. I will battle on with the John Lewis sewing machine for dunces instead!
32. Go to a yoga class.
Done! I joined Indiejob Yoga Club and made them bully me into going to a weekly class. I thought it would be a load of wafty chanting/a deeply embarrassing opportunity to prance around in a PE kit with people from my office; turns out it’s just some stretching and standing on one leg. I quite like it!
41. Make a cake with chickpea water in it.
Done! It works - the water in the chickpea tin does indeed have the same gloopy consistency as an egg and will stick a cake together like magic! It was a bit strange making a cake mixture that smelt of chickpeas, but it tasted fine once it was cooked (maybe a bit mushy, but I think that was my fault for under-cooking it as I am very fearful of dry cake). I gave some to my parents without telling them the ingredients and they liked it! Well then.
48. Go vegan for a month.
Done! I hopped on the Veganuary bandwagon as it seemed like as good a time as any. This was SO much easier than when I gave up cheese for Lent a few years ago - times have changed! There's more than one vegetarian sandwich in the world! I think I only slipped up twice: once on an innocent-looking falafel box from Leon, once on a packet of salt and vinegar crisps (!?!). I quite enjoyed the challenge of hunting for vegan biscuits, but I got a bit fed up with the lack of vegan cake in the world, and with having to ignore my colleagues every time they brought in birthday doughnuts. But I made lots of curries and stews, and went out with Pippa to eat seitan burritos at Lupita.
Anyway, I have gone back to eating dairy and being morally flexible now, but it was a fun challenge, and I'm glad it's easier to find vegan food than ever before. (And thanks to Rob for the vegan biscuit recipe book he gave me some time ago - I use it all the time and all the recipes are good!)
90. Do the Crisis food hygiene course and volunteer as a kitchen assistant.
Done! I've volunteered at Crisis a few times and it's cool but there can be a lot of sitting around making small talk with other volunteers, and I like having stuff to do. Also, I feel kind of hypocritical about doing it when I do next to nothing to help homeless people the rest of the year. But it's Indiejob's chosen charity this year, so I spent a day working in the Crisis warehouse in Dagenham with some work dudes, and then signed up to be a kitchen assistant at the shelter they were going to. I had to go to a one-day course on food safety and take an exam at the end; I had to be VERY BRAVE and look at a picture of some mould, but otherwise it was all fine and I told everyone about the perils of bins and soil and lukewarm rice for weeks afterwards.
I did two shifts at the Winter's Rough Sleepers shelter, which meant getting up at 5.30 to get to a school in North London. The first day I didn't really sleep and was very intimidated by being in a proper big kitchen with people who knew what they were doing and having to make food for 200 people at once. But the head chef was very nice and set me to buttering bread for about three hours until I got used to it, and then a jolly Irish nurse and I larked around trying to make huge pans of custard as fast as possible, and suddenly it was 4pm. The Indiejob folks were in that day (which was very strange - people who usually boss me around were emptying bins and manning the tea stall!) and Scottish Sweary Guy accused me of having "ninja volunteer skills", then wisted on for ages about having an epiphany while mopping the toilet floor.
The second day I got into my stride, cooked bacon for three hours (bleh, but it wasn't for me), served hundreds of plates of pasta bakes, chopped vegetables with a youth worker from Newham and Caroline Lucas's press officer, and encountered the most amazing vegetable peeler with
teeth! It was all proper fun hard work, and I went home promising to go back next year. And I got a certificate for my food safety exam - finally, a useful vocational qualification
93. Go to the Half Moon in Putney.
Done! Now, Kevan says this is cheating because it was a late addition to the list and I made plans to do it the very same day, but I have been meaning to go to the Half Moon and see a band there for a long time, as it's just down the road from work and has been there for about as long as rock has existed. They get some interesting old farts playing there, but usually it's just covers bands; however, last week I looked at their line-up and T'Pau were playing! I loved T'Pau when I was about 11 and so did pink_weasel, so we went along to hang out with other middle-aged admirers of Carol Decker's billowing flamy hair. It was quite strange seeing an erstwhile enormo-rock band step out of the pages of Smash Hits into the back of a bar in Putney, but they were actually a very good pub rock band, played the hits, refused to encore ("You'll just have to come and see us again!") and sent us home with china in our hands by home by 10.15. 'Heart and Soul' and 'Valentine' sounded great! Carol Decker made some self-deprecating jokes about the size of the venue! Then she made a joke about feminazis. Sigh... perhaps I should have gone to see Katrina from Katrina and the Waves on Saturday instead.
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mrs_leroy_brown and it was jolly good. We saw an orchestra playing some stuff by French composers, including 'Bolero' by Ravel which was awesome and should be about an hour long, though I have not been able to take it seriously since I saw Le batteur du Bolero which is supposedly a film about an orchestra playing 'Bolero' but is actually an eight minute close-up of the drummer's face. (Recommended - he has an excellent face.)
