The Alcohol Equivalency

d remains lurgied, but ventured outdoors at lunchtime. As it happened, there was a Continental market in town, so she came back with a gift for me - an assortment of fruit and nuts, a la Graze boxes and Cranberry!

So - yay!

She poured out a small bowlful and handed it to me. I looked down, a little sadly.
"That's what's classed as a responsible portion," she explained. "But I'm not gonna treat you like a six-year-old," she added, handing me the bigger jarful as well. "You're a grown-up, just, y'know, enjoy responsibly. Think of it as the Disappearing equivalent of alcohol."

By now, I would say I'm by no means drunk. In fact, I'm not even properly tipsy. I may be one over the eight, and hail fellow, well nut...

But am now putting the jar aside, at least for tonight. I've got choir in an hour, and it simply wouldn't do to be caught singing under the influence of nut-mix!

The Cyber-Conversion Confusion

Well, that was odd.

Went up to the hospital this morning for what I was told would be a "walking ECG" - where they strap a bunch of crap to you, basically turn you into a Cyberman, and then you walk around for 24 hours giving heart measurements.
Got there, and they told me I was down for an echocardiogram - much less fun, all in all. I queried this with the blunt-faced bint on reception.
"No," she said. "You're down for an echo, not a 24-hour tape."
"Really?" I said. "Cos there was a sheet of information about the 24-hour walking ECG, and nothing about an echo."
"Really," she said, challenging me with her eyes. Those eyes said "Are you fuckin' stupid, fat boy?"
"You're...down...for...an...echo."
I'm really not exaggerating her diction here.
"Please," I said, meeting her eyes. "Check." She checked. I was right. She sniffed.
"It's the wrong attachment," she decided.
"Is it?"
She stared at me.
"Yes. Obviously. You're down for an echo!"

I walked away. I bow to no-one in my admiration for the NHS - as a concept, it's breath-taking and as an inspiration to care and vocation, it trumps any pecuniary advantage you care to name.
But no organisation of its size and scope will survive without a certain number of arseholes. You kinda take pot luck with finding them.

Thing is - the Cyber-conversion had put me in a mindset that I wouldn't be able to do any exercise today. When it didn't take place, did I embrace the opportunity and jump on the bike?

Nnnno. Came home and worked my ass off doing day-job stuff, No exercise of any kind today, though calorie-intake hasn't been bad either. Tomorrow...who knows? Not thinking about it, really. Feel like I've been hit with the lead pipe of Knackerdity.

Zzzzzzzz.....Zzz.....Zzzzzzzzzz....

The Cranberry Disappearance

Particularly stalkerish readers will have heard me talk about Cranberry, a store at some of London’s tube and train stations where I have a habit of grabbing some fruit and nuts on the UberCommute as a kind of healthy-ish protein shot to add a certain nutritional value to days that would otherwise comprise principally of coffee. There’s a thread here – I used to have Graze boxes delivered, which were tiny shots of the same kind of thing. d has frequently made me jars of a fruit and nut mix as a healthy-ish snack. And Cranberry had become something I looked forward to about the UberCommute. Having had a month off them, I swung around the usual corner at Paddington this morning, only to find the shop shut up and a notice on it saying it had been repossessed. Have had a madly busy day, but actually found a minute to call up their head office, to see if they still existed as a company. Yes, it turned out they did…but only just. From having about nine stores, they now had a single stall left, in Hammersmith.

It will show you something probably quite deep and meaningful about the nature of addictive behaviour if I tell you that after work, I got a bus from Kensington to Earl’s Court, just to visit the stall. And then I got a tube from Hammersmith to Paddington. I went miles out of my way, just for a couple of handfuls of fruit and nuts.

That’s got to be wrong, surely?

So I’ve made a decision. I’m choosing to interpret it as a sign – even though I’m a rationalist who doesn’t believe in signs – that the Paddington store has closed. That’s me done with Cranberry. Phase done, time over with. Back to simply Coffee Mondays when I do the UberCommute.

Hey – protein’s over-rated, right?

Tomorrow should be interesting – I’m going for Cyber-conversion to do a 24 hour walking ECG. d, bless her, is still lurgied, and is apparently banging into walls and doors when she stumbles around the flat. So, walking ECG, shedloads of work, and trying to get my girl all better – she went to the docs today and apparently it takes around two weeks to throw off this bug. Poor thing.

The Scooby Sunday

Sssshhh...

Trying to essentially tiptoe, Scooby Doo-style, through the day. Walked four miles this morning with Ma, then came home and had my three Weetabix breakfast. Since when, I've had...fruit, and two bowls of mashed potato, with a small "snackpot" of baked beans. Should be my lot for the day, I'm hoping - early night, probably, as we return to UberCommuting tomorrow.

Woo...Hoo...

So, hence the trying to not let the day notice me - done fairly well, all told, and hope not to give the day any reason to throw me for a loop.

d remains lurgied and with the strength of a particularly lethargic kitten. Hence, additional benefit to an early night.

Oh bugger - just remembered, have to go early to choir tonight as well...Right...well, then this is me, going to pack a bag for tomorrow.

Remember...sssshhh....

The Neanderthal Nightingale Approximation

Back into the perspex boxes today. Kinda hatin' it so far, have to say. Even though technically, I'm glad to be back into a simpler dietary regime, a less excessive approach to what goes into my body...it's like going cold turkey with anything - you've grown re-accustomed to the excess, so in my case, you just kinda just want to grab a gateau and shove it in your face.

Nevertheless, have done a day of pretty restrained eating - Three Weetabix, four slices of toast, one banana, two apples, one small bowl of sausage pasta.

Simple eating, and no particular exercise today. Have been doing my Neanderthal, blokish version of Florence Nightingale today, as d was stricken with a lurgi. This, for anyone who doesn't have a Neanderthal of their own to call upon, translates as "Ug...Me make tea. You sleep. Me make more tea, wash dishes while you sleep. You up, take pills, drink fluids. Lay on sofa. Here - take hot water bottles. Take pills. Me make toast...You sleep..."

It's not what I'd call an effective care plan, but it's what there is in my experience-bank, so I've used it today. Tomorrow, Ma and I are at least going for an early-ish walk, to re-introduce our bodies to the business of exercise. Monday, I'm back to the UberCommute, and back to London. Tuesday's a weird one. Having another 'walking ECG" - which means becoming a Cyberman for 24 hours, strapped into monitors that I carry around with me. Not allowed to shower or bathe while I'm wearing the kit, so it seems unlikely I'll do any deeply strenuous exercise Tuesday either, though may sneak in a lunchtime walk.

And on we go, hitting perspex as we reach for that damned gateau.

The Maternal Resurrection

Beautiful breakfast with d and Ma and some of Wendy's family. Home from Kilworth House via a quaint Tudor village called Ledbury, where we stopped for the kind of lunch you can only do when you're in a whirlwind of hedonism, promising to reform in the morning. Butternut squash soup, and a cream tea. Yep, cream. Yep, tea. Yep, get over it.

Got home, chilled out for a ridiculously short amount of time, and then got dressed for a choir performance. Ma turned up in her car to drive me up to the chapel in one of the higher bits of the town.
"How you doin'?" I asked.
"I'm dead," she said. I sniffed.
"Looking good on it," I decided.
Turned out she'd had a letter from the Department of Work and Pensions - which she'd had to contact following the death of my Dad. "Thank you," it said, "for the information regarding the death of..."
Then it printed my mother's name.

My mother's name.
She smiled. Sweetly.
"I'm going to talk to them Monday," she promised, with the kind of annunciation that makes kings and presidents shudder.
"Zombie apocalypse," I muttered to myself.
"Hmm?"
"You're going to insist on a resurrection, I'm assuming?"
She looked at me, smiling horribly.
"Y'know, I just might..." she said.

"So," she asked. "Back to perspex boxes tomorrow then?"
"Back to perspex boxes in the morning," I confirmed.
"Me too," she agreed, encapsulating a sense of resurrection and new beginnings that's left over from the wedding.

So here's to tomorrow.

29th November - The Wedding Hedonism

So there you have it. My mate Wendy walked down an aisle, actually hand in hand with her beloved, Maria, today, and everybody clapped and almost-cried, and burst their hearts with gladness for them both.

Of course, it is true that everybody also nearly pissed themselves, somewhat cruelly but equally unavoidably, at the registrar, who had a most unfortunate lithp when it came to pronouncing words like “Regithrar”…and “Leithterthire”, and perhaps most unavoidably hilarious of all, “Thivil Partnerthipth”. Bless her, she meant well, and was perfectly within the law, but really, I think if you’re going to have a heavy lithp, you might be just as well to stick to marriageth…

But generally, the day went beautifully well – starting with breakfatht…oh stoppit!...breakfast, which was highly professional and, once again, taken in the Orangery, this time by daylight and white and bright and like eating in a beautiful long conservatory.

What is it about hotel breakfasts that turns perfectly rational human beings into the Emperor Caligula on a bender? I ordered the Full English, and that – bar the black pudding, of which I’m not notably a fan – was what arrived: sausage, bacon, egg, tomato, fried bread, so far, so tasty. Then a couple of holderfuls of toast arrived, and I figured “fuck it, I’m on holiday,” so I got stuck into that too. Enough to satisfy the hungriest bloke who ate, all in all, about eight hours before, right?

Yeah, but there was other stuff there. So I gamely tucked into plain yogurt with fruit compote, and fruit juice – which incidentally is by no means the innocent choice people think it is, and more than calorifically deserves the kudos given to it in the 70s as a course of its own. Then I did a hit and run of the cereal bar, scooping spoonful after spoonful of various different breakfasts into the same bowl. Because ti was there, and technically, it was included in the price of the room. Did I want it? Probably not. Did I need it? Certainly not. But yes, I ate it because it was there.

What? It’s a perfectly valid reason when applied to walking up mountains, but not when chowing them down?

Anyhow – the ceremony went off perfectly, lithp notwithstanding, and we thankfully didn’t eat again until about 5ish. Three full courses – soup, steak/chicken and chocolate tart in my case. Then coffee and petit fours. Because they were there, shut up. Then they brought round wedding cakes – generous cup cakes made, I strongly suspect, of chocolate brownie, then iced. I didn’t eat that. I couldn’t. We brought it upstairs and have packed it away…for tomorrow. Fuck you, technically I’m still on my holidays tomorrow – there’s another breakfast in about 9 hours, to which I’m perversely looking forward. I did however have another nightful of cider, and even though technically I didn’t need it, I just ate a chocolate tart from Costa while writing this blog entry.

This, incidentally, is how you end up being 20 stone and 5 feet 6. I would have not the slightest hesitation in guessing that at this moment as I sit here, I weigh more than 18 stone again. And yes, this is the kind of eating and living that got me to my crisis point in the first place – this is what it looks like when you’re almost intentionally self-harming through food.

Except this, I am actively, painfully aware, is on longer a way of life. It’s an aberration, a time of pure hedonistic celebration and involvement with the joy of my friends. It’s the same impulse that has seen me, tonight, get up and boogie. To quote Mitch Benn, “I have plenty of natural rhythm, but it’s all above the waist”, but still, the night was made for dancing, so on and off, here and there, the Disappearing Man…danced.

Once tomorrow has come and gone, and the sun has set on this wonderful holiday, and Wendy and Maria have buggered off to Lapland – gotta love that for a December honeymoon, no? – I will be coming down to the Earth on which I must now live with a bump. I know this, and accept it, and am to some extent looking forward to the rigors of pain and exercise and hard bloody work all over again.

Oh, two nice things as side—notes. I gave a speech as part of the after-dinner celebrations. Went down very well. Made people laugh, made people cry (even a couple of hard nuts, I gather), made people go “Oh wow” a bit, and made a parade of people whose names I couldn’t tell you if you tortured me come up and shake my hand or hug me and tell me I was fab.

Which could be a dangerous association, were my mind connectively inclined – wild calorific hedonism=people telling me I’m fab. But such thoughts must of course be cast out…largely in an abject fear they may be valid.

And I was given a gift, for doing my bit as a witness to the ceremony. A kickass new pen, from Wendy and Maria. There’s a crazy bit of connectivity there too – I always love getting new pens, they inspire me to write new stories. I can’t wait to see what stories this new one has in it.

But whatever they are, I’ll find them out in a world of discipline and exercise, not this world of chocolate-tasting madness. Nehh. I have spoken…

Mmm…breakfast in nine hours…