29 To Go

Today's weigh-in revealed that I'm now:
16 stone 4.5 pounds.
That's a loss of 1 pound.

One lousy, stinking, evil, insignificant little pound. All the walking, all the biking, the return to the gym and the degree of self-denial...a pound.

I was quite disheartened when I first found out about that. It's a dangerous time, when you make only slight progress - far more dangerous than when you make no progress at all, or put on, even. It makes you feel like having a calorific tantrum, and I actively considered going for chips at lunchtime.

But then, if you think about it - a pound is, by definition, four quarter-pounders. As d mentioned when I told her what I'd lost, it's a pretty juicy bit of steak. You'd know about it if you were hit in the face with a pound of gold, and you'd have a hell of a weekend with a pound of blow.

Older people, like me, are always telling youngsters how important it is they learn the value of a pound. And OK, over here in the UK, we're talking about money (which in itself is fairly ludicrous, cos you can't get anything worth getting for a pound these days, despite the flourishing of "Pound Stores", but I digress). So perhaps today's a day for remembering the value of a pound. At least, I suppose, it's a pound I don't have to lose again, unless of course I succumb to petulance and blow it.

And I also guess, in my quest to beat my pal Eve to lose 30 pounds, I'm one pound closer to the finishing line. One down...29 to go...

Titanic Town

Woke up this morning from a dream of being shot.

In Brighton.

By a psychotic 12-year-old. For protection money.

I say shot…actually it was a booby-trap. I tripped a trip-wire, specially put there for me, by said psychotic 12-year-old. Blasted what can only really be called “the fuck” out of my chest. Oddly enough, the dream went on. I had to get better, and then run his gauntlet of booby-traps again, trying to get from one end of Brighton to the other, this time with d’s help. Oddly enough, I’ve never been to Brighton. d has – it was, oddly enough, the day we won the Olympics that are currently going on. Y’know, the day before some psychotic nutcases blew…again, what can only really be called “the fuck” out of London tubes and buses.

Blink…

Blink, blink…

(Shrugs). No idea. All I can tell you is that if you’re going to have to get up at Stupid o’clock on an out-of-practice Monday, it’s not a bad incentive to do so if the alternative is closing your eyes and being blasted to buggery again by psychotic, protection-money-demanding pre-teens…

Had to go to London today, for reasons that frankly passeth all understanding. Nobody else was in the office. I was my organisation today. I got one call all day – and it was for me, so ordinarily, it would have been forwarded to me at home, while I biked, or ate cereal, or scratched my arse.

(Shrugs). So there you go – eighty quid I could have done without spending. But on the other hand, it was a very nice Monday in my part of London. It was as if every bugger had left the west side of London. You could walk on the streets, singing at full volume (which I did – The Time Warp, and Sweet Transvestite from Rocky Horror is you’re curious: thanks to my mate Sian for sticking those in my brain this morning!), and no-one would hear you…or, y’know…arrest you or anything. It kinda felt like so many people must be in Stratford that the west side of London was bound to rise up in the air, and the city would snap in half at Oxford Street, like the Titanic in the movie, till the Olympics ended up taking the whole city down to a subterranean grave.

Wore big clothes today, after the dressing debacle yesterday, which on the one hand is a pain in the arse as I’ve had to hold my trousers up all day (should have bought a belt at Paddington, really – they’d have snapped my hand off for the custom!), and on the other, has allowed me to pass shiny surfaces all day and pull my T-shirt tight, and go “Hmm, see that doesn’t look too bad to me…” in a faintly pathetic attempt to deceive myself I’m making progress. Still – self-deceit has helped me stay active and productive all day, and I was able to get a lot of stuff done off my inevitable and unending List of Stuff To Do. Many ticks, and even more crossing-through today, which at least from a personal point of view is better than moping about all day inwardly wailing “I’m so faaaaaaaat!!!” and craving  comfort food. Some days, you just have to feed yourself a big fat whopper of a lie, to stop yourself feeding yourself…well, a big fat Whopper, I suppose.

What happens tomorrow? I honestly have no idea. I’d like to do a walk tomorrow morning before work, but we’ll see whether I can shift my arse out of bed after the uber-commute. Guess that depends on whether the 12-year-old catches up with me.

So…

Sleeping pills all round?

Oh - blood was 4.8 this morning, but I almost feel like that doesn't count - my body was still asleep for hours after I tested, so maybe if I woke up at Stupid o'clock every morning, my blood would be low and percolating, and maybe it only rises in the ACTUAL morning...maybe.

Scarlett Fever

Have you ever wanted to flick an "Off" switch at the back of your brain and go zombie for a day or so?

I think of this as Scarlett Fever - the immortal line of Scarlett O'Hara's, you understand, being "I'll think about that tomorrow...after all, tomorrow is another day..."

Blood was 5.4 this morning, despite a dinner of hot dogs at 9pm last night. Going insane right now though, if I'm honest - which I am when I can't be funny, as a kind of last resort.

Tried on a couple of outfits for tomorrow - back to London, for the first Monday of the Olympics...woohoo.
Neither of them fit properly. These were my 15stone outfits, so obviously, they're not gonna fit properly yet. I think it's the instant gratification thing though - been good all week, gimme results, ya bastards!

Stupid.

Doesn't help that I'm Jonesing for chocolate in the worst way. And yes, we still have the chocolate biscuits from my moment of madness this week, but while I'm still not sure that "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels", I'm not sure at this moment that anything tastes good enough to wipe out how bad tight clothes feel.

Sigh. Damn.

Damn damn damn...
Going away to kick myself in the shins right now. Then I'm going to watch some people sing and dance for no very good reason (Yeah, sue me, I'm a Smash fan...), and then I'm going to get some sleep before going to London. A day of walking and working and coffee and pondering...Dad has appointments tomorrow that I wish I could be there for.

Then it's Tuesday. I'm actually not remotely confident of progress on Tuesday, despite working pretty hard this week. But if I think about that right now, I'll go mad. I can't think about that right now. I'll think about that the day after tomorrow...after all, the day after tomorrow is another Tuesday...

B-P-T

Blood was 5.2 this morning, which was pleasing.

Went back to the gym today for the first time in weeks. Two things to say - Firstly, I'm soooo out of practice. And secondly - OW!

Did my hour of biking tonight too - Nehh, still doing it.

Came downstairs after that. Long story short - our shower's out of bounds, cos the caulking is shot, and we discovered yesterday it leaks through the ceiling. So while waiting for our bath to fill up (cos, y'know, there's nothing like stewing in your own bike-sweat), I came down. d was watching Dynamo: Magician Impossible. I pretty much like his stuff, but he creeps d out and makes her start talking about Nostrodamus and the Devil. Nevertheless, she couldn't stop watching it. I walked in, kinda less...erm...clothed than normal. d looked up.

"Ah, there you are," she said.
"Yeah, me. Not some skinny guy in a T-shirt," I said, grinning, reminding her of a couple of nights ago when I scared the bejeesus out of her by dancing into the room.
"No, I mean there you are," she said. "You've gone from flab to flap again. That's a good step back to where you wanna be."

"Flab to...?"
"Flap...the belly-bit that had sort of...re-filled. It's kinda re-emptied."
"Cool. Now all I need is to go from flaB to flaP to flaT..."
"Everything in time, o impatient one..."

Couple of other things. Pal of mine in the States, Eve, popped up on Facebook today having spotted that I've updated my profile picture.
"You got skinny!" she said.
"Hardly skinny," I said. "Still got about 84 pounds to lose!"
"Trying to lose about 30 pounds myself," she said - which frankly is absurd, but whatever...
"Cool - race ya!" I challenged her. "First one to lose 30 pounds wins...something."

She didn't actually come back to me on that. Hehehe...It's ON!

And while I was bathing, d found an episode of Cake Boss. For those who watch the show, it was the renewal of Buddy and Lisa's vows (which we've been building up to for a while). People have occasionally asked for pictures of how big I was at the start of this experiment.
"That's you!" said d suddenly. Mauro, the Cake Boss's lieutenant, was on our screen, shirtless and hurtling down a water slide. (So if ya wanna know what I looked like, look him up, I guess!)
"I mean, he's taller, so you've got to work with proportion, but yeah, that was you baby...a loooooong time ago!" she said, reassuring me. While it was good to know that I've visibly Disappeared a bit since then, something about the loooooongness of the time ago struck me. We're heading into August, and I'm still almost a stone heavier than I was on the first weigh-in I did this year, back in January. Time to really start pushing now, to get back down there, and then beyond. I seem to have got the willpower back, with the gymming and the biking and the walking at least. The lightest I've reached so far is 14 stone 9. That's 25 pounds away. I have to do my 20 mile walk on 21st September this year. That's a little under eight weeks away. 16 pounds on the traditional two-pounds-a-week scale. So I'm still not going to be at my best when I do the walk, unless there are a few accelerator-pedal weeks in there somewhere. I'm going to set that as a mini-goal - actually, I'm going to tweak that as a mini-goal. I'd like to reach 14 stone 7 by the time I do the walk. - 27 pounds in  8 weeks. That seems radically unhealthy, said like that. But hey, I can dream, can't I?

The Invisible Man

Ahhhhh we’re not there.

Can’t tell you how glad I am not to be there.

I mean, yippie skippie, the Olympics have finally started, but I’m soooo glad I’m not there. Tonight, I’m not just a Disappearing Man, but an Invisible one –

My old “manor” – as I’ve just learned David Beckham used to call it – is on TV screens around the world right now. Stratford is in the eyes of the world.

I enjoyed living there, but personally, I’m happy to watch it from a couple of hundred miles away.

My life today seems small and insignificant by comparison to the Olympics, but I’ve enjoyed it. Delivered some work to a demanding deadline, got good feedback. Went up to sit with Dad for a few hours…he mainly slept. Did an hour on the bike, burned off 650 calories, had a nice meal, settled down to watch Stratford take its place on the world stage. Interestingly, there are some countries with a smaller total population than Stratford had when we left it.

Right – that’s as much as there is to say about today, frankly – Cuba’s just arrived in Straford…only another hour and a quarter of this frankly baffling opening ceremony…

Oh – blood was good this morning, down to 5.2. Maybe the biking starting to have an effect?

I Can See Clearly Now

"Ah!!!"
d jumped.
It's kinda funny, unless you're her. Eight years we've been married now, almost nine, and even when everything logical tells her there's just the two of us in the place, I can still startle the bejeesus out of her.
The weird thing is it doesn't usually happen when I dance into the room to a reggae beat, singing.

We'd been watching a bit of Cool Runnings - hey, it's the night before the Olympics - and I was popping upstairs to get on the bike. I couldn't find my training shoes, so I'd popped straight back again to look for them. The credits of the movie were rolling, so I kinda reggae'd my way into the room, singing along to "I can see clearly now the rain has gone' - again, a more appropriate song for the current heatwave in the World Capital of Drizzle it would be hard to imagine.

"Ah!!!"
d jumped.
"Scared the bejeesus out of me..." she said.
She stared at me a moment.
"You didn't look like yourself," she said.
"Is that good?" I asked.
"Yeah, you didn't look like you, you looked like some skinny guy in a T-shirt..."
Our front door was open of course, in the heat, so it made a little more sense than you might imagine. Some reggae'ing skinny guy could have wandered along our balcony and danced his way in.

But of course he hadn't. It was me.

It was very sweet of her to mistake me for a skinny guy, but it's too early for such comparisons to be accurate. I walked five miles this morning, and did some biking tonight, and ate reasonably sensibly - fish and tomato-salad for dinner. But I also weighed this morning, and I know it's too early to start talking skinny again. Let's at least look at things clearly, eh?

Still, she is sweet...

Blood was 6.2 this morning. So no change there then. Humph.

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Chocolate Biscuits

I honestly don't know what came over me. Y'know they say sometimes suicides are going along jusssst peachy, and then something snaps, and the next thing they know they're popping the pills  and drinking the water and they have no recollection of getting the pills or filling the glass or any of that? Well without wishing to come off all heavy on your asses, it was like that. I don't know quite what happened but as the packet of McVities Dark Chocolate Digestive Biscuits went through the scanner at my local grocery store, the beep kinda went off in my head, as if to say "Eh?? What??"

Thing is, I know I went out with the express purpose of buying something bad. It wasn't especially chocolate biscuits, just something to - and pay attention to the rhetoric of the brain here, it's telling - something to wreck all the good work.

Ahem.

Regular readers will of course see the issue here, which is that I haven't been doing the good work for weeks now. If I wreck the good work at this point, I'll be 20 stone again before I wake up and smell the chocolate biscuits.

So what was the urge about? The urge to wreck everything?
I have no idea. d said a thing recently that interested me.
"There are people who have a medical problem, and they're called alcoholics. Gluttony's not the same thing, honey," she said.

I've pondered that since she said it. Thing is, there are circles to being a Fat Fuck, just like Dante's abominable Inferno. And yes, absolutely, Gluttony's one of them. I'm more than familiar with the urge to eat not just a slice of cake, but the whole cake, just because it gives pleasure, and pleasure is...by definition...pleasurable. So yeah, I'm a Glutton, and I know that. But there's clearly, irritatingly, more to Fat Fuckery than than just Gluttony. If anyone can come up with more, I'm open to offers, but so far I've only come up with Four Circles of Fat Hell:

Gluttony - This is the simplest circle - it's essentially just an over-sensitivity to pleasure.
Comfort - We're familiar with the notion that certain foods provide comfort in times of stress. Ergo the more stress, the more comfort our systems think they require, and the more of the 'wrong' foods we eat.
Self-Sabotage - A darker circle, where we eat as an escape route - from all sorts of societal pressures, like the pressure to succeed, the pressure to have relationships, the pressure to be taken seriously in business etc...
Self-Harm - the drive to actually self-destruct, or to punish ourselves for...something.

I think, along this journey, I've touched every level at some point. Gluttony is easy - when I rave and bitch that I don't have a chocolate Sundae right here right now - that's Gluttony. Comfort eating...it's interesting, I've never particularly thought of myself as a comfort eater, but then, I've never really been under stress since this experiment began. Now, I guess you could say I'm under some stress, with business and Dad. Might account for some of the difficulties I've had in recent months trying, for instance, to re-establish my discipline levels. Self-sabotage...that's what I hit today, I think. Just the mindless desire to rebel, to go mad, to spoil things, and, presumably, to control the process of my own self-sabotage. And Self-Harm of course we touched on during my chippy binge of a few weeks ago.

Anyhow...
I actually stood there in Tescos, with the biscuits in my hand, and saw my future if I ate them. Sneaky treats, leading to bigger and bigger treats, leading to a woooooooorld of treats...and before I'd know it, I'd have slipped all the way back down to Fat Fuck Hell, and be the person I was before all this began - eating madly and being surprised at my heart giving up the ghost.

So I took them home and put them in the fridge. Then, for the first time in weeks, I made the time and got on the bike.

It was rather startled to see me. I did an hour on it, which I think surprised it even more. And then I promised it an hour every day. It gave a sardonic "Yeah, we'll see, mate" handlebar-tilt and groaned slightly as I got off it.

The road to Hell may be paved with chocolate biscuits, but if Meat Loaf taught me anything when I was a child, it's that the way back out is on the seat of a bike.

Blood today was 6.5. This is too damned high for my liking as well. Let's get back under control, dammit!

Inside Voice

You ever argued with yourself in public?
Hmm?

Right. Just me then, is it? Again.
Longer-term readers will know that I am entirely shameless about singing in public, and inflict moments of my warbling on passers-by when I'm out walking. This has, on many an occasion, caused odd looks, but never, in all fairness, comment.

Today though, I found myself having an argument with myself.
It all started with the weigh-in of course. Up 3.25 pounds this week, back to 16 stone 5.5. This is irritating, but didn't seem entirely serious - I haven't done the work this week, so obviously, the weight is going to go up. I figured I'd get to it in maybe a week or so, once my pressing work and business commitments were out of the way.
I walked up to my local Currys, where my laptop has been undergoing brain surgery - or at least, brainwashing - for the last few days, and picked it up. On the way back down the hill to home, I bitched at myself:
"Ach...up three pounds, man...gotta do something. But I'm just so tied up right now..."
Then I stopped.
Looked around me. The sun was high and bright, the sky an eye-watering blue in my home town. I work from home. I'm busy with work for both my day-job and the side business I started.
"Exactly how much easier do you want it, schmuck-face?" I asked myself.
"Well, I mean..."
"Nonono, you don't get to play the 'It's all sooooo difficult for Little Me' card. You really don't. You have time. You have opportunity. You have a gym card you haven't used in weeks, and a bike that's gathering dust in your office. You've switched meaningful, small doses of bran-based breakfast cereal for larger bowls of a couple of actually-pleasant cereals. You're not lacking time. You're not lacking opportunity. All you're lacking is discipline!"
"Ohhhh, what crawled up your kilt and tweaked your pubes?!" I said...
Just as the guy who'd been walking up the hill passed me.
"What??" he said. Not without reason, all in all.
"Oh! Erm...sorry!" I said.
"What??" he said again. Still not without reason, but in a notably more arch tone of voice.
"Sorry," I said, raising my hands. "Arguing with myself!"
He saw my hands, and raised me a pair of eyebrows.
"Oh aye?" he said.
"Really!" I said. "Honest. Sorry, just talking to myself."
"Sure about that, are you?" he checked. His shoulders were quite broad.
"Yep," I said, daring to move off down the hill. "Sorry!" I called again, looking behind me.

And I escaped down the hill.
"Inside voice," I said to myself - not actually using one. "Or better still, just think this stuff!"
"Right," I said. "Will try to remember that. Meanwhile...discipline."
"Yeah," I said. "Discipline. Discipline is easy. Miserable, but easy. Just do it. Balance your time. Get the fuck on with it!"
A woman walking on the other side of the road looked at me sharply. I swallowed, smiled at her in a non-threatening, but probably, now I think of it, vaguely "they don't let me have spoons, you know!" kind of way. She decided the world would be better all round if I wasn't in it, and got on with pretending that I wasn't.

"Seriously!" I muttered to myself. "Inside voice, for God's sake!"
"Right," I agreed, walking on home.

The Real Disappearing Man

Must...get...off...couch!

Must, if I'm to retain any hope of once more being a Disappearing Man, rather than a Swanning-About-And-Vacillating one. But! - pulling me the other way is the need to make a success of both my day job and my business...both of which involve me sitting on my ass until it grows large and flaccid and ultimately wears a groove through both the stitching and the molecular bondings of the couch and then, dammit, to sit there till the wooden frame gives way.

I'm behind on a couple of projects at the moment, and have some serious sitting-the-fuck-down to do tomorrow in order to get them even vaguely back on track. Which is all very well and groovy, but I'm more than confident that tomorrow, I will in fact have gone the wrong way and become once again a Reappearing Man - which I assume is what happens when you have only delusions of doing the exercise you need to actually do in order to Disappear. So at the moment I'm caught, notsomuch between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea as between the Nazis and the Deep-Grooved Couch.

Tomorrow will of course Be What It Will Be, and it's actually too late in the day to do any damned thing about it now, even were I disposed to do so, which I'm not...because of the aforementioned behind-beingness. In an act akin to bailing out the Titanic with a teaspoon, I intend to do an hour on the bike in the morning before settling down to a day of the day job and phenomenal grammatical pedantry. But that's fooling no-one into thinking I can even maintain last week's loss. So on we go...

If you're actually still looking for a Disappearing Man, you're not really looking for me any more...you're looking for my Dad. He's Disappearing not only in physical terms, but in terms of his recognisable self. I was up there yesterday and he walked into the kitchen...and I got a kick in the head, because it didn't look like "him". It's kind of like an old, shuffling stranger has stolen his body, but doesn't quite know how to make it work. Or how to inhabit his eyes, come to that, leaving them not exactly vacant, but haunted by flickers. He has tomorrow off from being examined, poked, prodded and fretted over by medics. Then on Wednesday, I'm going with him to the next valley over to get his eyeballs injected with Stuff again. Maybe...just maybe, the Stuff will bring "him" back to his eyes, cos right now, he's Disappeared somewhere beyond their reach.

Here's to tomorrow - a day of no-prodding for him, and of assbuncles for me. Blood was 6.3 today, by the way, with absolutely no exercise. Now...must...get...off...couch...and go to bed!

Blinkers

Blood this morning was 6.3 after a 5 mile walk.
The day after the walk has been very blinkered for me - staring at the small  screen of d's notebook, proofing  a non-fiction book for a client. Got something in the region of 80,000 words to proof in roughly the next 4.5 days. Hence the blinkers.

Hence the only nod to Disappearing today being the early morning walk. Likewise tomorrow and the rest of the week in all likelihood. No London tomorrow either - next time I see the city it will be in the full iron grip of Olympic Fever...may any and all wandering gods have mercy on us.

So what Tuesday will look like is anyone's guess. Not that great, in all likelihood. Ach...
One thing at a time - editing, day job and tomorrow, Dad goes back to the Consultant because he's been shivering freezing cold since coming out of hospital. He's also been eating little, roaringly thirsty, coughing up lungs and barely sleeping...pretty much as he was before he went into hospital for all that time.

Time to start spinning plates again, I guess...

Delusions of Disappearance

Blood was 5.8 this morning.

I don't really know how to explain this, but I'm having delusions of Disappearance at the moment - I haven't done very much proper exercise this week bar a couple of walks, but I done done the delusion of exercise - which means I've seriously intended to do some exercise, I've prepared to do some exercise, I've even on one occasion changed clothes to do some exercise...but then, in physical terms...erm...haven't actually done any, for one reason or another.

Nevertheless, going along with the delusions of exercise is a corresponding delusion of Disappearance. I feel pretty good, apart from the occasional sidelong glance at my shape in a mirror, and while my size 34 trousers are pretty damn tight, they still do up well enough to let me spend a day in them. I'm not eating badly, but without the exercise of course I'm slowing down the metabolism day by day, so I'm probably feeling better than I'm doing.

Had a great day though. Went to Cardiff with d this morning. The sun shone, we had a great time, including a breakfast at Carluccios (one of the handful of things we miss from living in London). This evening, I met up with Lee for The Dark Night Rises. Not that anyone's reading this for film reviews, but it was better than the last one, more in tune with the first, and an agreeable way to spend three hours or so. Groundbreaking? No. Fun? Mmmmnot really. But an OK way to spend a few hours if you have nothing better to do.

Dad too, I'm told, was having a better day today than the last few, so everything looks positive...

Unless of course, that's a delusion too...

Getting Laid on 9/11

Things didn't start at all well today. Didn't go walking as I'd planned. Fired up my computer and it wouldn't let me in. Tried to send a text and it wouldn't send...six times. Tested my blood and it came up as 7.0! After what was a relatively good night last night, at that. So all in all, things were not going well.

On the other hand, it was Dad's birthday, and he was at home for it, so that was promising.

But nonetheless, today I feel like a schmuck. I feel like the guy who just wants to dance and sing cos he got laid on 9/11.

Because today, in Denver, Colorado, a guy called James Holmes walked into a movie theatre screening The Dark Knight Rises and killed at least 12 people. That's a tragedy, and at present a senseless one.

But personally, I've had a pretty kickass day. As I say, Dad's home...Not well, by any stretch of the imagination, but home at least, which is better than it would have been had his birthday been two days ago.

I also got some fantastic news today - not one but two new paying clients signed up to www.jefferson-franklin.co.uk, paid their money and will soon be able to get their work edited within an inch of its life.

Hence, all in all, the feeling of getting laid on 9/11. It feels wrong, somehow, to want to headbang with pleasure and dance around in your underwear on a day when things like the Denver shootings happen.

I guess though what we have to think is that things "like" this happen every day to someone in this world - it's a world at war with itself, a world of famine and drought and poverty. But it also has to be, at one and the same time, a world of singing and dancing and loving and laughing and having some fun.

So for me, a good day. Although conspicuously not in Disappearing terms. Did no exercise whatever, put on clothes and gasped at the bulges and splodges and general circularity of my outline again. Maybe it's just the influence of negativity, maybe it's reality, I'm not sure.

Let's put it down to paranoia and move right the hell along.
Oh - the computer? Yeah, it's kinda dead. I have to get its brain washed clean on Monday, and re-installed from a backup. Fun!

Shooting Quasimodo

Sigh...

It's illegal to shoot people in the UK, right?

I mean, still?

(Wanders off, kicking stones, muttering about "stupid pinko liberal bullshit laws...)

There are plenty of people of course who, were there no such laws against the practice, I'd quite happily gun down without a shred of mercy in the street. I'm on a diet, whaddaya want from me?

Tonight though, it's not the fuckwits among the nursing staff at our local hospital (yeah yeah, there are good nurses there too) who would be first in the crosshairs. The most I think we're planing to do to them is not buy them a big-ass tin of biscuits - take that, bitches! It's not the chocolate biscuit manufacturers, or the people with...although these come close...naturally high freakin' metabolisms, who can "eat and eat whatever I like, and never put on weight". Normally, those bastards would be due for some serious Saw-style dungeon-antics in any sanely ordered society. but tonight, even they get a free pass.

Tonight, it's not the couples who order one giant sundae and two spoons on the grounds that "sharing makes it better", or the banks who fuck the system and the nation and then have little enough irony to send you a letter and charge you extra if you go overdrawn, or the Reality TV stars who are clearly not any kind of Real people - no...

Tonight it's Quasi-freakin'-modo.

We live opposite a church. I know, I know, there's every chance I'll get thrown out of the Rationalists' League for that, but we do. Can I just say - churches shouldn't be allowed to open in the Summer time. The long nights give people ideas. Ideas like "not shutting the fuck up with the godforsaken bastard bell-ringing, you pricks!!!"

Some tone-deaf, unimaginative bunch of fucks have been swinging on their bell-ropes for about two hours now. Right across the street from us. It's the lack of imagination that's really key to the urge to smash their skulls in with a hollow-point bullet or two. We had about half an hour of ONE..NOTE...The last quarter of an hour has been a simple downward scale...over, and over, and over again.

I may well snap any minute now, put on some underwear (TMI?) and go bell-ringer postal.

Arrrrrrghhh!

In better news, Dad came home today. Now sitting in his own environment, eating, chilling, coming back to terms with being at home. Finally coming back to some sort of routine. Tomorrow, in addition to the morning walk, there might be some gym action.

No, really, there might...
Blood was 5.8 when I woke up this morning. Walked six miles. Tested again. 5.9 - how the Hell does that work? Humph...

SHUT UP, YOU BAAAAAAAASSSSSSSTARDS!!!!

Craving, Just Craving In The Rain...

There!

Ya happy now?

Driven on essentially by nothing more than the last line of yesterday's blog, I walked six miles this morning. It wasn't...exactly...raining when I started out, so I took only a fleece jacket.

I was about a mile and a half down the Taff Trail when the heavens opened.
By the time I got back, my jeans were stuck to me with the dedication of a stalker. Had to come home and strip off everything...if I could have, I'd have stripped off my flesh and wrung out my bones...but then, if I could strip off my flesh, I wouldn't be doing all this!

Had some fairly serious cravings on the walk - going past the closed chip shop where I binged two weeks ago, something inside me clenched up tight like a ring-fisted punch of need. On the way back, I saw a chocolate biscuit in a puddle, and stopped. I was seriously tempted to scoop it up and stuff it down my throat. It was only a desire to be significantly less wet that stopped me doing it and forced me to walk on home.

The rest of the day was focused on Dad. As long as his blood sugar is acceptable in the morning, he'll be coming home tomorrow.

No, really this time.
He's still pretty down, but we'll see how tomorrow goes.

Going to try and walk again in the morning, even though the forecast is pretty shitty. If that doesn't work, am gonna get back on the bike for the first time in a while...or maybe even break out the gym card that we worked out asses off for sixteen weeks to get. Haven't used it in weeks now, so it'd have a certain novelty value.

Right now though, I'm gonna go and do some very important, high-level snoring. Catch ya tomorrow.

Whether The Weather Be Wet...

I didn't go to Exeter today.

I know what you're thinking - there's nothing special about that. On balance, the majority of the people in the world didn't go to Exeter today.

Thing is, I was supposed to go and see the Met Office - the UK's weather forecasting agency (second largest such agency in the world). They have a supercomputer that they wanted to show to a bunch of journos. Everything was going well, then on Friday, I got a call.

"Hi Tony, this is Beki from the Met Office. You know you're supposed to be coming to see us on Tuesday?"
"Yyyyyeah," I said, wary at her tense.
"Yeah...erm...we've had to cancel the event...due to adverse weather conditions..."

Had a day of such unsubtle absurdity. Dad was supposed to be coming home from hospital today, after a  couple of units of bloos and a steroid shot. That didn't happen. Got the blood, but no steroids and no escape from the ward. While we were up with him the second time, he had a hypo, getting sweaty and grey and obstreporous. We called a nurse.

By coincidence, it was the nurse who, a couple of nights ago had come in to "borrow a bowl of water". A bowl of water which she'd then thrown over a colleague who was leaving. She came in and checked his blood sugar, which was down to 1.3. She gave him a couple of glasses of orange juice, and he came round quickly.
"Now," she said, "I'm gonna check on you in a bit, and if your blood sugar's high, I'll give you more juice..."

It took us a second of blinking to spot this...
"You mean if it's low, right?"
She thought about it.
"Right," she agreed.

Y'know, I meet a lot of Americans on Facebook who don't understand the wonder of socialised medicine - the concept of a service free at the point of need, underscored by the notion that those who can contribute to society do so, even though it's clearly understood that those they don't actively like will benefit.

I still think this is one of the top five ideas had by a British politician in the whole of history. Today though didn't do my argument any good.

As for the million-pound question - the idea of Not Eating Chips is clearly at least part of the way to go (anyone not know this to be true weeks ago?).
Weight today was: 16 stone 2.25.
That's a loss of 3.75 pounds in seven days. Happy to take that, but I have to tell you, that last quarter-pound is gonna bug me.

Thing is of course, I haven't done very much in the way of exercise all week. Did a short walk this morning, but nothing much this week except the walk with Ma on Sunday. Not sure what this week holds with Dad, so formalised exercise time might be tricky to get. Gotta be an early-morning-walk week. Up tomorrow at 6.30 for a proper walk - adverse weather conditions or not, damnit!

Magic Beans

Blood continues 5.2.

You ever had one of those days when you're just...not...hungry?

Had one of those today - Had a coffee in Cardiff and by the time I got to London, simply didn't feel like anything - no more coffee, no food. Worked my ass off through the office's lunchtime, and worked late. At which point, knowing how long it took to get a tube to Paddington, I broke out the walkit.com website and found a walking route. Did it in 17 minutes or thereabouts - something like half the time it takes to get a tube. And of course, totally free. This was a goddamned revelation, and will change my London trip from here on in - apart from anything else, doing that 17 minutes basically burns enough calories for my first coffee of the day.

Stopped in for a single slice of pizza at a French food stall at Paddington, and a smallish bag of...stuff...at Cranberry (basically, nuts, fruits, seeds etc), to take on the train. Got home and d had made me boiled eggs and toast - not entirely sure why, but have had a craving for about a week for this relatively positive plateful of hen-potential. Annnnnd that's pretty much all there is to say today. Survived most of the day on coffee, and was perfectly replete. Don't know what the Hell that's about. Certianly won't be that way tomorrow - d's just given me a tour of the new fridge - there's home-made pizza and chicken rolls and stuff. So tomorrow will be calorifically fun - and familiarly tense, as Dad saw the consultant today, and may...just may...be coming home tomorrow. He and I are both trepidatious about this idea, but if it happens, we'll find a way to make it work.. As for the weigh-in - I'm still hopeful to have at least made my two pounds, but if not, then not. The focus of tomorrow is on work and on Dad.

Now...before I headbutt the computer and drool into its innards, I'm outta here. Here's to Tuesday!

Peruvian Activity Fever

Does hope have calories?

Just asking, cos right now I'm full of hope, and I don't feel heavy, even though I very well may be, because I've done a week when "Disappearing" equates pretty much to "not eating chips", rather than to "doing lots of exercise".

Did lots of physcial activity yesterday, and though none of it classes as actual exercise, it felt like a more virtuous way of spending the day than my usual "ass-sitting-fest", so I didn't feel bad or guilty about the calories that went into my system - in exactly the same way I don't when I do lots of actual exercise.

Today was a similar day. Did my first walk in a week with Ma this morning, then spent the day dashing here and there, doing chores, including some hardcore pruning, which felt agreeably physical. So I didn't feel guilty in having a traditional Sunday roast for dinner this afternoon.

I know of course this is hardly news to anyone, but the effect of doing physical work seems to be to make one feel energised, and lighter in the mind, than non-physical work. If someone had explained this in a way that made any kind of sense back when I was a kid, I might not have to be engaged in this....palaver...these days. I guess it's just not a very kid-friendly equation - sit on your ass and eat sweets=LESS fun than aching and sweating and doing hard work...I mean, c'mon, would you believe that?

Still, that seems to be the way it makes me feel.

At the moment.

Hell, maybe I have some weird South American fever or something...Yeah...
Oh my god, that's it. I have Peruvian Activity Fever..The good feeling is just the first symptom. I'm sure I've seen this on House...
Next thing you know I'll be stripping to the waist and hanging out on building sites, trying to get my fix of physical strain. After that, I'll probably join the army. Then of course, one way or another, I'll probably just die. It'll be inevitable. Another nameless victim of PAF. Tell your children. Warn others. Outside bad, inside goooood. Make them some popcorn and superglue their ass to the couch, or they might start to like the fuck out of exercise. And then we're all doomed.

Doomed, I tells ya...Dooooooomed!!!

The Fix-Its

"Wha-arggh"
For half a second, I believed a woman could fly. d was suspended in mid-air, and it looked like it might be rather fun. Then she crashed to earth, in the form of our kitchen floor. There was a really oddly loud crack as her knees hit the floor, a moment of unbalance and her palms smacked down, and what can only really be described as a bony clonk as her head collided with the concrete. Then, as if to add insult to serious injury, there was a kinf of crunching sound as her nose finally broke the momentum.

This face-plant was the result of us working late into the night to sort out the kitchen one last time, ahead of today. Today was fridge-freezer day. Which meant last night was face-plant night, and ice-pack night (ever tried making an ice-pack when you're busy defrosting every chunk of ice in the place? Interesting...), and painkiller night, and, as it happened, 2AM-getting-to-sleep night. As it happened, due to a clumsy moment on my behalf, it was also smashed-glass-jar-of-oatmeal-all-over-the-floor night. Cleaning that up with a dustpan and brush at 1.50AM was interesting too.

This morning, we woke early, and went downstairs to vaccuum up the remaining oatmeal and glass. Then the day was about getting our existing fridge-freezer removed, and a relatively big behemoth replacement installed in our kitchen. Then the day became about re-Rubiking our flat one last time once it was in place. We shifted furniture in at least three rooms today, some of it heavy, some of it awkward, some of it both at once. Went to see my dad, who seemed altogether less present tonight.

It was a day of aching muscles and actually of working together. Normally, when faced with a flat-pack and a screwdriver, and we end up nipping at each other, because that, after all, is the unwritten function of all flat-pack furniture and DIY, everywhere - to sow heartbreak and discord and despair among humanity. But both last night and today, we worked sweetly, with good humour, with consideration for each other, and with a common agenda. And we got stuff done.

Forgive me if I feel that's worth a couple of hours in the gym.

We fixed everything we touched today...with the exception of d's nose (which apparently is working better as a nose than ever before!), and her knees (which really, really aren't working as well as they have done before), and arguably her head, which has come up with a nice fetching bump. And I think, in some weird way, it fixed our approach to working on projects together too.

On to tomorrow, when I'm reliably informed there WILL be walking in my day, dammit! Ma's picking me up at ten, and we're walking round a reservoir together.

Just...cos...

Blood was 5.2 this morning, which was also a good element to the day. Let's see how it goes from now until Tuesday, shall we?

Fifty Shades of Grehlin

Blood yesterday was 5.9. Blood today - 6.0.

Tried to go for a walk twice today. Kinda failed both times. First time I let Ma know I'd be going past her place, and got invited in for coffee. Ended up staying for longer than planned and talking to her kitchen-builders about the Olympics (14 days from now, folks. We're officially into Prelympic Frenzy...(waves the world's smallest, hidden behind the Higgs Boson, flag)).

Went home via the library, joining on the way. Did some work, as I still, annoyingly, have to do for a living. Decided that come lunchtime, I'd give the walking a second shot. This time, got as far as a shop I needed to pop into. Picked up a thing that looked easy to carry, but turned out to be significantly heavier than anticipated. Decided the uphill walk could bite me, and went back home.

So all in all, have done less exercise than planned, but on the other hand, have eaten less than yesterday. Not starvation-less, I've had two meals, but calorifically less. Still craving chips, by the way...which brings me to something I read yesterday.

There was a story on the BBC News website yesterday about an exhibition at the Science Museum in London, featuring what is known as "the little brain" - the over hundred million neurons in the stomach and gut. That's more than are in the head of a cat. The "little brain" doesn't do much complex thinking of course, but apparently, it does genuinely influence the motional state of our "big brain". Butterflies in the stomach? Yep, a genuine reaction to fear, anxiety or excitement, beginning in the gut and getting transferred upstairs.

The story went on to explain some new thinking about the gastric bypass operation that I'm still bitching and working in order to avoid. The thought behind the op, apparently, has been that by reducing the physical size of the stomach, or its ability to expand, you reduce hunger.

But apparently, it's a little more complicated than that. It's all to do with Grehlin.
Grehlin's a hormone produced in the gut that appears to have an important role in making us feel hungry. By attaching the stomach lower down the gut, you reduce the ability of your system to produce what could be said ot be 'excess' Grehlin, and so you don't feel as hungry, or eat as much. The race is now on to develop a pharmaceutical anti-Grehlinate, or Grehlin-suppressant, that wouldn't involve slicing your innards open and re-attaching them in a slightly different configuration.

What I take from all this is a sense of understanding. In the wake of the binging last week, my mate Wendy said she thought I was like two people in conflict - one who wanted to Disappear, and the other who wanted to sabotage him and just eat everything. While this is a cop-out way of explaining my situation, it's kinda cute to think of myself this way - with my "big brain" in charge of the Disappearing, and the "little brain" in the gut sending ongoing messages, high as a kite on Grehlin, screaming "FEEEEEEED MEEEEEE!!!" like Audrey II in the Little Shop of Horrors. Doesn't explain the whole self-harming drive, but it's a cute thought that helps me rationalise the situation, even though it's probably just me bulshitting myself. Helps me not freak out when the cravings come. "Oh that's just the little Grehlin-junkie screaming," I'll say to myself, and try and push on down under orders from the big brain.


Now, excuse me - hospital calls. Dad seemed much better still last night - awake, alert, engaged, and tracking complex conversations and ideas. Let's see how he is tonight...

Grease Deficiency Syndrome

Grease is allegedly the word. It was the word last night, I can tell you - had a furious nipping sensation, driving me to find a chip shop. Got to Paddington and actually walked the streets, looking for one.

Found one. Had the change in my pocket for a large portion of chips.
"No, dammit," I muttered to myself, scaring some tourists. "It's a Thing! It'a a goddamnedsonofabitch THING!"
Walked away, got on a train, with my brain entirely hijacked by the idea of some hot, greasy carb. We picked up a delay, meaning we were likely to be stranded in Cardiff for an hour between trains.

An hour...

You can get up to Caroline Street, the so-called "Chip Shop Alley" of Cardiif...eat a large portion of chips...and get back to Platform 6 in an hour. Trust me, I know whereof I speak.

Fortunately...I suppose...we picked the time back up, and so there wasn't an hour spare, only three minutes, so my Grease Deficiency Syndrome was defeated by expediency.

But so far, this week, I've not given in to it. I've sooooo wanted to, but I haven't.
On the other hand, haven't done a thing in the way of exercise either. So next Tuesday's results will reflect...Whatever The Effect Of Not Eating Chips Every Day Turns Out To Be.

Chips CHips Chips Chips Chippppppps...
Sigh.

Going walking tomorrow though. No, really, I am...

Honest...

A Life Less Svelte

d posted a picture of me on her Facebook page yesterday, which rather shook me. It was me, in January this year. Research tells me I was 15 stone 9.5 when it was taken, and it has to be said, I look pretty good in it. I've been telling everyone that that was a stone and a half ago, when clearly, it was less than a stone lighter than what I am right now. Which is actually pretty strong motivation to get back there again. Not sure if we have any pictures of me when I was, for one brief shining moment, weighing in at 14 stone 8, but I can only assume that in those, if they exist, I look even more like an ordinary human being.

Meanwhile, met a colleague today, with whom I enjoy an occasional bullshit session.
"You're looking fit," he said, as an opening gambit.
"Hmm," I muttered. "I've put a stone and a half back on..."
"Ahhhh yessssss," he comic-sneered. "I must admit, I rather expected to see more of a wraith..."

It strikes me, from a combination of these two facts, that I need a shift in focus. I have to stop obsessing on the stone and a half, and simply just make progress. 9 pounds or so and I'll be back to the photograph-level. From there, onward and back to a more svelte way of living. Should focus on the day to day and week to week, and make progress that way...y'know...like I did the first time round!

Downs and Ups

Blood was 5.8 this morning. No, I didn't drag my ass out of bed and go walk. No, I didn't get on the bike before work. No, I didn't get on the bike at all. As new starts go, it's taking its time to get going, fair play.
Weigh-in was 16 stone 6. Nearly at the half-stone marker. So it's decidedly, unmistakably up after the week-long binge.

On the other hand, I weighed yesterday, and came in at 16 stone 7 - so clearly, day 1 of Being Alone And Not Binging has had a beneficial effect.

Moving right along, went to see my dad at lunchtime. He wasn't there.

Which is to say, something was there, but it wasn't my dad. You know how when you go to visit someone in hospital and you walk past side-rooms with Really Old People in, and they're lying there, asleep in death-masque poses, mouth open, and the colour of the grave? And you always think "Poor sod...not long now..."

That was what was there. He looked frail and pale and brittle and old and defenceless and yellow, and all you wanted to do was cwtch him in his vulnerability, but you were afraid if you did, he'd snap.

We woke him up briefly, and he didn't seem terribly aware of where he was or what was going on. And he wanted nothing to do with any of it, with anything except sleep that looked too much like something not-sleep.

Went away, came back at 6 tonight. He still wasn't there.
Which is to say he'd been moved. From a kind of side-door Emergency Care section to a ward, a proper ward with a room of his own and a bathroom en-suite. When we went in, he was awake, and alert, and coherent. He'd lost a lot of the yellow colour, and he could speak. He'd been drinking water voluntarily and keeping it down. He was Dad again. He was himself.

Sure, he was himself still in some pain, and still in desperate need of sleep and fattening up, but he'd come back to us from wherever pain and infection had driven him.

He was having blood infused into him, and there was more to come, followed by another double dose of antibiotics tonight. So while he's still got a long way to go to be within yodelling distance of ticketty-boo, he's come back to us again from the grim yellow reaches of the afternoon.

And on we go, with a renewed sense of perspective, and determination not to let him down.

A Disappearing Event Horizon

Today, in all honesty I've been taken over by events.
Event 1 - Slept late. Needed it. Not gonna whinge. Blood was 6.0 by the way.

Event 2 - Day Job. Not entirely sure what happened there, but sort of forgot it was Monday...I think by virtue of being here, rather than on a train. Entirely missed the morning meeting, which was weird.

Event 3 - The Business. had to go and get some flyers made lunchtime. Got there, agreed to pre-pay, bugger said "we don't take cards, only cheques..." had to schlepp back home and back up the hill to them...which was about as much exercise as I got today!

Event 4 - Dad. Was gonna do some biking this evening. Then something clicked. I'd texted Ma earlier in the day to find out how Dad was. Several hours later, there'd been no response. That's always, always dodgy. When she got back to me, it was to say that dad had been re-admitted to hospital with what they were calling "a very bd infection throughout his body". Eek! He's had one dose of "urgent" antibiotics, is getting the second lot probably as I write this, then being flooded with fluids, cos he can't actually keep even water down right now. Three units of blood coming his way tomorrow. Ma came here for dinner and decompression, and we played "Find The Father" on the phone with the hospital - he'd been shifted from where he'd been admitted, and eveybody seemed to think he'd gone to one unit...except that unit. They said he'd gone somewhere else, but when they tried to connect us, we ended up connected to the early universe and a big long beep. Redialled, went straight to the end of the line, and eventually tracked him down. Allegedly, he's comfortable right now. I'd be freaking amazed if that were the case, quite honestly, as he hasn't been comfortable in recent memory, but so much for hospital jargon.

Event 4 - The Fridge Freezer. Longer-term readers will remember that the reason d and I have been turning the apartment upside down and inside out for the last few weekends - even to the extent of cancelling guests - is that we've been making room for a fridge and a chest freezer. Welllll that's not happening now. We're minutes away from ordering a single stand-alone unit...which means much of what we've done in the kitchen may be undone again...or may not. We're not sure. There was much discussion and comparison on websites, and searching of discount codes, and checking of balances, and other complicated palaver. There were apparently Reasons for this. I'm a bloke, so basically a cave full of icicles is good enough for me. Phrases like "superchill" and "frost free" are pretty much lost on me, but I've been taken through the ropes this evening. there were even online videos and 360 degree image tours. So if you want to know what it feels like to be a piece of cheese surrounded by vegetables when the lights go out...I can actually tell you now.

So all in all, I've been pushed along on a wave of events, and now it's time to go to bed. Maybe tomorrow I can haul my ass out of bed and go walking before work...maybe...

The Fat Pants of Shame

"See these?"

I saw them. d was showing me a part of our wardrobe. The part in which we'd put all my new clothes when we bought them - back when I was 15 stone.
"These are out of bounds for a while," she explained.
She wasn't being mean - she saw me Wednesday morning, puling a sweater that had fit me over a bulge that did it no favours. She knew that that whole day I'd felt uncomfortable, and like some sort of fake - like a balding guy with an atrocious comb-over, essentially, trying to persuade the world that what was happening to me wasn't happening. It's not exactly a mindset conducive to progress.

She handed me a pair of trousers from earlier in this journey.
"Till you can wear them comfortably, ok?" she said, hugging me.
"OK," I agreed.
"You shall wear the Fat Pants of Shame!" she intoned, and we broke into giggles.
Tomorrow I begin again with an exercise regime, AND - just so as we're clear - a healthier diet plan. Healthier than binging? Well yes, necessarily, but healthier than moderation too. We're putting away the frozen yoghurt maker for a while. Putting away the mindset of making allowances. But - and this is probably just as well too - we're also putting away a degree of mania that operates in the other direction. The fact is, there's been a good deal of slip-back. As d puts it, my belly had become something of, if by no means a six-pack, then at least a layer cake. Now...it's pretty much back to being a sponge.

That's not going to go away over night. A sense of proportion here is gonna be vital. This is gonna take time - at the medically recommended rate of two pounds per week, It will take me something like two months to get back to where I was, and break open the Good Bit of the wardrobe again. But I'm done with pretending it hasn't happened, that I'm really a 15-stone man who just needs a really good purge. I'm now a 16 stone-probably-odd man, who needs to work hard to push his weight down. This really is Starting Over - Focus, Hard Work, Keeping It At Least Passably Real, and Getting On With It. Let the Hunger Games begin again...

The Key

You may remember last Sunday I said I didn't get back on the bike because of...something happening that I was embargoing till today? That wasn't some part of the more-than-almost lie, this was simply something so silly that it needed to be held from my folks until they came back.

They left on Sunday morning. d and I worked our asses off that day, each on separate parts of our little Rubiks' apartment, making progress and getting sweaty in our work clothes. It got to about 8PM.
"One more hour and we'll call it a night," we agreed. I went back to the office, and collected a large box of garbage to put out. Seeing me stagger down the stairs with it, d asked:
"Shall I come with?"
"Nah, I'm OK baby," I said, gathering the  keys for the garbage and storage rooms.
"Sure?"
"Yeah, no probs."
I pushed on out through the front door.

The relatively new, fire-safe, slamming if let go, front door.
But that was fine, because of course d was indoors, and could let me back in.

"Hold on honey," she said. "Let me open the downstairs doors for you!"
The flats we're in have a coded exterior door, you see, and my girl, in her tender care of me, was keen to rush down and open it for me so I wouldn't have to put down my box of garbage.

It's worth noting at this point that the garbage and storage room keys don't actually have a key to the relatively new, fire-safe, slamming if let go, front door attached to them.

We were down the stairs, about to go out through the coded door when the inevitable failure of our logic hit us.
"Bugger," I said.
"Oh..God..." said d.

A little visual for you. Me - fat bald bloke in sweatpants, a T-shirt, walking socks and slippers. d, in a summer dress and barefoot.

Trapped. Outside at night. No key. No phone. No money. No plastic. No folks (who had the only other key to our place), as they'd left for Cornwall earlier that day.

"Right..." I said. "Well, that kinda sucks..." I took off my slippers, and d stepped into them, so now we both at least had something on our feet. We tenderfooted it across to the police station.

The police station, at that time on a Sunday night, was locked. There was a phoen by its doorway. I picked it up.
"Merthyr Valleys Police, how can I help you?"
"Erm...well, this is not really a police matter, but my wife and I have locked ourselves out..."
Stifled laughter on the other end of the line.
"Who's your landlord?"
"Merthyr Valleys Homes."
"Annnnd you can't ring them."
"Dude, seriously - no phone, no cash, no plastic, no keys...Shared footwear!"
"Oh...right. I'll give them a ring and come back to you. Stay by this phone."
"Not really like we have anywhere else to go. Thanks."
Meanwhile, d had had a truly bright idea. We had the keys for the storage cupboard - where only a few weeks ago we'd put the winter coats, hats, scarves and boots. she flapped off in the slippers, and came back laden. Just as she reached me, the phone rang again.
"Ello," he said. "Talked to Merthyr Valleys Homes. They say they'll be with you in the morning..."
d pulled a wooly hat down onto my head.
"The...the morning?"
She tied a scarf round my neck.

"Nah, I'm only messing. They'll be there within an hour, they say."
"Ahahahahaha...Funny!"
Click.

We went home and sat on the stairs of the block, looking like orphans of the storm, and playing a rather stunted game of I-Spy.
"...something beginning with...D."
"Door."
"Yep."

Shortly, a van arrived, and out of it stepped a smallish, faintly shabby-looking saviour. He came up and we presented him with a locked door.
"Ah," he said. "Locked yourself out, 'ave you?"
"Just a little, yeah."
This was it, we thought - this would be the moment when he revealed some techie bit of locksmith's kit, waggled it about a bit and miraculously gained us entry again.

He pulled out a credit card. d and I exchanged a look behind his back.
He tried to waggle the credit card in the gap between the door and the frame. It didn't work. It didn't work on such a somehow heroic scale as to be almost impressive.

Well, that's that, we thought. We're gonna spend the night on the street.
"Kitchen window's open a bit, I see," he said. It was - about enough for a small Cappuchin monkey to waggle through.
He stuck his arm through the gat, bent it in a way which I had previously thought only orang-utans were capable of, and popped the window more fully open. Then he skinnied up and in, and introduced us to our home again. Our salvation was a house-breaker with a van.

And so, our evening was taken up with being locked out, and getting back in again.

Next morning of course, the very first thing I did was get a couple of keys cut!

d said something very important about this whole episode.
"I wasn't in the least worried," she explained. "We were together - what was to be worried about?"
She was right - we were together, and that was the key to not worrying. About anything, actually.
This of course has come back to us in the wake of yesterday. In the wake of potential disaster last Sunday, she trusted me to get us safely somewhere, and together we had a laugh. Last night, I came back to myself, and the first instinct I had - after taking a shower, admittedly! - was to get back to d, to tell her things, As long as she was with me, everything would be OK.

That's the key that neither of us will ever forget.

The More-Than-Almost-Lie

"I really need to shower..." I said as I walked in, eyes shiny as if I'd just invented the concept of standing under water and applying soap to the body.
"Cool," said d, undoubtedly somewhat relieved.

When a guy doesn't shower for the best part of a week, there are any number of possible explanations. 1) a pathological dislike of cleanliness, 2) a desire to develop a lice farm, 3) a radical busyness...

Without getting out my violin, andother possible explanation suggested by the psychologically-minded is some form of depression.

I had to shower, and then I had to sit down with d, and tell her what I'm about to tell you...before I told you what I'm about to tell you.

It breaks down like this.
Last night's blog was a lie.

In fact, it was a lie representing a week of bigger lies.
I haven't just been feeling the urge to binge. I've been binging. Proper binging. I'm not gonna take you through it all - that element of last night's blog was pretty much true, and covered it. You lie, you force-feed, you lie some more. Most significantly, I've been going to the local fish and chip shop every day for lunch.

I've been entirely unable to not do this since, if I recall...last Friday. Which of course didn't help with the weight, the guilt, or the feeling of utter hopelessness and failure. But neither did any of those things empower me to stop doing the same thing the next day. That, of course, is the point of addiction - you're not in control of a goddamnedsonofabitch thing.

Today, got a text from my mate Brenda. She was so sweet, offering to help me lighten the load she'd sensed in previous blogs, and go walking with me next Monday if I was in the office. Sadly, I'm not, cos I'd love to do that, but this week I'm in on Wednesday for an AGM. Full tilt stuff.

Thing is, it was not only sweet, it made something clear to me. I was out of control. And I could do nothing about it. I wondered, actually, what I'd tell her if we talked it through. Hell, at that point, I was lying to everybody about what I'd done and what I hadn't. It's entirely likely I'd have told her only what I told you all last night - that I was feeling the urge to binge. So - lying to friends. Check. Can I remind you, this is what addiction is ABOUT. It reduces you from your normal, allegedly principled self, into a creature of pure instinct. Pure despicable instinct. So - sorry about that - to all of you.

Thing is - that wasn't a blinding flash of light moment. Went right ahead at lunchtime today, back to the chip shop.
Tonight, went out to see Spider-Man with Lee and his nephew, Orlando (cool kid, freakin' awesome name...which might be even cooler if he wasn't young enough to be named after Orlando Bloom).

Spider-Man has been a hero of mine since I was about five. I've spent at least one birthday since d came over laying in bed watching the entire "1967" series of Spider-Man cartoons. I'm a bit of a geek...in case you missed that.

The new movie...interesting. Andrew Garfield doesn't look like Peter Parker to me, but it's a well-written movie, so he sounds like the Spider-Man of old...

I'd like to tell you that was why I had a flash of lightning moment - y'know, power, responsibility, the struggle of the bad guy to be a good person not an out-of-control animal...yadda yadda yadda...

None of that's true either.
Walked out of the movie theatre, got a text from d. Walked three paces and BAM-

A chunk of hardass fell back into my brain. And that was it. The addiction fell away again, just like that. And Mr Hardass is back.

I have no control over THIS either. I have no idea why I fell so radically off the wagon, burned it to the ground and pissed on the ashes. And no idea why the Hardass fell back in my brain three paces outside the movie theatre tonight. Which means of course it might happen again, without warning.

Thing is, this is the first time I've ever realised what was happening, during and after the event. So here's hoping I'll have a bit more sense next time, tell d immediately, and the rest of you shortly afterwards, and maybe, just maybe, it'll prompt the Hardass back into me quicker.

Hell, what do I know, maybe it won't. But anyway, lies notwithstanding, the Hardass is back in the house. Let's lock this thing down again.

"I miss my skinny guy," said d when I'd told her all this.
"Yeah," I agreed. "Me too. He'll be back soon."

The Urge

Woke up this morning feeling pretty much as miserable as yesterday's entry made me sound. Blood was 8.2, which is clearly unacceptable. Weight was up on Tuesday (Yeah, I weighed, shoot me!). Energy low, motivation subterranean. Funk level warp 10...

Mentioned this to my mate Wendy.
"Moderation's the key, Tone," she said. "Everything in moderation."

Ah.

Shame.

Moderation, clearly, is not very much of an option. It's since I started introducing moderation into my diet that things have been going wrong. It's pretty much the failure of the Aristotelian experiment.

Thing is - for most fat fucks, I'm sure the 'everything in moderation' advice is undoubtedly good advice. But - in case you've missed this, I appear to be an addict.

Not, particularly, a food addict - that's where the mistake comes in to people's perceptions of the thing. It's more an addiction to extremism.
I remember the urge that would go into a binge. It's not an urge to taste good food, it's not a pallette-pleasing, yum this is tasty thing. When the urge comes, you barely taste a thing. When it comes, you don't care what it tastes like. You just push. You push food into yourself, and then you push some more, and then, when you're sure you can't eat any more, and you're entirely physically satisfied, you push some more. The urge is not to taste. The urge is to harm. To hide. To disappear from the world behind a coat of fat and self-loathing. When the urge comes on you, you'll lie. Without compunction, without blinking, you'll say you're eating healthy, and nip out for a lardfest when you know no-one can see you. You'll do it in secret, because secret is private and private is the nature of the thing. You'll lie, and lie, and lie some more, as you feed yourself to destruction, to danger, to physical consequences that eventually take you out of this life.

There's of course a logical answer to this - take a psychological approach, and solve whatever issues drive the addiction to extremes. The point about which is, even when I was facing the possibility of surgery, and the alternative of doing...all this...I've never gotten to a point of wanting to be moderate. Moderation feels instinctively wrong to me. The closest I got was agreeing to the Aristotelian experiment, of trying to add moderate restraint into my life, doing "a bit of everything". Of trying to be Normal. At the point of being at least a stone over the weight I reached while Disappearing, I think it's fair to say I have failed this experiment.

And the thing is...I can feel the urge nipping at my head and my heels. The urge to eat the most harmful stuff I can find, and then some more. The urge to binge.

So what's the alternative? Clearly, the alternative is to get back behind my perspex boxes. Just as extreme in its own way, but with - for now at least - far more attractive personal consequences. So now I'm going to sign off and talk to d, because my perspex boxes changed our world radically the first time round, and, if I go back to them, they'll change out world again this time.

As part of this equation, I went to get some diabetic meds today...and discovered that, contrary to the Atkins-recommending doctor's advice last time, the Zenical is STILL on my repeat prescription. I took it to the pharmacy and was told it's STILL unavailable anywhere. So now I have two prescriptions for the chemical cosh, neither of which I can get filled. The perspex boxes are probably my only hope of not drifting into binging and cataclysmic Disappearing Failure before the drugs become available. So as I say - this is my going away to talk boxes with d.

Shrinkage

"Blimey..."
I got dressed in what might be considered Proper Clothes this morning for the first time in weeks, for the London übercommute. The shirt and sweater combo that had looked rather good when I bought it had a distinct "older bloke" bulge. I padded into the bedroom to kiss d goodbye for the day.
"Blimey," she said. "That sweater's shrunk a bit..."
"Noooo it hasn't," I said, looking at the bulge in the mirror.
"Maybe we should wait a while before we make another pot of frozen yoghurt, eh?"
"Yeah, maybe," I agreed.

The truth is, of course, that clothes you buy to fit you when you're 15 stone look a bit like a sack of kittens straining to escape when you're 16 stone. It also occurs to mew that I'm at the point of an image-bounce...while so far, people have been able to compare to the "old me" - the 20 stone me - and go "Oooh, ahhh...look how much thinner you're looking..."
It's now been four months since I was at my lightest...and that was about a stone and a half lighter than I am right now. So people who last saw me back then can now look at me and suck their teeth and go "Blimey...looking a bit fatter aren't you?" not the least of these people of course is me.

It's interesting to me that this was originally supposed to be a one-year experiment. In some ways, it's tempting to say that that's exactly what it turned out to be - a successful one-year programme, followed by, to date, four months of failure, backsliding, misery, whining and weight-gain. The temptation to simply throw my hands in the air, give up, stomp off and have a sundae is huge. I wish I could say the image in the mirror was enough to jolt me in the ass and get me losing again...but it isn't. Not today anyway. I want to lose, still. I want to get down and down and down...I just don't feel strong enough to push it that way today.

Meh. In London today anyway, stuck in committees, so there's buggerall I could do today. Let's see what happens tomorrow - might wake up with a brand new master plan...

The Almost-Lie

Blood this morning - 6.1.
Weigh-in today...sigh...

Well, the weigh-in today has been bothering me in the subconscious background all day. It's the first time I've ever contemplated out and out lying to you. I mean, I've kept things from you, fair enough, either for timing, or relevance, or rampant bloody-minded egotism, and all of this is fine on my own personal *cough, cough* moral scale. But I've never out-and-out lied to you about my result. But today I wanted to. I really, really wanted to. Here's how I rationalised it - for the last few weeks, I've done the weigh-in after some physical exercise - either a walk or a biking session. And I've tended, on the whole, to drop a pound and a half by doing that. This is not an exact science of course, and neither is it really a deception. It's been a routine.

This morning though, I neither walked nor biked, but got on the scales.
16 stone 0.25, they told me.

My immediate reaction, other than "let's jump on the bike for an hour!" was "Yyyyyeah, but it's not really that, is it, not for a like-by-like comparison...I mean, it'll be a pound and a half less than that reeeeally, wouldn't it? I mean...reeeeallly?

And I genuinely mulled the idea of recording that as the real result - I mean, a pound and a half would have put me on 15 stone 13 - comfortably, if barely, in the fifteens, rather than barely, but irritatingly, in the 16s. But no...here it is, unvarnished - up two pounds on last week.

Funny really - By Thursday of last week, I'd actually lost two solid pounds, down to 15st 10. Then, in the onrush of blisters and bone idleness, I clearly put four pounds back on. Humph. Not a happy camper, but the point is, I haven't done the work, so I can't expect the results. On to another week of hope and hopefully glory. On with the ubercommute tomorrow, to which I'm sort of looking forward - got a couple of chapters from different people to finish editing - including my pal Tig, who's been waiting now since pretty much the Dawn of Time for some feedback on her work. Time to Get A Bloody Grip, clearly...!

Layer Cake and the Power of Advertising

Blood this morning was 5.5, which was fine, especially as - for reasons that I'm embargoing till the end of the week, I didn't get to bike last night after all. Could have done something today. Didn't. Did quite a bit of day-job and quite a lot of business work today - website stuff and Facebook stuff mainly: at the start of the day, Jefferson Franklin Editing had only 20-something likes, now we have about a hundred more. Plus a couple of authors have sent me first chapters to work on, which always holds the tantalising promise of money...which would come in really handy.

That being said, there's every chance that the blisters will have worked their evil way with me come tomorrow. Again, buggerall that can be done about it at this point. If it's not good, it's not good, and we re-focus in a blister-free environment going forward.


"You have bald knees," mused d. We were bathing together - an occasional pleasure that, given a combination of a truly evil bathtub in Stratford and a LOT more weight - has been rather more theoretical than occasional for a few years. "How come you've got bald knees?"

Feel free to insert your own (probably perverse) theories here. I did.

"You've also got the legs I remember," she said. "The legs I married...before I ruined you!"
She didn't ruin anything of course, but she's probably right about the legs. I was heavier than this when we married, but my legs were pretty much OK because I hadn't worked out the bus schedule in London, so I used to walk everywhere that I couldn't tube it to. The legs are fairly stable now I'd say...
"Course, your six pack's a bit more like...erm..."
I pulled the flaps of flab in, to give her my best weightlifting impression.
"...a layer cake," she finished, grinning. "Mind you, it used to be a barrel, so that's progress..."

So this is me - Layer Cake Boy - signing off and facing whatever the morning brings, looking endlessly forward and downward, and full of plans of Stuff To Do for the coming week. Oh and with a shedload more people liking me than they did at the start of the day.
"Pays to advertise," said d when I mentioned this. So, what the hell...

"Writing a book, a script or a play? - Then get yourself a professional editor (no, really, I've told you before, don't take this blog as evidence of the skill!), at recession-friendly prices. Go to www.jefferson-franklin.co.uk now, or email us at enquiries@jefferson-franklin.co.uk for a quote. Prices capped until May 2013 for work up to 200,000 words..."

Diss Con 1 - This Is Your Brain On Shakespeare

Hmm...clearly something's gone wrong with my maths somewhere - wasn't supposed to reach Diss Con 1 till Monday.

Blood this morning was 5.8, which is OK.

People tell you not to operate heavy machinery or make big decisions while under the influence of alcohol, or drugs, but nobody ever tells you not to write blogs while watching a maudlin Shakespearian history.

Last night's entry came to you courtesy of Richard II - one of the more wishy-washy of Shakespeare's historical kings, which happened to be on my TV while I was writing.

Apologies, therefore, for the rather heavy tone of some of the later bits of it. I had an email from my pal Wendy this morning that said:
"Stop being a ponce!"

Sage advice, as ever...only slightly diluted by the fact that when I asked her about it, she admitted it had been written in the wee small hours of the morning, when she was drunk as a glass of whiskey, and in the painful sobriety of the morning after, she couldn't remember what she'd texted me.

Today has been more of the same - decimating the office, discovering things from my past. So far I've discovered:
A page or two of sex scene from my very first collaborative piece - with Karen "Slinky", back when we were both in school. It was printed in dot matrix ink on that old printer paper with the holes in that was fed on a big roll.
A few pages of handwritten novel from my friend Sian, written a decade ago.
Scads of letters from my various friends over the years.
Pictures of the amateur dramatics troupe I was with as a teenager. Was kinda fun spotting all the pre-teens who are thirtysomethings now...
Postcards from my pal Jon, when he went touring the world.  Bittersweet to read them, as he later committed suicide.
My first prize for writing, when I was 19.
A professionally produced 'front-page' all about me from when I left my first job as a journalist...

It's been something of a grand tour of my history, but one thing really springs to mind - none of the things I always thought would be in there...are in there. Always figured by 40 I'd be published. Clearly, this is my own bad, because I seem to do practically anything else, other than write. But have had some really good ideas lately, so intend to get on with things. Likewise with the Disappearing - intend to try and get back on the bike tonight, so as not to let blisters drift me into a standstill-week. No uber-commute tomorrow, so Tuesday will be pretty honestly the result of this week, so I'd hate all the early work to be undone by the sitting-on-my-ass portion of the week.

But I guess we'll see. I'm honestly not stressing out about the thing.

Honest...