Disappearing II

Right. Well...that's a bastard.

When I started the first Disappearing Man experiment, it was on the 1st of March, a Tuesday.

I weighed 20 stone 7.5, and I'd had enough of feeling fat and having no energy and having health issues because of my weight.

Tomorrow, I'm drawing a line. It's the 1st of November, a Thursday. Tomorrow, in all likelihood, I start writing a novel again for NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. Tomorrow, also, in all likelihood, I take on some new responsibilities with the Dowlais Male Choir. Tomorrow, also, I start a month of annual leave, and have shedloads to do for my business.

Tomorrow, we start again.

Weigh-ins will, from now on, be held on Thursday mornings, not Tuesday mornings. Because I weighed in today, and I've had enough of feeling fat and having no energy and having health issues because of my weight.

Now - because I'm going to weigh in tomorrow - I'm not going to tell you what today's weigh-in result showed. But tomorrow, I'll weigh-in again, and tell you what it says. Tomorrow we begin what I've threatened to begin several times.

Tomorrow, we begin The Disappearing Man II. Do Not Adjust Your Set...

The Monday Inaccuracy

My pal Matt posted on Facebook this morning how he'd been stuck in the ghastly Monday morning rush-hour. I smirked, and reminded him that it was actually Tuesday.
"Oops," he said. "I guess it just feels like a Monday..."

At no point during that exchange did the importance of Tuesdays hit me. I've done a day, eaten breakfast, lunch and two bowls of d's really killer tortilla soup (seriously, folks, you need to taste this stuff, it's phenomenal!), and was just in the bathroom, thinking about what I could tell you about the day, when a day of the week tapped me on the shoulder.

"Ahem," it said. "Tuesday here."
"And?" I said, having a natural propensity to get a bit stroppy when days of the week tap me on the shoulder.
"Think about it," said the Tuesday-memory. I did.
"No, seriously, what?"
"Tuesday...bathroom...anything?"

"Oh, crap!"
"There it is," said Tuesday.

I completely forgot to weigh in this morning. No idea how that came about, I just...did.
Means of course I should weigh in tomorrow. Not looking forward to that at all - still feel fat and bloated at the moment, but at least, this week, it feels like I'm starting back on the right track.

Humph. Doing something exercisey with Ma in the morning. Not sure what yet. But something, at least.

Hermit Junction

Walked this morning, in what turned out not to be the quite-reasonable-amount-of-light, rather than the ghastly-dark I was expecting. Felt nicely virtuous when I got home. After which, I haven't moved outside the door. All day.

Which is kinda what happens when you have two jobs, I guess. On the upside, today was free of temptation. had a cereal breakfast, had the final incarnation of d's fantastic chicken tortilla soup, had eggs on toast for dinner, and that was that, more or less, so you could say the hermit lifestyle gave me a chunk of exercise and a reasonable food intake.

Tomorrow needs to be moderately different though - going to do another early morning walk, then have to pop to my doctors for more pills (having discovered today that I was out of diabetic meds). Also, have an old friend coming round at about 2, so should in all probability get out the vaccuum cleaner (I eat with a style and finesse somewhere between Mr Snuffleupaguss and the Cookie Monster - its' not a style that's kind to carpets). So - stuff to do, calories to burn, yadda yadda yadda...

Hermit Junction is pretty good fun, all in all...

Transform-A-Soup

Another reasonably good day today, though no big chunk of exercise. In particular, the triumph of the day was soup.

d made a tortilla soup that was simply divine, and I had it as both a pre-choir and post-choir meal. The amazing thing was before choir, it was a Mexican-flavoured clear soup with vegetables. After choir, it was a gorgeous rich Tortilla soup, with creme fraiche and lime, and it was just addictive. I had seconds, and it turned into a Mexican chicken queso soup...The final portion is in the fridge for tomorrow's lunch - the base soup, the lime, the creme fraiche, the chicken, the tortillas - it's a glorious jigsaw puzzle, to be put together at will. I'm not sure what it says about my current state of being that I'm really quite looking forward to that tomorrow.

Also looking forward to getting back on my morning walking-horse, which I intend to do tomorrow in the godawful dark. From here, we claw back progress, day by day and step by upward step.

Ramble On

Think that's it.

Think I'm starting to get myself back. Think I've had more or less a good Disappearing day.

Had coffee and a single slice of toast (free, no less) at a new local cafe called Trenchers for breakfast, then was whisked off to the roof of the freakin' world, otherwise known as Morlais Gold Club. Dammmmmn cold up there this morning, but Ma and I were there for a good old Ramble.

The Ramblers' Association is a group of people who walk. No, let me re-phrase that. The Ramblers' Association is a group of hard-ass motherfuckers who WALK! 
Let's be clear - there's strolling, which is just the ambulatory form of getting from A-B. Then there's walking, which is the proper, calorie-burning version of getting from A-B. Then there's what these mad bastards do. What these mad bastards do is like walking, except not only uphill, but uphill, over rocky outcrop, down cliff-edge, through river, across mud-swamp, down dale and then, just when you figured they were done, back uphill some more to finally kill you off. 

We only did a moderate walk today, a five-miler, but god....DAMN...it wasn't like any five miles I've ever done before. Except possibly the five miles I did with Geraint while he was here - and on some of the same route, come to that.

Made me miss my brother, made me ache like a bastard...and - and I can't sufficiently explain this - made me want more. Will join them next month, and hope to do a 9.5 mile "energetic" walk, and to go forward from there to others.

Meanwhile, on returning from today's Ramble, had beans on toast, and this evening, d made some deeply nourishing home made chicken soup, so had a couple of bowls of that. That's healthier than recent days and weeks, so to me, it counts as a good Disappearing day. Now, on we go, to smaller and better things.

Down the Water Slide

Today has been a little better than recent days, in terms of food and exercise. I feel like I've jumped into a water slide, and within the next few days, I'll pop out, and splash into the new reality I keep thinking of and craving.

I've felt big today. Looked at my face in the mirror, and felt it rather more square than recently - like a Henry VIII face. Walked around a bit with my hands behind my back, and felt them harder to join than they have been. I'm not having either of those things - I'm just not. I want to be able to look at my face and recognise myself, and I want to be able to walk the way it feels natural, without stretching and straining to do so. Here's to the other end of the water slide.

Tomorrow, I have a Ramble to go on. Five miles, around an old local landmark called Morlais Castle, as part of the local Ramblers Association. Ma and I are going for a yomp around the countryside.

Here's to the other end of the water slide, I think. Maybe it'll get here sooner than imagined. I feel sort of ready at last. The song seems to be lasting...

The Length of a Song

In my life, I've had two dads - one bio, one "proper", so to speak. One did his biological bit and was otherwise unreliable but legendary. The other was a model of sticktoitiveness, and raised me, along with Ma.

It has struck me more than once that my own character essentially plays out the dichotomy between those two. My bio-dad would have brilliant, world-conquering flashes of inspiration, and get hyper-enthused about his new project...for about a day or two. But when it came to sustained effort, he tended to lose interest or dynamism and try something else after a while. My "proper" dad, the one we lost just last month, was the complete opposite - he was a stubborn sod, but a man entirely of his word. If he said he would do a thing, it was done, and done well. 

With me, when I'm in a stubborn bastard phase, I'm like my proper dad...and then some. I become almost fanatical about the things I'm doing. When I'm not, I tend to be brilliantly careless, roaring, everything'll-be-fine and cavalier.

Walking up to the store tonight to get some eggs and bread, I had my iPod with me.

Tom Jones did some wailing about tearing down the house...Nah...

Tenacious D tempted me with songs of sex and...well, more sex...and rock and roll...Nah...

My thumb found the Shrek soundtrack. All Star and I'm A Believer by Smash Mouth. Bad Reputation and Stay Home...Hallelujah by Rufus Wainright...I'm On My Way by the Proclaimers...

And for the length of an album, I shook myself. I could embody this music. I could be an All Star - in control of my life and my destiny, not constantly overweight and at least a little bit sad. All it would take is concentrated stubborn bastardy, a vision of a goal, lots and lots of sweat and pain and self-denial and a staggering amount of determination. And - for the length of this handful of songs - I truly believed I could do it.

What happens when I wake up in the morning, the Me of Now is not responsible for. The trick, really, will be to extend the length of the songs until, say, I've done a really, truly good day, which I don't feel like I've done for a while - I feel like the exercise I've been doing is largely dabbling, and the food intake has been too large. But if I can do one really good day, it will extend the song into another day...and every day you do successfully is, to borrow once again from the language of addiction, one day more that I'll have been calorifically "clean". And once they start piling up, the thought of not adding to the pile becomes painful, so you do more, you ensure you eat less, to "qualify" for the idea of a good day. And from good days, in accumulation, come good weeks, come good results, comes the Disappearing Man.

When I did this the first time, it was a lightbulb moment, a kind of switch that went off and made me want to change my life. I haven't had that now, I've had a handful of songs, and I know how fickle my determination can be under their influence. But here's hoping for one good day. One good day, and then another...Maybe I need some longer songs? Hmm...Meat Loaf, Meat Loaf, Meat Loaf...

RSI

Walked around the park five times this morning, after failing once again to smash our new alarm clock to tiny electronic smithereens. Then went to work at Ma's. Hours and hours of ass-sittery, focussing, today, on a handful of peer-reviewed acadmic papers.

In the history of Mankind, and probably, now I think about it, in the history of Womankind, there has - I guaran-freakin'-tee you - never been an occasion when one human being has turned to another and said: "You know, this Being Alive gig is all fine and dandy, but what I really need now is nine hours of peer-reviewed academic papers. That'd set me up jusssst right..."

I think, by the end of it, my eyes had given up. All I could see were little waving white flags in front of my face.

Then there was choir.
I like choir. I enjoy choir. But there have been occasions when going to choir has seemed like the biggest, most unlikely challenge in the world. Came home tonight, sat on the couch and thought "It would be soooooo nice to just sit here."

Went in the end, mostly because hard as it felt to do, explaining why I hadn't gone would have been even harder.

Why I wouldn't have gone was RSI.
Nono - not RSI as you know it. Not Repetitive Strain Injury. This was a case of Random Sadness Incidence.

Not sure what the Hell it was about, but from out of freakin' nowhere, I felt sad. Not breast-beating, woe is me sad. And not everything is futile and we're all gonna die sad either. Just...sad. Kinda...pull the bedclothes over your head and go to sleep till the world is better sad. Random sad.

Sitting in choir before the actual singing started, I texted a few friends to find out whether this had happened to them, and if so, what they did when it happened.

Sally-Anne said "Ah yes. That. Not really any quick cure as such. Just remember it's probably nothing to do with real life as it is right now."

Wendy, being Wendy, said "Remember everything good in your life, remember there are people that love you...and get the hell over yourself!"

She has a point - sometimes, great chunks of my day-to-day memory of things like that just float off into the Arctic distance, to disconcert the polar bears something chronic.

Sian, joint oldest of my female friends, said "Music. Loud music, full fat Coke and sing your head off!"

Which was quite handy advice in itself, sitting in choir. So I de-focused the sadness, did a stack of remembering, and sang my heart out. Got a special mention and a brief round of applause, even, for learning so much of the repertoire so fast. Clearly, they've never heard of my particular brand of fanatical musical geekery, so that was pleasing. Home now, RSI dissipated, supper doing, Stuff To Do list still bulging, but minus at least a couple of solid, immovable objects.

And on we go.

The Self-Image Deception

Got up at 6.30 this morning. Not my idea, frankly, but d is showing faith in me.

Generally, I've always hated it when people showed faith in me - it's tended to mean they're taking me too bloody seriously. But in a spouse, the occasional bit of seriously-taking, and indeed the occasional bit of faith-showing, can work the human equivalent of miracles - not least by making the faith-recipient believe in themselves when needed.

So d has installed an alarm clock in our room, that I don't, truth be told, now how to turn off or alter. So at 6.30 every morning, the wretched thing is going to screech in my ear, give me a brief heart attack, and make me get out of bed and refrain from smashing it against a wall.

Went to the gym with Ma this morning - y'know...since I was up.
Did some treadmilling, some arm-pulling, some up-sitting, some back-stretching and a chunk of bike-pedalling. Left feeling all sorts of good and energetic and virtuous about myself, sliding a hand down my belly and convincing myself it was a bit flat-ish.

Then I got on the Nazi Scales.
17st 6.75, they said.

Zoiks!

Just goes to show how wrong a self-deluding person can be, I guess. So of the original 5.5 stone I lost, I've now put 2.5 back on. That sucks. It's been fun, but it still sucks.

Thing is, there's always faking it till you make it. Discipline, even when not imposed by the self, will have some effect, presumably. So the clock, when it screeches in my lughole at 6.30 tomorrow, will induce me to go walking down the Taff Trail with Ma before work. And so on...Time, surely, to get some sort of discipline back in my life. I'd like, I think, to be at most 16 stone 7 pounds fore Christmas - so, 14 pounds in 9 weeks (yes folks, 9 weeks TODAY is Christmas Day. Panic now. Panic long and hard and mighty....right now!). Should be achievable, shouldn't it? With a bit of discipline and a nauseating clock?

Let's see what happens...

The Ageing Irrelevance

Ever noticed how you don't often feel age creeping up on you when people say you should?

Last year, I spent my birthday running around like an 8-year-old in a "6th Doctor's Costume" T-shirt at a Doctor Who experience, then came home to Merthyr to see my folks. Didn't feel older at all, because if anything, 40 felt massively empowering and right.

This year, it's been pretty much business and pleasant hours. I took the day off work, as I always do, and d, Ma and I went to Cardiff. Spent some time and some money in That's Entertainment - basically an enormous DVD and CD recycling store - had a great lunch at Madame Fromage (introduced Ma to the restaurant, which was a fun thing to do), got bamboozled into owning some weird walking trousers, had an exceptionally good Starbucks, and came home. d gave me some really thoughtful gifts - a "Writer's Clock", with the normal numbers replaced by things like "Proof," "Edit," "Draft," "Stare Into Space," "Chocolate," "Margarita" and so on...Laughed my ass off at that. A great polo shirt with a Stephen King quote on, which is so fabulous I have to share it with you: "The road to Hell is paved with adverbs..."

Class. Can't read the man's writing, but as a human being and a commentator, he's cool.

And so on. It's been a satisfyingly grown-up birthday, compared to last year's, and I enjoyed them equally but in different ways. Came home and jumped on the computer, as there was Much To Do on this day off - adverts to approve, and a manuscript to try and finish editing. Weirdly, as things have suddenly exploded, I've booked my first job of 2013 this afternoon. We're pretty much chock-a-block with work till then, and with the prospect of more coming in shortly. Who knew what started out as a relatively safe mid-life crisis would develop into a Real Thing?! Still have to clear the set-up costs of the business though, so bring it all on, I say, and let's make money!

Still working on the manuscript now, actually .My Stuff To Do list this week would make...
Well, you know in Genesis, Chapter 1, God's all "On Day 1, I did this...Then on Day 2, I did that..."?
If he saw my Stuff To Do list this week,  He'd scratch His beard philosophically, suck His teeth, and go "Seriously? In one week? Ach...can't be done...just can't..."

Still - what does He know, eh?
I don't feel any older, I feel pretty good in myself, and while the Disappearing needs to really kick the hell back in some time soon, I feel on top of all the bits of my life that could threaten to overwhelm me. If this is what 41 feels like, I'm happy to take it.

A Trying Year

Tomorrow I turn 41.
Just did a quick search, and the weigh-in after I turned 40, I was 16 stone 12.5. This week I'm likely to be 17 stone and some-odd. That means that on balance, in Disappearing terms, the whole last last 12 months have been entirely pointless. But, really speaking, probably only just.

If I can just get snapped back to Doing, rather than trying, I could forget most of what has from time to time been a very trying year, and push on back down, as I did for the five months following this week last year.

But how to get snapped back...is anyone's guess. Of course, for now, I can keep trying, on the fake it till you make it principle - that's got to be better than just letting completely go...


...right?

The Yodic Ultimatum

"Do...or do not. There is no Try..."

Anyone?

I'm now of course picturing the handful of geeks I know who read this blog acting like Hermione Granger in a classroom, but I'm going to swiftly and continually ignore the lot of you and act like no-one knows, so I can have the pleasure of telling you.

This, of course, is Yoda, the small green wisdom-cactus of the Star Wars movies, with an eight-word contribution to the world of philosophy that will, the way society is going, one day out-rank practically everything Aristotle ever wrote.

Of course, linguists and logicians have been bursting to bitch-slap the smug little puppet-bitch for decades, because of course there is such a thing as trying. You can try and succeed, or you can try and fail, just as you can not-try and succeed, or not-try and fail. It makes more intrinsic sense when you try and succeed, and it makes as much sense when you don't try and fail - that's the point of training, after all, to establish neural networks and muscle-memory to increase the statistical likelihood that you'll succeed.


Ahhhhhhhh....
I know you don't care, but I feel so much better having got that off my increasingly impressive chest.

The thing is, this Yodic Ultimatum has been on my mind lately. While out walking with Ma, I told her about how the middle way, the idea of Aristotelian restraint, had spectacularly failed for me, because there's something hardwired in my brain that actually gets more depressed at just having "a little of what you fancy" than it does in either the state of gorging or the state of complete impulse-control and self-denial.

The middle way, I said, seemed pointless to something deep in my psyche. Pointless, and what's more, untenable.
"...which in itself if a bit depressing, because it means I'm going to spend the rest of my life either Disappearing or Reappearing, rather than just Being..." I said. Ma had been sympathetic so far - she herself has always hated shades of grey (the condition, not the books. I really haven't asked her what she thinks of the books. All in all, it hasn't been the year for it). She's always said that she can live with black and white, but that grey - the middle - drives her absolutely up the wall. At this bit of self-pity though, she took issue.

"Yes, but it's your brain, isn't it? You rule it, it doesn't rule you..."
I told her the jury was probably still out on that.
"...cos you're a stubborn little bugger when you try," she added.

And there's the rub. I'm not a stubborn bastard when I try. I'm a stubborn bastard when I do. When I can switch my brain into "this is what is happening now" mode...then this - not not-this, not nearly-this, not close-to-this-but-no-cigar, but this, the whole this and nothing but the this - is what will happen. Trying to do this, wanting to do this, finding ways to explain why I'm not doing this, setting deadlines and goals and strategies for this-achievement are all, to me, entirely meaningless. I either do this, or I do not. Trying exists in the middle, the soggy zone of ordinary human temptation, emotion, and swamp-like blurred focus. Plenty of people try, and succeed. But for me, there really is no practical purpose to trying. I either have to do, or not do.

Can't tell you how much it irritates me that the hairy-eared green homonculus happens to be right about that. but he is.

So what does that mean, exactly? Where do I go from this not-exactly-revelation? I have no freaking idea. I feel Disappearingly rudderless, able only, through trying, to hold back the worst of possibilities. And it occurs to me, in moments when I want to give myself a break, that in 12 months of Doing, I lost five stone, and in seven months of merely trying, I've only put back on two of them, so there IS a quantitative value to trying.

It's just not as much good as Doing, that's all...

The Tachycardia Backfold

There are some things in life you grow up hating and fearing. If your family has a history of heart disease or strokes or cancer, you're always...aware of those things, on the grey edge of consciousness. Recently though, there have been things that have become scary out of nowhere.

I was the first in my family to introduce tachycardia into the mix about two years ago.
Then my Dad was admitted to hospital with tachycardia...and never came out of hospital again.

"Saw every hour last night," muttered Ma when she turned up for our gym visit this morning.
"Whyzzat?" I muttered, eyes still closed and generally hating the world.
"Had a cup of tea and three Diet Cokes last night," she explained.
"Riiiiight..." I said.
"Had tachycardia for hours," she owned up.
"Allllllrighty then," I said. "And we're going to the gym...erm...why?"
She didn't answer, but kept on driving. Turns out she's had tachycardia before, but never quite as bad as this.

"Welcome to the world of de-caff," I said, and the world dissolved into rowing machines and sit-up machines and bikes and pain.

It's weird, feeling like I "passed on" a condition to both my parents, while understanding that such a thing is impossible. It's kind of a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, tachy-wachy...thing. Just...truly...weird.

The rest of the day has been a bit mad - business has exploded! Suddenly, people are finding us on Google, and coming to us left, right and centre. Just as well I have pretty much the whole of November off from my day job...might just about have time enough to do the night job during the days!

18th October - The Blur

Unff…

Am exhausted as I write this. The UberCommute yesterday started at 6…something, Did the day in the office, then went to the hotel I’d booked for the night. It was better than the one from last week, but I was up on something like the fourth floor…which means, obviously, hauling the iron lung up four floors every time I came back to the place. Went for dinner at a local pizzeria that took two hours to serve me a pizza. Got home to the hotel at about 10.30. Having dragged my ass back there, exhausted, I couldn’t sleep. Stayed awake till 5AM, dropped off for two hours, then had to do another day. Did it, got to Paddington, got on the train to come home and got stuck outside Reading.  Missed my connection up to Merthyr, and am now on a bus to take me up the Valley.

Somewhere along this line, I’ve finished a magazine, attended The Committee Meeting That Would Not Die, edited 30 pages of a really quite good romantic comedy, completed a free sample chapter for a sci-fi timey-wimey book – Don’t know if you guys know, but I offer free, no-obligation edits on the first chapter of any book – eaten pizza, drunk entirely pointless de-caffs, and, for no readily identifiable reason, splashing out ten pounds on the DVDs of the Aliens movies.

The thing is, I remember all of this only as an abstract, blurry, what-the-Hell-was-that kind of way. Neeeeeeed to sleeeeeeeeeep. Gym in the morning.

Did I mention….unff…

The Disappearing Popsicle

Brr.

Went to bed last night freezing. Woke up several times in the night....freezing.
"Want a hot water bottle?" asked d blearily on one of those occasions.
"N-n-n-nooo," I said, wrapping the blankets round myself more tightly, and unchivalrously shoving my frozen feet against her legs.
To be fair, what I meant was "Sure, if we had a service robot who would go and get me one, that would be lovely, but since we don't, I don't want you conforming to stereotypes of the subservient wife waiting on her man hand, frozen foot and finger, and I happen to know that if I set foot outside this bed right now, I'll just freeze and die, so I guess I'm screwed..."

She sighed.
"Numpty," she muttered and went back to sleep. I shivered, hearing the godawful wind batter at the windows.

The last time I woke up, d was already awake, playing backgammon on her phone.
"C'mon sweetie, time to get up. Your mom's gonna be here any minute..." she said.
"She can't," I said. "We can't possibly go walking in this weather. Sounds like it's blowing a gale out there..."
I texted Ma.
"We still doing this...walking...thing?" I asked.
"Yep. Be down for you in about ten minutes," she replied.
"Fuck," I said, and still refused to get out of bed.

Nevertheless, when Ma got here, I was all but dressed. In fact, I was DRESSED. You know how some kids with overprotective mothers turn up at school on the first day of winter looking like the Michelin Man, wearing every scrap of clean clothing they own and unable to move their arms? It was kinda like that. I shuffled out onto the balcony and down to meet Ma. We walked a quick-ish six miles, which earns you a breakfast at the best of times.

Didn't do my weigh-in for another three hours. I was sitting here, still in all my layers and terrified to take off my boots, for fear of instant frozen-toe death.

When I did brave nakedity for about 45 seconds, today's weigh-in was:
17 stone 2.75 pounds. Not great by any means, but oddly, better than I'd imagined. There is now A Plan in place - Ma and I will do two stints at the gym per week, plus one of these walks. Anything extra is kind of fat-busting gravy. So hopefully, should be down in the 16s again before too long, and hence back to 15 in long, slow, arduous due bloody course.

When d came in from work tonight, she flashed her eyes at me.
"Finally warm up?" she asked.
"Yep," I admitted.
"Good. Before you go to bed tonight, you're in a hot shower or a hot bath, Mister. There will be no more of this bullshit. Last thing I want is a Disappearing Popsicle..."
"Good plan," I agreed. Then I came in here to tell you this, and now I'm going downstairs to warm myself on companionship for the evening.

London tomorrow, UberCommute and an overnight, so that'll be delightful...

The Jeepers Expostulation

There comes a point in every man's life when he looks at the vista before him, takes a breath, and mutters "Bloody Norah, I'm so out of practice!"

Had that moment this morning. Regular readers - of whom there still appear to be some, despite this not having been a weightloss blog in about seven months - will remember that yesterday, under the influence of a highly delightful Buggerall Coefficient, I mentioned that today there would be a return to the gym, with treadmilling, and rowing and biking and...suchlike.

There was very assorted Suchlike this morning. There was walking, and rowing and biking and pulling down on an upper-arm-type nightmare.
"Jeeeeeepers! I cried. Everything...just...hurt. Legs and knees and arms and back and stomach and ass. Even my flab-rolls hurt, which I didn't think was possible without something like a switch or a switchblade.
And I didn't do 20 minutes of any one thing.

Rest of the day has been spent at my desk. And the next few weeks look...innnnterestingly full of work. Paying work, which is always helpful. Still, tomorrow, Ma and I are heading down the Taff Trail before work. This, I somewhat laughingly believe, should be easier than this morning's experience, because if nothing else, I've been using my leg muscles relatively recently.

Not so the arms, the stomach, or anything else I've used today.

Ow...ow...owowowowowow...

The Buggerall Coefficient

Blood this morning was 7.3.

That's it.

That's the only remotely interesting thing about today in Disappearing terms. It's been a day of sitting on my butt, editing, while d - mainly, I think, to give me space and time to do precisely that, has been out and about - and quite possibly hither and yon, doing proper grown-up stuff like grocery shopping and food prep.

Feels weird but simply wonderful to be home tonight. To have nothing to go out and do - no choir tonight (after the concert last night, we get a break!), no badminton, no nothing. And no UberCommute tomorrow, as this week it's Wednesday-Thursday that I'm away from home. It's like my life has today been subject to a Buggerall Coefficient, a nullifier that is so unspeakably pleasant I really shouldn't even be telling you about it here.

The secret art of Buggerall is a much maligned and misunderstood discipline. One must get one's head in a state of Buggerall calm...which is like Zen calm, only less namby-pamby. And then one has to simply Do Buggerall. This is not like meditation, or sleep, or any suchlike consciousness-raising malarkey. It's purely and simply Buggerall.

Having said which, the editing I've been doing today has been tremendously good fun - seem to have stumbled on a rom-com to edit, which is a particularly fun way of Doing Buggerall and getting paid for it.

Of course, the bike, which is sitting behind me, has been scowling at me for several hours now, demanding I leave the Path of Buggerall and Do Stuff on it. But that, I think, is for tomorrow - meeting Ma at Unfeasible o'clock and we're going to the gym...together. Tomorrow, there will be treadmills, and rowing, and biking and sweating and all suchlike manner of perturbation.

For today, there is the blessed calm of a white office, with a white desk, and a fun piece of work to edit, and the Buggerall Coefficient. And now, there is going downstairs to spend a proper, full evening with my Cariad.

See - much maligned and misunderstood, the Buggerall Coefficient. Try it...I promise, you'll love it...

The Wall of Sound

Nice day. Good day. Cardiff day. Day after pay day.

Good night. Choir night. Concert night. Mainly wasn't singing out front, though dressed the part. In a lovely moment, was called onstage with all other choristers in the audience, for the last two songs.

Now understand - I've been in choir practices with these guys for about a month now. I've never heard a sound like this, being in amongst it, being part of it, like being the living breath of sound. Amazing stuff.

It's true that I had to go to Cardiff for a bowtie, because none of the ones available in most ordinary stores didn't go long enough to fit around my humungo-neck. Annnnd it's also true that I came clean today about an experience earlier in the week.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I was sitting here on my ass, when my heart went nuts. No caffeine-trigger, no exercise-trigger, no nothing, just suddenly, a heart going "Nnnnnah, fuck this, I want out!"

Did my usual thing, lay flat, put my legs up, did some slow breathing, and in less than a minute, had no problem. Annoying though, without a trigger. Can only really presume that the trigger in this case was lack of diabetic control - bloods have been a bit high recently - 8s sometimes - but there's a possibility of seeing a cardiologist to address this shit. Who knows - the original Disappearing Man project was partially spurred on by a tachycardic incident or three. Let's see what this one generates.

Continental Shift, or The Return of Orca The Whaleboy

I woke up sort of dead this morning.

You know how scientists will calmly tell you that you stop breathing for a few seconds at a time some times in the night? Yeah - woke up smack-dab in the middle of one of those, so suddenly I was awake, and not breathing, and not, really, able to work out how to do it either. Felt kinda like my heart was about to either burst or shut down. Then I blinked, and normal service was resumed.

As it happened, d had to go into work early today, so this happened at stupid o'clock, and after a little while, I got up and decided that if I was going to be awake at such an hour, I was going to make use of the time - got up, got dressed, got out the door, walked five miles, just like the old days. And, just like returning to the old days of anything, it ached like a sonofabitch with lack of practice. Felt reasonably good to do though, especially given the weirdly cardiac beginning to the day.

Ma was going to Cardiff today, so she offered to pick me up a pair of size 38 black trousers for tomorrow's choir concert.
She brought them round on her way home. They didn't fit. They didn't fit in the kind of way that a gallon of semi-melted butter doesn't fit in an egg-cup. She took them away again, mystified.
"Can't believe you've gone up two sizes..." she said.
"It's Continental Shift," I muttered. "It's like I lost five stone from all over, and then grew two of them back right here," - I almost bit my lip in frustration at this point, holding a kind of wobbly housebrick of human flab at my belly - "S'kinda vexing really..."
"Yeah," Ma agreed, going away again.
About forty minutes later, she called me up.
"I've just picked up a pair of size 40 and a pair of size 42 in Tescos," she said. "I'll drop 'em round."
She did.
The size 40s didn't fit. The size 42s did...just about, with a judicious amount of in-breathing. Thankfully I'm not actually singing tomorrow night, or I'd be screwed.
The outfit of course is all black and white. Never mind penguin suits, for I am Orca, the Whaleboy!

Oh, one thing from last night's choir practice which is entirely unrelated to Disappearing, but made about 30 grown men lose it completely.

Tomorrow night for the concert, we open with a Cole Porter medley [Spoiler Alert - ah, damn, too late...], included in which is a chunk of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". Our choir mistress had impressed upon us previously that the need to use long vowels was perhaps never as important as during the phrase "A count-ry es-tate, is something I hate..." And yes, I've broken the words up as we sing them, rather aggressively as instructed.

Last night was the final rehearsal before the performance, and it's understandable of course that instructions and imprecations get rather truncated mid-song. As the choir sang "A count-ry es-tate, is something I hate..." with, as it happened, short vowels, a voice rang out.

Let me just say that if you've never heard a short blonde woman yell the first syllable of the word "country" at a group of 30 grown men while standing in a grand old church...you haven't really lived. The giggles began in the top tenors (my section!), and rippled all the way down to the basses, faces turning red, then puce, then eventually indigo with the effort of holding it together enough to make an intelligent sound to the end of the song. Then we all lost it.
The choir mistress winked at us.
"I won't be able to yell that on Saturday," she noted. "Long vowels, pleeeease!"

It's six to five and pick 'em whether the choir gets through that song tomorrow now.

I'll let you know. Meanwhile, I'll be in the corner operating the microphones, adding my own sotto voce whalesong to the whole affair. The choir mistress did collar me at one point though, saying this would be the first and last time I wouldn't be singing in public, which means I've passed my choral probation. More walking, more working out, more fitting into the goddamned trousers called for!

The Penguin Principle

There was a game when I was a kid, that seems to have morphed over time into the basis of a shedload of "surveys" across the social media. The game was "Which are you?"

Which Star Wars character are you? Which Superhero are you...from each universe - Marvel? DC? Which sitcom are you, etc etc...

In many versions of this game, I was a split personality. Which Winnie-the-Pooh character are you? Well, I was the brain of Eeyore, stuck in the body of Pooh. And most particularly, in the "Which Batman villain are you?" version, I liked to think I had the brain of the Riddler, stuck, waddling along, in the body of the Penguin.

I offer this preamble to explain that I never much cared for the Penguin. Penguins per se, absolutely, they were fab. But humans that looked like penguins always rather irritated me...

Is there a point to this? Yes, there really is, I promise - stick with me.

I've never owned a Dinner Jacket (or tuxedo for the Americans). I've never wanted to own one, because I don't want to look like that - all black and white and round and waddley.

Of course, my dislike of the outfit on me was also heightened by the one time I was asked to wear one for a works do, and I walked into a hire shop, and asked:

"Would I be able to-"

"I hardly think so," sneered the assistant. I walked out again. 

So I've never owned a Dinner Jacket, and never worn one.

But now I have to. It's the uniform for performers in the choir. I was up at Ma's today, and she offered me one of my Dad's DJs. I tried it on, and while it absolutely doesn't do up, it will probably do, at least to get me through this Saturday, which is the annual concert of the choir.

The trousers on the other hand were a no-go. They were size 36, non-stretchy, and there was a significant belly-wodge  over which the material would simply not go. I'm hoping to buy a cheap pair of size 38s ahead of Saturday. It was a sobering moment, realising I'd expanded by not only two stone, but also two sizes. Something will be done, of course...you've heard all that before. I'm sick of saying it this year. 

Energy, discipline, routine etc. We all know what needs doing to get this going again. Why I can't seem to simply do it is anyone's guess....

This is where I waddle away, like a sad, disconsolate penguin...

Raaaaaaaaaaaaawk...

The Financial Malfunction

Is it me? I seem to have a fucked-up pound sign burned onto my forehead this week. Couple of days ago, a credit card I thought was dead rose up to bite me in the ass with a letter saying I'd missed payments.
Cue an hour on the phone talking to fuckwits, and all because a payment I made as a one-off last year had been taken, silently, a second time this year, giving me a balance I knew nothing about.

Today, I tried to take some of my money from my business Paypal account and transfer it to my business bank account.
"Hmm..." said Paypal. "We're not sure about you. You could be an axe murderer for all we know..."
Paypal took my money and is pondering whether I can have it. Still...some twelve hours later. When it told me I could be an axe murderer, it said it might take four hours to make up its mind. I can only assume it's making up three of its minds right now.

This evening, I was happily working along when the phone rang.
"This is your bank," said the brusque guy on the other end. "We need to speak to you urgently."
"OK," I said. "Well...I'm here."
"Need to give us your details to clear security," said the charm school graduate.
I gave him some. They weren't good enough for him. "You've failed security. Call us back immediately. It's urgent," he said, then hung up.
Cue another bloody hour, checking my accounts for fraud, searching through folders for passwords, calling them back and talking to people.

Turns out it was all down to the fact that I'd used a card to buy flowers for my brother-in-law, who has a birthday today. Suddenly, I appeared to be 3500 miles away, hence immediate alarm bells and the clanging down of jail cell bars in the office of my mind.

Tomorrow, you lot have to give me a freakin' break and let me have my own bloody money, alright? It's the law!

The Satiation Excess

Yesterday was weird. Weird being in London and not looking forward to walking through my own front door at the end of the night. Weird finding a hotel to crash in overnight. Weird walking – as I did, for no real reason other than the doing of it, to prod myself into some idea of nostalgia maybe – up almost the length of Oxford Street by night…singing Train songs, in case you’re interested.

There’s a word you probably know that has a strange resonance to me, and probably to all Disappearers. The word is Satiety.

It means fullness, satisfaction, contentedness. I have a slightly weird relationship to it as a word because when we were trying with increasingly bright desperation to get my Dad to eat something and build up his strength to battle the infections he picked up in hospital (yep…still rankles…), the doctors said he “had” satiety – the sense of being full, of not wanting more, and that was why he found it so difficult to eat, and why he often threw up what he did.

I think many aspiring Disappearers have a weird relationship with satiety. Eating the way we eat is not often about reaching a point of contented fullness. I know myself I’m often goaded on by a whispering uncertainty of hunger-to-come, if that doesn’t sound entirely mad – the notion of “Yeah, I might be full now, but if I don’t keep eating, I’ll be hungry later…”

Yesterday, walking up Oxford Street by night, I found a Starbucks that was open late. I’d hate a couple of coffees that morning, and nothing of substance till then. I was actually walking up Oxford Street looking for somewhere to eat. Place after place though turned me right off. One place didn’t, but I couldn’t bring myself to go there without d, so I walked on, sated, with my coffee in my hand, to find my hotel.

That was interesting. Apparently, they’d “upgraded” me from a single to a double room. Hoorah – except the double room was exactly the width of a double bed, so I had to get in and out of the thing by climbing up the bed from the bottom. I called d, and felt my emotions twinge for home. I also knew if I told her I’d lived the day perfectly happily on a couple of Starbucks, she’s have given me a firm look, and she’d probably worry. So, late at night though it was by then, I went to the Indian restaurant a couple of doors down, and had some food I didn’t particularly want – but which the whisper was saying would stop me waking up in the night hungry. Once I’d eaten it though, I was sorry I’d gone – simply because light though it was, it was an infusion of late-night calories I could have done without. I still felt the same satiety, but now my brain was working out columns of calories and work, and giving me its own interpretation of a stern look.

Sigh…

There’s no pleasing some brains.

Today, I’ve had a coffee and a bagful of assorted fruits and nuts from Cranberry, but I’m on the way home. On the way home with a good supply of editing commissions for the business too, as it happens. Now that’s a kind of satiety I can really truly get behind. More than anything, the contentment of home is quite enough to fill me up for a while.

There will of course be no weigh-in this week – Next time will be 16^th, prior to another two-day stint in the Smoke. Deep, deep joy…

Into The Wasteland

I've had a good day personally. Finally got the office to a state where I can see it working, with a little last-minute humanisation from d.
Followed that with a good happy sing at choir practice and now...here I am. Here we are, d and I together, enjoying a shared space and time.

I'm occasionally given to ponder the meaning of happiness. This is about as good as I can get - the pleasant, knowing, sharing of space and time and smiles and touches that say a world of things that merge the past, the now, and all a world of days to come.

Which makes tomorrow's UberCommute suck all the more than usual. Not only does it involve the usual Christ o'clock train journey, but it doesn't involve the evil-bastard commute back tomorrow night. Instead, I'm going to a book launch that isn't my own - always, and without exception the worst kind of book launches to attend, in my experience. That means I'll be too late to get a train home at all, and so am either staying over with my pal Sally-Anne, or staying at a B&B overnight. While of course there's no reason why a nearly-41-year-old man should bitch about the occasional viccisitudes of the his job, having so nice a time together makes it harder even than normal to leave in the morning, and harder still to make it an overnight.

Into the wasteleand with the Disappearing Man...

The Curve

Funny the things you notice.
I've been doing a lot of work in the office today, excavating the right spaces and places to make it work, and help, eventually, to get the bedroom box-free -yes, I still haven't got the bedroom box-free after nine months here. It's a big sliding puzzle, OK? Nehh...

Anyway, while doing it, I spotted my stomach in a small shaving mirror. When I saw it, I had to go look in the big bedroom mirror. That didn't help, because I saw it again.

I've got a curve back.

I mean...when I was down to 15 stone, beneath the prow of the man-breasts, there was - at least when I sucked in - a kind of concavity. Over the last few months of putting back on, I've been OK with some of it, because there's been a sort of straightness beneath the plateau. But today...well in fact undoubtedly before today, but certainly today in every mirror I pass, there's a curve. An outward, spherical curve. I'm regaining my Humptiness. This cannot be allowed to go on.

Oh, and a note for Tuesday-watchers. There will be no weigh-in this coming Tuesday, because for the first time in quite some time, I'll be away form the Nazi Scales this Tuesday, doing an overnight in London.

All in all, it's probably just as well, seeing the curve...

If It's Not One Thing...

My brother Geraint, while he was over with us, developed a way with a wink and a line that I'd first read a few years ago.
"If it's not one thing," he's say, with an affectionate smile, "it's your mother..."

I'd first heard the line spoken by British actress and raconteur Maureen Lipman, whose mother became famous in her own right by virtue of the affectionately humorous stories told about her by her daughter to...well, pretty much any audience who stopped by. In particular, Lipman's mother was somewhat immortalised in a series of advertisements, when she (Lipman) herself played a Jewish mother...of about her mother's age and apparently general disposition. Lipman's daughter's a playright now, so I like to think what goes around comes around...

It occurs to me from time to time that I have a Mother.
It occurred to me, for instance, the first time I brought a nice, respectful girl, raised in an Italian American family, home to meet my folks, and Ma, with a knack that has pretty much always characterised her approach to conversation, strove to put d at her ease by welcoming her into our bizarrely functional family with the line:
"Ohhhh don't worry about us, love - we're just like the Mafia..."

It occurred to me again while driving with her in London. Having missed the turning she wanted on the Leyton High Road, Ma pulled up to a spectacularly sudden halt in the middle of the road, and began backing up, straight into somebody else's BMW. Its owner hooted at her rather urgently, as did several cars behind it that had had no option but to pull up. She nodded at them in the rear view mirror, as if to say "Yes, I'm coming back...you might want to do something about that..." The BMW cowered for its paintwork. Meanwhile, I was in the passenger seat, trying very hard to be invisible.
"Mum...he's going to shoot you...Really, he is - they do that round here..."
She sniffed, a certain air of "I'd like to see him try" set firm on her face. Eventually, among a hail of hooting and expletives, she backed up far enough and made her turning, giving the BMW a cheery wave of "thank you" as she did so.She didn't get shot, though to this day I have no idea why.

I went up to her house today at around lunchtime, to wait for a couple of people - one who was going to repair the cooker that apparently gave up the will to live immediately after my dad's funeral, and one to fix a string of under-cabinet lights.

Ma, it should be pointed out, wasn't there for a very good reason. She was off getting a swanky new part-time job, telling hospital managers what the hell to do. You see, the thing about her is she's not just a fund of demented stories. She's actually also the kind of person who, if indeed she found herself in the Mafia, would undoubtedly be running the Family by lunchtime - and making sure they all cleaned their shoes, to boot. She's the kind of person who, if she'd been around when God allegedly said "Let there be light!", would have waited a while, had a good look round, and then presented him with a list of improvements. Which would work. And then, knowing her, she'd be off polishing the stars while His Almightiness set about implementing her recommendations.

Anyhow - when she came back in, taking her new-found swankiness in her 4ft 10 stride, she came out with a line that left me choking on my coffee.

"Oh," she said, innocently. "I saw a report on the news last night about that Jimmy Saville, and thought of you."

This will be lost on non-Brits. Jimmy Saville was a DJ-cum-TV-star in the 70s and 80s, then an increasingly weird reclusive figure in the 90s, and then a corpse. This week it's been alleged he was also (prior to being a corpse) a pervert, raping and molesting teenage girls in his celebrity heyday.

"Thanks!" I said when I'd managed to not choke on my coffee. Turned out her mind was working on a different level - I'm an editor in my day job, and we'd had a discussion yesterday about the editorial power - you get to choose what you report and what you don't. Then last night, the editor of a leading news programme had apparently chosen not to cover the Saville story - that, I reeeeeeeallly hasten to add, was the connection that made her think of me. Really.

d and I took her out for dinner tonight, to "celebrate" her new job. Feels just a little weird to be celebrating anything just let, a little Hamlet-ian, so to speak, but really, the celebration was just an excuse to stop her paying, which she does without fail if you don't body-slam her to the ground and steal her credit cards.
"Oh," she said, out of nowhere. d and I braced ourselves - most of her weirder stories start with an "Oh."

"Did I tell you about my run-in with the Military Wives?"
Again, some context - the Military Wives are a singing group of...well, of military wives, essentially...who scored a number one at Christmas with a song to raise money for a charity for veterans.
"You ran into the Military Wives?" I asked, bemused but not entirely surprised.
"When I took Geraint to the airport, I went shopping afterwards," she explained.
"Riiiiiiight," said d and I in unison.
"Went to Marks & Spencers," she added - this being a leading British department store.
"And I was just pootling about, minding my own business. Then I heard cheering in the distance. Thought they must be having a staff meeting or something. Anyway, I carried on, went up to home furnishings, got bored, came back down, and I'm just having a squint at the price on a new table-cloth - oh, did I tell you, not a nibble on that dining table, it's been in the paper three days now. I'm not happy...anyway, so I'm looking at this tablecloth when a woman prods me in the arm..."
"O....K..." I said.
"'Excuse me,' she says, and I look up. Didn't fancy the table-cloth that much, it was too stripy. 'Excuse me madam, would you come this way?' she says. And I'm looking around, thinking 'what's going on here?'"
She wasn't the only one by this time.
"She says 'Can you come this way a couple of steps, please, you're standing on the catwalk.' And I'm like 'What?' So I look up properly and I focus, and there, down the far end of this catwalky thing, are the Military Wives, all sort of looking at me. Turns out Marks was launching a Military line - y'know, trench-coats and stuff...and they'd booked the Military Wives for the launch. And there I was, just wandering in, looking for a table-cloth that wasn't stripy, and they're all looking at me."
I rubbed my eyes a little, trying to get the scene out of my mind.
"And this woman's leading me off this catwalk-thing, and she says 'You can stay for the buffet afterwards if you like, but there's due to be a woman on here in a minute with boots and a stern expression...' So I said 'Oh, well I'll stay then, if there's a free buffet...'"

All in all, I think Geraint had a point. Pretty much, so far in my life, if it's not one thing...

Oh, PS - if anyone wants to buy a dining room table...get in touch. Please!

Going Round In Circles

"Feels like we've slipped into a parallel dimension," I grunted, kicking a stone. I always kick stones when I'm in a funk. I become practically stonophobic.
"Yeah," said Ma. "Exactly that..."
She doesn't kick stones. It's a flaw, I think. She had a look on her face that suggested she wanted to kick something.
"I keep thinking we should be worrying about Dad now," I muttered, kicking an entirely different stone. "He should be in hospital right now, having his clinical trial. We should be worrying about what to feed him, and keeping him mentally engaged and trying to make him laugh and...and...STUFF!" I said, kicking the living crap out of a third, entirely innocent stone. It skipped off into the lake to have a sulk of its own.
Ma sighed.
"Yeah," she said again. "Instead of which, we're just...sort of..." She sighed. "Going round in circles."
We rounded the edge of the lake, on the first in a long while of our lakeside morning walks.
It was a little on the nose, I admit - walking round and round a lake, feeling like it's an analogue of life at the minute.
We walked.
"Look," said Ma. "The trees are pretty."
I looked, nodded. They were.
Somehow that didn't help.
"Yeah," I said. "Pretty..."
We walked around the circle one more time.

Funky Town

Meh...

Blood was 6.2 this morning. Got on the bike, did almost an hour. It was dull. Seem to be in a right old funk today. Nothing seems to be right, and I have very little idea why.

Met my Biodad's third wife and chief widow this morning. Biodad, for those not generally keeping up, is not the one who died recently, but the one who died some years ago of hangnails and gangrene. In the aftermath of his death of course, she was ashen and devastated and frozen in her space and time.

Today, she's in bloom. She's bright, and healthy-looking, and smiling.

I'm not sure whether that's the bright spot of my day, or the point at which the generally subconscious funk began.

It's probably some running-deep pustulent bastardy, whining away in the undercurrent of my brain, all the usual postgraduate psychobabble bullshit - starting from a "How can she be so alright?", graduating to a "Will I ever be that alright...and will Ma?", passing briefly through a "What does that mean about us if we do?" phase, and basically collapsing into a deflated shit-flan of wanting to throw myself into a vat of ice cream and see which bit of me freezes first.

Didn't even go to my choir tonight, because somehow, it was like there'd have been something ultimately joyless about my joyful noise.

About to call it a night and go to bed. May...just conceivably...get up at 2 in the morning to watch the first Presidential debate...cos yeah, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm a US Politics Bore given half a chance.

Time to quit Funky Town though, and get on back to Groovy Avenue...

Row Row Row Your Boat...

Weigh-in this morning showed me as 17 stone 1 pound - that's a technical loss of 2.75 pounds on last week, though in the interests of honesty, I weighed again last Wednesday and was down to 17 stone 0.75, so we'll see whether tomorrow the "settled" weight is any better than that.

While in all technical terms, I began back behind the perspex last week, I also had a couple of very large meals last week and at least one thoroughly gorgeous dessert - which is hardly perspex at all. I also never actually SAT my ass on the bike.

Annnnnd I still haven't. Stuff to do and all that. But I'm off in the next few minutes to do another badminton session. And tomorrow...something happens. Looks like the weather will be shitty, so probably not heading down the trail. Either getting on the bike or heading to the gym tomorrow morning before work - no exceptions, no excuses, none of my usual bullshit. Feels like being plopped in a rowing boat at one end of the Thames (or more appropriately these days, I guess the Taff), and having to row myself to the other end. Long, tedious, and bloody hard work, but all beginning with the determination to pick up the oars and pull.

This is me...pulling.

The Stretchy Pants of Orange Salvation

Back to London today for the UberCommute. Now, it should be duly noted here that I’m under a strict ban, enforced by d, and adhered to by me for my own good. I take no Xenical on either a Sunday or Monday, because the power of the little blue pills that turn your innards to a volcanic orange grease-fountain is built up in the system over some days, and, as has been pointed out to me on more than one occasion, the last thing you want is to be faced with an UberCommute when your ass is in a particularly explosive frame of mind.

So I was good yesterday – took no grease-pills. Only actually ate one meal yesterday, but it was a biggie – a Sunday lunch at a local hotel called Ty Newydd. Last night, I was fine. This morning…I was fine. Stopped off at Starbucks for my normal couple of de-caff skinny lattes (or buckets of pointlessness, as I affectionately call them), got on the train. Got off the train, feeling fine, grabbed a smallish selection of nuts and fruits and the like from the Cranberry store at Paddington station, walked through Hyde Park and got into the office.

Colin, our administrator, sauntered in, looking happy.

“Tony!” he exuberated, as he always does on a Monday morning, as if trying to catch me in a hungover state.

“Team meeting at 11.30?” he suggested. “Unless you wanna just get it over with?” I looked at my watch – it was 11.21.

“Hellllno!” I exuberated right back at him. “Some of us have spent a few hours on the train, and need the bathroom,” I explained. “Sorry if I’m sharing too much there…” I stood up and grabbed my Kindle, in preparation for the walk down the corridor.

And that’s when it happened. It was a thoroughly ordinary fart. The only hint of its superhuman nature was a certain…puffiness about the trouser. The point that concerned me more, really, was that I hadn’t known it was coming. I smiled, a vaguely rictus smile around the room. My mate Sally-Anne frowned at me, as if to say “Dude, seriously, you look a bit creepy now.” Colin nodded slowly and headed back to his own office. I clenched a fist around my Kindle and walked, fast, but with very small steps, to the bathroom. It was occupied. “Baaaaaaaaaastttttaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrdddd!” I yelled…I’m fairly certain, only inside my head. The guy who was in there came out almost immediately, looking patrician and haughty to the very roots of his hair. He was carrying a kettle. As ya do.

“Good morning,” he sneered, walking past me as if on stilts of pure condescension.

“Yeah, whatever, you old fuck, get out of my way!” I yelled…again, I’m fairly certain, inside my head.

I got in, locked the door, whipped down my jeans and underwear and began…

…

…checking.

This is an undignified procedure for one who’s never had the delight of changing a child’s diapers. Starting from the front of my underwear though, I was beginning to relax – clear, clear, clear, cl-

That wasn’t clear. That was a devastation pattern, a dark nightmare, sneering its mysterious existence up at me.

“Oh, Goddddd…” I whined.

Could be sweat, I thought, trying to convince myself. I took a floret of toilet paper, and experimentally wiped it across the offending dark spot.

Orange. Bright, and everywhere, orange.

I did the best I could to clean them up, then set about myself.

You know that thing babies sometimes do, where they end up with shit all up their back, and you have no idea how they do it? The only thing you can think of is that baby’s asses come equipped with periscopes for projectile sewage disposal, especially to put new mums and dads through their paces as the baby does its Exorcist-child thing.

I have now been that baby. I was grabbing armfuls, yard after yard of toilet paper, going higher each time, searching for the boundary of the disaster area. Every time I’d start higher, thinking “it can’t possibly have reached up here, it was only a little farrrrrt!” and wallop, there it was, the incriminating orange evidence – bloody everywhere!

Took me about 20 solid minutes of clean-up and one terse rattling of the doorhandle by some other poor schmuck who – bless him – thought he wanted in right then when he truly, truly didn’t, before I was ready to face the world again. The underwear, I decided, couldn’t really be saved. I’d cleaned them as best I could, but I ended up throwing them in the bin. I wodged myself into a whole new dimension of sanitary protection, and had little option but to go Commando for the rest of the morning, clenching with all the will my sphincter possessed.

At lunchtime, I went down to my local branch of Marks & Spencer, picked up some new underwear, and a pair of stretchy sweatpants. I took them to the cashier, then was suddenly struck by a thought – what if the trousers didn’t fit?

“Scuse me…have you got a fitting room?” I asked, suddenly. She pointed absolutely opposite her desk. I smiled sweetly and followed her finger. 

Now…I do realise that it’s technically deeply unethical to try on trousers while going Commando and having suffered a Xenical explosion – if they hadn’t fitted, I might have had to buy them anyway, along with a pair in the next size up – but fortunately they did. I high-tailed it back to the office, and changed. New pants, new trousers, new man – sure, technically, I ended up losing my underwear and bringing my jeans home in a Marks & Spencer carrier bag, but apart from a degree of mortification, I got off relatively lightly from what could have been a truly disgusting event.

By the time you read this of course, I’ll be home from the UberCommute. I take pills on a Monday night…

Batten down the hatches, Disappearing Folk…