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DAY 281: Discovering I’m allergic to cigarettes, goddamnit

THIS WEEK, my eyes are puckered little pissholes in the snow, itching like they just got out of jail. I’ve got no idea what’s going on.

I decide to get tested for allergies at the MindBodySpirit Festival in Melbourne.

The practitioner runs a renowned allergy testing company out of Sydney. His stand is not covered in pictures of faeries or banks of useless machines flashing lights, nor does he have glitter on his face, which is a good sign. Still, I’m skeptical.

I sit at the table and he gives me a brass electrode to grip with my left hand, then jabs me in the centre of my right palm – an acupuncture point – with a sensor. This communicates with his computer by a galvanometer. On the screen, the program runs through over 100 foods, vitamins and hormone levels, and he jabs me twice as it clicks onto each category. The galvanometer in front of us swings to full whack for things like vegies, but flatlines for things like wheat and fags.

The practitioner gets irritable when I ask him how it works, but as Anne Smithells helpfully explains on Positive Health:

“As food is placed in the mouth, the body has to immediately rush the correct enzymes to it to break it down for digestion and to add the necessary antigens. This means that the body’s sensing devices have to be able to identify the food. They do this by interpreting the resonance signature, or frequency given off by the food as it reaches the mouth (this can be measured as a wave form, rather like a radio signal). The system has been programmed to recognise the signatures of each of the foods, vitamins, or minerals it is testing, to convert them into a digitised form and then to feed the relevant data into its memory for analysis.”

The bad news: I’m allergic to cow milk – which might be why I found these looming creatures so sinister on Day 100: Testing a Cow-Hugging Ruse – and also Vegemite and nicotine. This might explain why I had to persevere for the entire first year of high school to learn how to smoke without going yellow – and once again when I decided to learn how to smoke without drinking.

The practitioner tells me you can be intolerant to foods for a long time, but as gluten and casein (found in milk) build up in the body, you can eventually tip yourself over the edge. He hands me a tub of enzyme capsules to help break down the nasties in my system, and glibly dashes out a $40 receipt to add to the $110 I’m already paying, without consultation. Oof! Here’s my credit card to stuff down your bra, sir.

Keeper? Will try and stick to what I’ve learned. If you see me ordering a soy latte or smoking a clove cigarette, don’t judge.

Categories body bothering, food and drink

DAY 280: Geocaching my way to victory

8 Jun

I’M late to the party, but I’ll explain geocaching – or ‘hi-tech hide and seek’ – to the absent guests.

The cryptic crossword of outdoor activities, it requires participants to use a GPS to locate a waterproof container (hidden by a previous participant) within a short radius of supplied coordinates. There are over 1.3 million active geocaches listed on websites, spanning over 100 countries.

Sometimes you might have to work the final coordinates out from a series of clues: by taking last letters of a series of road names and then using the numbers those letters fall into the alphabet at, for example. Once you find your haul, you add the date and your details into the logbook hidden within, and add a little something of your own to the package.

My interest wanes almost immediately as my young nephew wields the GPS and takes us at a fair trot towards the harbour… until we’re about five feet away and I spot the life ring. I leg it over while the little fella’s gazing about at stones and bushes, and shove my hand into the hole at the front.

I’ve found a dirty tissue decoy, but when I move around and shove my hand into the back, I pull out an old vitamin bottle. Triumph! Sucked in, kid.

Inside is miscellaneous rubbish and a photo off some kids. The first geocache, 10 years ago, was hidden in the wilds of Oregon and contained software, videos, books, food, money and a slingshot – so things have obviously taken a bit of a slide since then.

I can’t really talk though, as all I have to offer is a Malaysian coin. If I’d planned properly I would have brought along Chinese crackers, a gobstopper and one of those fortune telling fish, to really show the next person how it’s done.

Keeper? Feels a bit like you’re cheating, using a GPS. If you have your orienteering badge, you might want to try a more organic game.

Categories specialist skills, sport

DAY 279: NOT exploding with rage at my disconnected upload

7 Jun

IT’S either a sign of the times, or just because it can’t fight back, but my most apoplectic explosions of rage are reserved for technological equipment. I’ve taught countless printers a lesson they’ll never forget, while my violent rebuttal at the TV playing up is likely to surprise us both.

I decide to set up an impromptu experiment, to see if it is actually possible to avoid an episode if I really put my mind to it. I want to upload a very large file, and I want to do it right now – on this country train – and I am not allowed to curse, tut, slap my forehead or even bunch my fist if it fails.

Common sense dictates this is a stupid idea – I’ve tried it many mornings before and only achieved a dozen disconnects and accompanying oaths. It’s bloody asking for trouble. What’s more, a woman has sat next to me and is clearing her throat softly every few minutes, despite there being free seats elsewhere; I know full well that if I were to mete out a savage little “FUCK” upon disconnection, I would be able to glean some enjoyment from her discomfort, which makes this experiment all the more challenging.

Having established the controlled variables, I hit ‘send’ and keenly watch the progress report at the bottom of the web page. We’re passing through North Melbourne and out into the internet wasteland that is Sunshine, always a trouble spot for my disposition. Meanwhile, I’m egging myself on by watching the connectivity box; watching the green squares flicker in a desultory fashion around point zero. I can feel my blood pressure rising.

I dare myself further by thinking of the money; how much of my data allowance this is using up with every passing minute.

“You can’t do it, can you?” I taunt silently, as I struggle not to shake my head slowly and condescendingly at the screen.

After 25 minutes, 90 per cent of the file has been uploaded. I’ve got my hand over my mouth, Hillary Clinton-style. We stay on 90 per cent for a further 14 tantalising minutes… and then finally, finally, that punchable little pop-up reports: “You were disconnected by the PPP server”.

Woohoo! I feel a strange kind of elation; something like triumph. The computer may have totally failed in its simple task, but I have succeeded in mine.

Keeper? I can do this.

Categories personality facelift, philanthropy, specialist skills

DAY 276: Beating my brother at something

3 Jun

AH, the existential pain of the youngest child. Always outsmarted, outpunched and outrun, and always roundly thrashed at Trivial Pursuit.

The youngest child can go one of two ways: into musical theatre, where their ‘lookatmelookatme’ tap routines will be indulged, or into their bedroom, to sulk.

Well, all those hours in the bedroom choreographing routines to Annie and Starlight Express have finally paid off, as when it comes to Wii Just Dance, it seems, I’ve got the moves.

It was only a matter of time before my brother and I were pitted against each other by his children, and the quite frenzied anticipation and screaming in the room (not me) as we line up to take on ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’ proves this is a showdown everyone has been waiting for a long, long time.

Keeper? I WON. HA HA HAAAAAAA HA HA HAAAAAAA HAHA etc.

Categories personality facelift

DAY 275: Failing to unearth a worm

2 Jun

This didn't happen.

A FEW days ago, my brother – who used to teach children and so is a wealth of this sort of information – told me that you can coax earthworms to the surface by tapping on the grass until they poke their heads up. Birds achieve this with their feet when they do that curious bandy-legged dance across your lawn, to mimic rain.

Today, by some curious coincidence, there is a jackdaw stuck down the chimney of the house I’m staying in.

When bits of grass, pans of water and cajoling in a simpering voice fail to coax it down, I go out onto the common and tap the grass to procure a worm. I can’t help picturing the adulation that’ll abound when I stroll back in with a wriggler, like the Steve Irwin of Middle England.

Twenty minutes later, I call it quits.

Keeper? No.

While you're here... look at this!

Categories creatures

DAY 274: Bounding up buildings

1 Jun

NOSE my way into this historical water tower in Suffolk.

Is now an estate agent’s, complete with whiteboard diagram on top floor about targeting the youth market via Facebook.

That’s it, really.

Keeper? Yes. I’ll not let this particular experience thwart me.

Categories tourist

DAY 272: Being idle

30 May

I’VE quit my job in order to hoon around the country and write about things, which is a nice idea in theory, isn’t it?

I’m panicking a bit about how I’ll actually get things done instead of just lounging around in front of Foxtel, occasionally adjourning to the fridge, or off to bed, for a quick tension-reliever.

For some pointers I pay Tom Hodgkinson a visit at his shop in West London. Tom started out working at The Guardian fresh from university, but left (inspired by US zines like Dishwasher and Temp Slave) to launch his own magazine The Idler, which has now progressed to issue 44, reconfigured as a fabric-bound hardback book, typeset the old-fashioned way.

His advice to freelancers, as passed down to me over a pot of tea, surrounded by crumbling books and cakes, is to sit in the bath a lot and lie in whenever possible, to help brilliant ideas come to germination.

Sounds flakey until you consider this chap’s authored a bunch of successful books devoted to making the most out of life, published the aforementioned magazine for 15 years, imported absinthe, opened this café and shop – a drop-in centre for wandering poets – and founded the Idler Academy, of which he is headmaster.

Situated at the shop, the Academy offers lectures in Virgil, mending, still life, drama, wine tasting, Latin (Tom’s young son reels off some grammatical exercises to demonstrate), poetry and more. Lecturers include Louis Theroux and The KLF’s Bill Drummond, the latter of whom teaches woodwork, for god’s sake. (“He’s got a Presbyterian work ethic,” explains Tom.)

Next on Tom’s agenda – or maybe not, since he’s just dreamed it up this minute over fruitcake – is outreach work. His heart bleeds for middle management types who could do with some office visits and gentle guidance from The Idler team.

“Why is it always white, middle-class people wanting to go out on outreach work when they need help themselves?” he ponders, idly.

Keeper? These tips will keep me warm even when my electricity provider will not.

Categories personality facelift

DAY 271: Racing stuff

29 May

WHEN Tiger told me about the Turkish pharmacy with fat leeches in jars sitting in the window, I knew I had to buy some and race them. I’ve already had one on me during the Day of a Thousand Fucks, so racing them was the next most obvious thing to do.

The pharmacy, in North London, is stacked with curious supplements and extracts – including snail extract – but I’m hopping from one foot to the other waiting for the woman to get off the phone so that I can buy my leeches. The longer she’s on the phone, the more I’m unsure as to how I’m going to phrase it.

As it turns out, the leeches are not for sale. Instead, the chemist slaps them on whatever part of your body is ailing – for fifty quid a leech – just like in the olden days. The chemist says they usually set the leeches free afterwards to avoid cross-contamination, but that some of the locals are in uproar about this, so there is going to be a meeting on Tuesday to discuss whether the leeches should be freed or killed in alcohol.

Anyway, the long and short of it is I can’t have them, so I have to resort to a plan b. This strikes me a few days later at the seaside, as the family set out to go crab fishing. Bait worms would make good stand-in leeches – in fact better, as they’re less likely to stick to your fingers as you set them on the racetrack.

I’m thwarted once again, as it turns out we’re using bacon for bait, which is rubbish at racing. And so, plan c: racing crabs.

I mark out a track and set two tiddlers down, drawing a crowd of young onlookers who are totally jealous that they didn’t think of this. There’s a lot of screaming and carrying on, and one crab definitely wins, but they’d set off before I could name them or put money down. Void!