Found this video via A Cup of Jo earlier on.  My favourite is “a Liz Lemon party is MANDATORY”.  Amazing.

So it’s February!  And, as is usually the case at this time of year, it would seem that approximately half of the blogging world is involved in some kind of project, whether it’s outfit posting, writing about the little things in life, or simply taking a photo every day and sharing it.

In line with my abstention from making New Year’s resolutions, I have decided not to hop onto any monthly challenge bandwagons in 2012 (I am, however, reading everyone’s updates!).  Instead, I will attempt to proceed just as normal: read more books, have more adventures, live as fully as I can (the latter is meant both in a big picture – travel, career, love, philosophy – and small picture – “OMG just bloody well IRON your favourite pencil skirt so you might actually be able to wear it!” – kind of way).  I will make pancakes on the 21st though, that much I can guarantee you…

I’m also attempting this year (and every year since I came across Eckhart Tolle for that matter) to focus on what’s happening now and what I can do about it, rather than on what might happen in the future and what I might or might not be able to do about it then.  And on that note, while I will wholeheartedly embrace Spring when it arrives, I’m not going to wish my February away, or hide from the fact that it’s still Winter, still cold outside and still dark far more than it really needs to be.  Imperfect as it may be, the reality is that life is happening now.  In February.  In the cold, in the wind, and in the dark.  This month I’m going to put an extra base layer on, get out there and do stuff.

Image above from here.

Have I ever told you guys about the two weeks I worked as a Beetroot Inspector?  Strictly speaking, the job title was “Process Operator”, but Beetroot Inspector sounded much more fun, and it was also far more accurate a description of what I actually did.  Yup, I inspected beetroot.  For eight hours a day, I stood at a conveyor belt wearing rubber gloves and a white coat, armed with a vegetable peeler and the grimmest of expressions.  My task was to weed through thousands upon thousands of steamed beets as they trundled past me, their destination pickling, then packaging, then distribution to all of the UK’s major supermarket chains.  It was serious stuff.

My beetroot days came fresh out of uni: I was poor, living with my parents and desperately in need of something to tide me over financially while I waited to start my graduate research post in the Autumn.  And despite the obvious downsides – the 5am starts, the factory politics and the fact that I could almost physically feel my woefully underused brain rotting itself into oblivion – I actually had a really great time.  One of my best friends worked on the line next to me and we’d laugh constantly at each other’s factory attire, or we’d carve smiley faces out of individual beets as they passed us by.  Then, as soon as the clock struck 2pm, we would cast off our hair nets and drive home, the air in my tiny second-hand car thick with the putrid stench of industrially-steamed root vegetable.

A charming picture, right?

Anyway, I’m digressing.  Prior to my employment as a Beetroot Inspector, I absolutely loved eating beetroot.  Couldn’t get enough, in fact.  Post-employment, however, and as much as it was fun while it lasted, I couldn’t even look at the stuff without feeling physically sick and attempting to leave the room.  It wasn’t until I started having a fortnightly farm box delivered  a couple of years ago that beetroot began to appear in my life once again.  Every box in a while there would be three or four of them, freshly pulled from the ground, covered in dirt and sniggering at me from the bottom of the crate.  It was only then, when my inbuilt aversions a) to being mocked by vegetables and b) to throwing away perfectly edible food kicked in that I realised it was just about time beetroot and I fell back in love.

And we have.  As it turns out our relationship is even stronger than it was before my inspecting days.  Back then, I had a blinkered view of what beetroot had to offer me: I only had eyes for the pickled kind that comes in jars and tastes great in salads or as a quick post-work snack.  A mistake, friends.  Beetroot is massively flexible in its uses: transformed into fritters, baked into chocolate cakes, stirred into dips – the possibilities seem endless.  I made this rather neon dip effort tonight (grated beetroot, chopped coriander, sea salt and natural yoghurt) and ate it stuffed into wholegrain pitta breads with falafel, cucumber and avocado.  I’ve since been popping back to the kitchen every half hour to scoff some of the leftovers straight from the bowl.  Totally delicious, and so amazingly good for you it hurts.

So.  If there is a moral to this long-winded tale, I suppose it would have to be this:

Good things really can come from working as a Beetroot Inspector.

Worth knowing, right?

What are your favourite beetroot recipes/embarrassing-yet-hilarious jobs?

It somewhat surprises me that, for all I like to think of myself as a culturally astute young lady, until yesterday I’d never once been to see a ballet.  I used to go to ballet classes when I was young but, as my ever-encouraging teacher was so fond of telling us, we were “about as graceful as a herd of elephants” (in case anyone ever needs to know, this is exactly the right way to make a bunch of five year-olds despise ballet dancing, if not develop group eating disorders).

But childhood scarring aside, I think the main reason I’ve never been to the ballet is that I have a bit of a thing about story lines.  I like to follow them near-obsessively, somewhat like a devoted sniffer dog at a baggage carousel.  If I become even temporarily lost or confused by a book or a film I’m liable to crossing my arms and huffing.  I’m definitely not the best at sitting back and letting something wash over me.

But ever since I saw The Artist a couple of weeks ago I’ve become slightly more open to the idea that you really don’t need to have dialogue, or a narrator, to follow something.  That actions really can speak louder than words, if you’ll mind the cliché.  The Artist was incredibly easy to follow as it turned out – the music, the facial expressions and the movement all played their part in ensuring the audience wasn’t left in the dark.

And the same, by and large, goes for the ballet.  Although there were a couple of moments yesterday where I found myself thinking, “but wasn’t she…?” or “but why is he…?”, on the whole, I got it.  And small pockets of minor incomprehension were not even remotely capable of spoiling the fun I was having overall.  Because therein lies the other thing about ballet: it’s just so pretty to look at that it doesn’t really matter if you’re just a wee bit lost, some of the time.  In fact, the storyline almost becomes irrelevant, so profoundly enjoyable is it to sit in front of a live orchestra and to watch colourful tutus, lithe limbs and pointed toes as they leap and float around a stage.

I was amazed by how much I loved it.  Ballet?  A. Good. Thing.

What new stuff have you tried recently?

Image above from here.

This weekend I’m visiting friends, so I expect to be working on more tea, more laughter, more dreaming and more fun.  Not so much on the more sleep, but there’s always next week!  Happy Fridays everyone.

Image above from here.