The Subtle Art of Self-Pleasure

Now, those who've been paying attention will know of my ongoing love/hate relationship with Starbucks, and its ongoing part in my Disappearing story.

There are no Starbucks here in Merthyr. Lots of cafes, to be sure, and some who even understand the complexities of a de-caff skinny latte, but...shrugs...somehow it's not quite the same.

d, being who she is, and knowing me better than anyone, foresaw this difficulty, and gave me, for Christmas, my very own fancy-pants milk-frothing proper espresso-cappucino dewberry-maker. We hadn't used it so far, because the kitchen is one of those rooms, like my office, that's still a work in progress, but tonight, to celebrate the dawn of this year of new potential, we broke it in. Have to say, if anything is gonna ease the Starbucks pangs, it's this machine.

It's an amazing palaver though - buttons to heat the water, paddles to compress your little spoonful of coffee, twisty things to slot into place, tight as can be, buttons to press to surge the water through and give you a smattering of gorgeous espresso, then nozzles to pull and knobs to turn to spurt some steam, and then you dip the nozzle and swizzle and swill till the milk grows double, then pour one into the other and away you go...

Except, as with all complicated pleasures, there you don't quite go, for then there are buttons to unpress, twisty things to untwist and unhook, capsules of soaked coffee to dump and rinse, nozzles to wipe down and spurt through for cleanliness, and nooks and crannies to wipe clean, so they don't go manky. Then, in an extra special twist, there are trays to remove and wipe down, and jugs to wash and dry, and then, maybe, away you go, with a cup of coffee that costs you £2.75 in a Starbucks but here at the point of need is free as your effort can make it.

That's the thing about pleasures - you have to make sure the happiness you get from them is more than worth the effort you expend to attain them. Now, in London, if you were to ask me whether it was worth doing all this when, for the price of £2.75 I could get a trained barista to do it for me, I'd answer you with a derisive snort and probably a hand gesture. But here, as we prepare to shift from 'setting up our life' mode to 'battening down hatches and living on a reduced income' mode, when I'll be able to simply nip down from the office, make myself a coffee of a Starbuckian taste and quality, and then bog off back upstairs, you bet your ass it'll be worth the effort.

Haven't Disappeared much at all today - ate a hearty, welcome-to-the-new-year breakfeast, and a faintly colossal late lunch. But d assures me that this is OK, as it's 'the end of the holidays', and that, in real terms, dietary austerity should actually start tomorrow.

Hmm...

Still haven't found the power cord for the Bike. Have a feeling that, if d doesn't object, and reasonable weather permitting, I might pop out tomorrow in proper boots and a proper coat and hat and investigate the Taff Trail. This, from all reports, is a walking or cycling path that follows the river Taff (which is the river that flows just acros the road from our flat). Apparently it runs all the way to Cardiff in one direction (which is 26 miles, and which under no circumstances am I planning to walk tomorrow). Not entirely sure how far it runs in the other direction...Of course technically, this information is just one Google-search away, but think it might be rather more fun to just walk it, or at least some of it, and then come home and Google it, to see how far I've gone.

So - maybe 2012 starts properly on the 2nd of January. Or maybe it doesn't - my mate Karen (Pulley) has begun her own Disappearing efforts today, joining me on the Xenical Run, and talking of walks over some undoubtedly godforsaken hilly bit of the countryside, to which I have to somewhat perversely confess I'm looking dreadfully forward - London's roads are one thing, but much in the way of up and down, there is not.

Oh also - I'm in conversation with my pal Sian. Sian, as I may have mentioned at some point...runs.
I mean, she runs properly - marathons for fun, endurance marathons for, she claims, even more fun.

She is of course stark raving mad, bless her, but at a moment like this, she's phenomenally useful. Because, though I swore it would be impossible at the start of this experiment, I'm thinking, in a vague way, of running myself.

Not, of course, marathons or anything as mad as that. But maybe a little running, for endurance, for strenght, for the sheer lung-bursting what-the-Hellness of it. Sian's given me a basic introductory idea of stop-start running for reeeeeal beginners. Who knows? It might come to nothing when the metal in my ankle resists. But I'm prepared at this point to try new things, and running might just be one of them.
It might even come to be a pleasure.

Oh and finally, talking about the metal in my ankle, it occurred to me this morning that it's fifteen years today since it entered my life and my body, in the wake of that mugging I mentioned a couple of days ago. It's been through a lot since then, carried me at twenty stone or more. Time to see whether it can be trusted to take me, at this lesser weight, through the pounding of a run, maybe?