Good Morning! We are back on an appropriate sleep schedule and feeling fine, if not suffering from a visceral post holiday depression. It is a real cruelty in this life that you must return to work before your soul has caught up with your body and you are barely fit for even your nearest loved ones. Or perhaps it is only a cruelty when you are live like me and am unable to appropriately plan your life or predict your moods.
Anyway, you are now reading the latest edition of I shaved my legs for…THIS?! The newsletter explores my theory that shaving your legs or putting in that bit of extra effort should translate to having an above-average day. To test this theory I critically review every shave and the subsequent day/week/experiences and give it all a rating out of 100. Any day that scores higher than a 75 was definitely worth the shave.
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The Shave
The morning that the news of the Queen’s death trumpeted out from my iPhone, I knew I must immediately rush to the shower and shave my legs post haste. The race was on for the media outlet willing to use the youngest possible photo of a 96 year old woman, and I, despite being a regular pleb, must at least try to hold myself up to those royal standards.
Unfortunately as I sat on the floor of the shower, thinking about how the Queen managed to be beloved despite being part of a cruel and increasingly obsolete system…a tile from the shower fell off the wall and onto my head. Two shocks in one morning! And after all that, my legs remain half shaven, kind of like my version of the flag flying at half mast.
Rating: 10/20 half points, for the half of my legs that were shaved.
The Content
I have entered a new phase of obsession, where I fixate on the work of a single person (perhaps say, after seeing their show at Edinburgh Fringe) and must consume it all without so much as pausing until I am totally burnt out and often, no longer interested. Woudn’t it be nice to simply be able to enjoy something in a casual way.
Don’t count on me to tell you who this person is, but huge points to you if you can guess because I have totally stolen their mannerisms and go-to moves and am now trying to pass them off as my own, natural thought patterns. It is so hard to know if I even am my own independent person, or just a collection of all the obsessions I have held over a lifetime. And that’s, that on that.
Rating: 5/20 for the ensuing identity crisis and brutal imposter syndrome.
The Food
Sometimes I wake up in the morning with an idea. And that idea is always ‘we should go to the Pub for dinner’. It’s good to get my partner on the hook early, give him time to prepare for the big night out. The problem with having this idea so early though, is that it does tend to morph throughout the day.
I start to think about how I actually don’t love the pubs closest to my house, they are fine but honestly the parmas are sub-par. Then there is a pub slightly further away, but very close to a comedy open mic - a dangerous temptation best avoided when going for a romantic evening.
Then the ‘maybe I should try something new’ thoughts start creeping in, and before you know it you are enjoying a spread of mussels, fries and sourdough at The Lincoln and thinking you are still partaking in the original plan. It all worked out though, because we were seated next to a large work function were seemingly everyone at the table was fucking someone else and you can’t pay for better dinner time entertainment than that.
Rating: 20/20 a mornings little plan is an evenings grand coup d'état
The Social Stuff
There is a musician in our building. Or at least we assume they are a musician because they play stop/start bad trance at all hours of the day and night. If there is one person you don’t want in the building, its a musician obsessed with their own trance tracks.
We had assumed they lived in the apartment directly above us because the music would shake our windows and seemed to eminate directly through the ceiling. But we couldn’t go and confront this apartment because we would so often hear yelling and screaming and banging coming from upstairs and quite frankly we were too scared to wish that sort of abuse on ourselves. We thought this house was occupied by some bitter and troubled single dad with an anger management problem and love of trance.
So we left a nice little note about using headphones, and then at 2am one night we left a much crankier note and were awoken by a visit to our door by a nice lady giving us a telling off for having the wrong apartment. We were urged to do more research before leaving notes. Once we recovered from her appearance rendering everything we thought we knew as a lie, we were emboldened to begin the hunt again. Now we knew that our fears (and understanding of acoustics) were largely in our heads.
But the music eludes us, to the point where it seems to be emanating from the building itself. Without source to blame or reason to give it some predictability. So if anyone has a Mengshen Decibel Meter, Digital Sound Level Meter Handheld Audio Noise Meter Tester with LCD Display Measuring 30-130dB (Battery Included) or similar, please let us know because we would love to borrow it.
Rating: 10/20 I will find the music, and when I do, I will ask them to do a mash up for my future lip sync battle track.
The Miscellaneous Stuff
We are BACK ON for links (I have time to procrastinate again).
How dare a tennis club have branding and merch this good and not ship it to Australia?
Sometimes you need to see something like this and bring those climate anxiety levels back just a touch.
This story about women losing their ambition really resonated with this former over-achiever
Not sure how many of these ice cream flavors would make good comfort eating
Haven’t read this…but a history of chips does appeal.
This was very peaceful to watch and the perfect accompaniment to me re-reading Bluets.
Rating: 20/20 The links are back and they are absolutely knocking it out of the park!!
Final Rating (65/100)
Back down in the middle for ratings, which we all know is really the bottom. Hopefully you are finding this newsletter to be back up to scratch and full of enlightening thoughts on the absurdity and amusing nature of every day life now I have returned.
If you did enjoy this newsletter, I would love if you could give it a shout out online or perhaps sign up a dear friend who might like it without asking for permission. It goes without saying that you could also sign up an enemy that would hate it and I would be equally as thrilled. I am off to make a cake and consume some more content made by those much more productive than me and thus more talented due to the aforementioned productivity.
Thanks for reading, parting is such sweet sorrow, but I’ll be back in 2 weeks or so.