I felt a bit jet lagged today and though I got the beginnings of some work done, by about 5pm I was spent. Hopefully the next few days will justify this excursion, though I am beginning to realise just what a mountain I have to climb. But if I don't make some headway this week then I am just storing up trouble for the future, like a squirrel storing up trouble for the future. By not storing up any nuts for the future.
The simile is not a good one.
Hopefully the book will go better.
I drove up to a local village to get a paper and some supplies and Oxfordshire was a winter wonderland, with frost and/or snow lining the trees and the grass. I saw a field of sheep that looked as if they had been frozen stiff where they stood. Not one of them was moving an eyelash. It was rather eerie.
The first man I encountered in the village was aghast to see me, "What bring you round these parts?" be enquired like a proper rural yokel. I wasn't sure if he knew who I was or had just recognised me as a stranger who must be quizzed. But it turned out that he was a fan - I imagine the only person in the town who would have recognised me (apart from his wife who also liked my stuff - or so he told me). He seemed genuinely flabbergasted. But he wasn't as flabbergasted as me. I mean, what were the chances of meeting someone who knew my stuff. A million to one. Almost as unlikely as someone who liked me happening to meet me. I told him I was writing a book, which was rather a grand pronouncement given how much time I spent playing facebook poker today. But that is part of the process. You ask Charles Dickens. He'll tell you the same. Facebook poker got him through all his stuff.
The cottage I am in has quite impressive grounds and half thinking about going for a run I walked down to the next field, which comprises of a steep hill leading down to a lake. The lake was frozen solid and a rowing boat protruded out of the ice at a comical angle. Like it had been captured in the process of sinking. I got down to the edge, wondering if I would be brave enough to step out on the frozen surface, like some kind of nature assisted Jesus, but knowing that I wouldn't. No one would have seen me down here until it was too late and I was found like a Jack Nicholson as a frozen statue of myself.
But what I liked most about being down here is that I could hear the ice on the lake creaking. It was strange to hear a sound coming from this apparently inanimate solid thing. But maybe the water was trying to communicate to me all the memories it has and all the ways it can consequently cure me.
I tried to jog back up the hill, but quickly realised how unfit my beach bumming has made me (it means lying around on the beach - I didn't bum anyone and anyone who says I did is lying). I am however returning to my healthier diet and am determined to lose a stone in the next couple of months so I might try a light jog in the morning.
Anne Hathaway is in the news and it's good to see her finally making a name for herself after living so long in
her husband's shadow. Ha ha, I am funny. It was actually
this Anne Hathaway, who I am astonised to discover is actually called that. I thought she had cleverly selected a familiar name in order to promote her career. Somehow Hathaway seems an unlikely surname to still exist, although I have never understood how surnames can really die out, unless having a really stupid one means that no one wants to procreate with you. But Hathaway sounds like a made up name, like some kind of forward strumpet in a 17th Century novel where names reflect personality (she'll hath her way with thee).
Anyway, she might have won a Golden Globe, though more likely some website gollum has made a mistake and typed something in wrong. Time will tell. But only if she loses. If she wins then the information might have been a leak or it might just happen to coincide with the actual and still secret result. Who cares really?
The reason I brought it up is because I think Anne Hathaway has one of those faces that are so pretty that she is actually quite unattractive. She is heralded as a great beauty, and I agree that in theory she looks like she is very attractive, but isn't her face actually too symmetrical. Symmetry is meant to be one of the prime ways that a face becomes beautiful, but isn't Hathaway's face just too symmetrical to be truly beautiful. Like she has a mirror right down her face - and you know how you can look weird when you do that, even to the most attractive side of your face. It looks wrong and creepy and odd. This works just the same for men as women and I'm not objectifying her - she must be a great actress to have managed to do so well despite this disability of having a much too symmetrical face.
So you're saying now, "So if Anne Hathaway came banging on your cottage door now, begging to hath her way with thee, promising not to tell your girlfriend about it, you'd tell her to leave, would you?"
And I'd say, "Yes I would. And I'd say to her, "Dream on Hathaway, even if I didn't have a girlfriend I wouldn't be interested in you, with your much too symmetrical face. Don't come back here unless part of your face has gone slightly wonky and then maybe I'll have a think about it - I mean, no I won't, because of my girlfriend. Unless you really won't tell her about it.... I mean, no. You could have the wonkiest face in the world and I still wouldn't be interested. But at the moment, even in a fantasy scenario where you're out in Oxfordshire knocking on cottage doors and I am single, I wouldn't consider even kissing your strange mirror face. So don't even think about it."
And that would be her told.
People with too symmetrical faces have been adored as beautiful for too long and it's time us asymmetrical faced people rose up and showed the world that actually we are much better looking than them, with our wonky eyes, and bulbous noses and one yellow and one green cheeks.
I also had a shave today and as I am here alone considered for a long time leaving my moustache, so that I would be walking around the cottage with a moustache. It's something that I don't think I'd ever do in the real world. No offence to moustachioed readers (or any of you with symmetrical faces), but having a moustache is a really fucking weird thing to do. If your face is symmetrical and you have a moustache then you the lowest of the low in my book. But I shaved everything else off first and looked at my secret moustache. Unfortunately I had slightly encroached on the moustache by shaving both ends a little bit before I'd had the idea of having a secret moustache and so I had to shave it off. But next time I am living alone in a cottage and Andrew Collings is going to arrive in a few days to record a podcast I am definitely going to grow a moustache. It will freak him out. He'll never be expecting it.
Though most of me feels I can be a different person out here in my cottage - growing moustaches and rebuffing glamorous symmetrically faced movie stars - I can't be. Because the minute I went down the shops in my moustache, my one fan in the county would see me and my hairy lipped secret would be out.
Oh I so want to have a moustache. It looked so amazing.
But I can't.
Because having a moustache is strange.
I've only been on my own for a day and a half and look how crazy I have gone.
