Happy new year

I've started going to the gym. It is, of course, ghastly and the sort of thing that no sane person would choose to do, except that there was a photograph the other day that left no alternative. First I had to be inducted (induced?) which meant that a trainer person (wonderful profile, I could have looked at it for hours, but an engagement ring too) took 75 minutes explaining the equipment to 4 of us. But if anyone asked, but what should I do personally, me, inkspot, the unproud owner of several chins, oh I haven't got time to answer that. When I go to the US there is a similar gym where I work and there, in the most litigious country in the world, induction means signing a chit promising not to sue if you drop a weight on your foot.

So I've no idea what to do. There's a machine with strings and pulleys and weights and I pull at that until it hurts and then I go to another machine with pedals and handlebars only it's not a bike and I press buttons until it tells me I'm doing something called cardio. It also asks me how old I am. Damned impudent, and I'm so vain that I lie to it. Yes, I lie to a fucking machine, that's how vain I am. Cardio is 85% but of what there's no indication (fat burning is 60% if that helps). Anyway if I can read it right I'm usually beyond cardio so, given how I feel, it's 85% of dead. The only funny thing is that the not-a-bike is situated in front of rather a cleverly lit mirror so while you're getting all red and sweaty and dizzy you can look at yourself and pretend that you can see a cheekbone.

Winter scene

I live in a particularly desirable part of a picture-postcard town. Well, I say desirable; it's certainly desired, although it looks like a cheap slum and is an expensive slum. It's next to a park and river and nature reserve, all adorable. There's a car park too, for the convenience of all. Including the doggers. When I take the pug for her late-night constitutional there has usually been a car, driving slowly around, or parked and signalling in various ways with its lights. (OK, maybe I'm wrong, but then explain the empty Viagra packets scattered around in the morning.)

Except that recently the police have cleared out the doggers and replaced them with drug dealers. Please officer, can we have our doggers back?

Setting sun

There is a conference this week in Tokyo for the 60th birthday of someone who is both a friend (older!) and distinguished; it's a pleasure and an honour to be here. Not all of the organizers are totally efficient, so I've been staying in a couple of different places, including Shibuya. This is full of love hotels and fashionably dressed teenagers, though I don't know who the love hotels are full of. Not me anyway.

I tre nani

Kinosaki is famous for its hot springs. The food here is excellent, the local speciality being crab. Otoh you will also be given eggs cooked in the springs; they prove that water at 80 degrees is insufficient to boil an egg. Avoid. A further "plus" is being accommodated in traditional Japanese inns, which includes the traditional cramming of 3 adults into a room fit for one. A crone comes in the evening to arrange the mattresses in an orderly row, like something out of an economy version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. However, there is no Snow White. I've discussed this with the other dwarves and we've agreed to advertise the position. Ladies, feel free to apply. And when I say position I mean positions of course, there's no need to stop at one. Why not seven? "But 3 into 7 doesn't go" you reply.

Maybe, but we'll have fun trying.

Mellow fruitfulness

More interesting things happen to me in, or in relation to, Bristol than I have any right to expect. On Wednesday I met Lulu Labonne for lunch (very good smoked salmon, very, er, experimental fruit salad, my responsibility). In the East Village she would be unremarked, in Bristol her black on black was deeply ironic, as is she. Her shopping included a green anti-personnel device that she claimed was a vegetable, but there are more edible-looking things in the Horrible Mediaeval Weapons section at the V&A.

The next evening Mrs Pouncer ("Clarissa darling") met me in the Isambard, the Paddington station pub. Frankly, the place wasn't good enough.

"Vodka and vermouth please".

"Sorry, we don't do mixed drinks".

"But this is a pub isn't it?"

"Yes, but we don't do mixed drinks, they're separate franchises."

Trust me, nothing on this blog is invented, it's all true. (Well, not quite, I invented Carla Bruni, but Sarkozy is real, he's a horrible little psychopath.)

So we moved on to dinner.

"It's got to be kosher."

"OK, there's a Chinese restaurant, Chinese food is kosher isn't it?"

I've long chosen to believe this, maybe I got it from Calvin Trillin, and have taught it to my daughter. Even sweet barbecued pork buns are kosher in a Chinese restaurant, there's a Talmudic dispensation or something.

"For god's sake Inky, they used rectified lard."

So we went Indian ("they're kosher").

Classical education

In a recent New York Review of Books (no link, it's a paysite) Glen Bowersock reviews two books on classical Greek sex between men and boys. He starts by explaining the words erastes as lover and eromenos as beloved. These are the usual euphemisms, but eros connotes physical love, i.e. sex. So in fact erastes = fucker and eromenos = (male) fucked, but the NYRB doesn't like the f-word. Most of the article is taken up with a detailed discussion of the evidence for exactly what happened (intercrural rather than anal apparently, and it goes on from there). Thank you Professor, it's your job to know this sort of thing. I must admit, I like grown women but this stuff functioned well as a form of higher porn. Oh, and the Romans were no better than the Greeks; google coitum plenum et optabilem to see what I mean.

So why on earth did Thomas Arnold choose classical Greek and Latin as the basis of an English boys' boarding school education? Lytton Strachey is hilarious on this subject in his Eminent Victorians, explaining that classics was what Arnold knew, so he would, wouldn't he? But Strachey was himself as gay as a Bristol pub, so why didn't he comment on the fact of Arnold institutionalizing a system where boys, of the same age as the eromenoi, were closeted, as it were, with teachers of the same age as the erastes? It is surprising that responsibility for a correct analysis should be left to this blog, but Precision Handling does not shirk its obligations.

Lost weekend

The poker club meets in the back room of a pub 1/2 hr away. Here's Carlos; he doesn't have a heart of gold, but I'm solid with him because I found him an expert witness (a maxillary surgeon) for his assault case. The question is whether the other guy's smashed face is due to encountering a wall or Carlos. "It's OK Inkspot, the police are probably going to drop the case because the other bloke has a terrible record, but thanks anyway. Really, thanks a lot." It cost me a 5 minute phone call to a surgical friend, but the British class system is as rigid as ever and Carlos has the wrong contacts. Except for me.

I played until too late, so Saturday was a bit of a write-off, I was too tired to be a useful family member and the morning was a bit tense. Sunday we had lunch with friends, he's gentle, she's beautiful. They have a lake in the grounds, so after lunch ("That lamb was delicious, you could really taste the innocence", stolen from Arlington Hynes at bogol, thank you Arlington, it was a great success) we went swimming. Despite the Indian summer it was too cold to stay in long, and the children were too intelligent to go in at all. Dinner was chips from the Turkish chip van; you don't get that in the country.