Booze Alternative: M&S Alcohol-Free Bucks Fizz

This is another alcohol-free option that I picked up to try last summer. In my drinking days Bucks Fizz was a Christmas drink in my eyes, but I think it’s important to break those kinds of habits and attitudes in sobriety (it is taking a LONG time to get used to the fact that I can drink ‘special’ alcohol-free drinks at times when I wouldn’t have drunk the alcoholic equivalents, e.g. while working, but I’m going to keep working on that). I actually think this alcohol-free version works better as a summer drink, because it’s nice and light.

M&S Alcohol-Free Bucks Fizz
M&S Alcohol-Free Bucks Fizz.

It was very tasty (and also felt quite celebratory according to my notes, though I can’t remember what I was celebrating), but I think the next time I feel like Bucks Fizz it’d be nicer to make my own with one of my favourite alcohol-free sparkling wines. Maybe a project for summer 2021.

Sunday Race Memories: Great North 5k 2015

I’m officially out of races – even virtual races – to review. Later this year is looking hopeful for the return of in-person running events, but in the meantime I will cast my mind back to my early days of running!

Great North 5k 2015

The Great North 5k in 2015 was the first race I ever ran. I was thirty then but look much older in the photo than I currently do at thirty-six because I was so heavy and unfit back then!

I was really proud of finishing this race. I’d trained for it all summer, in the balmy days of June and July and August and even in the heat of the south of France for a week – but never, somehow, in the pouring rain that showed up right on time for race day! (By the next day, it was glorious sunshine again, just as it always is on Great North Run day.)

I mainly remember the pre-race nerves and the ‘warm-up’ led by a Mr Motivator type (standard for mass races) that seemed to go on and on and on when everybody on the start line just wanted to get going. Eventually we were off, and although the combination of the rain and my glasses meant I couldn’t really see what was going on, I found that the adrenaline of the crowd meant that I ran considerably faster than I had ever done in training, and so I finished in 35:51, which is a sedate 5k time for me nowadays but on that day was a whole fifteen minutes faster than I expected to finish.

Another unexpected thing was the atmosphere of the start/finish area, which felt like a music festival. Geth (who had come to cheer me on) was especially impressed by this aspect, and it was part of the reason that he decided to start running too. He offered to get me a ‘well done’ present, and so I chose this book by The Oatmeal that I’d been eyeing up in the comic shops.

The Oatmeal running book

It’s still one of my favourite running books.

I don’t enter 5k races anymore (even during non-pandemic times) because parkrun fills that space for me (when it’s on… roll on June or whenever it eventually comes back). However, that just makes the memory of those early 5ks even more special. Once upon a time, it was an impossible-seeming distance.

Saturday ’80s Photo: Future/Past Vinyl Adventures

I don’t remember Mum and Dad ever buying singles. When I was a kid, singles were what *I* bought (generally on cassette because it was a quid cheaper than CDs, and also because when I first started buying them we didn’t actually have a CD player in the house). What Mum and Dad did have, as far as I knew, was:

  • A gramophone with accompanying early-mid 20th century record collection. I used to peruse this and found the names of the records fascinating, but the music itself was of little interest to me because (a) my interest in the 20th century only really starts circa 1963* and (b) it was mostly old Scottish tunes, which Dad always put on the gramophone for the kids to dance to whenever I had a birthday party. Mum and Dad eventually sold the gramophone and accompanying collection, enabling them to put a bigger TV in the space.
  • A collection of vinyl LPs dating from the early ’60s to the late ’80s. Half of it was/is Scottish folk, which is nice enough but not a particular musical passion of mine, so it was the pop/rock albums on the other side of the cupboard that I always dug out as a kid (and learnt how to use a record player as a result – something a lot of people these days have only picked up during adult retrohood!) My brother Malcolm and I divvied up a large part of this collection on Christmas Day 2019, as Mum and Dad are strictly CD/Spotify users now. Apparently it’s only really the younger generations that have recently returned to vinyl and cassettes.**
  • A whole bunch of cassettes for car trips circa 1988-2000, 80% of which were taped copies of stuff we had on vinyl or CD.
  • CD albums dating from about 1994, when the family finally got our first CD player. In the 21st century these have replaced the cassettes for car trip purposes. Mum and Dad are still folkies but their preferred folk is more ‘niche’ nowadays and so they still buy CDs as a way to support smaller bands.

During the Christmas 2019 divvying up of vinyl, I was surprised when Dad produced a fairly substantial pile of 7-inch singles that I had never seen before, some of them dating back to the late ’50s. I didn’t expect there to be any ’80s goodies in there, due to my aforementioned memory of Mum and Dad never buying singles – I assumed the 7-inch collection must all have been from their teenage years – but I was wrong!

'80s 7-inch singles

‘Total Eclipse…’ and ‘Say Say Say’ are both 1983 classics, but ‘I Know Him So Well’ was released as a single in December 1984 – the month before I was born. It appeared to be the most recent 7-inch in Mum and Dad’s collection when I went through it – so maybe it was parenthood that put an end to their single-buying!

Anyway, these tiny slices of the ’80s belong to me now, and I really need to fire up my own record player and give them a spin someday. Much more special than burying them in my ’80s Spotify playlist!

*Nothing to do with Chatterley, the Beatles, sex or anything else that Larkin wrote about. 1963 saw the first episode of Doctor Who, and so that’s when the 20th century became properly interesting as far as I’m concerned.

**Pre-pandemic in the late ’10s I used to love going into branches of HMV, heading up to the music floor, and seeing that it was all vinyl and cassette tapes once again – not a CD in sight!

Flagging by Friday

Last weekend felt like spring. I made a lot of plans to step up my exercise levels this month, and to catch up with all the things with which I’d fallen behind over the last couple of weeks, and to keep my planned schedule going so that I could continue videogaming in the evenings.

On Monday morning, I went out for my daily run and the temperature had dropped by about ten degrees. Everything was covered in frost and my hands froze as I trotted round my usual route, desperately wishing that I’d put gloves on. This set the tone for the rest of the week.

I’ve worn gloves for my run every morning (though it did finally feel like it was warming up again today). I’ve run slightly more, but not a lot more. I’ve not been out for any of the long walks I was planning. I’ve kept up with cleaning and blogging, but not caught up. I’ve worked on my jam game, but not as much as I wanted to. I’ve not been videogaming at all in the evenings, because I’ve not had the energy for anything more than mindless web browsing and listening to music.

Energy has been sorely lacking in general this week, both physically and mentally. Geth hasn’t had any either because he’s got various absorbing work stuff going on at the moment, and when we’re both in that state we just sort of doze during downtime, half-there. Sleep hasn’t been great, and I’m waking up every morning with a lot of stiffness and aches and pains – something that’s chronic to an extent, but has been very noticeable recently. I’ve been having issues with breathing and joint swelling as well, which are things that largely went away when I lost weight a few years ago. I’m heavier than I’d like to be at the moment, but am still a healthy weight, so I’m not really sure if it’s related or not.

I’ve found it difficult to concentrate this week as well, so I’m really glad it’s nearly the weekend. Normally I’d be excited about videogaming but right now all I want to do is sleep!

Hoping next week will feel a bit brighter.

Full moon
Last weekend’s full moon looked amazing, but my phone camera wasn’t interested!

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Nintendo 3DS eShop – ‘Main Theme’
will.i.am and Britney Spears – ‘Scream And Shout’
Idina Menzel – ‘Into The Unknown’
Kate Bush – ‘Running Up That Hill’

Sunday

Depeche Mode – ‘See You’
Duran Duran – ‘Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over) [The Story Mix]’
Roxette – ‘Listen To Your Heart’

Monday

INXS – ‘Need You Tonight’
Ed Sheeran – ‘You Need Me, I Don’t Need You’

Tuesday

Joe Hisaishi – ‘A Battle With Creatures’
will.i.am and Britney Spears – ‘Scream And Shout’
Don Henley – ‘Boys Of Summer’
Taylor Swift – ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’

Wednesday

Pet Shop Boys – ‘Heart’
will.i.am and Britney Spears – ‘Scream And Shout’
The Wonder Stuff – ‘A Wish Away’
Jason Derulo – ‘Want To Want Me’

Thursday

Duran Duran – ‘Do You Believe In Shame?’
Spandau Ballet – ‘True’
David Bowie – ‘Ashes To Ashes’

Friday

The Go-Gos – ‘Our Lips Are Sealed’

Phone Box Thursday: Pixel Planning

Yes, I’m still searching for the next Doctor Who red phone box. I’ve got plenty of other phone box-related stuff to talk about in the meantime though!

There’s a new Adventuron jam on and my planned game FINALLY features a phone box. Pretty much all of my games have been planned to feature a phone box but I’ve had to cut it for space and time reasons. This time it’s actually happening.

I’m not doing pixel art for this particular game – I’m going to be using a different style. Still, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ‘plan out’ my featured phone box through the medium of pixels.

Red phone box
Pixel phone box! With no phone inside as that would have spoilt the simplicity of the image. The box is a standard K6 – I might have a go at a K2 sometime soon.

Within the month, I should be able to share the final phone box image with you! Need to block out some time to get those graphics done…

Playlist Pick: Pet Shop Boys, ‘Heart’

I have a mega-playlist on Spotify for ’80s chart hits that I like. Because I want it to be comprehensive, I’ve been working (on and off) since about 2012 on a project where I watch the video of every single track that was ever a UK chart hit in the ’80s… in band alphabetical order. It’s a long project (it took me about two years just to compile the complete list) and I’ve only made it to the letter ‘J’ so far in terms of watching the videos and adding the best ones to my Spotify playlist.

As such, I sometimes get a bit of a craving for hits by bands who are further along in the alphabet, and have a separate ‘holding’ playlist for this purpose! Pet Shop Boys are one of these bands and also one of my favourite acts of the era. I bought tickets for myself and Geth to go and see them in concert in 2020; the gig was postponed first to 2021 and now to 2022, so I need to be patient for that one!

In recent months (since about November) their 1988 number one ‘Heart’ has been a frequent late-night craving for me. I LOVE that intro. Makes me want to dance! (I don’t, as Geth has usually gone to bed by that point and my loud trampling would probably wake him up. Chair-dancing is fair game though.)

The video is a daft story about a wedding and vampires. ’80s videos were the best.

More musical ramblings next week.

2019 Pizzas #29: Dad’s Famous Hogmanay Pizza

I knew, when I decided to log pizzas on the blog for 2019 at the end of 2018 (a year in which I logged ciders, but now knew I would not be continuing to do so due to my decision to stop drinking alcohol), that the last pizza in the log would be Dad’s homemade pizza that he makes every Hogmanay. I also knew that it would be the best pizza I ate all year, because it is (and continues to be) the best pizza I have ever eaten.

A few notes about this pizza:

  • I always knew I would learn to make it myself at some point because it’s an important family recipe, but I did not expect that I would not end up posting this blog until after I had indeed made one myself for the first time.
  • I took pictures of the 2019 edition, but accidentally deleted them (this is NOT something that usually happens with me – I’m normally very careful about keeping all my photos!) so the pictures in this post are from other years instead.
Hogmanay pizza
Sitting ‘patiently’ with Grandad while Dad made the pizza, 1986.
Hogmanay pizza
Mum and Dad enjoying the spoils, 1995.
Hogmanay pizza
A whole pizza to myself, 2002…
Hogmanay pizza
…and again, 2005. In those days I used to eat the pizza earlier in the evening and then head out for a long night on the tiles! It was a great stomach liner in the days when I still had to worry about such things…
Hogmanay pizza
Dough rolling, 2009.
Hogmanay pizza
A perfect slice, 2018.
Hogmanay pizza
Dee’s famous Hogmanay pizza? Had to make it myself in 2020.
  • The basic recipe is in a 1979 cookbook that Dad has always used (‘The Art of Cooking’), but he learnt the best technique from some Italian friends-of-friends back in the early ’80s.
  • I brought about fifteen schoolfriends back to the house on Hogmanay 2000 when we were doing our alcohol-fuelled rounds of each other’s houses, just so they could all experience the brilliance of Dad’s Hogmanay pizza. Many of them still talk about it more than twenty years later.

The sauce is the absolute taste of Hogmanay for me. Since learning how to cook it myself, I’ve adapted some of the techniques when making pasta sauce. Toppings-wise you can have whatever you want, though for me it’s always been mostly peppers since I went veggie in 1999. The dough is thick and filling, though not filling enough that I don’t manage at least four large slices every Hogmanay!

I’m actually quite surprised that, in the end, I only ate twenty-nine distinct pizzas during a calendar year. I clearly have my recurring favourites.

A new food series for 2020 starts in a couple of weeks. I’m only one year behind now!

‘Race’ Review: Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation Retro Run Series ‘I Love The ’80s’ 10k Challenge

My first proper virtual for 2021 (other than the LEJOG accumulator I’m doing, which started on 1st January and lasts all year) was a 10k run that I did for the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation’s Retro Run Series. I’d seen these virtual runs advertised online last year, and as an ’80s obsessive I was really keen to do the ’80s version.

You can sign up to do a challenge for any decade from the ’60s to the ’00s, or even do all five if you’d like to go for the supermedal! You can also choose any standard distance from 5k upwards, and can change your mind about the distance if necessary before the virtual (as the medal and t-shirt aren’t distance-specific). I decided on 10k, as I really wanted to complete a 10k in January 2021, having not managed to do so in November or December 2020. As it happened, because of the snow, the only 10k I managed to do in January was on the treadmill, and I wanted to do a road 10k for the virtual. I eventually managed to get my ‘official’ 10k in on the first weekend of February – I was really glad that you could choose to do it any day before the end-of-February deadline! The website now states that you can do the runs at any time up to the end of May 2021, so still plenty of time to get those retro runs in if you’re interested.

I was really pleased with the run itself – my running had all been very slow over the winter, but on the day my legs clearly decided it was a race and so I managed a time that was fairly close to my official 10k race PB. One of a number of recent signs that are very promising for when I get back to doing real races again.

I didn’t listen to the ’80s playlist provided during the run, as I generally prefer to run without headphones. I will have a listen at home at some point though! Bling-wise I donated extra in order to get the t-shirt – I don’t normally bother with a t-shirt for virtuals as I have so many from real races and my drawer is getting a bit full, but the Retro Run Series ’80s t-shirt is a fantastic design, with a reference to the infamous Frankie/Hamnett knockoff slogan on the front, and a nice synthwave-esque neon/car/sunset motif on the back.

Retro Run Series t-shirt

The medal is also great, with the featured ’80s item being a ‘Sonny’ Walkman (avoiding a legal issue maybe?) and some nice ’80s colours and fonts that are a very welcome addition to my medal collection. Going to display this one with pride.

Retro Run Series medal

The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation are going to be doing another virtual series later this year, so I’ll be waiting with interest to see what they come up with!