The Healing Properties of Cheese

I eat a lot of cheese. So much so that I decided to give up eating cheese for Lent. I haven't had a single pizza for three weeks. (I haven't had a double pizza either, so that's definitely an innovative idea to bear in mind for Easter Monday!)

I have just been off work for the last two weeks with some kind of non-specific viral thing. Is this coincidence?! Pah, I think not.

Clearly cheese is good for you.

It turns out that cheese is far better for you than I ever imagined. The non-specific viral thing was actually rather specific. It was glandular fever (aka 'Epstein-Barr', aka 'Mono') and it wasn't very pleasant.

Birthdays

For all you regular readers of my blog (you strange people!), I should probably introduce Vanessa to you. She's my lovely girlfriend. We've been seeing each other since the end of July. Before that point, we used to walk around with our eyes closed.

November and December is a busy time for me with birthdays - my sister, me, and my Dad all have birthdays around this time.

Amanda's - my sister - birthday is first, and we spent a fun day in London. In the morning, we went to Borough Market. I'd never been there before, but spent an enjoyable few hours wandering around. It sells all kinds of unusual (and some usual) foods. As I love my foods, I was happy. Especially as there are plenty of free samples to be picked up. I left with some ostrich sausages and some exotic mushrooms.

We then looked at a large crack in the Tate Modern. It's a big hole in the floor which is no doubt meant to represent something particularly deep. By which I mean profound.

Then we saw the First Emperor Exhibition in the British Museum, which included some small number of the Chinese Terracotta Army. I found it particularly interesting, as I know very little about ancient China. Vanessa has some Chinese heritage, so she was fascinated.

And then we finished off the day with some pancakes. Amanda loves pancakes and when she found there was a restaurant where she could manage to have one for a main course as well as for a dessert, she booked it immediately! Unfortunately, because the day was so long, and everyone was tired, and the main course pancake was quite big, she could not manage to follow through with the pre-meal plan. She had to miss out on the dessert pancake!


And then it was my birthday a few weeks later. I was celebrating a significant number and so I spent the day itself at home with family, then had a large party in an old man's pub on the Saturday. I like old men's pubs! It was a really good evening, and my friends had all signed embarrassing photos of me (sadly there aren't many other sorts of photos of me!) for a montage Pol had prepared. It was a very touching gift - and really professionally done too! Sadly, Vanessa was sick at this time, so I couldn't introduce her to all my friends. I think she's met most of them now though!



And then it was my Dad's birthday, which meant a mid-week trip home in December for some more family time.

And while I'm talking about birthdays - Matt, I'm sorry.

Hamster Jam

Way way back in October, I went with some friends to Amsterdam. A lot of them had signed up to do a half marathon, but I had not got round to it. Which was lucky, because I was ill that weekend too - I spent the few days wandering around the city dressed in hat and gloves and thick coat.

This was the weekend of the Rugby World Cup Final, so we managed to find ourselves a good pub in the centre of Amsterdam to watch the match. Unfortunately, some of the friends who came with me on that trip were of the South African persuasion (in fact, I believe they still are), so they were rather happier than I was at the end of the night.

The following day was the day of the race, so while the four crazy people were preparing, Simon, Jolanda (who are both of the afore-mentioned South African persuasion) and I went on a boat trip around the canals of the city. Then we went to a cafe for some traditional uitsmijters , which is a healthy meal consisting of toast, with three fried eggs on top, then ham, cheese and tomatoes. It's a bit like an omelette that nobody bothered to mix, on some toast.

We then made our way to the Heineken Brewery, in order to undertake the tour of the Brewery. On our way there, our path crossed the route of the half marathon. During this short stretch, we actually saw one of our friends, but our plan to claim we had been waiting there all that time failed as he didn't see or hear us cheering him on as he went past.

The Heineken Brewery tour is pretty good. It is very similar to the Guinness Brewery tour, in that there are lots of interactive things to do, and it tries to be informative, but with one major drawback in comparison - you get Heineken at the end rather than Guinness. I think you might get more free drinks at the Heineken one though, so it depends on your preferences...

We met up later with the successful runners, who were tired and sore, but happy, and accidentally took them into an extraordinarily classy and expensive restaurant. It happened to have a name similar to a reasonably priced restaurant in the guide book, but turned out to be very different. We only found this out when they came round with the bread basket and the menus.

We managed to avoid, on the whole, 'coffee' shops and prostitutes. There's actually a lot more to Amsterdam than what it appears to be famous for!

Being Ill

I've been off work all week so far. I appear to have some kind of virus which has made me very tired, and very achy, and hot, and headachy, and given me various other symptoms. I've been sleeping for most of the time, and then lying on the couch for another large proportion of the time. But now I fancy a change of scene, so I'm going to sit here by the computer for a while and try to catch up with some blogging....