Fear not folks, my profound ramblings about my rock star life disguised as a running blog are not about to veer off into the culinary realm. I might start to post the occasional recipe because I want to seem like a grown-up lady, but I solemnly promise not to attempt to metamorphose into a food blogger. Although I eat food regularly, sometimes even six times a day, and I’ve even been known to write articles about it, I’m not going to pretend to know what the hell to do with it.

I like food. It tastes nice (sometimes), and I enjoy the sense of occasion associated with eating. I love lolling over dinner in dimly lit restaurants, slugging red wine and casting provocative eyes at my beloved (although that’s quite tricky in our local strip-lit Chinese). But if left to my own devices, I confess I will happily eat Tescos 24p bean soup, pitta bread and hummus, every single day. I’ve been known to survive off this very same meal contentedly every night for months. Sometimes I jazz it up with a raw carrot, but only on special occasions. This is not a sadistic weight-loss initiative; it’s because I’m lazy and joyless.

If the scientists invented a robot that could press a button and inject bean soup and hummus straight into my veins so I didn’t have to bother heating it up, I’d opt in. I’m not sure why I’m such a killjoy. I was raised on delicious vegetarian whole food by my mum and had a healthy attitude to eating as a kid. But when I’m on my own I really couldn’t give a toss about cooking. I’d rather stare at a wall than prepare a tasty feast for one. Conversely, give me some mouths to feed and I love nothing more than cooking up a (meat-free) storm in the kitchen. I will merrily spend hours baking pie, roasting vegetables, and concocting obscure frittata parodies, but only if there’s someone there to feed it to. Otherwise it’s ding dinners all the way. (Microwave. Ding!)

So anyway, since my recent exile to the Scottish wilderness, as I now share my life with a red-blooded male, I’ve taken up cooking again. Although he’s a big braw tattooed Scotsman who looks like he eats his meat straight off the bone, Ultraboy is for the most part vegetarian, which makes life a fuck of a lot easier. Any veggie who’s ever dated a hardcore carnivore will know that despite your best efforts, your relationship is doomed. If you favour plant-based food, you just can’t share your life with a man who considers meat and two meat a staple diet and refuses to accept any form of vegetable as a viable alternative. You’ll only succeed if you’re rich enough to employ two chefs and own a Smeg fridge big enough to fit all the opposing food in (I always wanted a red Smeg fridge).

Despite routinely pushing his body to its limits, Ultraboy thrives on a predominantly plant-based diet and makes really good curry and all sorts of cool strange things to do with celeriac. (A weird alien-like root vegetable that tastes a bit like parsnip, which for some reason unbeknownst to me Ultraboy is singularly obsessed with). So we share cooking and take it in turns to make big sexy meals for each other that we usually devour in front of True Blood, Walking Dead, or Falling Skies. Basically stick me in front of anything gruesome featuring supernatural beasts feasting on each other’s brains and I’m happy. This is probably weird behaviour for a vegetarian. Don’t judge me.

As we’re the proud parents of 10 eccentric fluffy chickens, you’d think more of our meals would involve eggs, but the ladies have been off the lay of late. Aside from the odd Chinese, all of our banquets are based on beans, pulses and happy green vegetables. (Except for when Ultraboy’s out of town that is. Then it’s cheap soup and bumper-sized hummus all the way baby). Not because we’re compulsive dieters. We both just prefer whole food. I was raised that way and Ultraboy swears by it for fuelling him up mountains. I’d secretly love to be whippet thin, but God built me this way and she knew what she was doing in the design room. I eat well and exercise shit loads and I still have a big round bum, so who am I to argue? In order to shave inches off that booty I’d need to live off air and then I’d be a grumpy bitch.

There is one exception to our healthy eating regime, and it comes in the form of what I like to call ‘stress baking’. Since moving to the country, when the pressure rises, in true farmer’s wife fashion I’ve started taking to the kitchen to ease the tension. Weirdly, if I’m in a hellabitch mood, a good hour of baking makes me feel infinitely better. Pretending to be Nigella by licking raw ingredients off my fingertips provocatively adds to the enjoyment. The woman is the essence of sexual Zen.

The problem with stress baking is the stress eating associated with all the sugary goods you’ve just produced. So to save my ass from getting any bigger (I get fat just sniffing muffins) I’ve been experimenting with healthy cakes. This is secretly bollocks, there’s no such thing as healthy cakes and anyone who says so is lying. But sprinkle a bit of hippy shit in your cake mix and it mysteriously removes all the guilt. So without further ado, I would like to introduce my first ‘healthy’ recipe to you…

Banana Badass
Stick badass on the end of anything and it implies it will make you run like a wild cat. It really won’t. But the addition of flaxseed will make your eyes bright and your blood flow like a horny vampire. Honest.

Tastes better than it looks

Ingredients
2 large or 3 medium very ripe bananas that have been festering in your handbag/fruit bowl all week.
4oz butter.
4oz Demerara sugar.
6oz self raising flour.
2oz oats.
2 chicken eggs or one duck egg (sounds creepy, but duck eggs are creamy and fun).
2oz milled flaxseed (available in all good hairy hippy supermarkets).
2 handfuls of crushed nuts.
1 handful of mixed dried fruit.

Method
Heat the oven to gas mark 4; 180C.
Grease a loaf tin.
Mash the bananas until they’re sort of mushy but still chunky.
Cream the butter and sugar together and mix in the eggs.
Mix in the bananas. Add the flour, oats and flaxseed, followed by nuts, fruit and anything else vaguely healthy looking lying around the kitchen.
Scrape into the loaf tin and bake for 40 minutes. Then lower the temperature to gas mark 2; 150C and cook for a further 30 minutes.

Eat hot or cold with big mugs of tea and experience an unparalleled running Zen that’ll make you praise the day you stumbled across my blog.

Please note: If your Banana Badass tastes disgusting, makes you ill, or provokes vampiric urges, The House of Rhalou accepts no responsibility.

I’ve been an impoverished magazine journalist for the best part of a decade. Despite working for a variety of magazines, the most valuable lesson I ever learned about writing actually came from my beloved grandmother Verily Anderson. Not the sprinter, the other granny, whose name I have tattooed across my back to remind me to be more badass. (It’s freaking huge, I know. It wasn’t supposed to be that big, but a well-tattooed gentleman friend influenced me somewhat on ink day).

Verily badass

Verily means truly. Verily truly was the distilled essence of badass. In the 1950s she’d waltz into any public bar and order a pint of ale long before it was considered socially acceptable for women to drink alone. She also had five kids, travelled the world aged 85 with her youngest granddaughter (me) and wrote books for a living. She finished her last book the day before she died aged 95.

The only literary advice she ever gave me was ‘never start anything with I’ as apparently it sets a self-indulgent tone. Oops. Oh well, maybe it’s okay to be a little bit self-indulgent every once in a while. Considering Granny Verily’s other stock saying was, ‘When things get bad, go to the pub. When things get really bad, throw a party’ I don’t think she’d have disapproved of the occasional moment of self-indulgence all that much.

So to that end, I’m going to unashamedly boast about my latest article in Women’s Running magazine. You’d think I’d get used to seeing my name in print, but I still get completely overexcited on press day. It’s a fantastic feeling to see my words on a big shiny page (minus all the fucks. Magazine editors always edit out the F word if you try and sneak it in) and know that at least a couple of people in the world will read it.

This month feels exceptionally exciting because, although I was on staff at Women’s Running for nearly three years, this is my first published article since becoming a FREELANCE JOURNALIST (sorry for shouting but it’s well grown up and scary) so it feels like a big deal.

Read me baby

My latest article is also about a very newsworthy subject, vegetarian running! Everyone should go veggie. Not because I give a shit about the baby animals or environmental impact (although I really do) but because it would make eating out and dinner parties much easier for those of us that choose to eschew animalia. I always feel like such a loser in restaurants when I have to ask if there’s anything on the menu without a mum or a face. Plus my brother-in-law Jay Scrimshaw is a head chef who specialises in offal, which sucks balls as I never get to taste his cooking. Christmas day is a logistical nightmare. If only they all liked quinoa and alfalfa sprouts as much as I do.

It’s also nice to have it in print that being a vegetarian will have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on your ability to run a marathon. True story. But I won’t ruin the plot, go and buy the sexy running mag now so they commission me to write loads more, sales pitch over. Who fancies a quick pint of ale?

Since bothering to change my bank details and managing to survive one whole month in The Borders, I think I may now officially be a Scottish resident. Against the odds I’ve endured four weeks of solitude, relentless rain, enormous hills, undecipherable local lingo and the company of one very handsome but rather grumpy Scotsman. I think I may stay a while…

Thank you for all of your advice on assimilating into Scottish life. Since last week’s blog 10 things I know about Scotland I’ve also learnt some cool new phrases; bogal being my favourite. It means window shopping/having a look, and it’s a Jamaican dance craze. I’m still none the wiser as to what ‘the back of nine’ means. There appears to be a few regional variations to this one. But I am now safely armed with enough local lingo to know that Ken is a word and not a bloke and eating chips with absolutely everything is common practice.

Since mastering the art of communication, I finally mustered up the courage to visit a local physio and get my suspicious knee looked at. She pummelled me to within an inch of my life leaving actual visible bruises in her wake, so I definitely got my money’s worth. Fortunately it turns out I’ve just pulled a muscle in my thigh, so Rhalourella will run to the ball again.

Don’t be fooled by the foam roller’s unassuming appearance

Since then, upon advice, I’ve invested in a foam roller. Despite working in fitness publishing for a few years now, I’ve never actually investigated the murky world of foam rolling before. Ultraboy was sceptical about the introduction of a foam roller in our life, arguing that it was a fad. He studied at the school of true grit and cut his fitness teeth sneaking up sheer rock faces and kayaking down voluptuous gorges before he could even talk, so he didn’t see the point in a puny roll of foam, arguing that a little 20-mile run round the block would sort out his aches and pains. But I forced him to have a go anyway, because I’m a girl, and we have mystical powers that make even the most stubborn Scotsmen do what we want. So I made him mount my puny roll of blue foam on the living room carpet, and sat back to watch him wince like a little girl.

I’m not really a secret sadist and Ultraboy is still the distilled essence of badass. Even in his currently injured state (catastrophic kayaking accident ripped his arm from his socket and now it pops out all the time) he’s the fittest person I know. But even the baddest man in town is no match for a foam roller. Those compact tubes of bubble-filled rubber really bloody hurt. Especially if you’re a runner with thighs like tightly wound granite. It’s like they seek out the pain and drill laser death rays through their tubular foaminess and straight into your soul. Don’t believe me? Jump onboard a foam roller for five minutes and call me back. I defy you not to cry for your mama after stiff foam and IT Band meet and get to know each other intimately upon your thigh.

Even the chickens are sceptical

Despite the extreme agonising pain, the evil roll of foam has now become a staple part of our nightly routine and we’ve been taking turns to sodomise our thighs in front of the telly. It makes quite a fun spectator sport. Here’s hoping that a few weeks of extreme rollering will result in two lean, mean running machines that conquer any race thrown our way. Failing that, it doubles up as a brightly coloured chicken viewing platform.

Meanwhile back on the ranch, to supplement my writing I’ve been helping out some friends Tim and Phil with their bootcamp Sexy in the City. I grew up on the same street as Tim and we’ve been friends since we were about 4. Together the boys run bootcamps that offer fun and friendly workout sessions for city chicks. If any of you happen to live near London Liverpool Street and fancy honing your body to shmoking hot sexy proportions, tell them I sent you. If only Sexy in the City operated in the wilderness too. But Sexy in the Boggy Field doesn’t have quite the same ring to it…

Week two of Operation Rhalou in the wilderness and I seem to be settling into country life okay. Thankfully last week’s Chickengate was solved by a quick visit to the local donkey sanctuary that doubles up as a chicken petting zoo. They kindly took Monty the evil ginger cock off our hands in exchange for three considerably less threatening Silkie chickens, who I’ve collectively christened Chaka Khan.

Chaka Chicken Khan

Curiously, since we waved goodbye to Monty, his fellow rooster Freddie has stepped up to alpha mode and started lording it about the garden. What is it about men? Even in chicken form must they be forever locked in an archaic battle for supremacy?

I was hoping to have something a bit more rock ‘n’ roll to blog about this week than poultry. Life may be quiet in the country, but chickens alone are not enough to sustain a blog. Unless you write a blog specifically about chickens that is, in which case, my apologies, chickens are great. My intention was to write about running, but I haven’t done very much, due to a self-diagnosed IT band injury. But arguably self-diagnosis and doing sod all about it definitely makes me a typical runner, even if I’m not currently doing very much running.

I should probably stay in rival chicken bloggers good books anyway, because I suspect I may be inadvertently developing a chicken fetish. And since writing exclusively about running at Women’s Running magazine for nearly three years, maybe it’s time to spread my wings and write about something a bit more existential. Like birds.

If you don’t have anyone else to chat to, chickens certainly do start to take on a whole new level of importance. Those feathered friends have become my family. I eat most of my meals in their company, I study them obsessively (they’re like mini dinosaurs!) and even meditate amongst the mystic chickens. Okay that’s a lie, I find it impossible to sit still for that long, but their mere presence is quite meditative. If only chickens could run 10K at a comfortable pace, or bitch about boys over a glass of Merlot on Thursday nights.

Anyway before I change the name of this blog to City Chicken in the Sticks, let’s get back to the job in hand. The next obstacle in Rhalou versus country life is only marginally less pathetic than being scared of maverick poultry. This week I have mostly been grappling with the fear of being alone. Not in a spiritual sense (I welcome spiritual enlightenment, hence the bold move to the wilderness) but the fear of actually being alone, all by myself, all night long, in the middle of nowhere, with nobody to hear me scream…

Ultraboy is off to run a race in the highlands this weekend, leaving me home alone with the chickens. Ordinarily I’d relish the opportunity for a bit of Rhalou-time, so I could secretly watch One Born Every Minute, get drunk, eat Rocky Road and paint my toes pirate red at the kitchen table. But that was when I lived in a flat surrounded by six billion people, so I could still hear my neighbours farting through the walls. There’s being alone, and then there’s being alone, in the wilderness, with no car and no sense of direction, and a rusty torture chamber in the cellar. Okay I lied about the torture chamber bit too, Ultraboy gets his kicks from torturing me in a hill running sense, but the rest is all true. I have to spend one night on my own in the house on the hill in the middle of nowhere in Scotland, and I am shitting myself.

I know the crime rate in The Borders is considerably lower than London. Plus after finding a dead body in my back garden in Hackney a couple of years ago and witnessing a shooting in London Fields (both true) I’ve probably used up my horror quota for a lifetime. But combine the house, the hill, the rain, the woman alone and the wilderness, and my weekend definitely possesses all the ingredients for a classic horror film. Except for the gang of horny young teens on spring break required to get picked off one-by-one by the serial killer/monster/tribe of zombies in the lead up to my gory finale, but that’s just a minor plot detail.

I’ve seen The Evil Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre enough times to know slutty redheads rarely make it out of the woods alive. The surviving role is almost always saved for the brunette. And when the aliens do land in the garden, I can’t even run away! My IT band injury is practically begging for an axe-wielding murderer to chase me limping through the undergrowth. I’m just thankful I’m not a blonde; they always get chopped up before the intermission.

Arguably I could just jump on the train to London, or call my Dad who lives 20 miles up the road, or beg Ultraboy to take me to the highlands to share a tent/car/hostel with his sweaty ultra runner mates (sexy). But as shit scared as I am about being on my own in the arse crack of nowhere with nothing but a flock of chickens to protect me from the antichrist, I need to suck it up and be alone at some point, so it might as well be now. If I’m really going to morph into a fully-functioning country girl, I’m going to have to man-up and I’m going to have to do it fast.

If anyone reading this does happen to be a serial killer/monster/tribe of zombies, please don’t come to The Borders and kill me in a complex yet visually exhilarating way this weekend. But do feel free to come and visit! I’d love to have a guest or two for the weekend. We could have a nice cup of tea and talk to the chickens. Chickens are really great.

After several months of meticulous planning, I finally made it to Scotland to begin my new life of hill running and romancing under the stars. I always knew the transition from Shoreditch to The Borders was going to be a tough one. Not least because I’m used to living in zone two with six billion other people and 24-hour hummus on tap (yes I know, there are probably far more exciting things one can acquire after-hours in the great city of London, but hummus is the distilled essence of the Gods). So what’s the real reason the big move to the wilderness was bound to be particularly challenging? My new rural abode is located in the ass end of nowhere, an hour from the nearest train station, and I don’t actually know how to drive…

Not only am I clueless to the rules of the road, but I don’t have a bicycle, or a helicopter, or a unicorn. And there just aren’t enough people living on this particular hill out here in the sticks to justify a frequent bus service. We do live near a really nice donkey sanctuary with 71 different funky donkeys to choose from, but after three days of country life, I haven’t quite plummeted to donkey-riding depths just yet. If cabin fever really starts to set in, I’ll wait until Christmas Eve and charter an old donkey to carry me to a local barn, so I can lie down in the hay and give birth to Jesus Christ. But if miracles do occur, I’d prefer to have a driving licence and a snazzy new car than the trials of mothering the new messiah. Plus I have only just moved in with the boyfriend, so one step at a time.

So until I learn to master the art of driving, I’m not going anywhere. And before anyone suggests running to the nearest hummus shop, I’ve knackered my knee (great start to my hill running career) so basically I’m stranded in no man’s land like a fish without a bicycle, or a driving licence. But curiously, despite my concerns when I was back in the heaving metropolis, living in the wilderness without any reliable transportation is actually the least of my worries. After living in Hackney for the past six years, I’m really enjoying the peace and quiet. The biggest obstacle to my future happiness is in fact much smaller, fluffier and more inherently evil than any of life’s transportation woes. I’m talking about my new nemesis, my boyfriend’s cock, Monty.

Monty the evil ginger cock

No I haven’t christened my boyfriend’s manly cluster in homage to Judy Bloom’s Forever, (my first foray into early sexuality when Jackie magazine couldn’t provide the answers. What did she call his willy? Roly?) When I say cock, I mean cockerel. A Polish Frizzle to be precise. But not just any Polish Frizzle. Monty is a mean ass cockerel who wants my blood. I swear the frizzly little fucker is out to get me.

As with most cockerels, Monty likes to make the first morning call. Except he thinks 4am is an acceptable time for the world to wake up (that’s when I used to go to bed, oh how times have changed). Despite his antisocial timekeeping, Monty is actually hilariously funny to watch in action. He minces about the garden in a stately manner and parades in front of his hens with one wing raised like a bull fighter, whipping his red cape about in preparation for battle.

But despite being a fortuitous comedian, Monty is one vicious chicken and he rules his roost with a steely resolve. In the pecking order, he’s the top dog, and everyone must obey him, including me. Consequently, if I try to cross the garden to do something really ghastly, like feed him or clean out his water tray, Monty will go for me, wings, talons, beak and all. He’s drawn blood twice now. If he came in human form, he’d be Dorian Gray and hide a picture of his evil tarnished soul inside his chicken coop.

Even though Monty is only ankle-high, I confess I’m secretly terrified of the evil little rooster. I’ve been avoiding the garden at all costs, but he still stalks the outside walls and seems to know exactly which window ledge to jump on in order to stare through the glass and straight into my soul. I swear to God he’s out to get me. Arguably I should just drop kick the little bastard into the ether, but I’m a vegetarian and I don’t possess the fighting spirit. Plus I’m already rather attached to the lovely organic eggs his girlfriends have been laying and fear assaulting their alpha may put them off the job in hand.

The only individual in our manor that Monty does not bully is Ultraboy. But I imagine a six-foot Scotsman striding through the morning mist brandishing a bucket of seed would be an imposing sight even if you’re not a seemingly innocuous but secretly evil cockerel. Or perhaps Monty is locked in some ancient love rival battle, and believes that Ultraboy is his one true love?

Whatever the sadistic chickens’ intentions, now that I live here, it’s time for me to man up. I didn’t emigrate to the wilderness without a driving licence only to get beaten by a vicious little cock with a chip on its wing. So step two in this city chicks assimilation into country life, vanquish the vicious chicken before it gets me! Then all I have to do is book a driving lesson, learn the local lingo and become an expert hill runner. Not sure which is scarier actually…