The ugly shoes of hope

On Friday, I did something I never thought I'd do.

With the Husband, walking back home from lunch (I had another half day, after a 14 hour day a few days before) I stopped off at a running shop. A specialist shop that has always scared me slightly. I walked up to a member of staff and told her that, although I'd never really run before, I was going to do a couch to five k and needed a pair of trainers that would stop me getting injured. She didn't laugh at me. Instead, she carefully measured my feet, brought up a few pairs of trainers, and got me to try them on. I then ran on a treadmill (me!) while she filmed how I ran and picked the best pair for me. I bought them.*

On the next door treadmill, the Husband was doing the same.

Our trainers are now sitting, in their boxes, in the corner of the bedroom.

This is the fourth pair of trainers I have owned in my adult (ish) life. The first, bought for fifth and sixth form PE lessons that were bunked off as often as possible, lasted me a good eight years. After all, I hardly wore them, until I hit a gym phase at 24.

Then I bought myself a new pair. They were chosen as much for being the cheapest and least ugly in the shop, and the fact that they were technically a size too big never bothered me. They did me a few months of the gym, before I met the Husband and found more fun things to do in the evening.

My third pair were bought by a friend for walking in. She found them uncomfortable, and said if they fitted me I could keep them. I kept them for a year or two, although as they're still pretty uncomfortable I tend to work out barefoot at home.

This pair are different. Although they are the third most expensive pair of shoes I own and I resent how ugly they are, at that price, they are comfortable. And I chose to get them. And I'm determined to use them, to start the couch to five k, and possibly even to wear these trainers out, in time.

Now I'm not one of life's runners - when I told my mum about these trainers she was speechless. But I think I can do this. And for the first time in my life, I really, really want to try. I know it'll be hard, and that it'll take time - probably more time than the nine weeks of the programme. But I'm excited, and hopeful. And that ugly pair of shoes in the corner of the bedroom has come to symbolise that excitement and hope.

Tonight, I'm planning to put them on.




*If anyone in Edinburgh wants to do the same, I really, really recommend Footworks in Bruntsfield. They were so helpful, and spent so much time on us!

New toy: electric mixer

I can be a bit of a puritanical baker. Not in what I cook, but in the way I do it. Although I've had a food processor for years now, I tend to mix cakes by hand - it doesn't feel like I'm making it otherwise.

Although I do use the beaters on my food processor for some things, they're not very strong, and using them involves an unholy amount of washing up.

So generally, it's me and a hand whisk - even for meringues. It's good exercise!

However, recently I've been thinking how much easier life would be if I had a mixer - especially as I'm cooking more no-fat sponges, and they're just a pain by hand.

When I mentioned this idea to The Husband, he suggested I put some Christmas money we'd got from his grandparents towards it - because we both knew they'd be happy with us buying something for the kitchen with it. I also put some my birthday money from my Aunt towards it, as I wanted to buy something which has good reviews and a chance of lasting a good long while.

I went for a mixer in the Kenwood kMix range because it was good and heavy and had good reviews online – and, if I’m completely honest, because it's a fab almond colour and has a nice retro look. Until the day when I have the money and the space for a Kitchen Aid, I thought this would keep me happy!

It's good and heavy - so much so that my hand does start to hurt after mixing for a very long time, but no-where near as much as it does when using a hand whisk!

It also comes with a handy stand which keeps all its bits and bobs together - and means it can be kept out on display if you're not quite as desperately short of surface space as we are.

It cost just shy of £60, and I've already had a play with it, making both a very nice meringue and utterly failed mayonnaise. It made short work of both. In every sense, as far as the mayonnaise was concerned, but I suspect that was operator error! I'll blog both later in the week.

Little pretty things: French letters

 

When I was a little girl, I used to ask my mother why I never got any letters.

Rather than explaining to me that the letters grown-ups get are in fact very boring, mostly bills and bank statements, she would explain that you had to write letters in order to get letters.

I would then go away and work out who I could write to, so they could write back and I could get a letter of my own. If I didn't get distracted in the process - usually by a book, because very little has changed - I would get out a pen, whichever writing paper I had been given the Christmas or birthday before, complete with sheet of lined paper as a guide, and start writing. I suspect my grandmothers or Great Aunt were the lucky recipients of these epistles, given the high likelihood of them writing back, and I still have a letter my Great Aunt once wrote to me, tucked into the recipe book from her childhood she sent me (that's a whole different post!) Sadly, these three wonderful ladies all died before I entered my teens, so I have no way of checking what sort of correspondent I was!

These days, I get plenty of letters. And let me tell you, boy are they boring. Junk mail, pension statements, bank statements, credit card statements. I'm beginning to realise that no post that comes in a window envelope is ever worth having. 

So when a handwritten envelope drops through the door, it's exciting. Even more so if it's not Christmas or my birthday. And even more so when you recognise the handwriting and realise it's an update from a friend you don't see enough of.

There's something wonderful about saving a "real" letter to read with a little drinky or a cup of tea, and catching up on news. Reading it another couple of times over the next couple of days while starting to think of a reply. And then finally getting out a proper pen and paper, sitting down at a table and starting to write.

So when I realised I had run out of notelets, and had nothing apart from tiny correspondence cards and great sheets of printer paper in the house, it was the perfect excuse to nip out to Paper Tiger and spending a happy ten minutes choosing stationery. 

I took home the above. I couldn't resist the pretty designs, based on vintage French fabrics (hence French letters - what else did you think I meant?), the envelopes, and the fact that it comes in its own sturdy box, perfect for stacking the letters I get in return in, just like I used to when I was eight. 

I wish I'd kept them. It would be lovely to read a letter from Granny now. 

Little pretty things: personalised correspondence cards

When I was younger, I hated writing thank you letters. It was always a chore, never a pleasure, but something my parents would never let slip. Many an hour was spent staring out of the window trying to work out exactly how to say thank you for yet more writing paper.

As I got older, I started having to write fewer thank you letters, as my grandparents passed away and as I became "too grown-up" for presents from a lot of relatives.

But as I got older still (and this post is scheduled to go live on my 30th birthday, so I'm positively ancient...!) and started giving more gifts, I began to understand how important that thank you is. Not necessarily in the old-fashioned way - a heartfelt thanks in person, a text or an email, all can be more than enough to reward and reassure the gift-giver, and thank them for their kind thoughts (even if you can't think of any redeeming features to the present itself).

So by the time the Husband and I came back from honeymoon to a list of 50 thank you letters to be written, I'd got to the stage where I enjoyed writing them - explaining to the giver why we'd asked for a thing, why it was important, and thanking them for coming to the wedding. Mind you, the process still took three months.

These days, I'd still rather drop certain people a card than an email. But often good intentions slipped away - usually because I didn't have a suitable card or piece of paper to hand and so needed to pop to the shops, and then I would forget to go for a while, and then it would be just too late to say thank you.

So when I saw these beautiful correspondence cards on Etsy I had to get them. They're personalised with my name in the bottom right corner, which is a lovely touch - and a useful one if your handwriting is quite so bad as mine can be - means gift givers should at least be able to work out why I'm writing. 

The paper is lovely and thick, and the cards are the perfect size for the message - thank you, or I made you this, or "boo!" - as well as a bit of news,  and the usual pleasantries - without becoming a full blown epistle. 

What I really love, though, is the slight creepiness of the illustrations. What is that Victorian gent doing with the giant butterfly? Does he know it's there? Is it a giant, or is he tiny?

 

I've been known to keep one or two in my desk drawer at work so I can send a quick thank you note for a dinner party the next morning if I think my host is old-fashioned enough to want a thank you note (and I don't think being old-fashioned is a bad thing at all in that context).

 

I got my cards here. There are oodles of cards on Etsy, but to my mind, these are still the best. Currently, there are none listed in the shop, just wedding invitations and calling cards - but the seller does do special requests, so if you send her a message, I'm sure she'll help out! I paid about £10 for 10, but that was a while ago.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that, by the time you read this, I'm going to need to write a thank you letter or two!