taste the floor

Swimming Etiquette

1. Thou shalt go in the correct lane - yes i'm talking to you, balding fat men who can't swallow their 'male pride' and instead continue to clog up the fast lane inconsiderately. Conversely, muscley guys who are very slow should also get in the right lane. A six pack does not make you a good swimmer by default.



2. Thou shalt use the middle of the lane for overtaking only - swimming so far over it's impossible to safely overtake someone so you're stuck behind them, however slow/flailing they are is infuriating.



3. Thou shalt overtake people correctly - i.e. allowing enough room to completely go past someone, legs and all, before you go in front of them again. Fat men killing themselves to overtake you doing their best/worst frontcrawl as you're doing a leisurely breast stroke I find are the worst offenders, who although amusing are no fun when they kick you in the arm.



4. Thou shalt let faster people go first - having had someone stroking your toes the length of the pool generally indicates they are faster than you. Take a couple of seconds to let them go first on the next length, gor goodness sake.



5. Thou shalt wear appropriate attire - obviously swimming attire is going to be tight, but have the mercy not to wear sprayed on speedos/swimming costumes ten sizes too small - they're really not flattering. Jewellery is also obviously not a good choice, for example today I saw someone wearing their rosary beads, long and potentially dangerous and besides, God's meant to be with you everywhere anyway, or so I hear.



6. Thou shalt not pose in the shallow end - sure, a rest is acceptable, but blatantly posing in the shallow end, occasionally doing a token lap of front crawl/breastroke without even putting your face in (in the fast lane paticularly) is unbelivably wimpy.

Idle people lining the wall at the shallow end also means people who are actually swimming have nowhere to push off from, and can't complete lengths of backstroke properly, as even though someone standing in the shallow end will see you swimming towards them doing backstroke they will happily let you swim into/onto them. Idiots.



7. Thou shalt not openly be a pervert - obviously a swimming pool is a voyeurs dream...however openly oggling someone or deliberately waiting for them to do breastroke in front of you whilst you follow closely behind with your beady little goggles is nauseating.



8. Thou shalt not swim side by side - I don't care if you are a couple, get in line like everyone else you're clogging up the middle lane. Feeling each other up underwater is also not appealing.



9. Thou shalt keep lane discipline - most obvious rule, but the number of either really slow or deliberately disruptive people who just jump on in and start swimming the complete opposite way to everyone else is staggering.



10. Thou shalt not gob all over the place - disgusting. This goes for in the changing rooms too, paticularly in and around the showers. Pools are gross enough as it is, with the top layer consisting of the oil etc from everybody, going down to the denser human matter which is floating all around, (yum) but spitting can be helped.



Rant over.

L'ecole de Pole

"Aaaand, hang-back", my teacher pronounces with a relish, her perfectly sized torso draped elegantly vertical, her legs poised perfectly at a 45 degree angle. The eyes of several women around me bulge in disbelief at how effortlessly she executes this move, as I had done the first time round.

By now however I am resigned to the fact that this is what the move should look like, despite the difficulty of keeping your lower half rigid/strong and your top half fluid/elegant being akin to that of...well I don't know really, there aren't many everyday scenarios I can think of that involve being upside down.

Saying that I am getting better, and at least feel like I can do it now unaided, fairly certain I am not going to fall and cause myself an unpleasant spinal injury. Grace on the other hand, well, that's another matter.

Someone who does possess grace on the pole:

Good things come to those who wait

Post Secret

This has been going on for a few years now, but I'd forgotten about it and found one of the books in a book store the other day, and stood there flicking through it, absorbed for a good 15 minutes whilst my boyfriend poured over some comics. It's really interesting to browse other people's confessions, almost like being an agony aunt but a more succint version. Some are brutally honest and deep...

...others not so much, but they do make you chuckle.

The project is still going on now, you can check out the website which is updated every Sunday here, the best ones get documented on the website/in books/exhibitions. I'm thinking of submitting my own postcard and secret, but I have no idea where to start...

i am a meat eater

Therefore the 'Rootmaster' bus on Brick Lane did not paticularly cater for my needs. Drawn in by the novelty bus-restaurant format, I somehow managed to overlook the fact that the whole menu was vegan when scanning over it, and boarded the bus with high spirits (as an afterthought, the name 'Rootmaster' is a bit of a give away).

You can't help but notice the bus on Ely's Yard round the corner from Rough Trade, and I'd been wanting to go on it for a while, and sure inside was a pretty cosy set up, but the suspension does jiggle you around a bit, especially when people are clambering up and down the stairs. The smell of food wafting up to the top floor from the kitchen below promised unknown exotic titbits, but the reality was nowhere near as exciting.

The 'cranberry' drink I ordered turned out to be the most bizarre fizzy affair and got cast aside, and the starter of bread with balsamic vinegar (or something) was also a major let down. For my main dish I had a butternut squash curry type concoction with rice, herbs and the occasional trace of mushroom, which although delcious, was scarce. I was left feeling like one of my own curries would be more satisfying, and also cheaper. Although the flavour of the meal was lovely- I do love butternut squash - the overall effect was bland and just lacking, well er, meat. So be forewarned, climb aboard if you want to drink herbal tea and the like, or actually are, you know, a vegan, but if you aren't I'd stick to cafe 1001 or the foodhall, personally.

New York London PARIS Munich

And so after days, months, years of yearning even I embarked upon my voyage to gay Paris. It was indeed a charming city, at times, but I must admit France wasn't quite as magnifique as I'd anticipated...then again I guess I'd been idolising it for so long it came a little as an anti-climax.

A fabulous time was had never the less, and highlights included:

• Climbing all 300 and something million steps up the Eiffel Tower despite remembering I am not a fan of heights, occasionally nearly keeling over with exhaustion and being put to shame by toddlers taking on the challenge with far greater aplomb . Also amusing was a thief who was chased after and floored by several policemen, who were soon after backed up by fellow police officers on horseback. A little extravagant but hey.
  
• The Palais de Tokyo, a contemporary museum with some pretty rad installations and a really cool video on skateboarding, gnarly dudes.
  
• Eating the obligatory snails, which I had eaten before in Barcelona but not in garlic, and using a lovely metal claw to extract the slippery buggars. I became quite adept at this, and after a while managed to persuade the lovely Hayna to sample one. She dug it.


• The Moulin Rouge - amaaazing costumes and acts inbetween the dancers, paticularly a woman who scantily clad in a diamonte thong proceeded to dive into a tank full of water and snakes, where she thrashed around recklessly for a good minute or so. Main complaint with the show, there was no where near enough male nakedness, then again I guess the leering fat businessmen would not approve. But still.
  
• Montmarte - such a lovely area, there was a really good Dali museum where they had the Mae West lips sofa and the Sacre Coeur was beautiful, we saw the carousel and steps where Amelié was filmed. Not so lovely were the hordes of foreign men attempting to sell bracelets, telling you 'not to worry' as they try to prise their wares onto your arm as you shout at them. The erotic museum (which we perused purely to kill time, you understand) was also a giggle, Hannah tempted by the 'intimate jewellery' in the gift shop.

Not so great was the awful weather, which meant that we got soaked to the bone in a not so fun trudge down the Champs- Élysées, which was no where near as picturesque as I was hoping. The Louvre was also a bit of a let down, though our experience was marred by the horrendous amount of visitors crammed into every square metre and our fatigue from the significant amount of walking we'd racked up over the excursion. Overall a trés bon trip, but I was glad to get back to London where in my opinion, even though people (especially on the underground) can be rude, we are altogether a lot more pleasant than the French.