Making Adjustments

Is there anything bad for you that doesn't smell a thousand times better at the seaside than it does in day-to-day life in the city? I mean...anything?
We arrived yesterday and went for a quick bite of lunch because we hadn't had the chance to get anything at the train station. Most of Bognor appeared to be closed, so we stopped at a pub. Given the action of the Xenical, I really should have been thinking more clearly when I ordered the quiche. Eggs, milk, cheese...yeah, no excess fat in that...

It was the dessert menu that killed me, brought me back to life, cloned me exactly and then killed me again. Ordinary, bog-standard seaside pub desserts of course, but soemthing about the sensation of being - even briefly - on holiday flips some sort of brain-switch and amplifies the devil-voice on your shoulder going "Ooooohhhh yeah...go on...."
Suddenly I was having fantasies of diving naked into an enormo-sundae, nibbling on human-sized chocolate chunks, making flabby angels in puddles of strawberry sauce, doing appalling, not remotely erotic pole dancing around a Cadbury's Flake the size of Nelson's Column, before sinking my teeth in good and hard, and generally having a fine old time. Sitting there, reading the menu, I also got an idea for a short story, about which, probably, more in due course.

The thing is, I'm trying not to make this all about me, my diet, my heart and my freaking bowels, but just occasionally, they're fighting back - I was just done with dinner last night when I had to disappear for half an hour as the quiche and the Xenical had an argument, and whoever ended up winning, I lost. Incidentally, I should say - I swear, I'm not doing these things just to have something to write about, I just really, truly, genuinely am that stupid!

This morning at breakfast, it surfaced in a slightly different way - when on holiday, I tend to enjoy a pot of tea with breakfast, but of course being on caffeine embargo nixed that. My next, most natural choice, would be a glass of milk, but after the quiche encounter, I finally learned my lesson, and had to eschew that too. So - juice and water, woohoo, let's all do a freakin' celebration jig around the breakfast bar...

Actually, on a side note, it's slightly weird these days getting my mother and I together. d and I arrived downstairs first for breakfast this morning, and they were playing Stevie Nicks over the speakers - Edge of Seventeen. So I actually did do a little celebration jig around the breakfast bar, till d told me I was scaring the staff. So I sat down and ordered my breakfast. Two minutes later, my folks came into the breakfast room. Ma, without thinking about it, started doing a little celebration jig around the breakfast bar. Nature or nurture? Who knows, it's just a little freaky to find yourself as a hairy, balding, flabby nearly-40-year-old man turning into your own mother!

Anyway - after breakfast, we went strolling along the pier into town to visit the world best second hand book store, and along the way, every poxy little stall or stand or shop might as well have been doing the dance of the seven doughnuts, or reading seductively from the hot dog sutra. Every sense - including memory - was ratcheted up to 11, and I had real trouble stopping myself from diving, rugby-tackle style, at more than one vendor and demanding they let me eat everything they owned, guilt-free, cos goddammit, I'm on holiday!!!!

(Takes a Zen breath of acceptance or somesuch nonsense).

Right. Off to go swimming now. Bike be damned, just call me Orca, the Whale-Boy!