December, 2014 - cushtie.com

Month: December 2014

  • All the things we keep, all the things we miss

    So as is traditional on the last day of the year, I look back at the first day of the year and check how I did on my resolutions.. In 2013, I enjoyed about a 1 in 3 success rate. In 2014…

  • Cleaning up Cecile

    On Christmas Day, one of our visitors mentioned what an interesting shade of lavender our octopus, Cecile, was. That was when I realized she really was too dirty. We bought Cecile just over a year ago, in the run up to Christmas. La Serpiente Aquatica Negra fell in love with her almost immediately, flinging herself […]

  • Cold in Singapore

    It rained again this morning, and although the temperature is in the mid-twenties, it felt cold. So cold, in fact, that I wore a corduroy suit to work today, and didn’t faint from heat exhaustion ten feet from my front door. And the rain rained on, and the rain rained on us.

  • Things I learned at the end of the year

    Last night I stayed up way too late, reading Madame Bovary. The Christmas period is a good time for rest and reflection, catching up on sleep and getting organized. Not for depriving yourself of sleep by rereading French novels. Needless to say, La Serpiente Aquatica Negra awoke at seven as usual and came to wake […]

  • A big bang

    I finally admitted to myself that if I haven’t ridden my mountain bike off road in the last two years, I’m probably not going to do so in 2015 either. So today I bought a pair of slick tyres, because while super tacky downhill mud tyres are all well and good, they don’t make you […]

  • Damp Boxing Day

    I woke up at six thirty to a downpour. I turned off my alarm and went back to sleep, gloomy at the thought of missing a run this morning, but looking forward to a rainfree day when I woke up. It carried on raining.

  • Christmas 2014

    We failed to continue several traditions this year. We didn’t get out for an early morning walk in the park (although we did go for a walk near our flat, and saw some chickens). Our daughter didn’t turn her tongue black by trying to eat Christmas cards. And my wife didn’t make cinnamon rolls that […]

  • Preliminary overindulgence

    Tonight I ate an entire bag of Kettle Chips. I blame my wife for this, because she bought two huge bags of the upmarket crisps home today, and she knew I had willpower deficiencies. I didn’t enjoy eating them after a quarter of the way into the packet, but compulsively I carried on well after […]

  • Marathon preparations

    This evening my wife went out and left me in charge of the baby, which wasn’t as onerous as it might sound, because La Serpiente Aquatica Negra went to sleep at 7:30 and there hasn’t been a peep out of her yet. So I had some time to catch up with various tasks around the […]

  • Recovery mode

    I’d overdid things yesterday, ot perhaps my hangover was harder to overcome than I had expected. For the whole day, I was a limp mess of a man, stumbling around the office, three espressos down on normal operating parameters. But at least the sun was out.