Sloppy (Almost) Seconds

“Nic finds there no better indicator that she had her meal too late than attempting to do her normal evening session of strength-training including bent-over rows, triangle presses and kettle-bell swings.

If you don't know what they are, they all involve bending double and throwing weights around while trying very hard not to prompt a repeat performance of dinner."

To be fair, I thought the forty minutes on the elliptical trainer might have helped a little before moving onto lots of leaning all over the shop trying not to drop the hand-weights on important parts of my anatomy like my head and my nose, but, alas, I was proved otherwise. Instead of helping aid my metabolism and get things moving from um, higher up to lower down, I merely succeeded in giving myself indigestion and an impressive ability to burp along to some of the most popular hits of the Eighties. I have much to learn in the ways of waste management. I do, I have discovered, know most of the words to the songs on all six volumes of Essential Eighties Classics, so there's that.

I used to work-out on the trainer in front of the telly, if you'll remember from a previous post, but had to start listening to something, anything through headphones, because the poor behemoth started falling apart slightly; even with gentle handling (or at least gentle handling once I realised that for much of its life with me, I was over the recommended weight for use) and careful applications of WD40, my valiant, brave, and slightly doddery Sir Domyos EL5500 had started rhythmically clicking and whirring as I turned the pedals. As much as I appreciated its worth and faded glory, the noise drove me mad, even through the headphones connected to the telly.

The next stage was to start working through the hours and hours of classical music on my MP3 player, but although there are good roistering numbers, movements, even complete works (boy, those late Romantic and early Modern composers must have had ears of steel to cope with such extended periods of rambunctious cacophony) suitable for inspiring a long-term depletion of energy, there were still enough slower, quieter sections that didn't really blend well with the external syncopated sounds of an asthmatic, peg-legged pirate walking up and down the deck of a hollow iron-clad ship. 

And so I turned to the popular music of the nineteen-eighties. And marvellous they are too, not only in initiating inspiring gasp-a-longs, but also in drowning-out the ever-more penetrating swan-song of Sir Grinds-a-lot. Who was also a pirate in his hey-day. Obviously.

But unfortunately neither Bonnie Tyler, The Pet Shop Boys, nor The Clash could really do much to help with my tardy tea-time troubles (you can prise my love of alliteration out of my cold, cadaverous claws), so I had to approach my hand-weights with even more care than normal. 

You'll remember the Wii-boxing self-punching saga? (Or, :: cough :: all of them?) Well, you can imagine that having not so strongly attached, and much heavier things on the end of my arms had already inspired in me great feelings of fear and awe, so adding to that a general need to keep certain soft and digesting parts of my anatomy out of weight's reach, while also making sure that any bending over wasn't completely stomach-emptyingly efficient rendered the general calorific depletion of the evening's workout rather less than usual.

Have I learnt my lesson? Will I remember to keep a good few hours between eating and any exertion whatsoever? Yeah, probably not. I have, however, leant that tricep kickbacks are really quite good for helping release trapped wind!

Jessica Smith TV

I've mentioned the YouTube videos that I used for workouts maybe only a couple of times, which is, in the whole scheme of things, a massive oversight considering the extraordinary effect it's had in helping me in my struggle to lose weight.

I can't remember any more when it was exactly that I first turned to the internet for help, but I know it was after I started with the 5:2 intermittent fasting, so it has to be after the Summer of 2014. 

I don't mean to make it sound like it was an awfully long time ago for something so recent, after all, it's only really a year since I started using these videos, but because I can't really admit to enjoying making myself feel sore, tired, and sweaty on a daily basis, the time hasn't really flown by. So yes, it feels like longer than it really has been. Yah, boo, sucks to be me.

But I am in danger of rambling off onto different subject paths, (as is my wont in real life; I can follow my own stream of logic aloud and not realise I'm doing it until I see peoples' faces glaze over in confusion. It is a thing.) so I'll bring myself back to the subject at hand, and that subject is Jessica Smith TV.

I first asked (although I suspect, given the context, 'begged' is more the verb we're looking for) the internet for help after a particularly gruelling Wii session that included lunges and squats, both of which I couldn't do (and I still can't lunge) because my knees were screaming at me to stop after the merest suggestion of bending and bearing weight. Every tendon, every ligament, every muscle connected with this joint were in cacophonous harmony; shouting out together that this movement would only end in tears. And possibly tears. (Ah, English. I love you.)

I searched for exercises to help bad knees, and this is one of the first examples that was listed: "The Best Lower Body Workout for Bad Knees" by Jessica Smith:

Yes, perhaps not quite the answer to my not-really-concise question, but there was something in this video, perhaps the tone of her voice, perhaps the feeling that she knew we were hurting yet didn't make us feel useless, perhaps the presence of her cute little doggy, that hit a chord with me. She works in a tiny space, yet doesn't let that stop her pushing you hard. She gives a great commentary without sounding too peppy and American. (Sorry, Americans. I love you and your up-beatèdness, but it does jar rather against my Scottish pragmatism for certain things. Having someone shout "git on wi' it, ya big lump o' lard, or yi'll aye be a fair disappyntmint tae yirsel'!*" instead of "Yes, keep going, that's right, only a few more, don't you feel GREAT?" is not a comparison I've been able to make as of yet, but don't think I won't try it out to see if I can prove myself right if I do ever find a hardened Scots workout instructor online. You know, this might be the niche in the market I've been looking for... "Och, dinnae dae whit ah dae, dae whit ah sae, ye bowsie numpty!"** "Aye, bend doon like yon bauchelt wifie, an' howk up yir haund-wechts ower yir lugs!"***)

*Get on with it, you large person, or you will always be a real disappointment to yourself.
** Oh, don't do what I do, do what I say, you well-padded idiot.
*** Yes, bend down like a crippled old lady, and pull up your hand-weights above your ears.

Once I'd managed to grunt my way through this first video, I decided, instead of limping for the hills, to see what else this not-too-peppy dog-lover had on offer, and I was immediately (read: the next day, once I had control over my leg muscles again) taken with her wide range of walking exercises. 'Walking exercises' sounds a wee bit you're playing at exercise, but in reality they can be exhausting, and range from simple routines (this is the first one I tried):

to mashups of walking and yoga, walking and weights, walking and dance, walking and intervals, walking and step aerobics... More than enough for me to be getting on with. Over the months I've managed to progress onto more intense workouts, including strength training:

barre/strength mixes:

cruel and unusual blends like kick-boxing ballet:

to delightfully comprehensive (read: I'm not sure I'm supposed to bend like that) stretching routines:

and I've found Ms Smith to be quite the agreeable online workout taskmistress. (In a 'I wish I didn't have to workout at all, but this'll do until I've miraculously lost fifty pounds and am promised life-long perfect weight-maintenance by a now-contrite, formerly weight-bestowing guardian spirit' way.) I guess I should be glad that there's over three hundred free workouts to choose from so far, plus a new workout added to the list pretty much every week, because I think I may be waiting a wee while yet for that guardian spirit to make an appearance.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Polenta?

I stocked my cupboards up with a load of things of which I'd either never heard, or had never used before, after I made my decision to try a gluten free elimination diet to see whether it was wheat that was causing me all sorts of bleh. An overzealous shopper on this occasion, my basket at the local health food shop was laden in record time. Laden probably due to panic, certainly intrigue, and possibly something to do with a bogof deal. Actually it was buy one get on half price, but bogohp isn't as fun to have on the page. But stock up I most certainly did, with:

Corn flour I'd heard of as a thickener, but it is apparently also something you can use to make cakes and muffins, or used in a mix with other flours. (Bear with me. Plain flour, self-raising, and wholemeal were pretty much all I was aware of up until this point, and now they were being thrown out of the equation, I realised I was standing at the bottom of a very steep learning curve.) 

Brown rice, white rice, and the ever-popular but illogical-sounding glutinous rice seemed interesting and not too scary. The ordinary rice flours seem to be a staple in a lot of baking recipes, and the sweet rice flour looks like it could be really good fun given the right recipe!

Buckwheat flour initially confused me because the uh, 'wheat' in the name, but research (aka Mr Wikipedia) told me that it is actually a relation of rhubarb (this world of ours is a strange, strange place) and not a wheat or grass at all! It's one of the flours I read that you can use instead of almond flour, which is excellent, considering you need to take out a second mortgage to be able to afford enough almond flour for anything more than a couple of cup-cakes. 

I'm exaggerating. But only just. Note: I didn't get any almond flour. At eight euros for a three hundred and fifty gram bag I'm as well just buying a couple of boxes of inordinately expensive GF choc chip cookies from the local supermarket.

Anyhoo, if you'll give me a second to climb down off my high horse, I'll continue...

Chickpeas (garbanzo beans,), although new to me in flour form are loved be me in bean form, and I presume they can be used in much the same way as buckwheat flour - they seem a very similar texture, but of course that might mean nothing until I've used the chickpea flour for myself, which I plan to do in some Indian recipes I found online.

Coconut flour was a no-brainer simply because I love coconut. I have since come to, if not appreciate, then be aware of its fickle and thirsty ways, and I appear to have amassed quite the stock-pile in my cupboard. (It was the main ingredient of my first ever cake. Not the Idiot Cake, but the Travesty To Cake-Dom. I have learned much since then.)

But polenta, or corn meal (coarsely ground as opposed to the finely milled corn flour). It was there beside all the other meals and flours looking for all intents and purposes like it belonged with them. It was gluten free, bogohp, and although I'd heard of it, and was positive it would be a positive addition to my GF stash, I just wasn't sure how that would come to pass. And stayed not sure.

So those two bags of polenta have just languished there in my cupboard since July, waiting for me to remember I had them. Waiting, in fact, for me to find a cheap Kindle book on Amazon by Mark David Abbott called 'Cookies: Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Refined Sugar Free' (not an affiliated link, nor have I anything to do with the author) in which I found some lovely sounding recipes, including Orange Polenta Cookies. Ding-Ding-Ding! 

Orange Polenta Cookies

160 grams polenta

55 grams brown rice flour

48 grams almond flour (I used buckwheat)

1 tsp GF baking powder

50 grams coconut oil

50 grams palm sugar (I used light brown sugar)

grated rind of 1 orange

1 tsp orange juice (I used a tbs, but that's because I was squeezing the thing by hand and it may or may not have gone everywhere...)

1 egg

(optional couple of handfuls of white choc chips - not part of the original recipe, but I fancied them and thought white choc and orange would go nicely. And because chocolate.)

Like most of the (albeit beginner) recipes I've tried before, you mixed all the dry stuff together, then all the wet stuff together, then chucked them all together (I am now suffering from semantic satiation. Together together together) to make a dough. The recipe suggested using a food processor. I laughed in the face of such presumption and whipped out my cheap, plastic bowl and trusty wooden spoon.

The dough then had to be covered in cling-film (I have yet to be convinced that anything involving cling-film can possibly be less than a three-man job; one to hold the box, one to gently pull the fragile plastic from the box to the length needed, and one to carefully coax a tear across the width without letting go of the edges while simultaneously fighting the wrap's inner compulsion to fold up on itself in an intricate and intimate manner. I went through two metres of the stuff just to have enough to work with), rolled it into a log and let to set in the fridge for half an hour.

But Behold! A wrapped and submissive slab of polenta dough, and included in the deal, a still-life of my trusty heart-shaped measuring... things, which are marvellous in our eyes.

After thirty minutes you then carved it up into slices and bunged it in a medium oven (180C) for ten minutes.

Final instructions were to leave them on the baking tray(s) until they were cool. 

The nomming part was self-evident.

I have to say the gentle warning about the texture wasn't needed, and in fact I'm reminded of a coarse shortbread. The orange gives a lovely tang, the white chocolate a hint of decadence, and the biscuit itself isn't quite as crumbly as I expected. I may not have waited until they were cool to sample one :: cough :: so that expectation was placed at an unnatural low anyway. But they passed the I Don't Know What To Do With This Weird Ingredient test with flying colours, so I feel a little more hopeful that polenta's future will be spent out in the light with the rest of the cool GF flours instead of stuck in the dark corner of my kitchen cupboard pining away, forgotten and misunderstood !

Rootin' Tootin' Gluten-Free

Back in June I rather unceremoniously announced my intention to switch to a gluten-free diet by internet-crying over the ingredients of my favourite chocolate bar. Why? Because the combination of nougat and chocolate and... oh, why go gluten-free. :: coughs :: It's simple. A myriad blood tests came back normal, indicating that my blood sugar was normal, my cholesterol was normal, I wasn't coeliac, and my internal organs were doing a good job in keeping good enzymes in and bad enzymes out!

I know, I know, that sounds like I'm actually in pretty good shape! And it's almost certainly because I chose to change my life a few years ago! Huzzah! 

Warning: TMI ahead.

But we couldn't find the reason(s) behind my weird, itchy, scaly skin patches, my chronic sinusitis, migraines and vertigo (that I had linked both to perpetually blocked and sometimes super-angry sinuses and an already long, LONG history of migraine starting when I was seven), long-term digestive issues ranging from feeling bloated and burpy, to the utter agony of having to spend hours on, or in close vicinity to, the porcelain throne (sometimes even starting just a few minutes after eating something that obviously didn't agree with me), plus mood swings and other brain-type ups and downs.

I had previously googled the symptoms. Rookie mistake. I potentially had anything and everything from a stubbed toe to something that would kill me in three months. (The stubbed toe was perhaps contributing to potential 'balance issues'. Doctor Google is sent to try us.) But if we want to look a little more intelligently, then my list of symptoms could still cover a long list of intolerances and allergies, not least gluten, but also a whole host of other causes. But I couldn't discount that an intolerance to gluten *could* be responsible for many of my disparate symptoms.

I kept a food diary earlier on in the year, a suggestion made by my sister. It's a great idea, but I am one for examining things to a ridiculous level and when my heart started beating faster after a particularly delicious door-stop sandwich I didn't immediately think AHA! Gluten, I immediately thought, wait - has it always done this after eating, but I'm only noticing it now because I'm on symptom watch? After a birthday week of more cake and bread than usual when the itchy, scaly skin on one hand suddenly developed on the other hand and drove me mad I didn't immediately think AHA! Gluten, I wondered if I had been holding onto something weird that had irritated my hands. 

After an interesting session with the doc going though my exemplary blood work results, we decided that in lieu of a truckload of tests that still might be inconclusive, I'd do an old-fashioned elimination diet. Cut out all forms of wheat and gluten for a couple of months and see if I notice a difference in any of the truckload of symptoms I brought to him. A simple method to determine the cause (or at least try to determine the cause) of a complicated ailment.

A couple of friends have told me on different occasions that they think having a food intolerance is just being weak and faddy. That this fad can be made worse by stress and anxiety, which in itself are symptoms of the weakness. A self-fulfilling prophecy. It's not real, so the sufferer should just stop complaining and stop being such a baby. They're just the blindly following the latest craze, which in itself is merely another cog in the diet-industry machine, because don't they realise that they're told they have these intolerances and allergies to make them go out and buy expensive stuff to alleviate made-up symptoms* when really there's nothing wrong with you that chewing on a couple of decent loaves of pure wheat bread spread with a big ol' portion of suck-it-up wouldn't fix.

Well, apart from saying that I believe everyone is entitled to their own opinion on anything and everything, as long as they're not a twat about it, believe me, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think it was going to benefit me is some way, because if nothing else it's draining my grocery finances dry. I have a small weekly food budget, and comestibles of a GF nature have a large appetite when it comes to eating cash. So it's not a fad. I can't afford fads.

Well, it's been two months, or just under, since I started cutting out all things gluten-related from my eating, but before I give you a then-and-now comparison, just let me say that cutting out the gluten was technically easy. I stopped buying stuff with gluten in it, natch! But oh my goodness, I felt pretty rotten for the first week or so of actually not ingesting the stuff. I had no energy. The lethargy was too hard to fight for a good few days and I spent the time in listless pursuits of little nothings. I didn't manage much exercise at all because everything seemed to ache - my joints, my muscles, my head. Oh ye gods, my head.

A couple of years ago I realised that I was overdosing on a caffeine by hundreds of per cent, so made the decision to stop coffee cold turkey and was not in any way prepared for the ensuing OH GOD KILL ME NOW constant thumping two-week long brain-ache that came as part of the withdrawal. (Coffee wooed me back, but we're just friends who see each other occasionally, instead of room-mates who live in each other's pockets.) This stopping-gluten headache was enough like that stopping-caffeine headache for me to realise that my body was fighting me tooth and nail and didn't want to give up its floury drug.

It did feel a bit like having the 'flu, but without the lack of appetite. Because man, I was hungry ALL THE TIME. I have no idea what's normal or what's not when detoxing gluten from your system, but the hunger with strangely accompanying nausea, the headache, the lethargy and aching everything was not fun. The worst of it was over after about four days, but the aches and headache lasted ten days or so.

You read of people more unfortunate that me who cut out gluten because they're coeliac and they say that when the body realises it doesn't have to fight itself any more, the relief from pain is almost like night and day. I may not have had such an epiphany, but once that final headache had shifted I certainly liked life a bit better, but didn't notice anything new and shiny in the guts department. However, after a couple of months of not really thinking about it (and even typing that - how marvellous not to have had to think about it so much!) I have come to notice things! Good things!

1a) I used to belch. I mean all the time, not just your discreet little burp behind your hand, but an honest-to-god Barney-from-The-Simpsons, oesophagus-rattling belch. I have unfortunate friends and relatives who will attest to this - you won't even have to pay them. Barely an hour would go by without the chance to recite the alphabet in gas form.

1b) It's a rare phenomenon now. I hadn't noticed that until just now, actually. I still burp, because, hey, I'm human, but that continual need to get rid of an awful lot of built-up gas pressure? It's not there!

2a) It was rare for a week to pass without having to spend a considerably uncomfortable amount of time parking in the porcelain garage, because something would turn your guts from its normal grumble to PANIC!! EVACUATION!! mode. Or if you were going out somewhere for a meal, you knew that you'd have to block the next day off (if you'll excuse the unintentional pun) as a home-stay day because the chances would be high that something you had eaten would set you off for a long stay in the pottery prison.

2b) The last upset stomach that had me doubled-up was I think around three weeks ago, and I think I can pin that on using oats that weren't GF. (My own fault for not checking first.) In fact, things are, um, well... Shall we say on an even keel just now, and try not to tempt the Fates by talking about it too much!

3a) I had a couple of patches of dry, flaky, cracking, very rough and very itchy skin that looked like they belonged on a not-so-recently deceased plucked chicken. They've come and gone over the years, but the last couple have seen me scratching those patches more often than not, and when they weren't flaring-up, the skin was like leather.

3b) And again, I've just noticed that I haven't been scratching for a good while. This little essay has come in quite handy! In fact, now I'm actually paying attention, the skin is as soft as the rest and although there's still a little patch where there was some scarring (that rash was itchy, man), but well! This is good news!

4) The jury is still out on the headaches, mainly because I had a teeny cold followed by an annoyingly interminable sinus infection recently, and although it is about a month since my last face-throbbing, gouge-out-my-eye headache, I'd prefer to wait and see whether that's because of changes in the weather, my sinuses currently flowing freely down the back of my throat instead of being their normal solid mass of pain, or because gluten is a bitch and hates me.

But as for those non-cleared-up sinuses? Well, I had tried going dairy free a year or so ago, because dairy is the first thing we singers blame for gunk on the cords and nose and throat. Probably because it's the number one cause of that gunk. So I cut out milk and my darling cheese, but nothing changed. I know for sure I never used the attention to detail when I was attempting dairy-free that I use now to check my foodstuffs are gluten-free, so when I noticed no difference in my sinus congestion I blamed it on being intolerant to something else, not realising that even the tiniest milk protein could be responsible for a whole lot of snot. Now that my tummy woes are at least pretending to be in check (excuse me while I touch wood for a second...) I'm going to schedule a couple of months without dairy, properly without dairy, and see if I can't go catch myself another break! Watch this space!

*looking at the price of almond flour I'm tempted to believe it.

Oh Automne, Embrrrace Me In Your Strrrrong Arrrrrms

It's getting cooler, and I'm getting happier by every falling degree. It was 14.5C when I went out this afternoon, according to Wunderground.com. Twelve thousand steps took me to the Haagse Bos, past the tourist-filled open gates of Huis Den Bosch, which I presume meant that the King and Queen weren't in residence, and back round by the lake, pausing to snap some burgeoning Autumn colour, tree stump art, and a sentinel heron, keeping guard on one of the palace CCTV cameras.  

Yes, it's a camera in my pocket, Autumn, but I'm still really pleased to see you!

Food Blogging For Idiots

What can I say? I made biscuits again. Cookies. Shortbread. Ach, you know what I mean. I'm just thankful that up to now they've all stored well, because potentially they could be trouble makers in the old fat department.  

I have to admit I'm really enjoying this baking lark. It's like messing around with Play-Doh that you can eat. That you're supposed to eat, I mean. (Because really, who hasn't fallen for that vanilla-y goodness at one point or other in their childhood?) All this mixing and blending and rolling and kneading and actually, it's even better than Play-Doh, because I don't know about you, but I think I must have had a non-food version of brumotactillophobia (a fear of different foods touching on your plate) when it came to the different colours touching one another in play. There's probably a proper name for that, but I'm damned if I can find it. There's an answer for everything online, but you have to ask the right question first...

Now, though, everything gets mixed up together, and depending on what it's going to be, gets rolled out, or squished, or prodded or shoved into baking tins. I suspect all I've actually done here is confirm the fact that I'm just a big kid.

But today I'm going to pretend I'm one of those fancy food bloggers, because me and my little Samsung Galaxy S2 phone camera (yes, it's 2015, yes the S6 has been out for a while, but you know what? Take a look at my work space (which comprises of the lid of a table-top gas cooker, and my sink drainer) and baking tools (ranging from ancient, to second-hand, to cheap but cheerful), and you'll realise that getting the most modern phone with the zippiest tech is not the first thing on my list of life upgrades) me and my phone camera are going to pretend we're in the kitchen of Nigella or Ina, and it's really a fancy DSLR!

But first, I have to tell you what we're making! I'm failing in my duties as a food blogger already.
Tsk.

We're making Double Dark Chocolate Shortbread Cookies. Oh yes.

You need: 

120 grams of softened, unsalted butter

30 grams of icing sugar

30 grams of dark cocoa powder

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

100 grams of (gluten-free) all-purpose flour

90 grams of dark chocolate chips  (I *may* have added a bit more, because chocolate)

Reading the recipe, the first instruction was to wang the oven on to 160C, but reading further, you had to refrigerate the dough for at least an hour. Uh-uh. My leccy bill ain't having any of your wasteful habits, madame authoress. None of them. My tiny little oven doesn't need such a grand introduction to the medium heat of 160 degrees Celsius.

So instead I went ahead and creamed the butter, cocoa powder and icing sugar together to get a smooth paste, then added the vanilla, following that with the flour, and finally the chocolate chips.

 Turning it on to a board (read: lid of the cooker) I prepared it to be rolled into a 'smooth 8" log'.

:: snerk ::  I am a child.

I added a little cocoa powder to the baking paper, just to be on the safe side, then wrapped the log, twisted the ends, rolled it out, and put it in the fridge for an hour.

Yes, that's Markie's cocoa powder. The cheapest per gram, if you can believe that, that I can find here. Seems ridiculous, and although I must admit to not knowing the contents of every shop in town as of yet, as baking supplies go, this country seems woefully behind the times.

Remembering to put the oven on (well done me :: pats back::) I brought out the log, and chopped it up into roughly 20 pieces. The advice is to use a sharp knife. I'd add to that and say watch out for the cold and solid choc chips, because no matter how sharp your knife is, it's going to deflect off a choc chip or four and do unspeakable things to the uniformity of the shortbread cookies. Just sayin'.

As you can see, I was left with one small piece, one extra small piece that would have ruined the beautiful layout of my two trays of cookies. It was tragic, but it had to go.

Go in my mouth.  

The recipe suggested a baking time of twelve to fifteen minutes, and I went for thirteen, because I could. The next time I'll go for a couple less; my tiny wee oven likes to be good at what it does occasionally, and the shortbread don't seem to be greedy when it comes to time and heat demands.

I remembered just in time not to attempt to remove them from the baking sheet when they came out of the oven - flashbacks to my Mum making shortbread at home, and always leaving them in the tray to 'set' and cool a little before attempting to put them on the racks.

And these babies are so melt-in-the-mouth it's not true! They're light and chocolatey and ridiculously moreish, and I was hard-pressed to stop at sampling one. Okay. Two. They're really good, even though I say so myself. I think a couple of minutes less both of the initial mixing, and in the oven, might have made them a little less crumbly, but on the whole the recipe does what it sets out to do - give you a pile of delicious, double dark chocolate shortbread cookies.

A Game Of Fronds

"Nic is forever delighted by the first signs of degeneration and decay!"

You'll be forgiven if you think that that degeneration also includes my photo-taking skills. I know - the first photo is a higgledy-piggledy mess of slightly over-contrasted scrappy leaves and a not particularly pleasing arrangement of tree trunks, and while the second may be slightly better composition-wise, it's still bland and hardly worth sharing.

But look. Look closer. Do you see? The rowan leaves at the bottom of the first photo? They're turning pink! And the second photo? Pale green, orange, and yellow, baby! 

AUTUMN IS COMING! (Like Winter Is Coming, but hopefully with less chance of having your head chopped off by a spoilt boy-king.)

My favourite time of year is just around the corner!

I have never been a fan of Summer; the combination of being a fair-skinned redhead with a remedial need to stay covered up at all times, and being fat with an overriding emotional need to stay covered up at all times has led to a dislike of Summer months that border on dread. 

Give me Autumn and Winter where I can hide my layers underneath layers of clothing. Give me seasons when everyone is wearing more and I stick out less from the crowd. Give me seasons when it gets dark early and I can wear my black and blend in later. 

But give me seasons of change and colours and paths covered in crisp leaves. Give me seasons of emerging tree-forms, black against the blue sky and chilled, misty breath past frozen waterways and sleeping earth.

I can't wait!