For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

“Sorry,” I said to the waitress, “I also ordered a drink.”.

My soup and sandwich had been brought to our table but not the drink I’d ordered too.

“You can get that from the counter,” she said without smiling, turned her back and left.

I’m the cafe at our local Morrisons. They have a computer screen on a wall to order your lunch. You select what you want, pick up a number from a small box beside the screen, tell the machine what number you’ve taken and everything is then brought to the table. Except my drink.

And this is meant to be an improvement on staff taking your order.

Which, if the staff, were anything like our waitress, then, yes, it probably was as she was acting like she ran out of smiles in 2024 and was still waiting for a new delivery.

Today, for lunch, I’m still on holiday and my mum had some messages to run. She suggests we get a bite to ear when we’re at the supermarket and that how I end up with a cheese toastie. Just not the cheese toastie I ordered. (Or my drink).

I order a brie and cranberry toastie.

“We don’t have cranberry,” says the waitress after she comes out of the kitchen, after receiving my order.

“You can have ham.”

So, I have ham. And another cheese because they didn’t have brie either, but she didn’t tell me that.

But at least they had my drink – even though I had to get that myself.

Bread: edible

Filling: unspecified cheese and ham.

Taste: it was made with all the warmth, love and care of someone whose dog had just been put down.

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

My aim is try something different each day but. by something different, I don’t actually mean something completely different as that would be a waste of food. So, for today, I decided that since it was four days since I bought my bread, it was time to switch to toast as it was starting to become stale.

I love toast. In fact, if given a choice, I would sooner have toast than bread. Bread is soft. Toast is solid. Yet, if cooked right, it can also be soft in the inside. The perfect toast has all the advantages of bread but with added rigidity. Like the difference between a canvas tent and a bus shelter. Both keep you dry but there is just something more reassuring about something which doesn’t flop when you stand it upright.

So, for today’s lunch, a very similar to day one:

Bread: a few days old Italian bloomer from Newlands Bakery but TOASTED!

Filling: Tuna Chunks in Spring Water from Morrisons, Hellman’s Mayonnaise and a couple of spoonfuls of capers.

Taste: Spot on. And better than day one as the soft tuna mayonnaise is now caged in the toast.

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

What is a sandwich? Does it have to have bread? But what about rolls? Or wraps? Are they sandwiches?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary a sandwich is:

“an item of food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between them, eaten as a light meal.”

I like the use of the phase “eaten as a light meal”.

First, it suggests that a sandwich eaten as a substantial meal, perhaps by swapping out ham with an entire roasted pig, is not a sandwich. You can have too much sandwich to be a sandwich.

Second, it does need to be eaten too. Making a sandwich for fun or art or as a prop is not a sandwich. So, when Patrick Stewart starred in MacBeth and made a sandwich halfway through the performance, was it a sandwich if it was made for a sonnet and not lunch?

Today, I ask this question as I had a sandwich consisting of last night’s left over guacamole (made with avocado, chilli, tomatoes and limes) and some savoury biscuits found in the cupboard. While I realise this was not a conventional sandwich, it did have two ‘sides’ and a filling so met the basic visual image of a sandwich. I also ate it and didn’t use it to murder Duncan in his sleep.

Bread: a very dense form of bread, called a butter biscuit…

Filling: homemade guacamole.

Taste: The biscuit made a better scoop than a traditional tortilla chip and the guacamole was still tasty despite a night in the fridge. I give this an improvised 8.5/10.

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s going to be 31 days of… lunch.

I love lunch. Especially when I’m at work. My favourite lunch was when I worked as a porter in Stornoway Hospital and my lunch was taken at 3am in the morning. That’s when I worked night shift and would sleep most of the day and have lunch at night, and always the same thing: two rolls and cheese, a can of coke and a mars bar. And crucially, a newspaper, which I would read back to front, from sport to news.

For half and hour I wasn’t in an empty, dark hospital where I could walk the corridors and not see anyone for hours at a time. I was having lunch. I was at Celtic Park. I was anywhere but at work.

Even now, when I have lunch, I’m not at work, I’m at lunch. I don’t look at email. I don’t work. I read the news, I read about Scottish football. The only thing that has changed is that I don’t eat a Mars Bar, I have a yoghurt because it’s healthier. Or at least I think it is. I bet if I check it’s probably has just as much sugar as a Mars Bar. (But I’m not going to check).

But, for this year’s 31 day challenge, I’m going to try and change more about my lunch. I still love a roll and cheese. However, I’m going to try and introduce more variety (no, I’m not going to start reading TMZ instead if Celtic Quick News) and try different different fillings, different rolls… maybe even different lunches completely. Hello, sushi.

So, for the next 31 days, TwinBikeRun is becoming TwinBikeLunch.

And, today, we start with an old favourite. the Tuna Mayonnaise sandwich.

Bread: a couple of days old Italian bloomer from Newlands Bakery.

Filling: Tuna Chunks in Spring Water from Morrisons, Hellman’s Mayonnaise and a couple of spoonfuls of capers.

I’m not sure why I started adding capers to tuna mayonnaise I think I had it in a cafe and liked it so started doing it at home. I don’t always add it, just when I remember to buy capers. Because, really, who buys capers every week?

Taste: Spot on. Can’t go wrong with a classic.

I’ve only read 150 pages of a 1000 page book but I already know it will be my book of the year. I’m currently reading Lonesome Dove, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and, despite it being a Western, which is a genre I’ve never read before, it is easily the best and easiest book I’ve read all year. Characters feel instantly real, the story catches you straight away, and the author has complete control as he swaps between different characters so you always know who’s point of view you’re following, and each feels different from the next.

So, for book of the year, I give it to the first 150 pages of Lonesome Dove, because even if the next 850 pages are dire, those first 150 pages are better than anything else I read this year. (But I’m assuming as a Pulitzer Prize winning book, it doesn’t fall off a cliff on page 200).

Like last year I aimed to read 26 books and managed to read 43, including a couple of 1000 page plus books (fantasy writer, Brandon Sanderson responsible for writing a chapter when a paragraph would do) and a couple that were barely a hundred pages (Catch The Latch, an autobiography about horse racing and The Great Gatsby, which is a classic I’d never read).

My favourites though were:

Oscar Wars – An entertaining history of Oscar winners and losers

The Warhammer Black Library – Easy to read sci-fi that comes with 231 sequels. It may take some time to read all of them…

Truss at 10 – Best political book I read this year, that gradually builds each failure of the Liz Truss premiership until her resignation becomes inevitable

The Wager – listen to this on audiobook. The true story of a British ship marooned in South America with cannabalism, murder, castaways and more cannabalism.

Great Uncle Harry – Michael Palin’s biography of his great uncle who died in WW1. Fascinating.

Garth Marenghi’s Terrortome – a made up trilogy of books by a bad horror writer featuring an entire chapter about how to make love to a typewriter. Very funny. If typewriter trysts are your thing.

Whalefail – a boy gets swallowed by a whale and has to escape. After reading this, I now know exactly what to do if Moby Dick gets peckish.

Watford Forever – the parallel story of Graeme Taylor and Elton John at Watford in the 1970s. Best sport book I read.

Marty McFly in Back to the Future travelled back 30 years from 1985 to 1955. If Back to the Future was made today, he would travel back in time from 2024 to 1994. If you want to do the same, you can just visit Grangemouth Swimming Pool. 

I have a colleague who lives in Elgin but works three days a week in Falkirk. They cannot sleep without a window open but when they’re in Falkirk: 

“All I get is freaky dreams,” they say.

“Why is that?” I ask. 

“Grangemouth,” they say. “It’s the fumes from the refinery.”

In the shadow of the refinery, you’ll find Grangemouth Leisure Centre. It’s a 1980s building that looks every year of its age. When you go in, you expect a swim to still cost 50p and for you to be asked to wash your feet in a verruca bath.

Cost: £4.50 as a non-member.

Facilities: Decent size cubicle and nice and clean changing area. However the showers are right beside the pool and open to everyone so not suitable for a proper wash, only a rinsing.

Swimming pool: At bust times it has one lane open for lap swimming and the rest of the pool for recreational swimming. I’ve been there at lunchtime during the week and would rarely meet anyone else using the lane, however the rest of the pool often had pensioners and kids so wasn’t very suitable for swimmings laps.

Other facilities? I couldn’t see anything else.

Busy? 5 – 10 people during a lunchtime swim.

Recommended? If you like colourful dreams.

“It’s like being washed by the gentle tears of a unicorn”.

I’m in an AirBnB near Dornoch and my wife has just had a shower in a bathroom that has a shower head the size of a computer desk.

“Is that a good thing?” I ask. 

“No,” she says, “the water has all the force of a falling feather. It feels like having a shower in a mist. Even a man lost in the desert would struggle to call what comes out of that shower “water”.

This is what happens when style trumps practical plumbing. A massive showerhead in the ceiling may look stylish, but if you don’t have the water pressure to back it up, it has all the force of a threat from the Beano’s Walter Soft.

A shower is important. In fact, to many, it is essential because, without a shower, many triathletes in training would face being dumped, divorced, sacked or social isolation from anyone with a nose. 

I don’t have a shower in the office. If I want to run in then I need to run to the office, pick up my clothes and then pop into a local gym for a quick shower. And I mean quick. The showers have a timer, and no sooner have you pressed the button to switch it on than it automatically switches itself off.  I must switch on, lather, switch on, run, switch on, lather, switch on, rub, switch on rinse, switch on, rub until done. I’m guessing the gym does this to save money on hot water but it does feel like its taking it’s timing from Flash, the fastest man alive, or Scrooge McDuck, the tightest duck alive, rather than anyone who actually uses a shower. 

“How long do you shower for?” They asked.

“2 – 3 minutes,” said the average man.

“0.1 milliseconds,” said the Flash.

“New Years Day, but only I sniff under my wing and smell B.O,” says Scrooge McDuck, “otherwise it can wait another year!”

And now I’m lucky to get even a single drop out of the shower. I don’t just ‘air dry’, I ‘air wash’. Which, to be fair to the Police Officer asked to attend the so called crime scene/shower, did look more offensive than I intended.

Last week, the showers were switched off. I went to the gym, a sign said “Please do not use the showers. Sorry, water off.”

And all I could think was “How did they know?”

I can’t remember the last time I had a bath. A shower is the athletes choice. A bath is not for water, it’s for ice. It’s for recovery, for cooling down muscles, and for storing body parts, if you also happen to be a serial killer. It’s not for washing.

Instead, I stick to showers. The more basic, the better. Hot water, decent pressure and preferably one with a door and not a shower curtain as a shower curtain is only good for two things: wrapping body parts and hiding serial killers behind.

A shower just needs to be able to wash you quickly so you can go from athlete to considerate husband/partner/wife/shared office colleague. It doesn’t need style, it just needs water, and lots of it.

“My wife likes to swim in the sea,” said our AirBnB host.

We’d hired a house for the week next to the ocean.

“Is there any good spots for a swim nearby?” I asked.

“She likes to go the small beach at the end of the road,” he said.

“Excellent,” I thought. It’s only a couple of hundred metres away and it would be great to have a swim spot so close to the house.

However, when I checked it out the next day it had a large sewage pipe coming from the shore and straight into the sea. Not sure what his wife is swimming in, but I didn’t want to take the chance!

Instead, after checking a few websites, I found that Inganess Bay, only a few minutes from Kirkwall is a nice sheltered spot and is popular with locals for swimming. In fact, when I arrived, two were already swimming. I say “two”. I mean one. The second was their dog! A woman and her dog were paddling back and forth across the bay.

When I was researching it, I didn’t know that Inganess Bay is also famous for having a wrecked boat. The Julietta was scuttled in WW2 to block the nearby Scapa Flow bay, but, when they tried to refloat it after the war, it could only be moved as far as Inganess before it sunk again. Various attempts were made to dismantle it but all failed and it’s been left to rust ever since.

REVIEW

Ease of Access: There’s a small car park next to the beach with room for 8 – 10 cars. I can imagine it hard to get a spot on a sunny day, but it was fine for late August.

Water quality: Very clear. There’s also plenty of room to swim before the beach starts to drop away.

Swim Quality: Excellent. The bay was noticeably calmer than other spots around the island that day.

Other People: Along with the other swimmer the beach seemed popular with dog walkers too.

Would I go back: Yes.