If you go down to the woods today, this is what you may encounter if those woods are Regents Park and you’re on a picnic with me, and <cough>I want to impress</cough>

From bottom left clockwise

• Picnic blanket
• Pre-picnic cool box (see note on ice blocks)
• Picnic set
• Pellegrino Sparkling Water
• Core Apple Juice - Cox/Bramley
• Cushion
• Tyrrell’s beetroot, parsnip and carrot crisps.
• Celery (got chopped up into nice bits and put attractively with the corn and carrots)
• Baby carrots
• Baby corn
• Sunglasses (Oackly’s Gascans)
• Camera, aside from this only used to take one shot.
• Neil’s Yard Cheddar (aged 18 months)
• Two roundals of goats cheese.
• Gouda with mustard seeds
• Port and hazelnut chicken liver pate
• Aubergine dip
• Hummus (a classic)
• Moroccan baby tomato and other stuff I can’t remember salad.
• Roasted pepper salad with nuts and sultanas.
• Olives stuffed with feta, chilli and peppers. Also some sun dried tomatoes.

This was going to be longer and funkier and cooler. Then I got bored.

Plus shaving one stroke at a time is really slow. And not as much fun as you think.

In pool when I play it, there is a certain shot where to get the ball to pocket I have to hit it with a certain amount of force. Any less force and my control isn’t good enough and the ball doesn’t make it to the hole or angels away. However the amount of force I need to get the ball to the hole is too much, and the ball hits the back of the pocket and bounces out. So what I need to get the ball to the hole keeps the ball out of it.

I’m not sure if this is irony, Alanis irony or something else entirely.

I’ve noticed, I have this same issue with girls. Not holing balls, so to speak, but with getting them to like me. (Bear with me, I’m not going off on a myopic one I promise)

Girls generally like me most of all when I am “cool sevitz”^tm. Cool sevitz is fun and funky and quite entertaining to hang out with. My first gf I don’t even remember meeting the first time, but she remembered me. Because I was cool sevitz. (There’s a longer story in that that explains the details but it’s far less interesting). I might even go so far as to say non-girls like cool sevitz too, but who knows (who cares? do non-girls count as far as coolness counts?)

However if I like a girl, I turn into love-sick-puppy ( a term not coined by me, nor about me, but fits all the same). As love-sick-puppy I turn into gormless-idiot-sevitz. I over compensate complete. If you think you can over compensate, I can out over compensate you before breakfast without coffee. Add to that a healthy chunky dose of over thinking, a mix of total general idiocy and occasionally a sprinkling of psycho-ex-boyfriend and it’s really no wonder I am single.

I’d like to think this is somewhat endearing but I suspect it’s more enduring.

So what I really need to do for a girl to like me, is not like them. Which is a bit like my pool example above. What normally happens, if I manage to pull that off is the girl starts by liking me. i don’t like her back. And then we go through a changing of positions where i start to like her, and turn into love-sick-puppy and she gets over the liking me bit pretty quickly. Worse is once a girl has seen you as love-sick-puppy, there’s pretty much no going back. You’ve screwed the pooch (perhaps not the best turn of phrase here, but I like it. Not the pooch, the phrase).

So what I need to figure out is how to like girls without liking them.

Hmm, bollocks.

As part of the sevitz 2.0 upgrade program (a better sevitz for me, a better sevitz for everyone) I’m trying a lifestyle change in the mornings.

• Not setting an alarm¹
• Waking up whenever
• Going to the gym
• Getting into the office whenever²

I made the decision partly because I needed change, partly because I had put a stone on that I wasn’t happy about³ and partly because I think I might be more productive if I’m working out.

So far after 11 gym sessions in 11 days, I’m feeling better about life, healthier (even if I don’t look like Nadal ⁴. I’m not sure if I’m more productive, but I’m I figure I’m as least as productive.

However the bigger change is I feel more relaxed ⁵ at work. I’ve broken the pattern of “alarm goes off, look at time, feel tired, talk myself out of going to the gym, get into the office by 8, work till 8, feel like I’ve gone through a wringer, feel like shit, feel exhausted, feel unmotivated⁶”.

I realise that I probably have more flexible work hours than most. But I definitely think most companies would benefit by having employees in the gym at 9am than the office. For the most part. And if I’m going to consider leaving the office by 8, a good day^TM, then I might as well hit the treadmill/weights first off.

Lets just hope it turns me into looking like Nadal⁷.

_________________________

¹ Ok, it’s set for 8:35am, but I’ve not been woken up by it yet.

² This is normally between 9:15 and 10am, averaging closer to 9:15 than 10.

³ Last year I lost a stone through stress. This year I put a stone on through stress. Go Figure.

⁴ Yet!

⁵ Read, less stressed

⁶ Add your own adjectives here

⁷ Is it wrong that I might be sexually attracted to him. I can be straight and attracted to him right?