RT @MrsStephenFry: A good husband is like a good wine – smooth, full-bodied and best kept in the cellar. #HowToHaveAnAlmostPerfectMarriage

@London2012 workers recreate Seurat’s ‘Bathers at Asnières’
Theirs: http://t.co/n7fdNkIm & original: http://t.co/ydO4F82z

Been plowing through all the adventures of Sherlock Holmes (good grief there’s a lot and by the way on a subject to which I will return at length is the need for some means of perspective when reading on a Kindle – it’s very easy to get sucked in to reading vast tomes when you were expecting a lunchtime novella… seriously how are you supposed to judge how much you’re committing to when you can’t see how thick the thing is. Yes, OBVIOUSLY, I could look at the clearly marked number of pages, but I don’t); Watched the BBC series in one go last week; and, saw the lovely Guy Ritchie directed movie as well very recently. Tomorrow I have an interview on Baker St.

So… it’s likely that it was overdoing the Conan Doyle that conjured Martin Freeman out of the thin air of Villiers St this afternoon?

Haven’t had a good celebrity spot in a while. Not since Gary Lineker in Barnes on Christmas Eve.

This year as January is my hibernation month, I’ve had more than the recommended daily amount of time to spend sales shopping. I’ve thoroughly checked the King’s Road, zipped round Covent Garden and been up and down my local high street.

This sales season I was looking to re-stock on trousers, skirts and dresses, due to a large quantity of my clothes having been chomped into tiny pieces by tiny evil bugs (who will die extraordinary and painful deaths in the very near future if I have to hunt them down one by one). I’ve been ignoring the fact that much of my workwear was inappropriate due to multiple holes making me look rather more like a tramp than an ambitious and competent professional (neither is particularly close to the truth, but one prefers to create the illusion of the latter). Anyway, it finally struck me that it was time to be brutal and throw away everything that had holes (surprisingly difficult for an otherwise rational person). I replaced with the following:

1x satin empire line dress with tulip skirt in black and white silk with pockets (awesome) – £96, LK Bennett (an option for my brother’s August wedding)
1x pink pencil skirt – £16.50, Monsoon
1x beige jumper with gold stars (!!!) – £36, Monsoon
1x chocolate brown wool trousers – £24, Monsoon
1x aqua knit top – £30, Laura Ashley
1x black rib knit empire line dress – £43, Laura Ashley
1x grey wool skater-style dress – £99, Rugby

As you can see that’s a very efficient and economic fulfilment of my criteria and I’m thankful to say that I should be able to successfully re-enter society in February looking professional, colourful and unholey.

Now to exercise some willpower.

Which brings me nicely to the lunchtime lecture on ‘willpower’. Quite extraordinary revelations about willpower being a ‘muscle’ that can become fatigued and thus less effective, but also exercised and thus stronger. The key takeaway for me was that by practising exerting self-control in things that you find easier, you will become better at controlling stronger impulses. The example given was that if you practice improving your posture for 2 weeks, you will be better able to address an exercise schedule, simply because you will have strengthened your ability to regulate yourself. Good news. Bad news you are better able to exert self-control when you have just eaten… so something of a paradox then, if the thing you wish to bring under control is, in fact, eating. Still, interesting insight into a scientific view on the subject.

Well, three cheers for me. I made it to the end of the movie, and it turned out that apart from a pretty grisly 30 seconds of ripping, shredding and screaming, ’127 hours’ wasn’t quite as gory as my imagination had conjured. Watch it. It’s excellent. Makes you wonder what you would do, if you had to, just to stay alive. I’m not sure I could cut my own arm off, but then I haven’t ever gone without water for more than a plane ride. In Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, there’s discussion of the power of hunger, and how when travelling with hungry cannibals, how impressive it is when they refrain from barbecuing you (I paraphrase). Thirst has to create an even more compelling survival urge, no?

Today, I’m going to a lecture about willpower and decision fatigue. A good solid January-based theme. Not a 100% sure what decision fatigue is, but feel like I had it before Christmas, when my last contract was coming to an end and I hadn’t been on holiday for 9 months… I simply had no ability to make decisions. I kept thinking: I need to make a list/I should add that to the list I need to make. And then, find I had no energy to either make a list or maintain it, let alone complete any actions on it. For me, that’s a sign that I need to go on holiday. I’m curious to hear what the lecturer will make of it.

I meant to go to the gym for an hour this morning before heading into town. Total fail. Excellent irony: to miss my gym session but make it to the ‘willpower’ lecture. Worth failing for that alone. I wonder if I will be better equipped to achieve my new plan to complete one hour of cardio every day post-lecture…

Wearing my new dress if you’re interested.

(spoiler alert)

I’ve just started watching the movie 127 hours, mainly out of curiosity at how long I will last before I get freaked out and have to turn over. It’s a story about an American extreme sports guy who gets trapped in a canyon with his arm pinioned by a rock. He is stuck there for 127 hours (5 days) before cutting his own arm off to get free.

I’ve made it 37 minutes so far (although the bit where he got his arm trapped was tricky).

I was recently locked in a gym for 2 hours by accident, and I hate the feeling of wasting time… and not knowing when it’s time to do something crazy (throw a dumbbell through the window/cut your arm off with a blunt penknife…)

I love Danny Boyle movies so really want to stick it out, but not sure that I’ve got the nerve for it.

I have a slightly worse attention span than a small fish and that is before you add in a mobile phone, laptop, kindle, ipad and very playful small cat. I can go from crossword, to novel, to article, to tweet, to… ooh sparkly ad for shoes. Yesterday, however, when I opted out of the several hundred tv channels, for on demand movie ‘Lbs’ – of which I’d never heard – I managed to watch it all the way through without picking up another device or small mammal. It’s a story about the addiction to food and the difficulties of overcoming habits without being able to completely avoid temptation, because the object of your addiction is fundamental to staying alive. Without self-pity or apology the challenge is directly compared to drugs and the hero is truly a sympathetic one. It may have take ‘a thousand attempts, but the 1000 and 1 has worked’. And, realistically, the ending doesn’t involve skipping off into the sunset, this battle is, as with drink and drug addiction, one that lasts a lifetime.

*****compelling

Weeks one and two of January 2012 were largely spent in Spain. Don’t think that necessarily counts as hibernation as it was sunny and there was only intermittent internet connection (my very own, very specific definition of hibernation is clearly in application here). But I’m back and reduced to duvet days surrounded by cups of tea, marmite toast, purry cat, kindles, ipads and sky+. What a wonderful week week three has been.

So far, in week three, hibernation has consisted mainly of catching up with season 2 of Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman; very charming), going to see (in leaving flat shock) Sherlock Holmes, Game of Shadows (Robert Downey Junior; very lovely, but am sure he used to be rather more convincingly hirsute?) and reading the complete adventures of Sherlock Holmes (curious incident of the dog in the night-time; did not know they were connected). Am finding the entire oeuvre utterly compelling and beautifully acted/filmed/written.

Furthermore, I have been inspired by two things:

David Hockney’s new exhibition at the RA is opening tomorrow and is already sold out for Jan and Feb, but the previews of the pictures are so beautiful. At school I once painted a picture of some woods, in which the trees were bright pink, and the effect accidentally three-dimensional. The previews that I’ve seen of Hockney’s new paintings have enthused me to pick up a paintbrush and get my colour back on… (don’t need to leave flat – bonus)

Mrs Moneypenny gave a lecture to some ambitious, but curiously under-employed women at the RSA about her new book and her advice for driving a career straight to the top by checking that your priorities match your goals (there were other things involved too). Good point and a funny lady. Shame that the discussion so quickly descended to the importance of hermes scarves. Still, I’m making plans to network my ass off just as soon as hibernation wears off. And, apropos of which, here is a quote from Jo Nesbo’s ‘The Redeemer’ that is illuminating: [of the Salvation Army]… “we are like the rest of society. Stupid, self-assured men ruling over smart women with a fear of heights.”

• RT @marieclaireuk: SPOTTED: Rosie H-W, Sienna, Kanye & Gemma Arterton front row at Burberry. Sneak a peek here… http://t.co/fQyxaD4b #
• RT @marieclaireuk: Haven't managed to get to #LFW See the latest catwalk pics here… http://t.co/t6sFbELD #

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• RT @marieclaireuk: SPOTTED: Rosie H-W, Sienna, Kanye & Gemma Arterton front row at Burberry. Sneak a peek here… http://t.co/fQyxaD4b #
• RT @marieclaireuk: Haven't managed to get to #LFW See the latest catwalk pics here… http://t.co/t6sFbELD #

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