Poetology

I've been studying like a frantic thing this week. With barely twelve days to go until I start college, I'm trying to get a grip on the whole reflexology theory doo-dah malarkey by reading as many books as I can find, backed up by research on the good old interwebbly. I've been making notes. I've been trying to apply different techniques to my own feet which is quite tricksy as I am, in effect, working upsidedown, and to be honest, I can't cock my leg up quite as far as I want to. I've started making notes, have taken to wandering round the house chanting the names of bones in feet, muscle structures and the associated locations of specific reflex points. At the hairdressers today, I got chatting to one of the stylists whose mum has regular reflexology for her thyroid problem and I caught myself thinking ' plantar foot, base of big toe, walk ball of foot times 6,' but luckily I didn't say it out loud.

But what I liked about yesterday's study - '8 moves for pre-treatment relaxation' - was finding out they had such poetic names. You start with the Angel Touch, then move on to Apollo's Breath. Then Atlas's Orb, Poseidon's Pull, the Healing Tornado, followed by Toe Rotations, Hermes Stretch and the grand finale, Phoenix Rising. How fab is that?!

The four basic techniques used in the actual treatment sound less romantic - walking, circles, hooking and rocking - yet they still have an air of comfort about them.

I am really looking forward to starting this course. I just hope my brain won't let me down.

This week, I have also been dazzling Andy and Heather with a range of creative vegetarian recipes. You'd think vegetarian cooking would be a doddle, wouldn't you? Not if you don't want to die of jacket potato boredom it isn't. I am beginning to think it was much easier to slap a bit of meat down on a plate with some veg. But I've been veggie for 5 months now and have no inclination to go back to carniverous ways.

So this week, with various cookery books balanced against various kitchen surfaces that are becoming increasingly swamped with various herbs and spices, I have presented to the hungry masses 1) rice and lentil pilau (a hit both hot and cold) 2) red lentil and ricotta lasagne (mild enthusiasm, remains are still languishing in bottom of fridge 3) veggie shepherds pie (a hit with Andy who took the remains to work the next day for his lunch, not a hit with Heather whose plate was left languishing in the oven for over an hour as she was on a late finish at work and the cooker did a magnificent drying job on her food) 4) sweet potato streudel (a HUGE hit, can we have it again?) and 5) random leftovers risotto ( a hit, but leave the veggie parmesan off Andy's because it smells of cat sick. Apparently).

And because there was much tolerance of my vegetarian experiments this week, I bought Andy some proper meat sausages made from proper dead pig for tea tonight. Heather has gone to visit a friend and is probably gorging on animal flesh as we speak! I had veggie sausages, and very nice they were, too!