Great Panjandrum with the little button at top

Stone soup

My favourite analogy for getting people to do things is the folktale concerning stone soup, which works on the theory that people will not volunteer, but don't mind joining in, and the more of them that join, the more enthusiastically others join them.
In general it works with people in voluntary groups, although there is a related effect which I call Playground. This happens when a group gets a bit too big and popular, and some people feel they are not getting enough attention, so hive off and form their own group, around their own soup pot. This happens all the time in the world of Amateur Dramatics, where the proliferation of small groups is dizzying. Our own group, spawned amusingly from a group called Breakaway, has this year spawned two more. Each one creates more obligatory evenings at not very good plays, followed by the statutory half hour in the bar kissing everyone and telling them they wonderful. Sometimes they are.
Soup is very much one my mind at the moment, as my Lenten lunch consists of whatever soup is on offer in the cafeteria, no matter how noxious, and a piece of bread, no matter how sponge-like.
The idea behind this is to experience the removal of choice.  The poor do not have any choice over what they eat. They eat whatever they can find.

How to think yourself - weekend three

Saturday 20th September - there is precious little to show for my efforts, either on the scales, or in the bagginess of jeans. The only measure of progress (apart from this blog) is the increased enjoyability of the walks, and a general sense of well-being. Of course it is possible that the latter is induced by the nearness of our departure for New Zealand, and the sun shining most gloriously.
No walking, as busy day getting ready for

(a) New Zealand

• write sermon for Michaelmass
• organise Public Pulpit articles for Albans Review
• ring banks to make sure our cards don't seize up overseas

(b) Brian Moore (formerly of this parish (vicar of)) and Sally Moran,
who are staying tonight, because we are all going to Sara Kironde-Strain's 50th birthday party.

Dispiriting episode putting on flouncy hippy-earth-goddess purple dress (dress code was purple) and surveying the matronly figure in the mirror. Still fits tho.

Got very cold at the party alas, so had to come home, and then lie in bed like a nineteenth century consumptive coughing up unspeakable matter. This does not help the regime (ha!) though it occurs to me, while performing a mini re-run of The Great Sickness of 2006, that I did lose a great deal of weight then. But was also so weak as not to be able to make it to the loft.

Sunday 21st September - After a splendid regime-busting breakfast of raspberries, croissant, bacon  & eggs with Brian & Sally, off to Burwell to see the family, and a walk on, or in James' case, a ride along the board walks of Wicken Fen.

How to think etc - week three

Monday 15th September - far too tired to care; called out last night and again at 6:00 am -  sorted by 10, but its residue wrings one out.

Tuesday 16th September - struggled down to walk round Bedfont Lakes, and was instantly transported to happiness. Such a simply beautiful place, which never ceases to yield new delights - tom-tits flickering through a treed gulley, a whole field full of seagulls which take flight as I come over the hill, turning the ground into a  moving tapestry of dull silver and green.

Wednesday 17th September - worked from home today, as nice Colin from 50Plus Handyman (who seemed barely fifty, let alone plus, and was very nice (just as well I am now fifty plus)) was fixing curtain rails. About 16:30 went for a walk up to Batchwood Hall, and met my chum Brian Field, who was retreating from the tradesmen working in his house, which has a nice symmetry about it. He offered to drive me home, but I explained that the whole point of my being there was to walk.

Friday 19th - a glorious day. I discovered this at the Lakes.  (a short walk but a merry)

All the bitterns must have been hiding. I was absurdly reminded of the occasion on which little Cressida & little Megan, aged 4, were wildy excited by a baby bittern (stuffed) in Auckland Museum, and set up a chorus of "Baby Bittern" at every opportunity. They were being baby-sat by a nice Melanesian student who was deeply distressed by this cry, and knew not why the baby had been bitten. He probably bears the scars to this day.

How to think yourself - weekend two

September 13th - 14th

This was Heritage Weekend:  we spent most of Saturday dutifully climbing up things -

 the St Albans Signal Box,  the 94 steps up the mediaeval Clock Tower, and several death-defying ladders to reach the bell-chamber of St Leonard's Sandridge, which Vivian, the master of the bells, shimmied up ahead of us, regardless of his immaculate blue blazer and venerable years. Felt honour was satisfied by this.

Sunday - not only walked home from church, but also miles to view the Carnival associated with the Thames Festival, a fairly disappointing event, being mainly Notting Hill reruns, ridiculous samba drum bands, and so many Bolivian troupes you wonder if there is any one left in Bolivia to brush the bowlers.  Gorgeous men and wonderful metal demon masks - wish I could find a picture. This one is some tasty blokes in blue very artistically smudged.

How to think etc - week two

As you can deduce from this splendid photo, clipped from the Queen Mary Reservoir webcam archive - a mind-numbing compendium of nothing happening - walking round the QMR is uneventful. However walk round a bit of it I did, making the event more interesting by observing a kestrel in full hover. I also crawled through some barbed wire in order to use the steps from street level up to the reservoir walkway. This made the outing much more exciting. There were rusting signs warning of GUARDS DOGS, but as one can walk up the long way and round the top without without meeting anything more canine or custodial than a mean looking duck, I ignored them.

Tuesday 9th September
Good effort today - lovely Bedfont Lakes where the bird-watching definitely outdoes the Reservoir: eleven geese grazing in a row, like policemen combing a crime scene, swans stately in the distance,
dabchick (left) or coot (right)  ( clearly different).   Even jogged a few paces, though mercifully delivered by dog-walking ladies before whom it would be undignified to jog.

Wednesday 10th September - we all need a break....

Note: if you are so idle as to be reading this, you must understand that it is raw material for a book; possibly a very dull book, on present showing.

I heard a pundit today expounding the theory that all art was self-portrait - literally in the case of portraitists - witness this stunning piece of photoshoppery: It is quite comforting, as a theory, because it means IT'S OK TO WRITE ABOUT YOURSELF (cos you don't have any choice.)

Thursday 11th September - it's suitably dark grey today. It feels like the end-time, with floods, famine, wars and rumours of wars.

Then the sun comes out and the wine is opened, and the world seems to have a tomorrow.

First meeting with the Company of Teens tonight - a cheery ill-disciplined bunch of kids. Bouncing around and totally failing at their theatre games has to constitute today's exercise. I can see that turning them into a disciplined troupe is going to be a challenge, but there is no shame if I fail.

How to think yourself etc - weekend one

Weekend Sept 6th - 7th
Stumbled upon this photo from last Sunday's (exceptionally enjoyable) visit from dear friend from doctoral days, Vernon Small. This amply shows the need for some sort of corrective action. The scales ditto.
In general a productive weekend, but not directly on the reshaping front (or the reshaping of the front?)
Tiggi was home for the weekend from Leeds, but apart from the vast consumption of good food, and the teenage-sized hole in the budget, was not much in evidence. We spent a merry two days clearing the loft of techno-crap. Or, it should have been merry but rendered Jeremy incoherently grumpy - possibly the vista of so many different forms of superannuated media - floppy disks, mag tapes, videos, playstation games, hundreds of CDs made superfluous by the Web - representing so much outlay - and for what?

It was the old photos that did it for me. How good I looked when young, and I didn't have a clue; thought myself saggy, baggy, lumpy and plain.   (that little blond dot in the picture is Cressida (tee-hee)).

Ate rather too well (own cooking), but did walk home from church on Sunday (but only because I had been called out by work, and the car was blocked in by a grotesquely large People Wagon.) Hoping that the exercise of clearing the loft counts towards the target; it certainly felt like work, but the effort might have been more emotional than physical.

I used to wish my body looked as good as my mind worked, but nowadays I think they are both equally undermaintained. But one thing at a time.

How to think yourself like a whippet - week one

September 1st - got off to a bracing start by walking a small proportion of the rim of the Queen Mary Reservoir pretending to be a bird-watcher. As there are only a few rangy cormorants and some lost-looking gulls in evidence, this would fool no-one, but there is no-one to see. Not even an Olympic gold medallist scudding across the appealing choppy waters

September 2nd - a decided write-off of a day, caused by India calling me up at 1:30 am, 3:40 am and 6:30 am about a problem which I finally solved for them at 5:30 pm - deeply motivated by the desire not to be called out again.

September 3rd - a much better attempt. A walk at Bedfont Lakes - not at all resembling the picture, but lovely in a totally unnecessary way. The pleasure of this stiff walk reminds me of a favourite piece of writing - a chapter from Amiable Destroyers in which the gloomy protagonist Brock does nothing much except walk through the desert at night. In a book packed with action, much of it steamy, this is quite a relief.

September 4th - another dud.  Today's excuse  reason is a visit to the alarming and wonderful Mr Guard which will require me to leave work early. Mr Guard owns several evocative and slightly eccentric performance spaces which I am lusting to perform in (not personally, you understand). I am far too nervous of this meeting to think of anything else.

September 5th - Whippet-like self-image slightly dented by vision of Catriona who is genuinely whippet-like, and lovely with it. Unfairly she fed us a great nourishing meal of meaty pasta while she herself  ate  quorn. Maybe a lesson here. Did manage a brief circuit of the Fishing Lake in the rain. Note to self: take coat and umbrella.

How to think yourself whippet- like - day zero

  Now it's Sunday and I am dutifully in church, which is a splendid arena for speculative thought, there being not much else to engage one. I imagine what my friend Philip might see if he looked across the church at me now. A bohemian, arty person - cropped grey hair, a black sloppy joe, jeans. But that image, which I have no difficulty in sustaining, also requires one to be lean and fit. I am not lean and fit. My face resembles a potato sack, and always will, but so does my body, and that is pure negligence. I resolve to be lean and fit.

How to think yourself whippet- like - day minus one

OK. So today I haven't had this idea, but tomorrow I will.
Like all good ideas it starts as a tickle, a Wembley of a Ely, to use the language of Doulgas Adams' LIFF.
It's an unsettlingly warm afternoon, and I'm walking with my good friend Sharon A up a flight of stairs on the South Bank in search of lunch, before we hit the matinee of Afterlife (see picture for the most satisfying sequence of this thoroughly unsatisfactory and pretensious playe) at the National Theatre. (see the West End Whingers for a wonderful resumè)

West end whingers on Afterlife

Sharon is tall and fit and lithe and teaches Yoga. I am not and don't. I start to pant a bit and feel inadequate, and angry. How have I all owed this to happen to me?