The Clothes Horse Reclamation

So - did it. Finally did it. Cleared the clothes off the exercise bike last night, got on it and pedalled. Only did half an hour, but did it to music and clocked over 300 calories, so it feels like a start.

Today though, got into my Jefferson Franklin shirt, and was rather dismayed to see the impact that the last few weeks have wrought. Looking rather barrell-bellied and generally as though when I put a foot down, pavements should crack and pedestrians fall over, in a sort of green-skinned, "Tony Smash!" way. The shirt was blousing rather a lot, and my word but that rankled.

On the upside, got to meet another writer today, in what is fast becoming Jefferson's Cardiff offices - the front left-hand corner of Starbucks, St Mary Street. That was fun, and energising, and positively ego-boosting to boot.

Biking tonight? That very much depends - have to disappear to choir in about 40 minutes, so no chance before I go. Will see how d feels about me taking up to an hour of "our time" after choir to pedal and sweat and sing even more. Heading down the Trail tomorrow morning, though, as I attempt to claw back some sort of normalised routine of exercise and smart eating. Anyhow, that's been today so far - am off to edit some more right now, as a sort of personal treat.

No, really. Doing it purely for fun now. Am not entirely sure I haven't been hit on the head by something heavy...

The Unff Inevitability

So - finished the uber-deadline thingummy yesterday. Can't tell you how much lighter I feel now that's out of the way.

The Nazi Scales would heartily disagree though.
16st 11 today.

OK, serious. But today begins the tail-turn once again. Haven't manageed it yet, but intend to get back on the bke for the first time in weeks tonight.

And yeah, there's a certain "unff" feeling at seeing a reading like that, because of course it's work that has to be done and re-done dilligently now. But after the last few weeks of pressure and deadlines, as I say, feel genuinely lighter in my head, so more ready to do something about it - and have just a smidgen more time to do it in.

So even though the unff feeling - which was inevitable really as I've been in a bit of a deadline tunnel - is there and real, I'm still feeling altogether more positive about the next few weeks.  So let's get on with them, eh?

The Normal Service Resumption

Well...that was a weird week, wasn't it, boys and girls?

Practically no Disappearing Man for a week.

Practically no Disappearing either, to be honest. Been about a month now that I've been off the wagon again. Definitely beginning to show in the re-chunkification - it's probably at least a stone now of regain (14 lbs, Americans). As d remarked to me earlier this week, "Yeah, you really need to get back to it...you're gonna be losing and gaining this same stone forever otherwise..."

She's not wrong. And as I sit here on a Sunday night, I've done buggerall exercise for pretty much a week. Tomorrow...not a whole helofalot will change, to be honest - still up against a stiff deadline tomorrow. Tuesday though...

Tuesday's a whole different ball game. The edit should be finished, and while - let us make no bones about this - there will still be a shedload of stuff to be done, it will be not only possible but probably imperative to get back to the walking, the biking and the eating within calorific bounds. So while there's unlikely to be a significant change to my Disappearing status tomorrow, come Tuesday...there will be a light at the end of the Disappearing tunnel. Tired of it all again, want my energy back, and that only comes with pushing on down and feeling disciplined. So here's to the weigh-in on Tuesday, the philosophical beating I'll take from it, and then the moving the hell on and down.

The Humidity Factor

Apparently, there was thunder and rain in the night. Actually, there must have been, because when I went down the Trail this morning, the grass was wet (Really, Sherlock, tell us more about your amazing deductions...)

Unfortunately, the sun is simply refusing to freakin' quit, so what we've done essentially is swap an oven for a sauna. Ugh.

Weigh-in today was bad, but not in fact anything like as bad as I'd imagined.
16 st 8 - up a pound on last week.

Why Tony, you don't seem to be at all neurotic about that What gives, dude?

I'm not, and here's why. I know what I'm doing, and what I'm not doing. And as soon as the heat and the busyness eases the hell up jusssst a smidgen, I'll be able to change this lifestyle malarkey again, and the weight, then, will drop like that elevator in the second Omen movie - zhunk! - because my system will be so out of practice at doing stuff and eating right that it'll go "Wow, dude, seriously? OK, let's get it on..."

So this barest wobble in the wrong direction can't actually phase me at this point. There are gooderer (as my pal Greg would say) times ahead. But they're not ahead just now.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and wring out my underwear, cos this humidity's a sonofabitch.

The Bionic Lughole

Hey hey. Been too busy to blog this last couple of days, and the weather has continued to be horrendously hot, meaning I've managed nooooo biking, no gymming, nothing remotely productive except a couple of Trail walks.

Today was a big step forward in another area though. Took possession of my hearing aid today. Against a background of a degree of scepticism, I slipped the thing into my ear.

Amazing. Not perfect of course, but still amazing. Suddenly I didn't need to look at people and read their lips. Didn't need to turn my left ear round in a sometimes demented paroxysm, and could join in conversations relatively normally.

So now, your Disappearing Man comes with a cybernetic lughole, an earpod of excellence... Jaime Sommers, the Bionic Woman, and I, both now do that thing where we incline our heads just slightly, and then have scientifically magical, clear or clear-as-dammit hearing. Now all I need to do is get back to the "stronger, faster, better than he was before" ethic of Steve Austin.

There's every chance that tomorrow, your Disappearing Man also comes with a 17 again, but let's see what's what. Haven't weighed at all this week, but the likelihoods are stacked against me tomorrow.

Where the hell's this thunder we're supposed to be getting?

The Tuesday No-Show

OK, so...that was weird. I was available Tuesday, and around, and at a computer...but blog entry was there none.

Essentially, what's happening is this. For weeks now, I've been too busy to bike. It's actually getting to the stage now where I'm genuinely too busy to blog. My Brothers of Song in the Choir now joke that "you can't take your laptop on stage..."

I'm pretty much working as many hours as possible, to get all the work done. Which...is...fabbbbulous.

Never thought I could enjoy working this much. Feels fantastic, but more than a little sick, given that for at least the first thirty years of my life I turned lethargy into a performance art.

As it happens, being too busy to bike has kicked me in my big fat ass this week - the weigh-in yesterday showed me at:
16st 7! Up about five pounds in the space of a week.
Clearly though there's a pathway to beating the hell out of that...I just need to carve out the time.

Not...that that looks particularly likely through the end of July, but hey...I'll get there. For now there's little I can do but be philosophical and attempt to be sanguine about it till I can chip out some time to get things going back in the right direction. Do I want to get back up to 17 stone? Of course not. Can I tackle 16st 7 in the immediate future? Probably not...

The Bizarro Inversion

Y'know, it's been a strange week. You'll have noticed that apart from anything else, it's been freakin' hot here in the UK. This is bizarre even for this time of year. People are dying...of heat...in Britain.

Clearly then, we're in BizarroWorld.

Which kinda represents the week I've had. Things have been going not just well, but crazy-well.
Jefferson has gone through the roof. The day-job is going almost swimmingly. And my job as PRO with the Dowlais Male Choir has brought almost unexpected success this week - press mentions and broadcast bits.

The only plate in my world that has pretty much fallen and smashed to smithereens has been the Disappearing plate. I'll make no bones about this - tomorrow's weigh-in is - to quote Greg Proops, of whose podcasts I'm currently listening to a yearsworth) - "gonna suck major man-bag". But tomorrow, there's going to be a shift in focus. I haven't biked for a good long while, because, apart from anything else, I don't want to be one of the people who dies of the heat. And frankly I still haven't got back on my wagon.
That changes tomorrow. Simple as...as they say around here. Tomorrow we get back on every track simultaneously, and we spin those plates...rather than filling them.

Forward!

Bohemian Rhapsody

This isn't the blog I want to write tonight. That blog is long and complex and probably just a little mind-blowing.

Maybe tomorrow.

For now, I'm going to witter on about something, largely because I can.

When friends from entirely unconnected areas of your life end up giving you the same idea, you know it's time to go do a thing.

Today, we did a thing. We went to Cardiff this morning (It's Saturday, goddmmit, where did you expect me to be, there's a corner of Starbucks with my name on it!), and went for lunch at an Italian resaurant.

Yep, that was it. That was the thing. The restuarant's called La Boheme, and I've had reviews of it from friends in entirely separate corners of my life. So today - on the hottest day of the year so far - we tracked it down and ate there.

Meh...

Wasn't bad, but I wouldn't kill ya for it - which as most of you know, is really saying something, cos from time to time I'd kill each and every one of you  with my bare hands for a guilt-free chocolate cake...

I think d's review sums it up: "I do feel like I'm in a real Italian place, like I'm in Italy, Italy...I'm just not entirely sure it's worth the air fare..."

To be honest though, today will go down in the history of my happiness for reasons entirely unconnected with the meal at La Boheme (including a slightly over-gelatinous panna cotta, so nehh!).

I went to a bank today.

That's rarely an experience that makes me happy, so today was a bit of a red letter day.

D'you know how you start a business these days? You go and see a business banker (I'm rather fortunate in that I used to spend Saturday nights with mine when we were teenagers, as parts of the same crowd. She's also that weirdest of phenomena - a banker with a sense of humour. Instead of one of those "Happy to help" badges they make people wear these days, hers simply has "Caffeine Addict:" and her name on it. I can respect that in a banker...). You ask them about funding and they go "Hmm...well these days, no-one gets an overdraft to start a business with..." (cos gods forbid we should be irresponsible and reckless with money, I'm guessing...) "...but what we can do is give you a business credit card, to make purchases on..."

So you get one of those, and then you start buying all the stuff you need to set up your business. And then over time, if you do it right, you get to put money towards paying off the balance of that credit card.

Well...I went to a bank today, and I cleared that credit card. My business exists now. In the black. In the world of proper, legitimate, technically profit-making concerns.

Can't really tell you how this makes me feel...both my fathers ran their own businesses (it's a bit of a perversion that I ended up being a Socialist, really). My nature-dad ran his into the ground like a paper plane, and there was always the fear when I started Jefferson Franklin that "if you set it up, no-one will give a toss..." - though admittedly, being reliably sober gave me an enormous head start on him. My nurture-dad ran his business to a quite impressive level of success - by which I mean he could pay off his mortgage early and so on. Fees like a bit of a hat-tip to him and what he taught me that today has happened. Even if I were to close it down tomorrow, it now feels like I can add "Entrepreneur" somewhere on my CV.

Of course, I also saw how back-breakingly hard my nurture-dad worked to make his business a success. My business, fortunately, involves abbbbbsolutely no heavy lifting whatsoever, but it has involved wuite a lot of time that otherwise belonged to d and I, or indeed belonged to the effort of Disappearing. That too, I learned from him.

And of course I'm not going to close it down tomorrow. Quite apart from anything else, there are editors in the middle of edits (including me). We've also now got work booked through the end of October, so it's likely the business will at least see out the end of 2013.

What happens in 2014? I don't know yet...though I do have Plans...
What happens to the Disappearing Man? Frankly, he gets a smack upside the head. This week, from Monday, discipline, thy name be Tony - morning walk as per usual, at least one hour on the bike or in the gym, sensible eating. Having crossed the business Rubicon, it's time to hop back across the Disappearing Rubicon and get the hell on with things.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get on - edits to do!

The Banging

Went down the Trail this morning, bought a short-sleeved shirt (as you do) for tomorrow's annual concert of the Dowlais Male Choir, came home and got on with editing.
There was a banging of doors from somewhere in our block of flats. Three bangs, like knocks at a door. Being of course half deaf I wondered if someone was AT our door, trying really hard to get my attention.

No, they weren't.

I went back to the editing.

The banging continued. Three rhythmic, almighty bangs at a time. But now, knowing it was nothing to do with me, I tried to ignore it.

Hafway through the afternoon, the school opposite our block turned on its amps and began a concert, mainly seeming composed of kids from the school doing karaoke in front of a crowd.

Got through the day - another sweltering, sweatbox day, sweetened to a large degree by also being payday (woohoo). Took d out for dinner and a movie tonight (Monsters University, since you ask. Big slow for the first half, ends better, still not a patch on Monsters, Inc).

When we came back, the concert was still going strong. And loud. And unable to locate an identifiable note if its life depended on it. Come to our annual concert tomorrow night, you'll have a much better time...

"Damn, it's hot in here," muttered d, wiping the back of her neck.
"Yeah," I agreed, practically wringing out my man-breasts.
There was a banging. Three loud, evenly spaced bangs.
"What the hell was that?" asked d.
"Dunno," I muttered. "S'been doing that most of the day."
"Y'know, screw it," said d. "We slept with the back door open all the time in East freakin' London...what can Merthyr do to us?"
I pondered.
"I said pretty much the same thing about walking home on new year's eve, 1996," I reminded her. New year's eve, 1996 was, for any newbies here, the night I got what is generally considered to be the living shit kicked out of me on the street in Merthyr, and woke up on new year's day 1997 facing surgery to reconstruct - or potentially amputate - my left foot.
"Humph...spoilsport," muttered d, as I went back up to the office to carry on editing.

There was a banging. Three loud bangs, like a knock on the door, audible over the racket across the road.
"Seriously?!" called d. "What the Hell is that??!"
"Seriously!" I called back, "I don't know!"

Half a chapter later, she came upstairs.
"Ok, fine, you're right," she said. "Can't sleep with the doors open."
"I agree, but why?" I asked.
"A total stranger just came to our door...asking if we smoked," said d.
"That's...odd," I admitted, not thinking about it very much.

There was...no banging. I sighed in relief and carried on editing.
The next thing I knew, there was the sound of a woman's voice from downstairs, using our phone, I thought, to complain to the police about the noise from across the road. I figured d had been doing her 'responsible citizen' thing again and finding out out who else was being disturbed by it.

About forty minutes later, she came up.
"Erm..." she said.
"Hi honey," I said.
"The police are downstairs," she said.
"O...K," I said, still thinking it had to do with the concert, which continues past 11pm.
"The woman who wondered if we smoked came back," she explained.
"Right." I blinked.
"Y'know that banging?"
"Yeeeeees..." I said, cautiously, not really feeling the bottom of this conversation underneath my feet.
"It was her. It was her cry for help. She's been trying to kill herself."
"Holy crap!" I exclaimed.
"She's been drinking, she's tried to hang herself...she came to ask if we had a phone, and she called for an ambulance to take her to hospital. I'm going to go with her, cos the police can't find her dad..."
I blinked again.
"Want me to come with?"
"If you could," she said, nodding. I got substantially more dressed. By the time I came downstairs, her dad had been found and she was heading off to hospital, leaving d behind. Apparently she has a history of abandonment issues, meaning every time she feels a relationship's going rocky, she starts tying knots or popping pills.

Is there a moral to this story?
Actually, there are two. First, my wife's more curious and more caring than I even know how to be.
And second, if you hear a persistent banging that isn't accompanied by evocations to some deity or other...go and check what it is. You might be the person who saves a life...

The Broiled Veal Experience

Yesterday was fun.

Just...such...fun.

Up at the crack of bullshit, couple of hours on a train, going to the day-job office for about four and a half solid hours of committee meeting...most of which was about committees.

Yeah, you heard me, that's committee-squared.
Then back to Paddington, via Starbucks of course to partially revive the committee-dead brain cells.
Got on my usual train at 7.15 last night. There was a guy with a long off-white ponytail sitting in my seat.
"Hi," I said. "Sorry, I think you're in my seat."
"No," he said, airily, fanning himself with an Evening Standard.
I checked the seat number.
"No, really," I said. "I think you are..."
"No," he said again. "I'm in D29."
"Yes," I agreed. "That's my seat."
"Got your reservation?" he challenged.
"Right here," I said. It's probably worth noting that I had on my broad-brimmed brown leather cowboy hat, and standing in the aisle, briefcase loaded, it was hot as High Noon. I began to hear the whistle of the "Good, the Bad and the Ugly" theme as we stared at each other. I narrowed my eyes. He thinned his lips.
"Show me," I growled, lower than I'd expected. His eyebrow twitched. A tear of sweat ran down my face. The air got hot and dry and time went away as we stared at each other. I watched his eyes, bit down on the straw of my Starbucks Strawberries and Cream...
His little finger moved, and I drew my ticket out of my pocket, as he scooped his, slo-mo, up from the table in front of him. In seemingly endless, frame-by-frame motion, we brought our evidence face to face.
"Ha!" I said. "Wait...wha-?"
He was right. He did have a reservation for seat D29. And so did I.
"Oh," I said, my Western cojones shrivelling and my Britishness reasserting itself like a popped balloon of embarrassment. "Oh, I'm...erm...I'm sorry."
"Mmm, me too," he agreed. "Oh, wait a minute," he added, working something out in his brain. "I know what it is - I was on the later train, and they only just upgraded me to this one."
"Ah!" I said, feeling my Western cojones swell with righteousness again. So it was a bureaucratic error, and fortunately, I was on the right side of it.

I'd like to say of course that there was no right side of it. We both had an equal right to the seat, but somehow, in the moment, my British nit-pickery saw perfect sense in the logic that because my seat had been allocated to me weeks ago, and his only minutes ago, I had a prior claim to the ass-space. He agreed, and frankly buggered off, never to darken my ass-dent again.
It was only once I was seated and set up ad the carriage filled with other well-meaning schlubs on their way somewhere that one other fact was borne in on me.

"Damn, is it hot?!" I asked, practising my rhetoric.
d texted me. "Having dinner with your mom. How ya doin'?"
I told her about the reservation-duel and the heat.
"Aircon or veal-broiling death are now our only options," I added.
We pulled out of Paddington.
"Message to passengers in coaches C, D and E," said the announcer. "Sorry to tell you, the air conditioning's broken down in those carriages. Suffer, peasants. Meanwhile for our first class passengers, your at-seat oral gratification team will be moving among you shortly, thank you..."

What followed was miserable. Hot, and sticky, and stinking of mayo from the woman across the table, who insisted on sucking down a salad, and her husband, who chowed through some olives and blue cheese. At one point I reached over and stuck a plastic spork right into her eye socket...

Whaddaya mean I didn't? I certainly felt like I did...

Did I mention the go-slow yet? We were stuck outside Maidenhead station for about 20 minutes.
"Something on the track," the announcer frankly, blatantly lied to us and our brains turned to liquid mush and leaked out of our ears.
Twenty minutes later, he came clean.
"Sorry about that, there was nothing on the tracks. Someone'd left a suitcase behind on the platform, and the bomb squad had to come and investigate it before we could go through..."
A guy two rows in front of me got up, gave an impassioned speech about how they were morons, and how the terrorists were winning, and how no-one complained in this country, and how he was going to write to the Prime Minister. I know, given everything, you probably think this is hyperbole, but I promise you, this is not like the eye-sporking or the First Class blowjob team, this actually happened. When he'd finished and sat down, we all said abbbbbsolutely nothing, and avoided making eye contact with him, in case he had a knife or something. He blew up a couple more times on the journey, usually exploding with single words.
"Morons!"was his word of the evening.
And so we trundled to a missed connection, an hour on Cardiff Cental's platform Six, being eyed up by the enormo-seagulls and praising Zephyr, god of breezes-round-the-armpits at regular intervals. Got in pretty close to midnight...

Stick a fork in me, folks...I'm done.

Got up at 6.30 this morning to go down the Trail with Ma...
Unff...

The Insectoid Instinct

Oh, right - you wanted to know the weigh-in, right?
Oh, 16st 2 yesterday. Not bad considering I've had a fortnight off the wagon. I can handle that, and by next week I genuinely intend to be back in the 15s. Back down the Trail tomorrow with Ma.

Interestingly, I always used to get the crap bitten out of me in Summer before I started all this, because, I'm assuming, my blood sugar was wildly high and the insects followed essentially the same instinct I ahd, and went for the good sweet stuff.

Over the last two years, this hasn't really been a problem. Then last night, after going to Choir committee (cos that's who I am now - CommitteeMan...), I went across to join d and our friend Louise at the Dragonfly pub and restaurant. They were sitting outside, since to sit inside last night was effectively no different to pre-heating your oven and then climbing inside.

Two minutes.

That's all it took for Wales' entire population of flying, biting, blood-sucking bastards to decide that dessert was served. I have bites on my bites right now, which leads me to rub myself up against doorways in a frankly disturbing manner.
Back on the wagon for Disappearo-Boy, cos this is just nuts!

The Metropolitan Comparison

As many of you know, d and I lived for about 7 years together in London, and then left for the comparitive sticks of my home town, Merthyr Tydfil, in South Wales.
I've always said that part of the joy of living in London is the anonymity, which allows people to be just as unique, self-expressive, self-realising and...well, not to put too fine a point on it, deliciously weird as they want to be, without anyone else actually having the time or inclination to give what might realistically be considered to be a whole fuck, let alone a fuck and a half.

And so when we left, a handful of people, knowing my view, nodded sagely, as at another soldier fallen, another tattoed mentalist gone to work in insurance, another lover of the wild, gone, as Billy Connolly would have it, decidedly beige.

"You're gonna miss the weirdness," they said. "The wild and crazy mentalness that only a city can provide..."

Wellll....
This morning, I met a bloke who had all over, bright blue, snowflake-crunchy zombie skin covering his whole face, who was dressed in a light tweed suit, with an alpine hat, out of which protruded a magnificent feather, and who carried an open bottle of beer in one hand, from which he sipped, rather than guzzled with the need of an early morning alcoholic.

This was at 9am, on the way home from Tescos.

Bring it on, London! Bring it on...

Tomorrow of course, I'm going back to London. For an all day committee meeting...about committees.

Cos that's the kind of mentalness you miss...

The Kinky Boots Of Renewed Vigour

The new boots - ohhhh yeah, think so very much. They have something called a steel shank in them. All I know about steel shanks is that they're what needed to be put into ordinary high-heeled shoes so that 18 stone transvestites could wear them in the movie "Kinky Boots".

Hey - almost anything good enough for an stone transvestite's good enough for me!

Fairly blasted down the Trail - with Ma today, which was fun for a change. Looking forward to tomorrow too - same trail, same boots, more music.

Weigh in tomorrow of course, but as yesterday, am not overly stressing about it. Yes, will be over 16 stone, but that's to be expected after two weeks pretty much off the wagon. But today began my return to wagonhood. So really it's not tomorrow's weigh-in that I'll be interested in, but next Tuesday's. Tomorrow's will be pretty much a speedbump in my trajectory of renewed vigour.

Also, helps that it's hot. Practically want to eat buggerall...

The Seven Sins Sunday

It's been a day of seven sins here, none of which are particularly useful to a Disappearing Man.

Woke up this morning with Lust in what it is conveniently euphemistic to call my heart...

Thought about going down the Trail for a six-mile walk...then got back into bed and let Sloth take me.

Opened up an email from a client, full of praise for the job we did for them. Which is as good a way as any of letting Pride into your life.

Pondered the aim of getting my own writing out into the world for a while, and felt a stab of cloying, honeyish Envy that others, that friends of mine, had books coming out or books on shelves, while I remain as yet just "promising".

Then remembered that however I might want to blow off things and feed my own characters on occasional Sundays, the amount of work we have booked (now running into October), will be good for business (which frankly, I think counts as Greed).

Had a moment of Wrath in Ebbw Vale. We'd gone to replace my dead hiking boots (they are ex-hiking boots. They have ceased to be). I'd brought the laptop along to get some work done when d and Ma went Proper Shopping, as I knew - this not being my first time at the rodeo - they would do.
"You don't need to sit and set up baby," said d, as they prepared to go into one particular last-little-shop. "We'll be right out..."
After ten minutes of standing, broiling like a frog on a hotplate, I went and sat in the shade...fuming quietly.
 
Which of course leaves Gluttony.
Gluttony wasn't going to feature particularly highly in my day till after lunching with Ma, there appeared plans for a dessert - fruit, meringue, ice cream and whipped cream...Didn't need it, shouldn't have had it, but wanted it, dammit, so had it.

Have now had a fortnight pretty much off the wagon. That ends tomorrow at 7am, when I - in my new boots - head off back down the Trail. Too little, too late of course to affect Tuesday's result, but this can't just be about Tuesday weigh-ins. If it's to be any damn use at all, it has to be about steady progress over time. And progress begins with a first step.

Tomorrow. 7am.

The Mortgage Muller

Another day of zero exercise. d and her pal Louise were off on a fun day today, so I buggered off back down to Starbucks and stayed there all day, working. I found myself wondering - if I was to take out a second mortgage, I wonder whether Starbucks would sell me my little corner of St Mary's Street.

At this point - with work having begun on an eighteen month bridge project just outside our window, and plans running up to rip off our walls, replace our windows and possibly lift off the roof - it'd probably end up cheaper than all the top-ups I'm gonna need in the next six months...

The Disappearing Malcontent

I need to make something abbbbsolutely clear before we start this entry. There is no real reason for me to want to bludgeon people to death today. I’ve had the kind of day that people who, for instance, go out to work for a living, can only dream about – Woke up, started work, then decamped to my favourite coffee shop – you know the one by now – and spend a highly companionable day enjoying coffee-based and frequently chilled beverages, while I got the hell on with stuff.

Tonight of course, it’s Friday night, and far from being able to relax and go meet my payday-girl, I’m due in extra choir practice in less than two hours. That’s not what makes me want to bludgeon people with – let’s say for generosity’s sake – a nerf-bat…

In fact, I don’t know what’s at the source of this feeling. Possibly, it’s the feeling – entirely self-generated at present – that I’ve slipped out of the groove I need to be in to get on with the Disappearing. Could well have got on the bike this morning at 8…but simply didn’t. Could, maybe, get on it tonight after choir and dinner…but you now as much as I do that I probably won’t.  Hence the sense of slap-happy malcontent grumpiness and nerf-bat obsession.

So basically today’s a waste of Disappearing time. On to tomorrow…

The Sliding Doors Error

Oh...there was no blog yesterday?

Hmm...I stood in the kitchen late last night, going "Did I already do the blog today? Oh yeah, must have done, I crossed it off my list of Stuff To Do..." and didn't think about it again. Feels like a certainty, to be honest...but doesn't exist anywhere in this reality. Maybe I've wandered into a parallel diension, and the "me" in the other version of reality wrote a blog yesterday. Wonder what it was about...

Boots, in all likelihood. Bought new boots back in March, and last week, they died on their heels, quite literally - came home from a walk down the Trail, to find the heels completely gone and full of stones. Since when, I've gone down the Trail a couple of times in my dad's boots, but the buggers are hurting me - have what looks like a burn mark on my right foot, meaning I'm Trail-impoverished till at least Sunday, when hopefully, I'll be taking the dead boots back and complaining wildly.

You'd think, in the absence of Trail, I'd be biking like a maniac.

Notsomuch. Haven't trusted myself to carve time out of the competing deadlines any day this week as yet to get on the thing. Which means more progress in the wrong direction come Tuesday, unless the situation is significantly addressed before then...Watch this lazy-ass space, I guess...

The Normality Bombshell

Ok, so a) I was right in general, and b) I was substantially less right than I'd imagined I would be.

Back down the Trail this morning (Nehh! Told you I would be!), and weighed in at a bad, but nowhere-near-as-bad-as-I-imagined...
16st 2.25.

Even though of course that's post-Trail, so the actual figure is probably more like 16st 4.0, I can handle that. It's probably about a week's solid, disciplined work to see a 15 again, and the weekend was utterly utterly worth it.

It's at this point that I get a clonk on the head from the Giant Frying Pan of Non-God, and while the tweeting bluebirds of consciousness spin around my bruised and hairless noggin, I have to ask - is this what normal people do? Have a heavy weekend, get up in the morning and go "Right, fuck, gonna have to have a light weekend to get this back under control," and then just fuckin' do it??

Wow...whodathunkit?...I'm becoming what passes for normal in this massively dystopian, cackling-in-darkened-room-with-all-the-worst-things-in-the-world-ever century...

Cool beans...

Apart from that, not much to tell you, my little Disappearo-junkies (and yes, I'm pretty much aware that these delusions of audience reveal more about my own egomania than they do about any actual viewing figures I may have. Most people who read this now are people who know me in real life, or know me in Mark Zuckerberg's Matrix). Ate a cereal breakfast when I came back from the Trail, post-weigh-in, ate a moderately carbolicious lunch, ate some grapes, whoop-de-doo...
Am looking at my list of Stuff To Do right now, and it has "Bike" as the top remaining thing to do on it. Let's see, shall we?

The Broken Wagon Extension

"Of course, we've technically got today off," said d, laying in our bed this morning.
I was already on the page with her - I'd set a 7am alarm to go do the Trail this morning, and turned it off at 6.50.
"That means," she said, swinging an idle leg lazily and turning my thoughts to drool and gibberish in my head, "it's still technically the weekend..."
"Yes," I said, watching the swinging knee like someone who's about to walk like a chicken or sing like Elvis. "Yes, it does..."
"So...I mean, really, there's no point going back on the wagon today...as such...is there? I mean, tomorrow's the day really...isn't it?"
I wiped the drool off my chin, as the knee did that peculiar thing that women's knees do, that hitches their skirts or nighties just a fraction of a milimetre and burns the world of men to the ground. In my private brain-world, Im fairly sure Salome had knees that did that. Delilah too...Goooood knees...

"Let's go to Cardiff for breakfast then," said d brightly, swinging lithely out of bed.
"Wa-huh?" I said, watching the knees disappear...

So we headed to the city, and had a day of just being groovy together and reconnecting, and then a bit of time where d had her hair done and I repaired to Starbucks, St Mary's St, without my coputer, and so with nothing to do but chill...which was fab. I've kind of forgotten what that feels like. Feels good.

Today therefore has been an extension of the weekend, and an extension of my period off the wagon. Back on it tomorrow at 6.30 am though, for an appointment with the Trail, and a week of salads and biking and hard bloomin' work. Looking forward to that actually: all this lazing about and eating nice things without neurosis is starting to get to me.