We Have a Situation Virginia Woolf!

I’ve been rigidly sticking to my exercise routine and walking 5.2 kilometres on my treadmill every day. It’s too hot to walk outdoors but I miss it because walking on the treadmill in the spare room (with the dogs sitting on the bed, staring at me in googly eyed wonder at why Mummy is endlessly walking and not getting anywhere) is a stupefyingly, boring activity.



Lately I’ve been watching a Netflix streamed movie on my laptop, reading Why French Women Don’t Get Fat on my Kindle, checking my Twitter and Facebook feeds, reading emails and blogs and chewing Nicorette gum to combat the boredom.

My set up...

The only problem with this is that the steady whir of the treadmill drowns out the speakers on my laptop.

I planned to watch the rest of ‘The Hours’ during my walk this morning and I don’t know if you've ever seen the Nicole Kidman movie based on Virginia Woolf but it’s not the sort of movie you can comprehend without sound. It doesn’t have visual jokes like say, Dumb and Dumber or prat falls like those puerile Johnny Rocks in his Head, Jackass movies. 

In fact without sound The Hours just seems to be about a whole lot of women weeping.


“Do you have any headphones I can use?” I asked Scotto this morning before he left for work.

He gave me these.

“Look after them,” he said in a cautionary tone. “They’re the only ones in the house.”


“What do you think I’m going to do with them?” I retorted sarcastically. “Stomp on them and set them alight? Drop them from a tall building? Run over them in my car? I’m not stupid you know!”


He sniffed and left for work.


In hopeful anticipation I set up my little electronic nest and plugged the headphones in.

Somehow in my eagerness I forgot to attach the safety clip to my t-shirt. I love the safety clip because it means if I go into cardiac arrest and collapse then the clip will immediately shut down the treadmill saving us from wasting expensive electricity; and our power bill is high enough already, thank you very much.


In my excitement I also failed to notice a loose cord hanging down from the headphones which somehow became entwined around my foot leading to a plummet of cataclysmic proportion by the unsuspecting treadmill user: me.


The treadmill, sans safety clip, kept going, and there was a very inelegant scrabble which took place leading to a near broken arm and a very distressed Chihuahua who leaped off the bed and began whimpering and licking his unfortunate mistress who lay howling on the floor.

Distressed Chihuahua

After checking my throbbing arm wasn't broken by wiggling my fingers, I resumed my walk.

Something doesn't look quite right!

The headphones were well and truly stuffed after being ripped from the laptop in such a violent fashion so I had to watch The Hours without sound after all. I amused myself by covering up Nicole’s prosthetic nose with my ‘good’ thumb to make sure it really was her and not just a plain cousin the producers had hired on the cheap.

I’m pretty sure it was the real Nicole but I have no idea what the movie was about.

The only problem I face now is where to hide Scotto’s head phones.


Any suggestions?

Shredded arm.