Sunday Summary

This week, I have mostly been…

Reading | Perfect, by Rachel Joyce

…author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry which knocked my walking socks off last year.

{via Goodreads}

I’m not far into Perfect but here’s the general idea: in 1972, two seconds were added to time. Young Byron Hemmings believes he has witnessed the adding of the seconds, but when he tries to make his mother, Diana, aware of the phenomenon, it has a devastating knock-on effect on their day.

Joyce writes with an easy, accessible style but I have to say I’m not enjoying Perfect as much as I did Harold Fry. There seems to be too much effort on the author’s part to create a sense of place through deliberate reference to brand names, programmes and publications of the time, and it jars with me a little. But I may well get over that by the end of the novel.

Listening | to Ellie Goulding and Passenger

…the two albums I downloaded for 99p each last week. 

Ellie Goulding is, as ever, magic – and Halcyon Days sounds equally amazing underwater! Here's Burn for your delectation:

And Passenger. Oh, Passenger.

I think I’m in love. You had me at All the Little Lights.

He reminds me a little of a cross between Amy Macdonald and the Guy from Once and yet he’s also unique. His best-known track to date, Let Her Go, has recently been nominated for a BRIT – and here’s for why. It’s just a gorgeous song.

Watching | RENT in concert

My sister booked tickets to the 20^th Anniversary RENT concert performance at the Hackney Empire last night, and in short, it was terrific. I’ve never seen RENT live before – my knowledge of the musical is based purely on the excellent 2005 film adaptation starring Idina Menzel, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms and Taye Diggs among others:

The live performance is a slightly different kettle of fish – much like the stage production of Les Mis, every line of dialogue is sung whereas some is spoken on film. And the concert performance is different still as movement is limited to work around the band, who are also on stage.

RENT is based on Puccini’s 'La Boheme', and takes place at the end of the 1980s, centring on a group of friends “living with, not dying from, disease” under the cloud of AIDS and HIV.

All the cast members are great but in the performance we saw last night there were a couple of absolutely stand-out performances by Ruthie Stephens as Maureen, Kenny Thompson as Benny, Mykal Rand as Tom Collins and Ian Stroughair as Angel. 

***SPOILER ALERT*** 

There's a scene towards the end of the musical where Tom is eulogising at Angel's funeral to a reprise of I'll Cover You (the original of which is a magnificent love song for Collins and Angel) and overhead is played a film of Angel removing her wig and make-up -- it's a moment of pure vulnerability which, paired with the depth of Rand's voice, was just perfect last night. Sneef!

http://rentinconcert.co.uk/

Right, time for QB's Internet Trawlings of the Week

# Over 100,000 images from the Wellcome Library have been made available to the public:

{A man standing on his hands from a lying down position. Photogravure after Eadweard Muybridge, 1887.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London}

# Is the end nigh for the iPod?

# {Adopts resonant, prophetic movie-trailer-voice} Angelina Jolie is MALEFICENT -- check out the trailer. She's scary.

Also, the soundtrack song, Once Upon a Dream, sung by Lana Del Rey is available for free on Google Play for a limited time. GP, you are spoiling us!

{Witches be trippin'.}

# I have a feeling I may have featured some similar images before but -- 33 Amazing Ideas That Will Make Your Home Awesome

{See-through bath. Really don't know if I love this or fear it! via here}

# And finally ... Someone didn't get the memo that the clue's in the name, here: 

{via The Poke (and my friend Evie who has unlimited resources of internet silliness)}

Peace out, y'all. 

And avoid supermarket trolley bays. They're bloodbaths.

On how life is...

The following things are rocking my world at the moment.

This song.

Lana Del Rey | Without You

And this remix of this song.

Ellie Goulding | Figure 8 (Alias Remix) AUDIO ONLY

Sounds a bit dry but... reading actual books. Finding time to read actual books more to the point. I set myself the new year's resolution of reading 24 now 30 books in 2013 -- I'm 10 down already and it's only March so quite pleased with that. There are so many books I have listed over on Goodreads that I haven't yet read but want to, and some off-list titles as well:

Smoothies.

Hello, you smoothie.

This might look like a truly dull cup of milk but is actually a banana-honey-yogurt-and-cinnamon smoothie. With oats. YEAH.

I'm not the best at eating fruit in its immediate form (I'm not a mega fan of bananas with any sort of brown marking!) and so much fruit in the UK is imported (except for those two weeks in which they're actually in season); I have a weird stigma about buying fruit off the market especially round here when I'm convinced it's all blighted by the cigarette smoke of passers-by... (never mind in supermarkets when you don't know how much it's all been sprayed etc etc) BUT I'm blissfully ignorant when it comes to zhuzhing a handful of fruit in a blender.

I'm in training for the MoonWalk again this year and have foregone the gym in favour of outdoor training. Which with the exception of Friday's soggy jaunt* is fine. But more on that in the next paragraph. I bought a new blender a few weeks back (I live an exciting life) and have been throwing yogurt, fruit and fruit juice into it at regular intervals ever since. Thus increasing my fruit intake. A bit. A smoothie also staves off hunger for a good while. At least until I see a maple pecan danish with my name on it.

Handy Walking Apps and Sites

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm not one of life's natural gym bunnies. Actually, no, that is a lie -- sometimes I don't mind a gym. But when I'm sweating it out on a machine next to Miss Skinny Von Tiny Bum or between Mr Muscle and the King of Body Odour I'm decidedly less keen. Especially if I'm paying £40 a month for the privilege of feeling even worse about my not-exactly-waif-like physique and inhaling strangers' man-sweat. Ew. No, thanks.

So this year I decided to hit the road a little more keenly in my MoonWalk training. Train 'in the field' as it were. Because as I discovered last year, gym training, hardcore though it may seem, is no substitution for training on the kind of surface you'll be pounding for 26.2 hard miles.

There are some downsides, of course.

It's been a miserable three months weather-wise, snow, rain, -3 degrees and dark when I got up and got home until very recently. And my walking buddy's no longer available to train as last year. And the roads around here are heinously lit. As in, barely lit in some places. When I'm walking with a buddy that's fine, but if I'm walking on my own, well, I need aural stimulation i.e. my iPod and it's not safe for me, a laydee, to be walking on my own, in the dark, with an iPod on even at low volume. (Note to self: buy hi-vis clothing...)

So to put it bluntly, I just hadn't been driven to get out and walk (excuses, excuses).

But then the MoonWalk Facebook Wall started filling up with the proud declarations of people who've done so many miles' training already, and I got the guilt.

Last year I relied on the treadmill to log my mileage. I have a pedometer but it's far from reliable. So armed with my trusty Android and t'interweb I decided to look into possible route-plottin', mileage-clockin' apps to help me build up my training.

And these are what I'm using at the moment:

MapMyWalk (app and site) -- this is more a reflective tool at the moment. I refuse to use it as a live clocking device as it seems quite judgmental in asking for your calorific intake and weight and quite frankly for what I'm doing I don't need MMW to keep count of this (plus I just don't wanna know). BUT for logging my training online it's great. Even if it's stuck on asking me for km rather than miles.

Everytrail Pro (app and site) -- a friend recommended this as it's possible to search for local routes that other walkers have already tried and tested. Which is absolutely great, until there are none in your local area for the distance you want. BUT the best thing about Everytrail for me is using it in conjunction with...

Mapometer (site)! Not available as an app yet, this site does enable you to plot out your own routes (off-road or on-road) on a Google Map, by activity, so you can see exactly how many miles you will clock up, and you can increase or decrease your route accordingly.

You can export your Mapometer route as a GPS file and then import it to Everytrail and check your adherence to the route on your phone. Which is the great bit. Until the battery conks out.

I plotted out a route of 4.5 miles from Shepherds Bush to Clapham (part of my train route home) to walk on Friday.

What I didn't factor in was...

• Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. People do seem to have been happily training in the rain -- but for me? Never again (at least not without waterproof trousers and eggs to throw at motorists who splash me at pedestrian crossings). 

Screengrab from Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

• Lack of visible pedestrian crossings on Old Brompton Road -- I went in search for one, ended up turning up a dead end road, had to come back again.
• GPS draining my phone battery to nada. Rain soaking my paperback map and my iPod into uselessness.

I didn't take an intended turn off the Battersea Park Road and ended up in Vauxhall. Tired, wet, and slightly off-route. That was it -- I got a bus to Clapham.

However, when I got home and replotted my actual route on Mapometer, including the diversion off Old Brompton Road, I'd done an extra 3.2 miles.

So not all bad news!