The Lovely Swimsuit (with apologies to Edward Monkton)

Once there was a beautiful swimsuit, and it said to the lady "wear me, for I will hide your wobbly bits, and you will be HAPPY and will FROLIC on the beach with confidence."

And the lady bought the swimsuit, and it was indeed lovely, and she lived happily ever after. 

From this you may deduce that I have new bathers. Well done, you. 

The last time I bought swimmers I wasn't yet married. I hadn't finished my degree. John Howard was still Prime Minister, the Pope was still a cuddly old man and not an escapee from Star Wars, and Steve Irwin was still ramming his thumb up the butt-holes of various animals with impunity. 

What a long time ago. 

The reason I've put it off so long is not because I hate going shopping for swimmers. My body hang-ups are more or less a thing of the past, mostly because I just can't bring myself to give a shit anymore. This is how I look, I'm too lazy to exercise and too greedy to eat less, so that's not going to change much anytime soon. 

No, it was more to do with the fact that I rarely go to the beach, and it seemed silly to spend the money one something that would get so little use. I'm just not a beachy person. I'm a creature of the indoors by nature. It would be like buying a cherry-pitter or a pair of driving goggles. Nice to have, sure, but when would I ever use the damn thing?

What forced my hand was that my swimmers blew away the last time I ventured out in them. Not while they were still in use, thankfully. But when I'd come in from the sea and draped my (ancient and rather stretched-out old suit) on the verandah to dry, the top simply blew away. I like to think that perhaps they became the basis of a pair of semi-detached bird's nests, or perhaps that a small child is even now using it as a double sling-shot for cantaloupes.

Whatever the case may be, they are long gone, and after six months I started to feel embarrassed at living this close to the beach and not owning suitable beach attire.

But I found the most perfect replacement. It's a one-piece halterneck with blue and white stripes, in what the shop lady described as a 'roaring twenties' style, and it makes me feel like Daisy Buchanan. It's magical. It's ruched across the stomach, it's got a sheepdog bra fitting*, and most importantly, the legs are cut for normals, not 1980s aerobic fanatics. I love it to pieces, and have been to the beach twice since I bought it, which is more times than in the previous two years put together.And not because I wanted to go, simply because the suit is too perfect not to take out in public.

This swimsuit has actually changed my life. I don't even care that I bought it from an old-lady store.

And that's it really. The first time I get on here to write anything in months, and it's to crow about swimmers. To be fair, my job has left me with very little in the way of extra brain power, so be glad it wasn't just me slamming my head repeatedly into the keyboard, which is what I usually do before rejecting what comes out as 'not edgy enough'. 

Tomorrow I may have something about more serious things, or possibly just a string of puns about coffee which I haven't decided if I'm game to publish because it is very silly. 

Can you stand the suspense?!?!

*rounds them up and points them in the right direction

This week's collection of things that made me laugh like a buffoon

a little time for Tash

For the second time in four days I have the house entirely to myself. What does a hip young thing like me do with all that time alone, I hear you ask? Well!

I listen to old episodes of The Bugle podcast at full volume

I make huge and frankly revolting peanut butter concoctions and cram them carelessly in my face

I change the water in my fish tank and give them a running commentary of what I'm doing

I pee with the door open, while singing show tunes off key (only advisable if you are confident that you really are alone)

I rearrange the pantry so that the cereals are in alphabetical order

It's important to get a bit of time to yourself every now and then, or you start to go a bit peculiar.

Recipes: Tea-Soaked Prunes

I made this a couple of times back when we lived in Spain*, but had forgotten about it til today. The previous tenant of the house we lived in in Pamplona had bequeathed us a cupboard full of exotic teas, and there's only so much roobios and lapsang souchong you can actually drink, and I found this recipe in some Spanish-language thing that I don't clearly remember. It may not even have been a recipe, now that I come to think of it.

Anyway, the point is that this combines delicious prunes (what? I like prunes) with delicious tea, and it is also very good for you as well.

All you do is brew some strong tea of your choice in a jar (teas with floral notes like earl grey work best) and add a few big strips of orange or lemon rind. Once it's cool, chuck in as many prunes as will fit into the jar and leave it to soak for at least two days. 

After that, they go in yoghurt, in cakes, in rice pudding, or whatever prune-friendly thing you happen to be eating. Prunes: not just for your granny.

*and, on an unrelated note, had a very cheese-heavy diet. I'm just saying.

Books: Zone One, Coulson Whitehead

In hindsight, reading a book about the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse was a terrible idea for someone confined to bed with a chest infection and (and this is crucial to my reaction to the book) a very high fever. In my delirium I felt the need to triple check the locks on all the doors and windows, and spent most of last night  planning my escape from the inevitable zombie hoards.

Described as 'A Zombie Novel with Brains', this is a slightly more literary take on the genre than usual. The main character we know only by the pseudonym Mark Spitz, and we follow him over the course of three days of the attempted reconstruction after the outbreak of the zombie plague.

After several years of anarchy a government of a sort has been reestablished and a project has been undertaken to clear out and make habitable a part of Manhattan - the Zone One of the title. The initial slash and burn has been carried out by marines, and the follow up is being handled by organised teams of civilians who methodically sweep the city looking for 'skels' (your traditional zombie) and 'stragglers' (infected individuals who for whatever reason have not turned into ravenous monsters, but who seem stuck in time. They are generally found just standing motionless in rooms and hideyholes around the city, and do not attack or even react to people). Mark Spitz is a member of one of these teams, and over the course of the book we follow his work clearing out the remaining zombies from the buildings, and learn about his life up until then through a series of flashbacks woven into the story.

The fact that this is very well written made it considerably scarier to me than most of the other zombie narratives I've read or watched. OK, so Dawn of the Dead might be more immediate, but Zone One is more existential. The fear grows on you. In particular I found the idea of the stragglers incredibly creepy. Mark spends a lot of time pondering why they've ended up where they are. There is obviously something about the particular sports they return to that draws them in, and they then stand there, motionless, until they gradually rot away. For some reason it is Mark's attempts to understand the infected that really gave me the willies. What if they're conscious in there, and aware but unable to control their behaviour? What if they really are just mindless drones driven by impulse? Which is worse? The funny thing is, the idea of coming is somehow worse than the idea of being attacked by something that's trying to kill you, because when something's trying to eat your face, it is at least a bit more understandable than the silent, slowly dying mannequins.

Having said all that, it's quite funny as well, in a morbid sort of way. Mark is something of a philosopher with a cynical streak and a talent for observation. I particularly liked the way he imagines what other people are seeing when they take down the monsters. The preppy white girl sees the welfare cheats, the overweight, the poor who don't try to make better lives for themselves. The trailer trash loud mouth sees them as the teachers who picked on him, the employers who wouldn't give him a chance, everyone who ever held him down. As always with zombie stories, the zombies themselves are just a metaphor of the things we're afraid of (whether that's death, illness, or having our entrails torn out by crazed monsters).

Very unsettling, darkly funny and a much better thought out and executed look at the zombie narrative than the usual. Highly recommended for those not suffering from mind-altering illnesses.

I also highly recommend this article by Simon Pegg on what it is about zombie stories that pushes our buttons so successfully.