Cursed with Both Head and Heart

Saturday 29 May 2010 The Guardian Hay Festival has reignited my enthusiasm for digital communication with its "Most Beautiful Tweet" competition, being judged by Stephen Fry - poor lad, he'll be inundated - and they had the good taste to retweet one of my attempts. There followed, of course, some hours of roaming around twitter - particularly the Hay Festival tweets - wishing I were there, wishing I'd made the short trip there when I lived in Minstead, New Forest, wishing I gathered my energies up a little more often to get to that sort of thing when available here, where I am. I had toyed with the idea of calling this blog "How I Stopped Being Fat", as I intend to write quite a lot about that, but I have resisted allowing my life to be dominated and destroyed by being fat, so I decided not to allow it to dominate my blog either. Anyone tempted to put off your living until you're the perfect shape or weight - please don't! a) because you might not ever, and then you'd look silly, b) because most things are just as possible at any weight - in the last few years, while weighing close to, and then over, 100kg, I have had two children, passed two ballet exams with Merit (Grades 6 and 7 RAD), earned a PhD in French literature, home-schooled my children, appeared in Fiddler on the Roof as Yente, danced on TV (The Topp Twins), sung in a choir, written a novel, impressed Iggy McGovern with one of my poems. Do I think Big is Beautiful? No, not particularly. I don't think Big is Better, and my size is starting to restrict some of my physical activities - and I'm certainly not dancing as well as I would be 50kg lighter - but I'm still dancing - and I am often fatigued and my immunity is low. But that's only a part of who I am, and, like one of the authors of The Bitch in the House, I have got on and done the things I wanted to do, and generally done them rather well. 'Nuff said. In a future blog I will explain the "Head and Heart" reference from Dorothy L. Sayers, and I plan to write a weekly "column," rather formally, as well as odd jottings whenever I feel like it. Hopefully I'll also learn how to attach photos, links, and so forth. I leave you with an urging to watch Stephen Fry's "vimeo" on "Things I wish I'd Known at 18" on a website called something like (but don't quote me on this), "vimeo.com." Also, for the more frivolous among you, see his "Boos" - one for each episode of QI - find the link on his twitter site - they're up to number 11 at latest count - basically, you get a 30-second audio recording of the audience yelling an unusual word (for this series, all beginning with H), and you get to tweet the word you thought you heard to Stephen Fry. And if you're right, you win ... a sense of quiet satisfaction. The two I've heard so far were, if I remember rightly, "hamfutter" and "harquelbutt" - no, that second one's not right, but something like that. The current one is a word coined by Bosie, and to me it sounds like "horsellum." And to follow the Hay Festival and see what they come up with as "Most Beautiful Twitter." Adios, and, as we are increasingly learning to say in our Spanish studies, Hasta luego, hasta pronto, and also à bientôt, yours (often!) sincerely, Teufel.