Here’s an unmissable deal, available at Boots in Nottingham. “Listerine mouthwash: £2.45 per bottle, or 2 for £5.00” It caught my eye while I was glumly traversing the fluorescent aisles this evening, buying a complete set of toiletries to replace the ones in the bag that I’d managed to leave at home. After the pharmacy, it was on to the underpants emporium (though I think it had a snappier name than that) next door, to fill my boots with smalls.
The unscheduled diversion delayed my run, but [most of] it got done. I’m back near the city centre this time, so no country parks on hand. Instead, the mean streets of Nottingham had to take the brunt of my lingering corpulence. Again, I seem to have hit a sticky patch in the weight loss. Indeed, I’ve managed to go back about three pounds since Sunday’s race. The glorious bottle of white Bordeaux on Monday evening, and (of course) attendant range of high-fat snacks, won’t have helped, but blimey, what a stunning wine.
I recently paid a visit to my MW friend, Richard Bampfield, to collect a shoal of mini shubunkins. Not only did he furnish me with a bucket of said wrigglers, but as I was about to leave, he casually remarked: “Oh hang on, you need something to keep that tub steady in your boot. Hmm…”
He returned with a mixed case of wine, containing all sorts of delights — Dom Perignon ’99, Meursault, Grand Cru Chablis, Cloudy Bay Sauvignon, some very decent cru bourgeois claret, and this bottle of white Bordeaux (will add name later — I don’t have a note of it here but I’m pretty sure it was Graves from 2005). Anyway, I opened the Bordeaux on Monday, on the highly questionable basis that I’d not heard of it, and therefore was probably the least special; but wow, what a super mouthful it turned out to be. Dry Bordeaux blanc tends to be pretty neutral stuff, but this one had real class — unusual weight, and a sort of butteriness that I’ve not come across before from wines of this region. Perhaps the winery’s handwritten label on the back “Not for sale” was a clue. Anyway, it meant the intention of a single glass was a promise to which I was not entirely able to adhere.
Since then, I’ve felt sort of unusually weighty and buttery myself, so this evening I struggled. It was a warm and slightly humid evening, which didn’t help. A further impediment was that the first two miles were pretty much all uphill — the first on the pavement, the second through a pit-bull paradise of a park. I’d intended 5 or 6 miles, but after the first two, I decided to cut my losses, and headed back the way I’d come. Much easier and quicker on the way down of course, but not quite easy enough to erase the discomfort of the first half.
But the congealed sweat of 4.3 hilly midweek miles is a very acceptable icing on the underpants and Listerine cake. And still an hour and a half of The Apprentice to come.
Sometimes, life is OK.
