And here we are, ten full months in to what started out as a twelve-month project, and is now likely to be at least a twenty-four-month project. d read last night's entry and chuckled.
"Official weigh-ins, unofficial weigh-ins...you know it makes no difference to anyone but you, right?"
"Oh yeah," I agreed. "Still..."
The reason I even thought about giving an official weigh-in figure today was...well, firstly for the official feeling of "this is what I've done in ten full months of 2011", aned secondly, because I did an "unofficial" weigh-in yesterday morning when perhaps radically empty (Chinese Buffet+Xenical - good combo if you want to impersonate a flume). And the result was fantastically good - 15 stone 11 pounds! Sooo, figured this little egotist, if I do an "official" weigh-in the day after, I'll look superbly good, having lost four pounds or more since Tuesday!
Yyyyeah. Had pizza yesterday. Woke up this morning, and my official ten-month result is 15 stone 13.75. One tiny ogrefart into the world of Fifteens, but hey - good enough to please me. Definitively 4.5 stone in ten months. Awoohoo.
So - how was your 2011? Mine was fairly mental - as you of course know. Looking back, it feels like longer than ten months. Feels like a lifetime, in fact, since I whittered on about diaries and how we used to use them, but now we blog our most intimate thoughts for the world to see. What have we done since then...begun walking, plugged in the exercise bike, ramped each one up, to five miles a morning and ten or twenty miles a day, shat ourselves absolutley stupid in Camden Town, lost a few stones, fallen down some stairs, seen the Olympic venue, gotten hopelessly lost more times than we can count, gone on holiday, broken a toe, had more blisters than seems possible, lost a few more stones, gotten sick of human beings and the grind of London, moved house across country and unpacked more boxes than we ever seem to have packed.
And that was 2011.
So what are my Resolutions for 2012?
Well, let's see:
1. I will not die in 2012 #fuckyouMayancalendarboy
2. Having lost 4.5 stones in ten months, I will lose at least the same amount in, say, eight months of 2012 - hitting my ideal weight and BMI by the end of August 2012.
3. I will avoid the flappy-skin syndrome of most heavy weight-losers by increasing the range of my exedrcise to include muscle-building work.
4. I will not freak out when I put on weight in muscle mass, reminding myself that 'muscle weighs more than fat nehh nehh nehh...'
5. I will attempt to re-integrate normality into my life, doing Aristotelian experiments with pleasure from time to time.
6. I will take the time to see some of my pals and particularly Karen Pulley, who has said she wants to join the Disappearing Wagon in 2012.
7. I will attempt not to bore the arse off you lot, while staying entirely honest to what the Hell happens in my life from day to day.
Will that do us, maybe? (Shrugs). Probably for now. How do you want to spend your 2012?
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Friday, 30 December 2011
Hermitville
Meant to mention - blood two days ago was 4.5, blood this morning is 4.8 - so even in the absence of my regular exercise regime, blood control seems to be maintaining itself.
There's a theme developing in this blog - got up, did stuff in the flat, ate loads, did no exercise, popped around the town, snored. It's a little like living in Hermitville, I know. I'd say bear with me - as soon as we can move for boxes and furniture, we can get some routines back - next week I'll be seeing the doc, hopefully saving money on the gym subscription, and the Disappearing Man can get back to being about the weightloss struggle, rather than the 'can't move for crap we hauled down the M4 and new crap we've bought' struggle.
Today - bins and bikes and bookcases...and a drowning dishwasher...have been the stand-out feature; popped to town because there's a faintly ludicrous degree of climate-change consciousness at work in the local council, given its industrial and coal-fired heritage, meaning that garbage disposal becomes something of a fine art - there are different bins for all the different sorts of refuse you can possibly imagine, including food waste, so we needed a couple of new bins. Worked through my office this morning, as a matter of necessity, because the delightful folks at John Lewis called to say my desk is arriving tonight, and at the time there was nowhere for it to go. So - shedloads of boxes disappeared from the office and ended up in the bedroom, making it An Interesting Challenge to get into bed tonight. But part of the joy of doing this is that The Bike was uncovered...albeit briefly, before I piled it with crap so as to give the desk-deliverers somewhere to go.
Bookcases is a simple one - we have Too Many Books. And Too Many DVDs, come to that. Much of the stuff I uncovered while carving a path through the office attested to these two facts, so I need to buy some bookcases. Perversely, the ones I need aren't available for home delivery, and Ma, blessed as she is with many things, counts a cute and tiny car among them, so it's probably a non-starter for transporting six-foot flat-packed bookcases. Gave the delivery guy who moved us here a call, and he quoted £40 to get three bookcases from the local retail park home and into place. Tempting, to be honest, because a) we have no car that's big enough to do the job, and b) d's less than convinced about our ability to hump them up two flights of stairs when they get here. Since we can't actually afford the bookcases till I next get paid in any case, I have time to mull this one, but it means a certain amount of stasis will set in up in the office. Hopefully though, once the desk is in situ, I can re-uncover the bike, and maybe even get back to using it either tonight or tomorrow...Otherwise I might start taking off for long walks. In the pissing-down rain. I know, I know, I said I wasn't going to do that when I started this experiment but a) this is Wales, for God's sake, if rain stopped play, nobody'd ever get anything done, and b) I have a good coat now...
Oh yeah, and there's this - I'm thinking of mayyyybe doing an Official Weigh-In tomorrow morning, on the principle of a 'Review of 2011' - get a very final reading of what we've managed since March. Not entirely committed to this though - after all, there's an official weigh-in on Tuesday in any case...Will see how I feel in the morning...the last morning of this weird year.
Am a little curious - what do YOU think my Resolutions for 2012 should be? Comment or let me know somehow, and I might well post some of 'em up. Hell, you know what I'm like, I might even adopt some of 'em!
There's a theme developing in this blog - got up, did stuff in the flat, ate loads, did no exercise, popped around the town, snored. It's a little like living in Hermitville, I know. I'd say bear with me - as soon as we can move for boxes and furniture, we can get some routines back - next week I'll be seeing the doc, hopefully saving money on the gym subscription, and the Disappearing Man can get back to being about the weightloss struggle, rather than the 'can't move for crap we hauled down the M4 and new crap we've bought' struggle.
Today - bins and bikes and bookcases...and a drowning dishwasher...have been the stand-out feature; popped to town because there's a faintly ludicrous degree of climate-change consciousness at work in the local council, given its industrial and coal-fired heritage, meaning that garbage disposal becomes something of a fine art - there are different bins for all the different sorts of refuse you can possibly imagine, including food waste, so we needed a couple of new bins. Worked through my office this morning, as a matter of necessity, because the delightful folks at John Lewis called to say my desk is arriving tonight, and at the time there was nowhere for it to go. So - shedloads of boxes disappeared from the office and ended up in the bedroom, making it An Interesting Challenge to get into bed tonight. But part of the joy of doing this is that The Bike was uncovered...albeit briefly, before I piled it with crap so as to give the desk-deliverers somewhere to go.
Bookcases is a simple one - we have Too Many Books. And Too Many DVDs, come to that. Much of the stuff I uncovered while carving a path through the office attested to these two facts, so I need to buy some bookcases. Perversely, the ones I need aren't available for home delivery, and Ma, blessed as she is with many things, counts a cute and tiny car among them, so it's probably a non-starter for transporting six-foot flat-packed bookcases. Gave the delivery guy who moved us here a call, and he quoted £40 to get three bookcases from the local retail park home and into place. Tempting, to be honest, because a) we have no car that's big enough to do the job, and b) d's less than convinced about our ability to hump them up two flights of stairs when they get here. Since we can't actually afford the bookcases till I next get paid in any case, I have time to mull this one, but it means a certain amount of stasis will set in up in the office. Hopefully though, once the desk is in situ, I can re-uncover the bike, and maybe even get back to using it either tonight or tomorrow...Otherwise I might start taking off for long walks. In the pissing-down rain. I know, I know, I said I wasn't going to do that when I started this experiment but a) this is Wales, for God's sake, if rain stopped play, nobody'd ever get anything done, and b) I have a good coat now...
Oh yeah, and there's this - I'm thinking of mayyyybe doing an Official Weigh-In tomorrow morning, on the principle of a 'Review of 2011' - get a very final reading of what we've managed since March. Not entirely committed to this though - after all, there's an official weigh-in on Tuesday in any case...Will see how I feel in the morning...the last morning of this weird year.
Am a little curious - what do YOU think my Resolutions for 2012 should be? Comment or let me know somehow, and I might well post some of 'em up. Hell, you know what I'm like, I might even adopt some of 'em!
Thursday, 29 December 2011
Back To The Future
"Ugh..."
I'd been laying awake for an indeterminate amount of time that felt like hours, with my stomach roiling. Eventually, I'd stumbled into the bathroom. While there, I heard d get up and potter about, positively brimming with positivity and 'greet the day' smiliness.
"Ugh.."
I shuffled back to the bedroom, utterly convinced it was still the middle of the night. Then I blinked.
d had made the bed, replacing all the 'shams' - which apparently are pillows that only look like pillows, but are not, under any circumstances, to be used as pillows - and was smiling at the day, just as I'd predicted.
"What the-"
"It's eight o'clock honey. Stuff to do!"
"Unff..." I said, pulling back the covers and crumbling back into bed, pulling the duvet over my head.
She gave me an hour extra, but I was still feeling like a grumpy six-year-old when I finally crawled out of my pit.
Turned into a day of furniture moving, box destoying, more furniture moving when it turned out the floor to which we'd moved the furniture originally was the wrong floor...y'know, as ya do...
We popped to the new doctors and registered (Drugs man...need the druuuugs....), and it was there that something peculiar happened. Because we'd also filled in the gym membership forms already, and I hadn't really noticed a particular box.
"Oh, you know they do a GP referral for the gym?" said Ma, who had come with us (it was technically her furniture that we'd been moving).
I blinked...It was like going back in time. Waaaaaay back in London, a couple of years ago, before he mentioned the possibility of getting my belly ripped open and truncated to stop me from dying, my doc had referred me to a local East End gym, for free. The point about which is that it always took me so long to get home to the East End after work, I never got there and my referral lapsed. When, at the start of this Disappearing experiment, I mentioned the possibility of taking this referral up again, the doc told me sadly that the programme had been cut, and so was no longer available.
So landing here in Wales and realising that the cut hadn't been across the board, and that I (or even we) might be able to still get a GP referral to the gym, was another feather in the cap of living in Wales. It does however mean that I won't be able to register with the gym until I've spoken to the Welsh doc next week. Still - if it saves us most of the dosh of our subscription, who's counting. And I begin work properly on clearing out my office tonight - in other words, working my way towards The Bike again...so here's hoping the future is gymmy and relatively cheap!
I'd been laying awake for an indeterminate amount of time that felt like hours, with my stomach roiling. Eventually, I'd stumbled into the bathroom. While there, I heard d get up and potter about, positively brimming with positivity and 'greet the day' smiliness.
"Ugh.."
I shuffled back to the bedroom, utterly convinced it was still the middle of the night. Then I blinked.
d had made the bed, replacing all the 'shams' - which apparently are pillows that only look like pillows, but are not, under any circumstances, to be used as pillows - and was smiling at the day, just as I'd predicted.
"What the-"
"It's eight o'clock honey. Stuff to do!"
"Unff..." I said, pulling back the covers and crumbling back into bed, pulling the duvet over my head.
She gave me an hour extra, but I was still feeling like a grumpy six-year-old when I finally crawled out of my pit.
Turned into a day of furniture moving, box destoying, more furniture moving when it turned out the floor to which we'd moved the furniture originally was the wrong floor...y'know, as ya do...
We popped to the new doctors and registered (Drugs man...need the druuuugs....), and it was there that something peculiar happened. Because we'd also filled in the gym membership forms already, and I hadn't really noticed a particular box.
"Oh, you know they do a GP referral for the gym?" said Ma, who had come with us (it was technically her furniture that we'd been moving).
I blinked...It was like going back in time. Waaaaaay back in London, a couple of years ago, before he mentioned the possibility of getting my belly ripped open and truncated to stop me from dying, my doc had referred me to a local East End gym, for free. The point about which is that it always took me so long to get home to the East End after work, I never got there and my referral lapsed. When, at the start of this Disappearing experiment, I mentioned the possibility of taking this referral up again, the doc told me sadly that the programme had been cut, and so was no longer available.
So landing here in Wales and realising that the cut hadn't been across the board, and that I (or even we) might be able to still get a GP referral to the gym, was another feather in the cap of living in Wales. It does however mean that I won't be able to register with the gym until I've spoken to the Welsh doc next week. Still - if it saves us most of the dosh of our subscription, who's counting. And I begin work properly on clearing out my office tonight - in other words, working my way towards The Bike again...so here's hoping the future is gymmy and relatively cheap!
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Welcome Home
May have mentioned this at some point, but used to get the crap kicked out of me on a regular basis as a kid. Partly, this was because I was 'the fat kid', partly it was because I was, perversely, 'a posh kid' (had more of a 'received pronunciation' than was normal in the Valleys, and partly, it was because I was a smartarse who didn't know when to keep his gob shut.
Then I went away to college, and came back fatter, and posher, and eeeeeven more of a smartarse, and having walked the late night streets in Southampton, and Glasgow, and the East End of London, I decided to go out for new year with friends in Merthyr.
We laughed, we drank, we got separated, I ran out of money, and ended up walking up the length of the town to get home to my folks' place. I got about three quarters of the way home, when a bloke came walking quickly up behind me, turned me round and picked a fight. I did that fatal thing that you should never do when someone picks a fight with you. I laughed. He kicked the crap out of me. I decided to stop laughing, and decided to give falling down a try instead. That, he decided, was altogether more appropriate. I passed out in the early January frost. That, I'm assuming, pleased him even more because eventually he must have gone away.
I woke up when a couple asked me if I was alright. It was a complicated question. Something in my left ankle was altogether less than alright. It bent in a whole new range of exciting and dramatic directions which it hadn't previously considered. Of course, when it did that, there was a shooting, sparkly pain that rocketed throughout my system, but hey, you can't have everything.
The bloke of the couple told me to get up. I mentioned that something was wrong with my ankle, so if it was all the same to him, I'd just lay here and die of frostbite. No, he said, I'd better get up or he'd kick my fucking head in. I sighed, tried to get up, put a little weight on the ankle, fell over again, and something altogether new went crack. Then, apparently disappointed, he made good on his promise and kicked my fucking head in.
Next time I woke up, a local policeman told me to get up. I rolled my eyes. Told him the story of the evening so far, and - rather than telling me to get up or he'd kick my fucking head in - he got me to the local hospital, where a whole other set of adventures awaited me.
I mention all this tonight for a simple reason. So far, our return home to Merthyr has been pretty fairytale. Tonight, dammit, we fulfilled last night's urge and went for a Chinese buffet meal at the local restaurant. When we came out, there were a bunch of pissed-up lads rolling through the streets, one of them announcing to all the world he was gonna 'have a piss right here..."
They yelled at us, as drunken fuckwits do. We ignored them, as non-drunken citizens do. And then we walked away. We were a few yards away, at the lip of an alleyway, when I felt him coming, fast, behind us. A hand slapped down on my head beneath my cowboy hat (did I mention - I wear a cowboy hat now...cowboy hats are cool...Have owned it for several years, but it didn't quite work until I lost some of the weight. Now...I still don't know if it works for other people, but it works for me and feels like me, so there it is). The hand grabbed at my hat, and d and I both spun around, yelling.
"Sssssanicehat, that!" yelled the drunk, as I grabbed the hat and took it off him.
Then he buggered off back to his pisshead mates, and we went on our way, not going actually down the alleyway until we were sure they weren't following.
"Welcome home, honey," muttered d as we got back to the flat.
"Some things don't change, I guess..." I explained.
"Oh I dunno," said d. "You're still walking, aren't you?"
She has a point of course. Merthyr still has drunken fuckwits who think it's OK to approach total strangers. But apparently, if you're in the company of a yelling American, you're safer than you would be without one.
Then again, in my case, if you're not in the company of an American, you're not home in any case...
Big Disappearing day tomorrow - tomorrow we put in the forms to join a new doctors' surgery, and the leisure centre, with its gym and pool, the visualising of which made Disappearing from home seem a real possibility.
Then I went away to college, and came back fatter, and posher, and eeeeeven more of a smartarse, and having walked the late night streets in Southampton, and Glasgow, and the East End of London, I decided to go out for new year with friends in Merthyr.
We laughed, we drank, we got separated, I ran out of money, and ended up walking up the length of the town to get home to my folks' place. I got about three quarters of the way home, when a bloke came walking quickly up behind me, turned me round and picked a fight. I did that fatal thing that you should never do when someone picks a fight with you. I laughed. He kicked the crap out of me. I decided to stop laughing, and decided to give falling down a try instead. That, he decided, was altogether more appropriate. I passed out in the early January frost. That, I'm assuming, pleased him even more because eventually he must have gone away.
I woke up when a couple asked me if I was alright. It was a complicated question. Something in my left ankle was altogether less than alright. It bent in a whole new range of exciting and dramatic directions which it hadn't previously considered. Of course, when it did that, there was a shooting, sparkly pain that rocketed throughout my system, but hey, you can't have everything.
The bloke of the couple told me to get up. I mentioned that something was wrong with my ankle, so if it was all the same to him, I'd just lay here and die of frostbite. No, he said, I'd better get up or he'd kick my fucking head in. I sighed, tried to get up, put a little weight on the ankle, fell over again, and something altogether new went crack. Then, apparently disappointed, he made good on his promise and kicked my fucking head in.
Next time I woke up, a local policeman told me to get up. I rolled my eyes. Told him the story of the evening so far, and - rather than telling me to get up or he'd kick my fucking head in - he got me to the local hospital, where a whole other set of adventures awaited me.
I mention all this tonight for a simple reason. So far, our return home to Merthyr has been pretty fairytale. Tonight, dammit, we fulfilled last night's urge and went for a Chinese buffet meal at the local restaurant. When we came out, there were a bunch of pissed-up lads rolling through the streets, one of them announcing to all the world he was gonna 'have a piss right here..."
They yelled at us, as drunken fuckwits do. We ignored them, as non-drunken citizens do. And then we walked away. We were a few yards away, at the lip of an alleyway, when I felt him coming, fast, behind us. A hand slapped down on my head beneath my cowboy hat (did I mention - I wear a cowboy hat now...cowboy hats are cool...Have owned it for several years, but it didn't quite work until I lost some of the weight. Now...I still don't know if it works for other people, but it works for me and feels like me, so there it is). The hand grabbed at my hat, and d and I both spun around, yelling.
"Sssssanicehat, that!" yelled the drunk, as I grabbed the hat and took it off him.
Then he buggered off back to his pisshead mates, and we went on our way, not going actually down the alleyway until we were sure they weren't following.
"Welcome home, honey," muttered d as we got back to the flat.
"Some things don't change, I guess..." I explained.
"Oh I dunno," said d. "You're still walking, aren't you?"
She has a point of course. Merthyr still has drunken fuckwits who think it's OK to approach total strangers. But apparently, if you're in the company of a yelling American, you're safer than you would be without one.
Then again, in my case, if you're not in the company of an American, you're not home in any case...
Big Disappearing day tomorrow - tomorrow we put in the forms to join a new doctors' surgery, and the leisure centre, with its gym and pool, the visualising of which made Disappearing from home seem a real possibility.
Tuesday, 27 December 2011
The Start of a Beautiful Recipe
One and a quarter pounds.
That's the verdict from the first court of the Nazi Scales - I've put on one and a quarter pounds, which means today's weigh-in shows me as:
16 stone, 1.25.
Which, all in all, is nowhere near as bad as it could have been, or as I'd been forecasting to myself.
Another day of unboxing today. We're making order out of rectangular chaos day by day, like weird Cubist gods and goddesses - I found myself able to get to our dining table today, and had an apple in celebration.
No particular improvement in my dad, for those who've been kind enough to ask or send good wishes.
And then tonight, our little jewel-house had its first proper visitor. I mean, we've had family already of course - they practically put it together - and of course my pal Sian was here when we loaded it up with the boxes we're now doing our damnedest to get rid of - but the first visitor who's not blood, but who's been here since our arrival, was Karen (Pulley) this evening.
It was fabulous to see her, here, in this environment - we had friends in London of course, but never felt confident enough of our decor and our space to have people just dropping by. So it's kind of underlined our joy earlier this week in having decor in the first place, having someone in to share it. Plus of course, it was great to introduce d to Karen - they're fairly similar in a lot of ways, not the least is a shared love of cooking and food. After lighting the occasional blue touch-paper, I mainly sat back and watched as their friendship, already generated via Facebook, blossomed beatifully over talk of types of people and goats cheese tarts and lamb tagines-cum-casseroles and the like.
Frankly, all the talk of food left me ravenous, and ready to cast the one and a quarter pound limited damages to the four winds of a slap-up Chinese buffet...
When Karen left to deliver a trifle (I didn't ask...it seemed somehow entirely reasonable at the time), d and I donned our 'serious Winter gear' and headed out. There are two Chinese buffets within easy walking distance, but neither of them were open, two days after Christmas. I felt somehow personally chagrined at that.
"We're not in London any more, Toto," muttered d sardonically. It's difficult ot pull off sardonic through chattering teeth and below-breath imprecations to any god who's listening, but she managed it nicely. We returned home for hot turkey sandwiches and equally hot baths. All in all of course, this was far the more sensible Disappearing strategy, and it's about time I found one. Quite apart from anything else, this weightloss blog hasn't been remotely involved with weightloss for far too long now! So here's to a Disappearing future, and the beginning of a beautiful recipe for a friendship flan, co-produced by the woman I love and one of my oldest friends.
Did I mention - kicks ass to be home...
That's the verdict from the first court of the Nazi Scales - I've put on one and a quarter pounds, which means today's weigh-in shows me as:
16 stone, 1.25.
Which, all in all, is nowhere near as bad as it could have been, or as I'd been forecasting to myself.
Another day of unboxing today. We're making order out of rectangular chaos day by day, like weird Cubist gods and goddesses - I found myself able to get to our dining table today, and had an apple in celebration.
No particular improvement in my dad, for those who've been kind enough to ask or send good wishes.
And then tonight, our little jewel-house had its first proper visitor. I mean, we've had family already of course - they practically put it together - and of course my pal Sian was here when we loaded it up with the boxes we're now doing our damnedest to get rid of - but the first visitor who's not blood, but who's been here since our arrival, was Karen (Pulley) this evening.
It was fabulous to see her, here, in this environment - we had friends in London of course, but never felt confident enough of our decor and our space to have people just dropping by. So it's kind of underlined our joy earlier this week in having decor in the first place, having someone in to share it. Plus of course, it was great to introduce d to Karen - they're fairly similar in a lot of ways, not the least is a shared love of cooking and food. After lighting the occasional blue touch-paper, I mainly sat back and watched as their friendship, already generated via Facebook, blossomed beatifully over talk of types of people and goats cheese tarts and lamb tagines-cum-casseroles and the like.
Frankly, all the talk of food left me ravenous, and ready to cast the one and a quarter pound limited damages to the four winds of a slap-up Chinese buffet...
When Karen left to deliver a trifle (I didn't ask...it seemed somehow entirely reasonable at the time), d and I donned our 'serious Winter gear' and headed out. There are two Chinese buffets within easy walking distance, but neither of them were open, two days after Christmas. I felt somehow personally chagrined at that.
"We're not in London any more, Toto," muttered d sardonically. It's difficult ot pull off sardonic through chattering teeth and below-breath imprecations to any god who's listening, but she managed it nicely. We returned home for hot turkey sandwiches and equally hot baths. All in all of course, this was far the more sensible Disappearing strategy, and it's about time I found one. Quite apart from anything else, this weightloss blog hasn't been remotely involved with weightloss for far too long now! So here's to a Disappearing future, and the beginning of a beautiful recipe for a friendship flan, co-produced by the woman I love and one of my oldest friends.
Did I mention - kicks ass to be home...
Monday, 26 December 2011
Unboxing Day
So...many...boxes...
The world has turned beige today among a wall of cardboard.
Let's put this into some sort of context - packing the boxes we have, took us months. In the last handful of days, we've unpacked several weeksworth - d's got floorspace in the kitchen, I've got bookshelves that are full of box-guts in the living room. The bedroom's taking a distinct shape (and, did I mention, kicks spa-ass), and we took joint baths tonight in the humungo-tub (real old-fashioned, gloriously sized, cast-iron).
So - life in Merthyr - pretty freakin' sweet. This of course comes on the day when there was a tube strike in London, a stabbing in the sales on Oxford Street, and a fairly record quarter-of-a-million shoppers at the Westfield Mall in Stratford.
Ahhhh...the Welsh Life...
In Disappearing terms, though, everything I have is braced for the morning - the final Tuesday of 2011, the first weigh-in on the Nazi scales. Had a big lunch at the local Harvester, and quite a big dinner at Franky & Benny's, so essentially, I've had a complete carb-fest the day before my weigh-in - talk about being out of out of practice at this shit...
In a weird way, am kinda looking forward to a hideous result tomorrow, to break that level of self-congratulatory contentment that I've been in for a little while, and get me bitchslapped back to semi-neurotic determination for the start of the new year. Not, of course, that breaking my self-congratulatory contentment is gonna be easy on the day of a quarter-million shoppers, abbbbsolutely none of whom make the slightest difference to me.
Still, fairly confident of having put on about five pounds. Less than that will be good enough, frankly...
The world has turned beige today among a wall of cardboard.
Let's put this into some sort of context - packing the boxes we have, took us months. In the last handful of days, we've unpacked several weeksworth - d's got floorspace in the kitchen, I've got bookshelves that are full of box-guts in the living room. The bedroom's taking a distinct shape (and, did I mention, kicks spa-ass), and we took joint baths tonight in the humungo-tub (real old-fashioned, gloriously sized, cast-iron).
So - life in Merthyr - pretty freakin' sweet. This of course comes on the day when there was a tube strike in London, a stabbing in the sales on Oxford Street, and a fairly record quarter-of-a-million shoppers at the Westfield Mall in Stratford.
Ahhhh...the Welsh Life...
In Disappearing terms, though, everything I have is braced for the morning - the final Tuesday of 2011, the first weigh-in on the Nazi scales. Had a big lunch at the local Harvester, and quite a big dinner at Franky & Benny's, so essentially, I've had a complete carb-fest the day before my weigh-in - talk about being out of out of practice at this shit...
In a weird way, am kinda looking forward to a hideous result tomorrow, to break that level of self-congratulatory contentment that I've been in for a little while, and get me bitchslapped back to semi-neurotic determination for the start of the new year. Not, of course, that breaking my self-congratulatory contentment is gonna be easy on the day of a quarter-million shoppers, abbbbsolutely none of whom make the slightest difference to me.
Still, fairly confident of having put on about five pounds. Less than that will be good enough, frankly...
Sunday, 25 December 2011
Carrot Hand-Jobs, Nazi Scales and An Inconvenient Truth
"I'm thinking if you just give it a straight stroke, rather than twisting at the end..." said d.
I blinked at her. I looked at the gloves I was wearing - huge blue rubber gloves with what looked essentially like pebble-dashed cat-litter embedded in them.
"You're suggesting I give the carrots a hand-job dear?"
She rolled her eyes at me.
"If you like, dear," she said. The gloves were a gift - Tater Mitts - essentially, gloves of death for potato skins, and, as I was set on proving, for carrot skins too - that were supposed to make dinner prep much easier, and as a bonus, would scrape the face off any domestic intruder with a non-lethal use of force.
Getting instructions from your wife on the best up-and-down motion to remove a layer of skin from something carrot-shaped is an experience that a) I hope you never have, and b) has a tendency to make you rather nervous by bedtime, but I have to report that the Tater Mitts worked as advertised, and a gorgeous Christmas lunch ensued.
I had jussst about tipped myself back to neurosis this morning, by checking out my weight on my mother's analogue scales, and then scowling more than somewhat at the probably-accurate reading they gave me.
Then, when it came to unwrap presents, one of my big gifts was something that I'd actually asked for - a shit-hot, brand new, Weight-Watchers approved set of uber Nazi scales.
These are scales that can measure you in any damn increments you like - Kg, pounds, stones and pounds...Fairly sure there's a setting on them that will measure you in Drachma, and another that measures you in farts.
"You weigh...169 farts..." - If that's not a setting that currently exists, I reckon I might patent it, cos it's good, semi-solid information that would be of use to any Disappearer...
Anyhow, the essential point is that these are scales that take themselves waaay too freakin' seriously, and therefore, they're likely to be hard taskmasters when I step on them in just two days time. I haven't dared take them out of their box yet, because even though I asked for them, I'm happy to admit I find them a little intimidating. It's gonna be like stepping on a Dalek, probably. "You-Will-Lose-Weight-Or-Your-Lardy-Arse-Will-Be-EXTERMINATED!"
But the point, I guess, is that normal service will be resumed for the final Tuesday of 2011, and I'll probably have slipped back over the 16 stone border. This will be what it will be, and we'll move on and shake the shit out of my now-complacent system in the first week of January.
The real shock of today was my dad.
I've seen him have highs, and I've seen him have lows. I've seen him have diabetic hypos, and had to half-carry him through London streets, and then force feed him sweets to come around. But I don't think I've ever seen him quite as utterly disengaged as he was today.
He sat there, staring into space, for most of the day, until after dinner, when he fell asleep entirely. Nothing could jolly him along, nothing could spark his interest or enthusiasm. He wouldn't come open presents, he wouldn't come join us at the table for starters, when dinner was served he ate in silence, and then went to sleep...
Don't in any way get me wrong - this is not a bitchfest. It's a concernfest. Among all the personal, seflish reasons for wanting to come home this year was always embedded the kernel of concern for my dad, and the desire to help him, and help my mum to make his life a little easier. Today was an eye-openener, inasmuch as it drove home the fact that when pain or some condition makes someone drift away, for even a day, there is little or nothing that can be done to help, to break the stainless-steel soap bubble and make a connection.
Still - don't get me wrong in this either - my dad's not drifting endlessly away, I'm not sounding some sort of hideous knell. He just had a bad day as far as I know. The rest of our day was a thing of warmth and wonder - being home, and not having to leave home and go back to the chaos of a London tube ride, was amazing, and a source of great contentment to us both. This feels so much like a new beginning, it's difficult to focus on greyness and grimness. and most of our time was bright and beautiful. Just bright and beautiful tinged with conern - like a microcosm of the reasons we made this move in the first place.
Seems like the way to go forward.
I blinked at her. I looked at the gloves I was wearing - huge blue rubber gloves with what looked essentially like pebble-dashed cat-litter embedded in them.
"You're suggesting I give the carrots a hand-job dear?"
She rolled her eyes at me.
"If you like, dear," she said. The gloves were a gift - Tater Mitts - essentially, gloves of death for potato skins, and, as I was set on proving, for carrot skins too - that were supposed to make dinner prep much easier, and as a bonus, would scrape the face off any domestic intruder with a non-lethal use of force.
Getting instructions from your wife on the best up-and-down motion to remove a layer of skin from something carrot-shaped is an experience that a) I hope you never have, and b) has a tendency to make you rather nervous by bedtime, but I have to report that the Tater Mitts worked as advertised, and a gorgeous Christmas lunch ensued.
I had jussst about tipped myself back to neurosis this morning, by checking out my weight on my mother's analogue scales, and then scowling more than somewhat at the probably-accurate reading they gave me.
Then, when it came to unwrap presents, one of my big gifts was something that I'd actually asked for - a shit-hot, brand new, Weight-Watchers approved set of uber Nazi scales.
These are scales that can measure you in any damn increments you like - Kg, pounds, stones and pounds...Fairly sure there's a setting on them that will measure you in Drachma, and another that measures you in farts.
"You weigh...169 farts..." - If that's not a setting that currently exists, I reckon I might patent it, cos it's good, semi-solid information that would be of use to any Disappearer...
Anyhow, the essential point is that these are scales that take themselves waaay too freakin' seriously, and therefore, they're likely to be hard taskmasters when I step on them in just two days time. I haven't dared take them out of their box yet, because even though I asked for them, I'm happy to admit I find them a little intimidating. It's gonna be like stepping on a Dalek, probably. "You-Will-Lose-Weight-Or-Your-Lardy-Arse-Will-Be-EXTERMINATED!"
But the point, I guess, is that normal service will be resumed for the final Tuesday of 2011, and I'll probably have slipped back over the 16 stone border. This will be what it will be, and we'll move on and shake the shit out of my now-complacent system in the first week of January.
The real shock of today was my dad.
I've seen him have highs, and I've seen him have lows. I've seen him have diabetic hypos, and had to half-carry him through London streets, and then force feed him sweets to come around. But I don't think I've ever seen him quite as utterly disengaged as he was today.
He sat there, staring into space, for most of the day, until after dinner, when he fell asleep entirely. Nothing could jolly him along, nothing could spark his interest or enthusiasm. He wouldn't come open presents, he wouldn't come join us at the table for starters, when dinner was served he ate in silence, and then went to sleep...
Don't in any way get me wrong - this is not a bitchfest. It's a concernfest. Among all the personal, seflish reasons for wanting to come home this year was always embedded the kernel of concern for my dad, and the desire to help him, and help my mum to make his life a little easier. Today was an eye-openener, inasmuch as it drove home the fact that when pain or some condition makes someone drift away, for even a day, there is little or nothing that can be done to help, to break the stainless-steel soap bubble and make a connection.
Still - don't get me wrong in this either - my dad's not drifting endlessly away, I'm not sounding some sort of hideous knell. He just had a bad day as far as I know. The rest of our day was a thing of warmth and wonder - being home, and not having to leave home and go back to the chaos of a London tube ride, was amazing, and a source of great contentment to us both. This feels so much like a new beginning, it's difficult to focus on greyness and grimness. and most of our time was bright and beautiful. Just bright and beautiful tinged with conern - like a microcosm of the reasons we made this move in the first place.
Seems like the way to go forward.
Saturday, 24 December 2011
A Thing of Beauty
Merrrrrrrrrrry Christmas!!!!
What? No….whaddaya mean that’s not till tomorrow? Feels like Christmas in my house, I can tell you. Got home last night to Merthyr, and our little place is magical. Small and perfect, like a Faberge egg, if Faberge eggs came with lots and lots of boxes.
d, clearly, and probably Ma too, have been working their assess off while I’ve been – and let’s make no bones about this – sitting on my ass on an air mattress for a week. For the first time in eight years, we have colour schemes! We’ve never had colour schemes – we haven’t been allowed by our landlady to vary the colours of our walls. Which presumably is why, at about 5.30 yesterday morning, as I went from room to room trying to conjure up memories to dwell on and generate some melancholy about moving out…nada. We’ve had happy memories of course, but in terms of the flat in Stratford…meh.
But we have colour schemes now. Our living room is red and brown and stripy and modern and with a beautiful rug to tie the whole thing together. Our bedroom is kinda like a spa – all pale sea colours and more space than we really know what to do with. I realise of course it’s very middle-aged to suddenly think your house is the bees’ knees, but now, ours really is.
Today, we had a wow-ish kind of day. Went out to a local café for a kickass breakfast (the kitchen, and my office, are currently serving as box-rooms. They’re awesome, but they’re awesomely full of boxes), then strolled into town to do some last minute Christmas shopping - drapes for the living room, mattress pads to turn our couches into heated chaises from which, frankly, we’ll probably never want to move (Ahhh, work-from-home, come to me my proud beauty…), cushions, and our Christmas tree.
We’ve never done a Christmas tree either. In fact, weird as this sounds, tomorrow will be the first Christmas Day since we’ve been married when we’ve slept in our own beds – we’re usually at my folks’ place, and indeed will be tomorrow too, but we’ll be home in our own place before the Doctor Who Christmas Special….so decorating our own Christmas tree was a beautiful ‘together’ moment that was still new to us. But the point is, just being in this new place feels like togetherness, and home, and everything we’ve been craving and never had the time to do in London.
In Disappearing terms – hey whaddaya want from me, it’s Christmas! This is weird – it’s the first year I’ll have done a Disappearing Christmas, and I’d be lying if I said I was going to be some miserly ascetic; indeed last night when I arrived in Merthyr, we went out to a Chinese buffet, and I ate without fear. I’m going to eat my Christmas Dinner, and enjoy it too, but Disappearing knows nothing about Christmas; I’m gonna do my by-now-usual thing – little bits of the good stuff, no desserts.
In case anyone’s wondering, I’ve clearly given up the idea of losing the next half-stone by New Year – in fact, if I can maintain my weight at 16 stone, I’ll be more than happy, I’ll be bloody ecstatic. But the whole point of New Years, I guess, is that you can shake yourself down and get a new lease of energy on your projects.
So I guess today really isn’t Christmas Day. It’s more like New Year’s Day – day one of the rest of our lives, to overuse a cliché. But of course, that’s why clichés become clichés – because they perfectly capture the mood of moments. And that’s what today feels like – a brand new page, and a thing of beauty.
Oh yeah, talking about things of beauty, and shaking, and new vigour and purpose, I reckon I need some of that, because I've found myself not actually caring very much about Disappearing of late. I should say, I've changed pretty radically during the course of this experiment so far. My tastes have changed, my clothes have changed, my sense of self has changed. Which means recently, people have been telling me they like what they see - I have 'a look' now, apparently, and people seem to respond well to it. Which is fantastic of course, but seems to have given me a comfy bed of complacency to wallow on. Because of course, for the first time in a long time, I like the way I look too, and the subconscious impulse runs through me - "Ahhh, it's OK...what do I want to carry this on for...?"
So come the new year, I definitely need to leave out thing-of-beauty maisonette and kick my own ass again. We're only half way through this thing, we're not, not, absolutely bloody not there yet...Think I need to slap that on a Post-It note on reflective surface in the new place. Still lots to do, but for now, of course - Merry Christmas!
Friday, 23 December 2011
Schrodinger's Disappearing Cat
It occurred to me at 5-something this morning, having stayed up all night, mainly to do final packing, partly to remind myself how rock 'n' roll I was, and also, partly, to give a chance for any second thoughts to surface in the grim December small hours, like prodding an emotional gum-ulcer, that I couldn't remember where I lived.
I mean, while actually sitting in a flat in which I've lived for about six or seven years, I had no concept of where it actually was.
Now I know I'm Significantly Geographically Challenged, but that's saying something. I found myself trying to work it out from the design cues around me but, of course, there weren't any. I was in a box the colour of porridge, and I couldn't have told you whether I was already in Wales waiting to move away, or in London waiting to move to Wales, or somewhere else entirely, waiting to so...something else. If you'd pushed me for an answer right about then, I'd have chosen c).
Mind you, my general discombobulation probably wasn't helped by the fact that, having decided to ride home in triumphant style and splashed out on a first class train ticket, it transpired, at about 11 o'clock last night, that our hordes-of-locusts removals men had accidentally...moved my ticket. To Wales. It's sitting there now, in one of many many boxes, sneering at me. I got into the office early this morning (as Virgin came and took away my modem yesterday), and called up the train company. To be fair, their attitude of "What a dickhead! Merry fucking Christmas, asshole!" is perhaps at least moderately justified - I did, after all, put a vitally important train ticket down during a house move. I'm surprised I didn't qualify for a festive kick in the knackers while I was about it. Mind you, I still have to go through Paddington station, so I guess there's still time...
Indeed, I ended up having to pay more money for a scum-we-wouldn't-deign-to-clean-out-of-the-buffet class ticket this afternoon, because now of course, having taken my house keys round to the letting agent at the crack of still-bloody-dark this morning, I am now officially homeless for about twelve hours. I mean, granted, there's homeless and homeless - I'm not about to pop the cap off a Super lager and go looking for Arthur, but at least technically, I exist in non-space and non-time right now. I'm neither a Welshman nor a Londoner, although I daresay there are quantum physicists who'd be able to prove that I'm actually both simultaneously, illustrating the inherent absurdities of our linear concepts of time, space and self-identity.
Well, this is one Schrodinger's Cat who's taking to his paws right about now, in a nod to sharply accented determinism. This is the Disappearing Man....Disappearing - but don't worry, I haven't popped out of the space-time continuum altogether. I'm just dabbling with faster-than-light travel for an afternoon. Well, faster than sound travel...oh wait, this is British rail we're talking about...Faster than a leek that's been pushed uphill by an asthmatic Daddy-Long-Legs using sprouts as primitive wheels...
Yeah, faster than the speed of leek, baby - we're on the Valley Lines now...See you on the Welsh side, innit mun...
I mean, while actually sitting in a flat in which I've lived for about six or seven years, I had no concept of where it actually was.
Now I know I'm Significantly Geographically Challenged, but that's saying something. I found myself trying to work it out from the design cues around me but, of course, there weren't any. I was in a box the colour of porridge, and I couldn't have told you whether I was already in Wales waiting to move away, or in London waiting to move to Wales, or somewhere else entirely, waiting to so...something else. If you'd pushed me for an answer right about then, I'd have chosen c).
Mind you, my general discombobulation probably wasn't helped by the fact that, having decided to ride home in triumphant style and splashed out on a first class train ticket, it transpired, at about 11 o'clock last night, that our hordes-of-locusts removals men had accidentally...moved my ticket. To Wales. It's sitting there now, in one of many many boxes, sneering at me. I got into the office early this morning (as Virgin came and took away my modem yesterday), and called up the train company. To be fair, their attitude of "What a dickhead! Merry fucking Christmas, asshole!" is perhaps at least moderately justified - I did, after all, put a vitally important train ticket down during a house move. I'm surprised I didn't qualify for a festive kick in the knackers while I was about it. Mind you, I still have to go through Paddington station, so I guess there's still time...
Indeed, I ended up having to pay more money for a scum-we-wouldn't-deign-to-clean-out-of-the-buffet class ticket this afternoon, because now of course, having taken my house keys round to the letting agent at the crack of still-bloody-dark this morning, I am now officially homeless for about twelve hours. I mean, granted, there's homeless and homeless - I'm not about to pop the cap off a Super lager and go looking for Arthur, but at least technically, I exist in non-space and non-time right now. I'm neither a Welshman nor a Londoner, although I daresay there are quantum physicists who'd be able to prove that I'm actually both simultaneously, illustrating the inherent absurdities of our linear concepts of time, space and self-identity.
Well, this is one Schrodinger's Cat who's taking to his paws right about now, in a nod to sharply accented determinism. This is the Disappearing Man....Disappearing - but don't worry, I haven't popped out of the space-time continuum altogether. I'm just dabbling with faster-than-light travel for an afternoon. Well, faster than sound travel...oh wait, this is British rail we're talking about...Faster than a leek that's been pushed uphill by an asthmatic Daddy-Long-Legs using sprouts as primitive wheels...
Yeah, faster than the speed of leek, baby - we're on the Valley Lines now...See you on the Welsh side, innit mun...
Thursday, 22 December 2011
Arthur Christmas
Well, that was subtle...
No sooner do I have one of my (increasingly rare, actually) atheistic rants, than the universe, with its typical perversity, sends Arthur crashing into my life.
Thanks for that, universe. Remind me to kick you in the crotch next time I see you...
Things were going well this morning - I popped to Argos when they opened at 8.30, to return some unopened archive boxes that we hadn't used in the move, then headed straight to the doctors. The doc who started me on this whole experiment by offering me elective bariatric surgery sorted me out with three whole months worth of Xenical, which should tide me over nicely till I get set up with a practice in Merthyr. I went and collected them from Linda, our friend at the pharmacist, (and of course, the other pharmacy-folk too). Had a bit of a chat there, and then started to make my way home.
There was Christmas music seeping out of a shop doorway. "Mary's Boy Child," by Boney M.
"...And man will live forever more, because of Christmas Day," they sang, in optimistic defiance of biology.
That's when Arthur introduced himself.
He did it with a shout. A friendly shout, as these things go, but nevertheless, a shout. Normally of course, when strangers start shouting at you in the street, you quicken your pace and develop serenely selective deafness. But there was something about the interposition of the Christmas carol and Arthur's shouting that stopped me in my tracks. I turned round.
Fucking Boney M!
Arthur was drunk. Well, either Arthur was drunk, or the world was sailing on a very rough sea and the rest of us were just too wrapped up in ourselves to notice. He swayed and staggered madly, drunkenly, in imminent danger of crashing to the ground with every step, waving a can of Skol Super lager around as he came. (Translation for the Americans. British lager is just like beer, only vastly more potent than anything of which you can get tall, frosty skeins in the States. Ours is warmer, and frequently of more mysterious origin, and absolutely nowhere near as much fun to drink, but the key point is - stronger. Super lager is basically a ball pein hammer to the skull, with a couple of shots of heroin into the eyeballs as a chaser. Arthur was very, very drunk...).
Arthur crashed up and into me. He was tall, and dressed in a leather jacket and despair. His face was bristly but not unpleasant.
"I'm drunk now," he explained unnecessarily, "but I'm not gonna be drunk tomorrow. Is there somewhere that can help me with this?"
'This' wasn't the problem of sobriety. This was his teeth. Or rather, his non-teeth - he leered into my face and pulled his lips up and open, revealing that most of his upper front teeth were missing, the remainder were black, and he had one broken shard left of one of his very front teeth. I held my breath, trying to ignore the lager-and-god-knows-what-else stench till he put his teeth away again. He grabbed my hand earnestly with his spittle-covered fingers.
"Err...yes," I said. "There's a doctors just down that road there," I pointed. "They have a dentist, I think..."
"They say I don't live here," said Arthur, who spoke with an eastern European accent - Russian, I'd guess, given his sentence-constructions - "they'd tell me to fuck off..."
I thought he was probably right, but I was just keen to do my bit in this unlooked-for conversation, and get the fuck on with my day. Shit to do, Arthur buddy - I'm outta this town tomorrow...
Arthur, a little unexpectedly, began to cry.
"Christmas Eve!" he wailed. "24th December, last year!"
This was a bit cryptic for my tastes.
"Can I tell you what happened?!" he pleaded.
I thought about it - I had a guy coming to take back my cable box at 12, it was probably 10...something, and a seriously drunk eastern European guy was clasping desperately at my hand, asking to tell me his life story. I sighed.
"Sure," I agreed, which I think it's fairly obvious was code for "Whatever the fuck you need to do, dude, just don't kill me. I have one day left in this city, dammit..."
"Middle of night," he said, setting the scene. "We were in a squat. There is knock on door. I go to answer it. Man there....Bastard. He puts his foot like this-"
Arthur stamped heavily and sideways, showing the classic 'foot-in-the-door' technique.
"...So door cannot be closing, yes?"
"Right," I agreed, nodding that I understood.
"He come in, call others, and they follow. They beat me up, man...." Again, he stamped, this time more graphically, acting out a thorough kicking.
"Then...last thing I know, he get a brick, and..." He mimed the overarm motion for me. The man had slammed him in the face with a brick.
"So-" And again he showed me his non-teeth.
"I am on floor, switched off," he said, using a phrase that worked. "This is nothing!" he roared suddenly at the world, daring it to do more to him, but his defiance lasted only a second. Arthur slid down onto the pavement, still clutching my hand. And the tears came harder.
"I am on the floor, switched off," he said again. "I can do nothing!"
The memory of impotence caused him pain, it was obvious.
"My girlfriend!" he explained.
"I can do nothing! My girlfriend, she's four months pregnant..." The tears became a wail, and I reached down to rub his back, like you would a kid with a scraped knee.
"They raped my girlfriend!!" he managed through tears and snot and slurring. "The baby...she lost the baby...and I can do nothing!"
I continued trying to do 'comforting contact' with this obviously deeply scarred man, but there's something about not believing in a higher power that leaves your range of responses to the world's atrocities somewhat limited...or maybe I'm just crap with people. It was territory we were about to come on to in a big way.
"I know there is a Jesus," said Arthur. "There is a Jesus, and these bastards, he will make them pay for this...forever...Jesus loves everybody, no matter what you've done, if you're a murderer or what. Jesus loves you..." He seemed a little confused between Jesus the Shepherd and Jesus the Terminator, but to be fair, he's not alone in that, and has more reason than most.
"Can I pray?" he asked. "It's really important to me," he affirmed. He still had my hand, so it wasn't like I could leave, and of course I'd never stop anyone doing something to make them feel better. So there we were, me standing, bending, him kneeling at my feet, kissing my hand, mumbling in probably-Russian and occasionally beating his breast, looking for all the world like a king blessing a medieval knight, or more appropriately, a Pop blessing a pilgrim.
Ohhhh crap, I thought to myself. This is becoming A Thing for the day...
When Arthur had finished praying, he asked me my name and I told him it was Tony.
"Artur," said Arthur, holding tightly to my hand. "You a good person, Tony..."
Yeah, right...I thought. It's weird, but because so many people think you can only be a moral person if you believe in a deity, there's an unspoken determination among atheists to out-moral them wherever possible. This wasn't exactly what I was thinking, but it did go through my head that if I just walked away now, I'd be pretty much letting the side down.
"Is there somewhere that can help me with this?" he asked, doing the leery teeth-showing thing again. We'd come round full circle.
"There is, yes," I said....and it was like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books from the eighties. Do you a) tell him again where to get help? b) take him to get help? c) Pull away, knowing he won't remember you ten minutes from now. I sighed.
"C'mon Arthur," I said, taking hold of his arm. "Let's see if we can get you some help..."
I knew of course, rationally, that he needed to dry out before anyone would be able to help him, and that even then, it would be at an Emergency Room where they'd be able to give him something to stabilise him. But I remembered, a couple of doctor's visits ago, an old lady had been brought in by someone who'd just encountered her on the streets, and they'd got her an ambulance to take her to hospital. So I walked Arthur back to my doctors. We had only gone a couple of hundred yards when he wailed.
"Can I tell you what happened?!"
"You've told me Arthur...but sure," I said, aware by now that it made no difference. His mind was tormenting him with the images of that Christmas Eve from Hell, round and round and round. He had to speak the words to relieve the pressure in his brain. Plus of course, Super lager=ball pein hammer - he had little in the way of short-term memory left, everything was focused on the long-term trauma.
Eventually, I got him into the surgery, and sat him down. I explained to the receptionist what the situation was, and she seemed keen to help me. She spoke to a doctor - not to my doctor, but to an officious little prick, frankly, who kept on about Arthur not being a patient of theirs, and needing an Emergency Room.
"I know that," I told him. "Can I get him a cab from here?" (I hadn't brought my phone out with me...I was only gonna be gone about half an hour...)
"Yes, you can do that," said the Prick-Doctor, "but really, we can't..."
"He's gone," said the Receptionist.
"What?" I said. "Who'd gone?"
"Oh god, he's wandering into traffic," she observed.
I looked round. Arthur had left the surgery and was indeed playing chicken with the traffic.
"Fuck," I said. It seemed to cover everything.
And again, the Choose Your Own Adventure options flashed up in my head. He'd left. He'd gone out of my life as suddenly as he'd come into it. That was an end to it...right?
"Fuck," I said again, for emphasis, and took off, running up the road to catch him. He'd just opened another can of super lager. This was not gonna be good.
"What's your name?" he asked again. I told him it was Tony.
"Tony Tony Tony," he said. "Always Tony." He sounded like he disapproved, but I wasn't having any of that.
"I've been with you for a little while now Arthur," I said. "Not changing my name for you or anyone."
He laughed, briefly.
"You wanna drink?" he asked.
"Nono, I'm fine," I said, taking his arm again. I was planning to lead him up to the main road, where we might spot a passing cab, the driver of which I'd have to speak to very nicely to get him to take us to the local hospital. Then I spotted a better bet. A local minicab office.
"C'mon Arthur," I said, beginning to get stuck in my own little conversational time-warp.
"Where we goin'?"
"Going to hospital, get you some help for those teeth, eh?"
"Nnno, I not goin' there," he declared. "'m'drunk..."
"Yes you are," I agreed.
"Can I tell you what happened?!" he wailed, and the cycle started again. This time when the events of last Christmas had run to their conclusion, he said he was going "up there" - gesturing to our local church. Seemed to make sense - he said they had bingo, and food and stuff. Forgive me, it's been a while and this is a major cosmopolitan city - I figured they could have! I also figured that, having picked a destination-point, Arthur at least knew roughly where he was.
Can anyone spot the flaw in this logic?
As we stagger-walked past the church, I was confused.
"Where we going, Arthur? Thought you wanted to go in here?"
"Nooo, wanna see my girlfriend," he explained. This gave us problems. I wasn't even sure, from his story, that the girlfriend was still alive!
"Do you believe in Jesus?" he asked suddenly, seeming suspicious of my sticking with him.
Oh crap! People who remember my conversation with the "you ain't from round here" guy in the States will recall that I never lie about this, no matter what the provocation. It's about as close to martyrdom as you can get being an atheist.
"No...not personally," I told him.
"Ohhh man, but there has to be a Jesus!" he exclaimed. "Look what happened to me. I'm a good person, man. It makes no sense if there's no Jesus! Otherwise, you tell me why it happened?!"
I didn't want to hurt him by pointing out that it happened because some people are just evil fucks, and other people aren't. I'd never rob him of that belief.
"Wanna pray!" he declared again. But this time, he didn't drop to his need, just clasped my hand and swung his head in close to mine, dribbling a little beery saliva and rather more snot onto my shirt.
"Can't remember the words in English," he said, almost craftily. "My Heavenly Father..."
He waited, expecting me to finish it for him. I wouldn't have, even if I knew the prayer he particularly meant. I mean, the Lord's Prayer is "Our Father..." - but that only occurs to me now, writing it back.
"My Heavenly Father..." he prompted again. I shook my head.
"I don't know the words either, Arthur...C'mon, let's keep walking..."
"Oh man...you pray for me....Please..." He looked at me intensely. "Pray for me..." Then the fire went out in him, and he staggered forward again.
We ended up walking past my flat, with me increasingly desperately trying to flag down passing cabs. There was nothing up the way we were going that seemed to offer any hope of a refuge for Arthur.
When suddenly, refuge cycled up behind us. Two community support officers on frankly dorky -looking bikes cycled up to talk to us.
I told them about Arthur, as much as I knew. Asked them whether we could get him to hospital.
"Yeah," said one of them. "We will. You can leave him with us."
I didn't really want to. I wanted to be sure he got help.
"Go on sir," said the officer. "We'll look after him."
I told him these guys would make sure he got his teeth seen to - which, on reflection, was probably about as much of a lie as it would have been if I'd told him the Lord lived in my shoebox - and took my leave of Arthur. And oddly, I haven't felt able to mention him to anyone till I wrote him down.
I want to make it clear - I didn't tell you all this to make myself look big and Samaritan-like. Quite the reverse in fact. If anything, it was an object lesson in how not having recourse to an easy leveller of playing-fields makes you unable to answer questions like "why did this happen to me?" with any answer that brings comfort. Doesn't make you wrong, of course, just comfort-impoverished, which I'm not sure isn't actually worse than being wrong.
The reason I haven't mentioned him to anyone till now is rather more pat. He asked me to pray for him.
I can't do that, I don't have faith in anything that would receive those prayers and intercede for Arthur's shattered life and consciousness. What I have faith in is human beings. Of course, I'm not blind - human beings were responsible for the acts that brought this man to the point where he staggered into my life today. We have such phenomenal potential, just by being alive, to be the best of people, or the worst. If you can't pray to a god to bring someone peace, all you can do is share their story with other people, to show the consequences of actions, to show a warning of what we can be, and to make a plea for our positive potential. All I can do is pray to you guys. Spare Arthur, in his brain-sized cell in his private Hell, a thought this Christmas. I know we're all feeling the bitchslap of economic implosion, but if you can do something - any damn thing - to bring light into someone's life - do it. I'm gonna do something myself, though I have no idea what. Maybe the person I can help will come staggering into my life just like Arthur did (I have no illusions I helped him at all). Or maybe I'll have to work a bit harder next time...
No sooner do I have one of my (increasingly rare, actually) atheistic rants, than the universe, with its typical perversity, sends Arthur crashing into my life.
Thanks for that, universe. Remind me to kick you in the crotch next time I see you...
Things were going well this morning - I popped to Argos when they opened at 8.30, to return some unopened archive boxes that we hadn't used in the move, then headed straight to the doctors. The doc who started me on this whole experiment by offering me elective bariatric surgery sorted me out with three whole months worth of Xenical, which should tide me over nicely till I get set up with a practice in Merthyr. I went and collected them from Linda, our friend at the pharmacist, (and of course, the other pharmacy-folk too). Had a bit of a chat there, and then started to make my way home.
There was Christmas music seeping out of a shop doorway. "Mary's Boy Child," by Boney M.
"...And man will live forever more, because of Christmas Day," they sang, in optimistic defiance of biology.
That's when Arthur introduced himself.
He did it with a shout. A friendly shout, as these things go, but nevertheless, a shout. Normally of course, when strangers start shouting at you in the street, you quicken your pace and develop serenely selective deafness. But there was something about the interposition of the Christmas carol and Arthur's shouting that stopped me in my tracks. I turned round.
Fucking Boney M!
Arthur was drunk. Well, either Arthur was drunk, or the world was sailing on a very rough sea and the rest of us were just too wrapped up in ourselves to notice. He swayed and staggered madly, drunkenly, in imminent danger of crashing to the ground with every step, waving a can of Skol Super lager around as he came. (Translation for the Americans. British lager is just like beer, only vastly more potent than anything of which you can get tall, frosty skeins in the States. Ours is warmer, and frequently of more mysterious origin, and absolutely nowhere near as much fun to drink, but the key point is - stronger. Super lager is basically a ball pein hammer to the skull, with a couple of shots of heroin into the eyeballs as a chaser. Arthur was very, very drunk...).
Arthur crashed up and into me. He was tall, and dressed in a leather jacket and despair. His face was bristly but not unpleasant.
"I'm drunk now," he explained unnecessarily, "but I'm not gonna be drunk tomorrow. Is there somewhere that can help me with this?"
'This' wasn't the problem of sobriety. This was his teeth. Or rather, his non-teeth - he leered into my face and pulled his lips up and open, revealing that most of his upper front teeth were missing, the remainder were black, and he had one broken shard left of one of his very front teeth. I held my breath, trying to ignore the lager-and-god-knows-what-else stench till he put his teeth away again. He grabbed my hand earnestly with his spittle-covered fingers.
"Err...yes," I said. "There's a doctors just down that road there," I pointed. "They have a dentist, I think..."
"They say I don't live here," said Arthur, who spoke with an eastern European accent - Russian, I'd guess, given his sentence-constructions - "they'd tell me to fuck off..."
I thought he was probably right, but I was just keen to do my bit in this unlooked-for conversation, and get the fuck on with my day. Shit to do, Arthur buddy - I'm outta this town tomorrow...
Arthur, a little unexpectedly, began to cry.
"Christmas Eve!" he wailed. "24th December, last year!"
This was a bit cryptic for my tastes.
"Can I tell you what happened?!" he pleaded.
I thought about it - I had a guy coming to take back my cable box at 12, it was probably 10...something, and a seriously drunk eastern European guy was clasping desperately at my hand, asking to tell me his life story. I sighed.
"Sure," I agreed, which I think it's fairly obvious was code for "Whatever the fuck you need to do, dude, just don't kill me. I have one day left in this city, dammit..."
"Middle of night," he said, setting the scene. "We were in a squat. There is knock on door. I go to answer it. Man there....Bastard. He puts his foot like this-"
Arthur stamped heavily and sideways, showing the classic 'foot-in-the-door' technique.
"...So door cannot be closing, yes?"
"Right," I agreed, nodding that I understood.
"He come in, call others, and they follow. They beat me up, man...." Again, he stamped, this time more graphically, acting out a thorough kicking.
"Then...last thing I know, he get a brick, and..." He mimed the overarm motion for me. The man had slammed him in the face with a brick.
"So-" And again he showed me his non-teeth.
"I am on floor, switched off," he said, using a phrase that worked. "This is nothing!" he roared suddenly at the world, daring it to do more to him, but his defiance lasted only a second. Arthur slid down onto the pavement, still clutching my hand. And the tears came harder.
"I am on the floor, switched off," he said again. "I can do nothing!"
The memory of impotence caused him pain, it was obvious.
"My girlfriend!" he explained.
"I can do nothing! My girlfriend, she's four months pregnant..." The tears became a wail, and I reached down to rub his back, like you would a kid with a scraped knee.
"They raped my girlfriend!!" he managed through tears and snot and slurring. "The baby...she lost the baby...and I can do nothing!"
I continued trying to do 'comforting contact' with this obviously deeply scarred man, but there's something about not believing in a higher power that leaves your range of responses to the world's atrocities somewhat limited...or maybe I'm just crap with people. It was territory we were about to come on to in a big way.
"I know there is a Jesus," said Arthur. "There is a Jesus, and these bastards, he will make them pay for this...forever...Jesus loves everybody, no matter what you've done, if you're a murderer or what. Jesus loves you..." He seemed a little confused between Jesus the Shepherd and Jesus the Terminator, but to be fair, he's not alone in that, and has more reason than most.
"Can I pray?" he asked. "It's really important to me," he affirmed. He still had my hand, so it wasn't like I could leave, and of course I'd never stop anyone doing something to make them feel better. So there we were, me standing, bending, him kneeling at my feet, kissing my hand, mumbling in probably-Russian and occasionally beating his breast, looking for all the world like a king blessing a medieval knight, or more appropriately, a Pop blessing a pilgrim.
Ohhhh crap, I thought to myself. This is becoming A Thing for the day...
When Arthur had finished praying, he asked me my name and I told him it was Tony.
"Artur," said Arthur, holding tightly to my hand. "You a good person, Tony..."
Yeah, right...I thought. It's weird, but because so many people think you can only be a moral person if you believe in a deity, there's an unspoken determination among atheists to out-moral them wherever possible. This wasn't exactly what I was thinking, but it did go through my head that if I just walked away now, I'd be pretty much letting the side down.
"Is there somewhere that can help me with this?" he asked, doing the leery teeth-showing thing again. We'd come round full circle.
"There is, yes," I said....and it was like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books from the eighties. Do you a) tell him again where to get help? b) take him to get help? c) Pull away, knowing he won't remember you ten minutes from now. I sighed.
"C'mon Arthur," I said, taking hold of his arm. "Let's see if we can get you some help..."
I knew of course, rationally, that he needed to dry out before anyone would be able to help him, and that even then, it would be at an Emergency Room where they'd be able to give him something to stabilise him. But I remembered, a couple of doctor's visits ago, an old lady had been brought in by someone who'd just encountered her on the streets, and they'd got her an ambulance to take her to hospital. So I walked Arthur back to my doctors. We had only gone a couple of hundred yards when he wailed.
"Can I tell you what happened?!"
"You've told me Arthur...but sure," I said, aware by now that it made no difference. His mind was tormenting him with the images of that Christmas Eve from Hell, round and round and round. He had to speak the words to relieve the pressure in his brain. Plus of course, Super lager=ball pein hammer - he had little in the way of short-term memory left, everything was focused on the long-term trauma.
Eventually, I got him into the surgery, and sat him down. I explained to the receptionist what the situation was, and she seemed keen to help me. She spoke to a doctor - not to my doctor, but to an officious little prick, frankly, who kept on about Arthur not being a patient of theirs, and needing an Emergency Room.
"I know that," I told him. "Can I get him a cab from here?" (I hadn't brought my phone out with me...I was only gonna be gone about half an hour...)
"Yes, you can do that," said the Prick-Doctor, "but really, we can't..."
"He's gone," said the Receptionist.
"What?" I said. "Who'd gone?"
"Oh god, he's wandering into traffic," she observed.
I looked round. Arthur had left the surgery and was indeed playing chicken with the traffic.
"Fuck," I said. It seemed to cover everything.
And again, the Choose Your Own Adventure options flashed up in my head. He'd left. He'd gone out of my life as suddenly as he'd come into it. That was an end to it...right?
"Fuck," I said again, for emphasis, and took off, running up the road to catch him. He'd just opened another can of super lager. This was not gonna be good.
"What's your name?" he asked again. I told him it was Tony.
"Tony Tony Tony," he said. "Always Tony." He sounded like he disapproved, but I wasn't having any of that.
"I've been with you for a little while now Arthur," I said. "Not changing my name for you or anyone."
He laughed, briefly.
"You wanna drink?" he asked.
"Nono, I'm fine," I said, taking his arm again. I was planning to lead him up to the main road, where we might spot a passing cab, the driver of which I'd have to speak to very nicely to get him to take us to the local hospital. Then I spotted a better bet. A local minicab office.
"C'mon Arthur," I said, beginning to get stuck in my own little conversational time-warp.
"Where we goin'?"
"Going to hospital, get you some help for those teeth, eh?"
"Nnno, I not goin' there," he declared. "'m'drunk..."
"Yes you are," I agreed.
"Can I tell you what happened?!" he wailed, and the cycle started again. This time when the events of last Christmas had run to their conclusion, he said he was going "up there" - gesturing to our local church. Seemed to make sense - he said they had bingo, and food and stuff. Forgive me, it's been a while and this is a major cosmopolitan city - I figured they could have! I also figured that, having picked a destination-point, Arthur at least knew roughly where he was.
Can anyone spot the flaw in this logic?
As we stagger-walked past the church, I was confused.
"Where we going, Arthur? Thought you wanted to go in here?"
"Nooo, wanna see my girlfriend," he explained. This gave us problems. I wasn't even sure, from his story, that the girlfriend was still alive!
"Do you believe in Jesus?" he asked suddenly, seeming suspicious of my sticking with him.
Oh crap! People who remember my conversation with the "you ain't from round here" guy in the States will recall that I never lie about this, no matter what the provocation. It's about as close to martyrdom as you can get being an atheist.
"No...not personally," I told him.
"Ohhh man, but there has to be a Jesus!" he exclaimed. "Look what happened to me. I'm a good person, man. It makes no sense if there's no Jesus! Otherwise, you tell me why it happened?!"
I didn't want to hurt him by pointing out that it happened because some people are just evil fucks, and other people aren't. I'd never rob him of that belief.
"Wanna pray!" he declared again. But this time, he didn't drop to his need, just clasped my hand and swung his head in close to mine, dribbling a little beery saliva and rather more snot onto my shirt.
"Can't remember the words in English," he said, almost craftily. "My Heavenly Father..."
He waited, expecting me to finish it for him. I wouldn't have, even if I knew the prayer he particularly meant. I mean, the Lord's Prayer is "Our Father..." - but that only occurs to me now, writing it back.
"My Heavenly Father..." he prompted again. I shook my head.
"I don't know the words either, Arthur...C'mon, let's keep walking..."
"Oh man...you pray for me....Please..." He looked at me intensely. "Pray for me..." Then the fire went out in him, and he staggered forward again.
We ended up walking past my flat, with me increasingly desperately trying to flag down passing cabs. There was nothing up the way we were going that seemed to offer any hope of a refuge for Arthur.
When suddenly, refuge cycled up behind us. Two community support officers on frankly dorky -looking bikes cycled up to talk to us.
I told them about Arthur, as much as I knew. Asked them whether we could get him to hospital.
"Yeah," said one of them. "We will. You can leave him with us."
I didn't really want to. I wanted to be sure he got help.
"Go on sir," said the officer. "We'll look after him."
I told him these guys would make sure he got his teeth seen to - which, on reflection, was probably about as much of a lie as it would have been if I'd told him the Lord lived in my shoebox - and took my leave of Arthur. And oddly, I haven't felt able to mention him to anyone till I wrote him down.
I want to make it clear - I didn't tell you all this to make myself look big and Samaritan-like. Quite the reverse in fact. If anything, it was an object lesson in how not having recourse to an easy leveller of playing-fields makes you unable to answer questions like "why did this happen to me?" with any answer that brings comfort. Doesn't make you wrong, of course, just comfort-impoverished, which I'm not sure isn't actually worse than being wrong.
The reason I haven't mentioned him to anyone till now is rather more pat. He asked me to pray for him.
I can't do that, I don't have faith in anything that would receive those prayers and intercede for Arthur's shattered life and consciousness. What I have faith in is human beings. Of course, I'm not blind - human beings were responsible for the acts that brought this man to the point where he staggered into my life today. We have such phenomenal potential, just by being alive, to be the best of people, or the worst. If you can't pray to a god to bring someone peace, all you can do is share their story with other people, to show the consequences of actions, to show a warning of what we can be, and to make a plea for our positive potential. All I can do is pray to you guys. Spare Arthur, in his brain-sized cell in his private Hell, a thought this Christmas. I know we're all feeling the bitchslap of economic implosion, but if you can do something - any damn thing - to bring light into someone's life - do it. I'm gonna do something myself, though I have no idea what. Maybe the person I can help will come staggering into my life just like Arthur did (I have no illusions I helped him at all). Or maybe I'll have to work a bit harder next time...
Ticking Off Lists
D'you think God had a To-Do list for that whole 'Create a world in Seven Days' thing he's occasionally credited with by at least some people?
I'm just wondering, because, having finished the fun-fest that was The House of Atreus by Aeschylus, with all its kid-slaughter, human-pie references, spousal murder, matricide and suchlike, I figured I'd pop across the pantheons, and give Genesis a go again. I've read the Bible a few times in my life, but never for its literary or entertainment value. Have to say, even compared to all that crazy shit in Aeschylus, Genesis is pretty freakin OUT THERE...what with the nice-enough but clearly inaccurate description of what might have happened to get us to where we...y'know...exist, and the stories of the talking snake, and the huuuuuge fuck-off flood that, and let's not make light of this, kills every damn thing on the planet except for a floating zoo...and presumably fish(? - how are fish less sinful than earthworms? Just asking...), the guy who offered a rampaging mob his virgin daughters to rape if they'd leave him the fuck alone...those same daughters getitng the old man drunk and sneaking in to have incestuous sex with him, the gifting of slave-girls to husbands by wives, just so they can 'have kids' together...the guy who wore goats-skin to look like his hairy-assed older brother, and got himself blessed by his father in his place...
Did I mention, this is just Book One of the Bible? We haven't even got to the Ten Commandments yet, let alone the fun-fest that is Leviticus...But the point I'm trying to make here is not some atheistic ranting one...no, honest, it isn't...
The point is that "And on the Seventh Day He Rested" schtick...
Really? Cos I gotta tell you, if God used To-Do Lists, and still gave himself the whooooooole seventh day off, I'm thinking there's some shit that got missed, back in the day, and he's just never mentioned it. I know in culinary circles, that's called "Standing Behind Your Dish" - you don't ever mention the ingredients that you meant to put in that would have made it freakin' awesome. Whatever stage you get to, you act like it's what you intended, and hope you get away with it. I reckon that's what God did.
I started this week with a single, simple To-Do List.OK, it wasn't exactly: Day 1, create Heavens and Earth...But not only does it keep growing, no matter what I lop off it, but, as I've mentioned before, it's started spawning junior lists. And not doing things in order is clearly fatal. Right now, if I'd been God (and who among us doesn't secretly believe that they are?), I'd have made the zebras, and LED lights, and corned beef, but I probably wouldn't have separated the waters into earth-waters and sky waters yet, or got around to making the Moon, or created cows, which of course, once you've created corned beef is problematic.
It's getting increasingly insane. This afternoon before i left the office, as I'm here at home tomorrow, visiting the doctor, and waiting in for an engineer, I actually wrote myself a specialised To-Do List of stuff that can be done at home, and then, as if that wasn't mental enough, I wrote myself a To-Do List for tonight - everything from "Put on coat, scarf, hat...Leave office. Get coffee and cash....etc through to...write blog, check memory stick, turn Word docs into pdfs. Sleep.
I don't know when I think I'm going to cross this last one off - triumphantly on waking up in the morning presumably. I wouldn't mind, but when I got home and crossed of "get home" I found that, having spoken to d, the list had actually grown three new items. And because they needed inserting at awkward points, I actually ended up re-doing tonight's list, for, apparently, the most efficient route through the flat, so that the things I'd done would all line up nicely and I could do them with the minimum of doubling back.
Wonder what was on the Divine To-Do List that got shuffled under the carpet when the Seventh Day Deadline' came up sooner than he'd expected. Comedian Eddie Izzard mentions 'Tell Them The Planet's Round' and 'Abolish Slavery' as big ones, and he's probably right. "Stop them taking life so freakin' seriously", I like to think might have been another one.
I've only been doing these days of To-Do Listing like a bastard since d left on Sunday - what's that, Day 4 - and I'm already bloody knackered. If I'd been God, we've had a five day week.
Which reminds me - I can hardly see the screen any more for yawning.
And On the Fifth Day He Rested...
Need to follow the example of the big Guy before I'm found slumped over my keyboard, dribbling incoherently.
Hmm...
The Duck-Billed Platypus is finally making sense at last...
Blood was 5.4 today by the way. 5.6 yesterday. Not technically the Seventh Day yet, but fuck it - time for this creative deity to rest...
I'm just wondering, because, having finished the fun-fest that was The House of Atreus by Aeschylus, with all its kid-slaughter, human-pie references, spousal murder, matricide and suchlike, I figured I'd pop across the pantheons, and give Genesis a go again. I've read the Bible a few times in my life, but never for its literary or entertainment value. Have to say, even compared to all that crazy shit in Aeschylus, Genesis is pretty freakin OUT THERE...what with the nice-enough but clearly inaccurate description of what might have happened to get us to where we...y'know...exist, and the stories of the talking snake, and the huuuuuge fuck-off flood that, and let's not make light of this, kills every damn thing on the planet except for a floating zoo...and presumably fish(? - how are fish less sinful than earthworms? Just asking...), the guy who offered a rampaging mob his virgin daughters to rape if they'd leave him the fuck alone...those same daughters getitng the old man drunk and sneaking in to have incestuous sex with him, the gifting of slave-girls to husbands by wives, just so they can 'have kids' together...the guy who wore goats-skin to look like his hairy-assed older brother, and got himself blessed by his father in his place...
Did I mention, this is just Book One of the Bible? We haven't even got to the Ten Commandments yet, let alone the fun-fest that is Leviticus...But the point I'm trying to make here is not some atheistic ranting one...no, honest, it isn't...
The point is that "And on the Seventh Day He Rested" schtick...
Really? Cos I gotta tell you, if God used To-Do Lists, and still gave himself the whooooooole seventh day off, I'm thinking there's some shit that got missed, back in the day, and he's just never mentioned it. I know in culinary circles, that's called "Standing Behind Your Dish" - you don't ever mention the ingredients that you meant to put in that would have made it freakin' awesome. Whatever stage you get to, you act like it's what you intended, and hope you get away with it. I reckon that's what God did.
I started this week with a single, simple To-Do List.OK, it wasn't exactly: Day 1, create Heavens and Earth...But not only does it keep growing, no matter what I lop off it, but, as I've mentioned before, it's started spawning junior lists. And not doing things in order is clearly fatal. Right now, if I'd been God (and who among us doesn't secretly believe that they are?), I'd have made the zebras, and LED lights, and corned beef, but I probably wouldn't have separated the waters into earth-waters and sky waters yet, or got around to making the Moon, or created cows, which of course, once you've created corned beef is problematic.
It's getting increasingly insane. This afternoon before i left the office, as I'm here at home tomorrow, visiting the doctor, and waiting in for an engineer, I actually wrote myself a specialised To-Do List of stuff that can be done at home, and then, as if that wasn't mental enough, I wrote myself a To-Do List for tonight - everything from "Put on coat, scarf, hat...Leave office. Get coffee and cash....etc through to...write blog, check memory stick, turn Word docs into pdfs. Sleep.
I don't know when I think I'm going to cross this last one off - triumphantly on waking up in the morning presumably. I wouldn't mind, but when I got home and crossed of "get home" I found that, having spoken to d, the list had actually grown three new items. And because they needed inserting at awkward points, I actually ended up re-doing tonight's list, for, apparently, the most efficient route through the flat, so that the things I'd done would all line up nicely and I could do them with the minimum of doubling back.
Wonder what was on the Divine To-Do List that got shuffled under the carpet when the Seventh Day Deadline' came up sooner than he'd expected. Comedian Eddie Izzard mentions 'Tell Them The Planet's Round' and 'Abolish Slavery' as big ones, and he's probably right. "Stop them taking life so freakin' seriously", I like to think might have been another one.
I've only been doing these days of To-Do Listing like a bastard since d left on Sunday - what's that, Day 4 - and I'm already bloody knackered. If I'd been God, we've had a five day week.
Which reminds me - I can hardly see the screen any more for yawning.
And On the Fifth Day He Rested...
Need to follow the example of the big Guy before I'm found slumped over my keyboard, dribbling incoherently.
Hmm...
The Duck-Billed Platypus is finally making sense at last...
Blood was 5.4 today by the way. 5.6 yesterday. Not technically the Seventh Day yet, but fuck it - time for this creative deity to rest...
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Welsh Tourist Walking
London took me aback today, and really made me smile.
Having to find my way to the South Kensington post office at lunchtime (which I did, thankyouverymuch Kathy! ;o)), I stayed in that area for lunch, finding a nice little cafe I haven't known was there for about six years. Had a very tasty and very filling panini, and caught myself thinking "Well, this is a great little find - I'll have to come back here..." before realising that no, I really won't. I don't live here anymore. I don't live in London. I'm Welsh Tourist Walking.
That rocked me back on my heels for a bit. Then, as I found my way back up to my office (and again, may I say - did that just fine and dandy!), I kinda fell in love with London all over again, but in a slightly different way. A way that only works if you listen, if you don't shut yourself off behind walls of music. I heard a youngish man with two small kids pik up a traffic cone and blow through it like a trumpet, or an elephant's flatulence, to make them scandalised and giggly. Heard the squeals of youngsters and the whoah-whoooahing of adults who had taken the opportunity of it being December to go ice-skating down by the British Museum. Saw a couple kissing, right there in the street, as though the self-important Kensingtoniands weren't even there. Saw a couple of young women wearing fur-lines sparkly red Christmas Deely-Boppers with no hint of self-consciousness. It made me smile broadly, probably unnerving the bejeesus out of my...fellow...tourists.
You know what it's like? It's like the last time we saw my mother-in-law. As good fortune or providence, depeding on your interpretation, would have it, we were able to leave her in the company of friends and family, and it was a happy last impression to have of her. We knew that it was false of course, that she'd wake up in the morning and we'd be gone, and she'd go on until she couldn't go on any more. But in our minds, she'll always be there in that final snapshot, surrounded by smiles and good people. Today, I saw a truth like that - London is going to continue just fine and dandy without me. People will still skate by the Museum, and do silly things to amuse their kids or young siblings. They'll still jab each other, and stab each other, and mug and rape and kill each other, and they'll go on being born, and raised, and finding whatever is out there for them, even if that's nothing, in this city. But pretty much my final snapshot of it as part of it turned out to be overwhelmingly positive and Christmassy, like a Richard Curtis movie version of the real city beneath.
Of course, having found a great little cafe to have lunches I won't have, the Disappearing Day continued in much the same vein. Chatting to Karen Pulley, she mentioned a place in Covent Garden that did great Sunday lunches.
"Yyyyeah," I mentioned, "the time to tell me this would have been last week, when I still had a Sunday left in the city..."
This evening, I met up with Karen Who Shall Be Called Mae for our final meet-up while I live here. We went for dinner at her local Italian, which appeared to have a menu consisting of "27 Varieties of Carb A", followed by "36 Varieties of Carb B", and to have an attitude to portion size that wouldn't have been out of place in the Elephant House at London Zoo. The garlic bread starter - was a pizza. The pizza...was about the circumference of a human head. Fortunately in one respect, I chose the wrong Carb B, a pizza laden with chili flakes, which meant I couldn't eat that much of it.
"See, you should have discovered this place earlier," she opined.
"Nom," I agreed, putting away the starter at an unseemly rate of knots. "S'alright, I'll have something different next ti-"
"Oh,"I said, chewing mechanically. "Right." I sighed. If I'd had a bell, I'd have rung it round about then.
Unclean! Unclean! Welsh Tourist Walkin' here, Welsh Tourist Walkin'...
It's time to go Home...
Having to find my way to the South Kensington post office at lunchtime (which I did, thankyouverymuch Kathy! ;o)), I stayed in that area for lunch, finding a nice little cafe I haven't known was there for about six years. Had a very tasty and very filling panini, and caught myself thinking "Well, this is a great little find - I'll have to come back here..." before realising that no, I really won't. I don't live here anymore. I don't live in London. I'm Welsh Tourist Walking.
That rocked me back on my heels for a bit. Then, as I found my way back up to my office (and again, may I say - did that just fine and dandy!), I kinda fell in love with London all over again, but in a slightly different way. A way that only works if you listen, if you don't shut yourself off behind walls of music. I heard a youngish man with two small kids pik up a traffic cone and blow through it like a trumpet, or an elephant's flatulence, to make them scandalised and giggly. Heard the squeals of youngsters and the whoah-whoooahing of adults who had taken the opportunity of it being December to go ice-skating down by the British Museum. Saw a couple kissing, right there in the street, as though the self-important Kensingtoniands weren't even there. Saw a couple of young women wearing fur-lines sparkly red Christmas Deely-Boppers with no hint of self-consciousness. It made me smile broadly, probably unnerving the bejeesus out of my...fellow...tourists.
You know what it's like? It's like the last time we saw my mother-in-law. As good fortune or providence, depeding on your interpretation, would have it, we were able to leave her in the company of friends and family, and it was a happy last impression to have of her. We knew that it was false of course, that she'd wake up in the morning and we'd be gone, and she'd go on until she couldn't go on any more. But in our minds, she'll always be there in that final snapshot, surrounded by smiles and good people. Today, I saw a truth like that - London is going to continue just fine and dandy without me. People will still skate by the Museum, and do silly things to amuse their kids or young siblings. They'll still jab each other, and stab each other, and mug and rape and kill each other, and they'll go on being born, and raised, and finding whatever is out there for them, even if that's nothing, in this city. But pretty much my final snapshot of it as part of it turned out to be overwhelmingly positive and Christmassy, like a Richard Curtis movie version of the real city beneath.
Of course, having found a great little cafe to have lunches I won't have, the Disappearing Day continued in much the same vein. Chatting to Karen Pulley, she mentioned a place in Covent Garden that did great Sunday lunches.
"Yyyyeah," I mentioned, "the time to tell me this would have been last week, when I still had a Sunday left in the city..."
This evening, I met up with Karen Who Shall Be Called Mae for our final meet-up while I live here. We went for dinner at her local Italian, which appeared to have a menu consisting of "27 Varieties of Carb A", followed by "36 Varieties of Carb B", and to have an attitude to portion size that wouldn't have been out of place in the Elephant House at London Zoo. The garlic bread starter - was a pizza. The pizza...was about the circumference of a human head. Fortunately in one respect, I chose the wrong Carb B, a pizza laden with chili flakes, which meant I couldn't eat that much of it.
"See, you should have discovered this place earlier," she opined.
"Nom," I agreed, putting away the starter at an unseemly rate of knots. "S'alright, I'll have something different next ti-"
"Oh,"I said, chewing mechanically. "Right." I sighed. If I'd had a bell, I'd have rung it round about then.
Unclean! Unclean! Welsh Tourist Walkin' here, Welsh Tourist Walkin'...
It's time to go Home...
Monday, 19 December 2011
The Father Christmas Feeling
Blood was 6.1 this morning after a five mile walk in vaguely uncomfortable shoes. Kind of expected that, cos I broke, and had a couple of handfuls of trail mix at about eleven last night. Still, at least I did the walking - gods only know what the blood would have been before the walk (I work on the principle that a morning blood-test isn't worth doing till I get to my desk, because Hell, none of the rest of me is awake till then, there's no reason my blood should rush to the surface just cos I stab a needle into my thumb. My blood's like the rest of me, it needs coaxing into operation early in the morning...)
Good-ish day, when you consider that neither d nor I do terribly well when we're out of each other's immediate orbit for too long (and yes, frankly, overnight is too damn long!) - we're one of those absolutely nauseating couples that way. I got quite a lot done today, but have discovered that as time is closing in, my To-Do Lists have entered their spawning season - I can barely get half way through one before two more lists have popped into existence. What's more, by the time I've actually managed to cross an item off any one list, at least three extra items have been born on that list, and a couple on at least one other...
The whole thing, added to the fact of getting up and coming home in darkness, gives a sense of rapidly encroaching twilight to the week - the sudden running out of the daylight-time of my London life. We did a lot of farewells while d was here, and I'm having to do final visits to a couple of places this week, but with d already working on setting up the new flat in Wales, it feels like I'm running to beat a Solstice sunset, or and endless series of Christmas lists and deadlines...
It occurs to me that this is probably what Father Christmas feels like in these precious last few weeks, wondering where he gets a pony from for little Louise at 24 hours notice, and whether Timmy Johnson can be persuaded he wasn't quite good enough this year, simply because lumps of coal are a hell of a lot easier to come by in this economic climate than Sony Playstations...
In purely Disappearing terms, probably not that bad a day - as mentioned, five miles of walking in uncomfortable shoes, a record three Starbucks (which pretty much, between them, negate the five miles of walking!), brocolli soup for lunch - seriously? Broccoli, as a soup? Which demented vegetarian ever thought that was a good idea?? (shrugs...one with a shitload of brocolli to use up, I guess...), and beans on toast for dinner. You know that technique where if you eat slowly, and make a meal last for 20 minutes, you feel fuller for longer, because your eyes are not only very often 'bigger than your belly,' as the phrase has it, but your brain, frankly, is also very often slower than your gut. It takes about 20 minutes for the signal "Hey, Schmucko - I'm full!" to travel the distance from your stomach to your brain.
Think about that. As a species, we have the hand-eye co-ordination to play cricket, for God's sake (though noticeably not the intellectual capacity to explain why we do so to the satisfaction of an impartial observer). And yet it takes 20 minutes for your brain to work out that if you keep shovelling food into your mouth, at some point fairly soon, your body's gonna be full.
Can I just mention, once more, that Intelligent Design is a crock of horse-shit?
Thank you...
Anyhow, the technique would appear to work quite well - smallish meal really, but very filling, because I ate it while reading some of The House of Atreus by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus. It's all fathers sacrificing their daughters on alters, and then wives stabbing their husbands to death for sacrificing their daughters on alters, and then, just when you thought it couldn't get weird enough, there are dreams of women giving birth to snakes, and breastfeeding them, till they sink their fangs in and suckle blood out of their nipples...oh and then the wife's two remaining kids get together with a plan to stab Mommy Dearest in the chest, and slit the throat of her new, possibly gay-man, lover (hence the 'possibly'!)...
...which is a great way of making sure you chew your beans on toast slowly, it has to be said. Actually, looked at one way, it's a great way of realising you're not that hungry after all.
Mind you, I could just be thinking about this too hard. With all the dashing about and list-spawning, it's entirely possible I was just savouring 20 minutes of doing pretty much buggerall but reading ancient Greek gorenography and eating some beans on toast! Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got an elf strike in sector 7Q and Rudolf's come down with reindeer-flu...
Good-ish day, when you consider that neither d nor I do terribly well when we're out of each other's immediate orbit for too long (and yes, frankly, overnight is too damn long!) - we're one of those absolutely nauseating couples that way. I got quite a lot done today, but have discovered that as time is closing in, my To-Do Lists have entered their spawning season - I can barely get half way through one before two more lists have popped into existence. What's more, by the time I've actually managed to cross an item off any one list, at least three extra items have been born on that list, and a couple on at least one other...
The whole thing, added to the fact of getting up and coming home in darkness, gives a sense of rapidly encroaching twilight to the week - the sudden running out of the daylight-time of my London life. We did a lot of farewells while d was here, and I'm having to do final visits to a couple of places this week, but with d already working on setting up the new flat in Wales, it feels like I'm running to beat a Solstice sunset, or and endless series of Christmas lists and deadlines...
It occurs to me that this is probably what Father Christmas feels like in these precious last few weeks, wondering where he gets a pony from for little Louise at 24 hours notice, and whether Timmy Johnson can be persuaded he wasn't quite good enough this year, simply because lumps of coal are a hell of a lot easier to come by in this economic climate than Sony Playstations...
In purely Disappearing terms, probably not that bad a day - as mentioned, five miles of walking in uncomfortable shoes, a record three Starbucks (which pretty much, between them, negate the five miles of walking!), brocolli soup for lunch - seriously? Broccoli, as a soup? Which demented vegetarian ever thought that was a good idea?? (shrugs...one with a shitload of brocolli to use up, I guess...), and beans on toast for dinner. You know that technique where if you eat slowly, and make a meal last for 20 minutes, you feel fuller for longer, because your eyes are not only very often 'bigger than your belly,' as the phrase has it, but your brain, frankly, is also very often slower than your gut. It takes about 20 minutes for the signal "Hey, Schmucko - I'm full!" to travel the distance from your stomach to your brain.
Think about that. As a species, we have the hand-eye co-ordination to play cricket, for God's sake (though noticeably not the intellectual capacity to explain why we do so to the satisfaction of an impartial observer). And yet it takes 20 minutes for your brain to work out that if you keep shovelling food into your mouth, at some point fairly soon, your body's gonna be full.
Can I just mention, once more, that Intelligent Design is a crock of horse-shit?
Thank you...
Anyhow, the technique would appear to work quite well - smallish meal really, but very filling, because I ate it while reading some of The House of Atreus by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus. It's all fathers sacrificing their daughters on alters, and then wives stabbing their husbands to death for sacrificing their daughters on alters, and then, just when you thought it couldn't get weird enough, there are dreams of women giving birth to snakes, and breastfeeding them, till they sink their fangs in and suckle blood out of their nipples...oh and then the wife's two remaining kids get together with a plan to stab Mommy Dearest in the chest, and slit the throat of her new, possibly gay-man, lover (hence the 'possibly'!)...
...which is a great way of making sure you chew your beans on toast slowly, it has to be said. Actually, looked at one way, it's a great way of realising you're not that hungry after all.
Mind you, I could just be thinking about this too hard. With all the dashing about and list-spawning, it's entirely possible I was just savouring 20 minutes of doing pretty much buggerall but reading ancient Greek gorenography and eating some beans on toast! Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got an elf strike in sector 7Q and Rudolf's come down with reindeer-flu...
Sunday, 18 December 2011
The Inverted Weekend
Well that was weird.
All day yesterday, d and I kept telling each other how it felt like Sunday already, because we'd both been home on Friday, packing our little hearts out. Today, frankly, has felt suspiciously Saturday-ish all day long.
And when I say long, I mean long. We stumbled to our air mattress about 1AM, to catch some sleep. Set the alarm for 5AM, and woke up naturally before it went off. d was already pottering about, doing the final things that needed doing. As it turned out, that was just as well, cos the removal men, who had said they were going to be here at 6, and then had changed that to 7, turned up almost as originally planned at 6.15! By that point it wasn't exactly a case of being dressed as vicars and nuns and offering plates of small oily fish to people at random, but we were running around, doing what seemed to be an ever-expanding number of those apparently last, final-honest things. The guys were hefty Valleys blokes, with cheery dispositions and a fine line in whatever the Welsh equivalent of the Irish craic is...chrachhhhh probably, with significant amount of phlegm-expulsion as part of the pronunciation.
Anyhow, these guys turned up with a big big van, and almost equally big big muscles, and went through the flat like a small but dedicated plague of locusts - within about 45 minutes, they were done, we were down to bare carpets, and I was waving d off around the corner.
I wandered through the empty flat, looking for something to do or somewhere to sit that wasn't inflatable. Plugged in the iPod and listened to Christmas songs for a while. Yes, voluntarily. Not at all sure what that was about.
Possibly, as my pal Mae suggested, to add to or test my Grumpy Git personna. Strangely enough, it had the opposite effect - I came over all excited and Christmassy. This, clearly, couldn't be allowed to go on. I developed a plan - I would go to Oxford Street.
Oxford Street on Christmas Week, which this nearly is, is where they put all the people who are destined for Hell but can't get in yet, due to the queues. But today - calm. Quiet. Eerie. You could walk about ten abreast up most of the street, should you have that many friends with a masochistic bent. I'm guessing this is the meaning of all those panicky headlines I'm seeing about the death of the British high street, as we all either buy nothing at all but an extra lump of coal for our Christmas dinner, or buy online. Whatever we're doing, Oxford Street was nowhere near bad enough to dim my festive spirit. Came home to the empty flat. That, finally, felt weird.
There's a sensation when you give up a job and are working your notice period of being Dead Man Walking - or I guess Lame Duck Waddling, in political terms. Right now I feel like Grumpy Welshman Squatting - as though the place stopped belonging to us at about 7 o'clock this morning, and now I'm just taking the piss, letting myself in and out of someone else's house and dossing on their floor.
Of course, technically, that's always true when you rent. But it's always felt like our place - it's been where we've come "Home" to. And now it isn't. Now it's just some weirdly empty, anodyne walls, and an air mattress, and me.
(Shrug).
d got the movers sorted out at the other end of course, and, if she's got any sense, will be going to bed soon - s'been a very exhausting few weeks since we got the news that we could move Home to Wales.
In actual Disappearing terms, a pretty good day - had a couple of big de-caffs throughout the course of the day, oosome beans on toast, a packet of baked crisps and three Weetabix. Not by any means a stellar day, but compared to yesterday's pizzafest, not bad either. Have already set my alarm for the morning, for 6AM. Time to get back on the walking jag.
Well, I say time - thankfully, it's not time for another 11 and a half hours. Right now it's time to settle into the mattress with a movie and a bottle of water, I reckon. Tomorrow it's time to get back on the walking jag.
Maybe...
All day yesterday, d and I kept telling each other how it felt like Sunday already, because we'd both been home on Friday, packing our little hearts out. Today, frankly, has felt suspiciously Saturday-ish all day long.
And when I say long, I mean long. We stumbled to our air mattress about 1AM, to catch some sleep. Set the alarm for 5AM, and woke up naturally before it went off. d was already pottering about, doing the final things that needed doing. As it turned out, that was just as well, cos the removal men, who had said they were going to be here at 6, and then had changed that to 7, turned up almost as originally planned at 6.15! By that point it wasn't exactly a case of being dressed as vicars and nuns and offering plates of small oily fish to people at random, but we were running around, doing what seemed to be an ever-expanding number of those apparently last, final-honest things. The guys were hefty Valleys blokes, with cheery dispositions and a fine line in whatever the Welsh equivalent of the Irish craic is...chrachhhhh probably, with significant amount of phlegm-expulsion as part of the pronunciation.
Anyhow, these guys turned up with a big big van, and almost equally big big muscles, and went through the flat like a small but dedicated plague of locusts - within about 45 minutes, they were done, we were down to bare carpets, and I was waving d off around the corner.
I wandered through the empty flat, looking for something to do or somewhere to sit that wasn't inflatable. Plugged in the iPod and listened to Christmas songs for a while. Yes, voluntarily. Not at all sure what that was about.
Possibly, as my pal Mae suggested, to add to or test my Grumpy Git personna. Strangely enough, it had the opposite effect - I came over all excited and Christmassy. This, clearly, couldn't be allowed to go on. I developed a plan - I would go to Oxford Street.
Oxford Street on Christmas Week, which this nearly is, is where they put all the people who are destined for Hell but can't get in yet, due to the queues. But today - calm. Quiet. Eerie. You could walk about ten abreast up most of the street, should you have that many friends with a masochistic bent. I'm guessing this is the meaning of all those panicky headlines I'm seeing about the death of the British high street, as we all either buy nothing at all but an extra lump of coal for our Christmas dinner, or buy online. Whatever we're doing, Oxford Street was nowhere near bad enough to dim my festive spirit. Came home to the empty flat. That, finally, felt weird.
There's a sensation when you give up a job and are working your notice period of being Dead Man Walking - or I guess Lame Duck Waddling, in political terms. Right now I feel like Grumpy Welshman Squatting - as though the place stopped belonging to us at about 7 o'clock this morning, and now I'm just taking the piss, letting myself in and out of someone else's house and dossing on their floor.
Of course, technically, that's always true when you rent. But it's always felt like our place - it's been where we've come "Home" to. And now it isn't. Now it's just some weirdly empty, anodyne walls, and an air mattress, and me.
(Shrug).
d got the movers sorted out at the other end of course, and, if she's got any sense, will be going to bed soon - s'been a very exhausting few weeks since we got the news that we could move Home to Wales.
In actual Disappearing terms, a pretty good day - had a couple of big de-caffs throughout the course of the day, oosome beans on toast, a packet of baked crisps and three Weetabix. Not by any means a stellar day, but compared to yesterday's pizzafest, not bad either. Have already set my alarm for the morning, for 6AM. Time to get back on the walking jag.
Well, I say time - thankfully, it's not time for another 11 and a half hours. Right now it's time to settle into the mattress with a movie and a bottle of water, I reckon. Tomorrow it's time to get back on the walking jag.
Maybe...
Saturday, 17 December 2011
A Love Letter From The Olden Days
It's the day before d leaves. That's meant lots of packing, and a meet-up for a meal in Romford, with some of her old workmates who've become pals. Yuen and Matt, Caroline and Russell, Leon and Niki (with their daughter Sadie and friend), plus Paige the newbie.
Good fun at an Italian restuarant for several hours. We talked about all sorts of things, but mainly, and wonderfully, about d. As most of the people around the table had worked with her at some point, it was a love letter from various points of the past, to the present, with happy wishes for the future.
I didn't exactly fall off the Disappearing wagon (resisted the lure of the desserts, despite the frankly whorish concoctions on offer). But in some ways, today was like a love letter from the olden days in a culinary sense too - ate potato skins and pizza, with gusto and abandon as we talked and laughed and remembered all the wonders that make up my wife. I figure it's pointless fretting about this right now - I have next week free from the tyranny of bathroom scales, in which to undo any damage of an Ordinary Day, and hopefully even make some progress on that Early Resolution.
It was interesting, and somehow I felt privileged, to see her through some other eyes today - highly recommend it as an exercise, by the way - see someone you love through the eyes of other people they've impressed. You'll see things you always suspected, shining brightly through in shards of mirror you've never possessed. And it'll make you even more grateful, and wondering, that they're in your life at all.
Yuen looked fabulous, and somehow radiant, and smiley as she always does. Matt (a fellow Who fan), talked about having an inside source that mentioned Ice Warriors coming in Season Seven (and you probably heard it here first. And didn't give a toss...). Caroline joked about coming to terms with 'being the new d' - she took over d's job as of last week. Russell told me I could probably stop being diabetic if I got my weight down to about eleven stone (Hello - welcome to the party, man!), and mentioned that maybe, some time in the future, we'd move again (Shame - I quite liked him up until that point...). Niki told us tales from her work, which is fascinating, but which I'm not going to share here on the grounds that they're her tales, not mine. Leon, I think it's fair to say, did his level best to embarrass the bejeesus out of his daughter and her pal (Sterling work, good man!). And Paige, bless her, who was perhaps ironically the last to arrive, turned up at a vital moment and saved the day with her mathematical skill and the calculator on her phone. Oh and while I think about it, Caroline also shared with us the pure joy of a website called www.deathclock.com. Go ahead, go there, I dare ya - it'll scare the bejeesus out of you. That wasn't so much a love letter from the olden days as a bitchslap from the future - according to 'normal' estimates, I'm due to die on August 3rd 2042, at the age of almost-but-not-quite 71. d on the other hand is scheduled to pop off the planet on March 19th 2039. I reckon if I have to piss about on the planet for three years in her absence, I'll probably die of sheer boredom anyhow, but yyyyeah...thanks for that one Caroline...
One cute little side effect of looking on that site though is that I've just had to calculate my BMI again. And apparently I'm now on the Very Overweight/Obese border. I know, not exactly party time perhaps, but as I mentioned riiiiight back at the start of this thing, I was originally in the Holy Fuck, How Are You Still Walking Around, You Fat Fuck? category, so I've come through the wilds of morbid obesity, through the flatlands of ordinary obesity, and now am flirting in the forests of just being very overweight. So, that's worth a miniature awoohoo all on its own.
We said fairly emotional farewells to the gang, promising to keep in touch, and then we came home and worked our asses off. Then we stopped, and I wrote this while watching How To Train Your Dragon...(shrugs)...just Because...And now it's 10.50, which means there are just about eight hours left before the men come to take my girl Home. And soooooooo much still left to do. So this is me, buggering off to Do Some Of It, and then hold my honey till the morning dark. Love letters from the olden days are all very well, but sometimes, all you have is right this minute, and you have to make the most of it.
Ni-night.
PS - Almost forgot to say, Caroline, please send the link for this to Leon? Thanks! t
Good fun at an Italian restuarant for several hours. We talked about all sorts of things, but mainly, and wonderfully, about d. As most of the people around the table had worked with her at some point, it was a love letter from various points of the past, to the present, with happy wishes for the future.
I didn't exactly fall off the Disappearing wagon (resisted the lure of the desserts, despite the frankly whorish concoctions on offer). But in some ways, today was like a love letter from the olden days in a culinary sense too - ate potato skins and pizza, with gusto and abandon as we talked and laughed and remembered all the wonders that make up my wife. I figure it's pointless fretting about this right now - I have next week free from the tyranny of bathroom scales, in which to undo any damage of an Ordinary Day, and hopefully even make some progress on that Early Resolution.
It was interesting, and somehow I felt privileged, to see her through some other eyes today - highly recommend it as an exercise, by the way - see someone you love through the eyes of other people they've impressed. You'll see things you always suspected, shining brightly through in shards of mirror you've never possessed. And it'll make you even more grateful, and wondering, that they're in your life at all.
Yuen looked fabulous, and somehow radiant, and smiley as she always does. Matt (a fellow Who fan), talked about having an inside source that mentioned Ice Warriors coming in Season Seven (and you probably heard it here first. And didn't give a toss...). Caroline joked about coming to terms with 'being the new d' - she took over d's job as of last week. Russell told me I could probably stop being diabetic if I got my weight down to about eleven stone (Hello - welcome to the party, man!), and mentioned that maybe, some time in the future, we'd move again (Shame - I quite liked him up until that point...). Niki told us tales from her work, which is fascinating, but which I'm not going to share here on the grounds that they're her tales, not mine. Leon, I think it's fair to say, did his level best to embarrass the bejeesus out of his daughter and her pal (Sterling work, good man!). And Paige, bless her, who was perhaps ironically the last to arrive, turned up at a vital moment and saved the day with her mathematical skill and the calculator on her phone. Oh and while I think about it, Caroline also shared with us the pure joy of a website called www.deathclock.com. Go ahead, go there, I dare ya - it'll scare the bejeesus out of you. That wasn't so much a love letter from the olden days as a bitchslap from the future - according to 'normal' estimates, I'm due to die on August 3rd 2042, at the age of almost-but-not-quite 71. d on the other hand is scheduled to pop off the planet on March 19th 2039. I reckon if I have to piss about on the planet for three years in her absence, I'll probably die of sheer boredom anyhow, but yyyyeah...thanks for that one Caroline...
One cute little side effect of looking on that site though is that I've just had to calculate my BMI again. And apparently I'm now on the Very Overweight/Obese border. I know, not exactly party time perhaps, but as I mentioned riiiiight back at the start of this thing, I was originally in the Holy Fuck, How Are You Still Walking Around, You Fat Fuck? category, so I've come through the wilds of morbid obesity, through the flatlands of ordinary obesity, and now am flirting in the forests of just being very overweight. So, that's worth a miniature awoohoo all on its own.
We said fairly emotional farewells to the gang, promising to keep in touch, and then we came home and worked our asses off. Then we stopped, and I wrote this while watching How To Train Your Dragon...(shrugs)...just Because...And now it's 10.50, which means there are just about eight hours left before the men come to take my girl Home. And soooooooo much still left to do. So this is me, buggering off to Do Some Of It, and then hold my honey till the morning dark. Love letters from the olden days are all very well, but sometimes, all you have is right this minute, and you have to make the most of it.
Ni-night.
PS - Almost forgot to say, Caroline, please send the link for this to Leon? Thanks! t
Friday, 16 December 2011
Bombsitery
See, I reckon the UN is missing a trick.
There's been all this research over the years into "smart bombs" but all they do, ultimately, is dissassemble molecules. If they wanted to develop a really smart bomb, it would find its way to your door, knock politely and wait till you let it in, then pack up everything you own into storage boxes, mark them as Fragile where necessary, and then pack them onto the back of a truck for you. Notsomuch a weapon of mass destruction, as a weapon of mass eviction.
Our place looks like it's been used for the testing of such a weapon tonight. The kitchen is decimated, but eerily clean. The bedroom...still has far too many clothes in it, but otherwise, it's just a boxful of air mattress. The bathroom - pretty empty. Our personal batcave - well Hell, that's never gonna be empty, but it's empty of anything that a) belongs to us, and b) we give a toss about.
The living room - well, it looks like the living room of people who don't live here any more. Boxes, wrapped-up bits of kitchenalia, one remaining couch, bookcases with their shelves out, wrapped in paper and taped together...I want to tell you it looks like a bombsite, but it'd have to be a very organised bomb...which I think is where we came in.
d and I have both been at home today, working our respective asses off, so again, I'm not gonna worry about the pizza buffet we had for lunch, or the chicken kievs and pasta I had for dinner. Just not gonna worry, or whinge, or bitch. Popped to the nurse at one point today, and with my clothes on, on her scales, I was doing OK, so, frankly, nehh!
The movers will be here about thirty-six hours from the time I write these words. And the next chapter of our lives begins, I guess.
Something that, of course, cannot be said for Christopher Hitchens, who died today. Hitchens, being perhaps the ultimate scorched-earth realist, probably understood quite well that it was coming. He's beyond gloating and victories now of course, but while he was here, it probably gave him some satisfaction to know that when he died, he would be more missed than many of the people he made the targets of his occasional invective. As a fellow journo, I for one will miss his no-really-cut-out-the-bullshit attitude, his breadth of reference and his uncompromising championship of reality over warm feeling. So here's to Hitchens! And to living as uncompromised a life as possible, for as long as possible.
There's been all this research over the years into "smart bombs" but all they do, ultimately, is dissassemble molecules. If they wanted to develop a really smart bomb, it would find its way to your door, knock politely and wait till you let it in, then pack up everything you own into storage boxes, mark them as Fragile where necessary, and then pack them onto the back of a truck for you. Notsomuch a weapon of mass destruction, as a weapon of mass eviction.
Our place looks like it's been used for the testing of such a weapon tonight. The kitchen is decimated, but eerily clean. The bedroom...still has far too many clothes in it, but otherwise, it's just a boxful of air mattress. The bathroom - pretty empty. Our personal batcave - well Hell, that's never gonna be empty, but it's empty of anything that a) belongs to us, and b) we give a toss about.
The living room - well, it looks like the living room of people who don't live here any more. Boxes, wrapped-up bits of kitchenalia, one remaining couch, bookcases with their shelves out, wrapped in paper and taped together...I want to tell you it looks like a bombsite, but it'd have to be a very organised bomb...which I think is where we came in.
d and I have both been at home today, working our respective asses off, so again, I'm not gonna worry about the pizza buffet we had for lunch, or the chicken kievs and pasta I had for dinner. Just not gonna worry, or whinge, or bitch. Popped to the nurse at one point today, and with my clothes on, on her scales, I was doing OK, so, frankly, nehh!
The movers will be here about thirty-six hours from the time I write these words. And the next chapter of our lives begins, I guess.
Something that, of course, cannot be said for Christopher Hitchens, who died today. Hitchens, being perhaps the ultimate scorched-earth realist, probably understood quite well that it was coming. He's beyond gloating and victories now of course, but while he was here, it probably gave him some satisfaction to know that when he died, he would be more missed than many of the people he made the targets of his occasional invective. As a fellow journo, I for one will miss his no-really-cut-out-the-bullshit attitude, his breadth of reference and his uncompromising championship of reality over warm feeling. So here's to Hitchens! And to living as uncompromised a life as possible, for as long as possible.
Thursday, 15 December 2011
An Early Resolution
Bad day, in all Disappearing probability - our Works Chistmas Lunch. Had soup and bread, followed by tomato garlic bread, followed by pizza: seriously, could I be more Carbolicious?
On the other hand, that's one meal in a week, and probably, given the rotund stuffitude of my bad self right now, probably the only meal of the day, so look at me, not stressing. Of course it probably helps that the scales are dead, and so can no longer call after me like schoolyard tattle-tales.
On the upside, finished almost everything I have to do in work before Christmas now, so the lunch was pretty much like that moment at school where they made you do maths problems, and triple underline your final answer. Work done. Pack now. Then bring on the sweet, sweet sparkly Welshness of Christmas.
Not that work is really done of course. Work doesn't finish till the 23rd for me. And there's still plenty to do - preparing, negotiating, signing contracts probably, all that stuff. But on a list of Stuff To Do, the latest issue of my magazine can now be struck through as Done.
Tomorrow, d and I are both at home, working like Snow White's woodland drudges to make sure that at Fuck-Off-o'clock on Sunday morning, when the big burly Welsh blokes come to steal away my wife and pretty much all our remaining Stuff in the world, we're not caught in another West End Farce scene of endless running around and costumes and chaos.
Oh, note for the vampire lovers by the way - blood was just 4.3 this morning - and this is without any of my previously-normal morning walking. Interesting in a geeky kind of way - wonder what it'd be if I'd done the walking. Really kinda missing the walking. Again, I guess, once d goes on to prep the new flat on Sunday, it's gonna be a weird, fairly desolate sort of freedom - like a sort of rolling back of time, as I get one week to pretty much say farewell to my city. The bike will be going with d, but there's nothing (y'know, save all the usual blistery schtick!) to stop me getting back to a walking regime. Think I need a bit of that, a bit of the walking, cos it almost feels like my blood's turning to nougat again (though clearly it isn't - 4.3, did I mention?) the longer I do precisely buggerall in the way of the exercise I was really getting used to. And while of course everything changes when we get to Wales, it'll be nice to get a bit of zingy, oxygenated early morning blood in my veins on the run-up to Christmas. And hopefully, with a system that's been lulled into a fairly true sense of security by doing buggerall, if I can hit it with some unexpected exercise before going Home, it'll jump-start the weightloss again. It would be mad - I mean really, truly, delusionally mad - to hope to hit the five stone barrier before Christmas.
So naturally, that's what I'm hoping for. We've had more of a Christmas present this year than either of us really knows how to express...but that doesn't stop me wishing for more, and if I could choose just one thing, I think that'd be it. One more half-stone, perhaps not by Christmas, but by the end of 2011. That's just sixteen days, and I've had pizza on one of them, so it's fair to say nobody's holding their breath. Still - nothing wrong with an early Resolution...right?
On the other hand, that's one meal in a week, and probably, given the rotund stuffitude of my bad self right now, probably the only meal of the day, so look at me, not stressing. Of course it probably helps that the scales are dead, and so can no longer call after me like schoolyard tattle-tales.
On the upside, finished almost everything I have to do in work before Christmas now, so the lunch was pretty much like that moment at school where they made you do maths problems, and triple underline your final answer. Work done. Pack now. Then bring on the sweet, sweet sparkly Welshness of Christmas.
Not that work is really done of course. Work doesn't finish till the 23rd for me. And there's still plenty to do - preparing, negotiating, signing contracts probably, all that stuff. But on a list of Stuff To Do, the latest issue of my magazine can now be struck through as Done.
Tomorrow, d and I are both at home, working like Snow White's woodland drudges to make sure that at Fuck-Off-o'clock on Sunday morning, when the big burly Welsh blokes come to steal away my wife and pretty much all our remaining Stuff in the world, we're not caught in another West End Farce scene of endless running around and costumes and chaos.
Oh, note for the vampire lovers by the way - blood was just 4.3 this morning - and this is without any of my previously-normal morning walking. Interesting in a geeky kind of way - wonder what it'd be if I'd done the walking. Really kinda missing the walking. Again, I guess, once d goes on to prep the new flat on Sunday, it's gonna be a weird, fairly desolate sort of freedom - like a sort of rolling back of time, as I get one week to pretty much say farewell to my city. The bike will be going with d, but there's nothing (y'know, save all the usual blistery schtick!) to stop me getting back to a walking regime. Think I need a bit of that, a bit of the walking, cos it almost feels like my blood's turning to nougat again (though clearly it isn't - 4.3, did I mention?) the longer I do precisely buggerall in the way of the exercise I was really getting used to. And while of course everything changes when we get to Wales, it'll be nice to get a bit of zingy, oxygenated early morning blood in my veins on the run-up to Christmas. And hopefully, with a system that's been lulled into a fairly true sense of security by doing buggerall, if I can hit it with some unexpected exercise before going Home, it'll jump-start the weightloss again. It would be mad - I mean really, truly, delusionally mad - to hope to hit the five stone barrier before Christmas.
So naturally, that's what I'm hoping for. We've had more of a Christmas present this year than either of us really knows how to express...but that doesn't stop me wishing for more, and if I could choose just one thing, I think that'd be it. One more half-stone, perhaps not by Christmas, but by the end of 2011. That's just sixteen days, and I've had pizza on one of them, so it's fair to say nobody's holding their breath. Still - nothing wrong with an early Resolution...right?
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
The Omen
"Erm...hi honey," said d when I got home last night.
She smiled a little too brightly, and kissed me.
"Hiiii..." I said, momentarily lulled, as men are when women kiss them. Then reality snapped back into place. "Whatcha doin'?" I asked.
"Nuthin'" said d in a coyish, flirty voice.
"Awww, OK honey," I said, smiling at her, playing along for half a second. "What happened?" I asked then.
She sighed a little.
"I don't know, honestly," she said, shrugging and giving up the cutesy act. She was still plenty cute enough for me. "I came into the bathroom, and it was just...erm..."
She paused.
"What?" I said. "What happened?"
"It's the scales," she said, her voice suggesting that in actual fact it was the scales. It had been the scales. These were scales, I got the feeling that had run down the curtain and joined the choir invisibule.
These, in short, were ex-scales.
"Really," she said, almost as though she thought my head was going to explode and I was going to morph all the weight back in the moment of a broken spell or something..."I don't know what happened. I just came into the bathroom and they were...there. Fallen. And when I tried to get them to work, they just...wouldn't. I took the batteries out, rolled them, put them back, but the scales were just...gone."
OK, I thought. The scales committed suicide. They finally got tired of being trodden on by my fat ass, and decided they couldn't face another ten months of this shit. They took their chance, and moved the fuck on to whatever electronic afterlife scales believe in. One with non-corporeal people, presumably, who weigh buggerall at any time.
So - not that I believe in omens, but this seems to be just another sign that our time in London has come to an end. Again, at any other time, this would probably flip me out, because I've been such a whingy git about only using this one particular set of scales as the Official weigh-in recorders, but hey - they died and we're moving out - one less thing to pack, I guess. One more thing to buy, on the other hand...
Which reminds me...We've gone back and forth on this one...Our fridge, whose name is Sven (and why not?), has been the subject of deep debate recently. He's gorgeous and tall and faux-American and was a gift from my folks, and dammit if he's not dying on us too as the time to move out approaches. We've been taking him, and not taking him, and taking him again...
d called me at the office today.
"Erm...hi honey," she said.
"What happened?" I said.
"It's the milk," she said, cutting out a whole round of cutesy as a favour to me.
"What, the milk committed suicide now?"
"Well...kinda," she admitted. "It's turned...again..."
I sighed. This was sadder than the scales. We never named the scales. In fact, come to think of it, I actually stole the scales from a girl I used to work with about two jobs ago. Sven had a personality. And he hasn't committed suicide - Sven's a stayer. But it's kinda like...you know how sometimes, with a beloved elderly relative, you go round one day and they're not exactly tracking the conversation like they were. And then, just as you go to leave, you notice a faint...uriney...smell about the place...
That's Sven.
He wants to stay with us. We love him dearly. But frankly if he was a human we'd be taking him to a clinic in Switzerland right about now. If we tried to move him to Wales now, and carry him up a flight of stairs, and lift him over a narrow balcony, I think he'd just give up the ghost and slip away in a puddle of turned milk and set his freon free.
So I think we've finally made a decision. We're gonna leave Sven here, dribbling gently, for whoever the Hell takes over this place when we've gone. We're gonna remember him fondly, and hope the new people treat him kindly. And actually, we hope he talks to them as though they're us, and just confuses the fuck out of them. That's a good way to remember our Sven. The scales - meh. Time to go online shopping...
She smiled a little too brightly, and kissed me.
"Hiiii..." I said, momentarily lulled, as men are when women kiss them. Then reality snapped back into place. "Whatcha doin'?" I asked.
"Nuthin'" said d in a coyish, flirty voice.
"Awww, OK honey," I said, smiling at her, playing along for half a second. "What happened?" I asked then.
She sighed a little.
"I don't know, honestly," she said, shrugging and giving up the cutesy act. She was still plenty cute enough for me. "I came into the bathroom, and it was just...erm..."
She paused.
"What?" I said. "What happened?"
"It's the scales," she said, her voice suggesting that in actual fact it was the scales. It had been the scales. These were scales, I got the feeling that had run down the curtain and joined the choir invisibule.
These, in short, were ex-scales.
"Really," she said, almost as though she thought my head was going to explode and I was going to morph all the weight back in the moment of a broken spell or something..."I don't know what happened. I just came into the bathroom and they were...there. Fallen. And when I tried to get them to work, they just...wouldn't. I took the batteries out, rolled them, put them back, but the scales were just...gone."
OK, I thought. The scales committed suicide. They finally got tired of being trodden on by my fat ass, and decided they couldn't face another ten months of this shit. They took their chance, and moved the fuck on to whatever electronic afterlife scales believe in. One with non-corporeal people, presumably, who weigh buggerall at any time.
So - not that I believe in omens, but this seems to be just another sign that our time in London has come to an end. Again, at any other time, this would probably flip me out, because I've been such a whingy git about only using this one particular set of scales as the Official weigh-in recorders, but hey - they died and we're moving out - one less thing to pack, I guess. One more thing to buy, on the other hand...
Which reminds me...We've gone back and forth on this one...Our fridge, whose name is Sven (and why not?), has been the subject of deep debate recently. He's gorgeous and tall and faux-American and was a gift from my folks, and dammit if he's not dying on us too as the time to move out approaches. We've been taking him, and not taking him, and taking him again...
d called me at the office today.
"Erm...hi honey," she said.
"What happened?" I said.
"It's the milk," she said, cutting out a whole round of cutesy as a favour to me.
"What, the milk committed suicide now?"
"Well...kinda," she admitted. "It's turned...again..."
I sighed. This was sadder than the scales. We never named the scales. In fact, come to think of it, I actually stole the scales from a girl I used to work with about two jobs ago. Sven had a personality. And he hasn't committed suicide - Sven's a stayer. But it's kinda like...you know how sometimes, with a beloved elderly relative, you go round one day and they're not exactly tracking the conversation like they were. And then, just as you go to leave, you notice a faint...uriney...smell about the place...
That's Sven.
He wants to stay with us. We love him dearly. But frankly if he was a human we'd be taking him to a clinic in Switzerland right about now. If we tried to move him to Wales now, and carry him up a flight of stairs, and lift him over a narrow balcony, I think he'd just give up the ghost and slip away in a puddle of turned milk and set his freon free.
So I think we've finally made a decision. We're gonna leave Sven here, dribbling gently, for whoever the Hell takes over this place when we've gone. We're gonna remember him fondly, and hope the new people treat him kindly. And actually, we hope he talks to them as though they're us, and just confuses the fuck out of them. That's a good way to remember our Sven. The scales - meh. Time to go online shopping...
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
The Half-Disappeared Man
Now...if you've been paying attention up to this point, you'll know that I can find a way to rob the joy out of even the most delicious moments.
If this was any other week, this could have been one of Those days.
But let's face one fact here - today's news is good. The weigh-in figure is:
16 stone...dead.
That's a loss of a simple quarter-pound, which in fact, on waking up this morning, I hadn't lost. After drinking some water and feeling the spirit of Cloaca move me though, there you go, quarter of a pound, that's your lot for the week. Now, what that means is that all the bitching I did this time last week about being so close to the 16 stone barrier, and the 4.5 stone of weightloss barrier, and the halfway point of this great experiment...is over and done with. I've done it, I've reached it, happy dance in the streets with your hands in the air...awoohoo.
But...
Yesterday, I did an unofficial weigh-in, and saw my first near-as-dammit-official, why-can't-it-be-Tuesday 15 stone reading. Granted, it was 15 stone 13.25, but there it was, all sparkly and Christmassy and thoroughly fifteeny in its wonderment.
This morning - nah, fuck you pal, you're 16 and that's where you'll stay!
Quite enough, on other weeks, to make me panic and pedal and whinge, and slubber the gloss of my triumph (is that a thing people still do?) with the grey paint of hungry ambition.
But this isn't any other week, this is this week. In fact, this is the last Tuesday weigh-in of my London life. The last Tuesday weigh-in before Christmas, because d leaves for Merthyr on Sunday, and takes the scales with her...
She did suggest I keep them with me here, and carry them to work with me on my last day, and then transport them home, like a new-born baby on that day, to set up in our new home in Wales. But - and please note the personal growth here - you can go too far with this kind of thing, y'know? So today's result, while meagre in its nature, and not as good as yesterday's unofficial figure, does at least allow me to say that in ten and a half months since I started this experiment, I've lost half of my excess weight. If we assume a similar rate of progress going forward, then by Christmas of 2012, I'll be, at least physically, the man I'm Supposed To Be. That's got to be a thought to banish the ghosts of yesterday's could-have-beens.
So - who's up for a happy dance with the officially Half-Disappeared Man?
If this was any other week, this could have been one of Those days.
But let's face one fact here - today's news is good. The weigh-in figure is:
16 stone...dead.
That's a loss of a simple quarter-pound, which in fact, on waking up this morning, I hadn't lost. After drinking some water and feeling the spirit of Cloaca move me though, there you go, quarter of a pound, that's your lot for the week. Now, what that means is that all the bitching I did this time last week about being so close to the 16 stone barrier, and the 4.5 stone of weightloss barrier, and the halfway point of this great experiment...is over and done with. I've done it, I've reached it, happy dance in the streets with your hands in the air...awoohoo.
But...
Yesterday, I did an unofficial weigh-in, and saw my first near-as-dammit-official, why-can't-it-be-Tuesday 15 stone reading. Granted, it was 15 stone 13.25, but there it was, all sparkly and Christmassy and thoroughly fifteeny in its wonderment.
This morning - nah, fuck you pal, you're 16 and that's where you'll stay!
Quite enough, on other weeks, to make me panic and pedal and whinge, and slubber the gloss of my triumph (is that a thing people still do?) with the grey paint of hungry ambition.
But this isn't any other week, this is this week. In fact, this is the last Tuesday weigh-in of my London life. The last Tuesday weigh-in before Christmas, because d leaves for Merthyr on Sunday, and takes the scales with her...
She did suggest I keep them with me here, and carry them to work with me on my last day, and then transport them home, like a new-born baby on that day, to set up in our new home in Wales. But - and please note the personal growth here - you can go too far with this kind of thing, y'know? So today's result, while meagre in its nature, and not as good as yesterday's unofficial figure, does at least allow me to say that in ten and a half months since I started this experiment, I've lost half of my excess weight. If we assume a similar rate of progress going forward, then by Christmas of 2012, I'll be, at least physically, the man I'm Supposed To Be. That's got to be a thought to banish the ghosts of yesterday's could-have-beens.
So - who's up for a happy dance with the officially Half-Disappeared Man?
Monday, 12 December 2011
The Downside
"Brrrr!" I whinged.
"Yes dear," said d and Sian together.
We'd been shifting life-drippings all day yesterday, and now we were shuffling into the Magor service station for a snatched fast food dinner. And I felt like I was turning blue.
"BRRRRRRR!!" I whinged, louder, to get the point across.
"YES DEAR!" said d, who knows how to deal with me when I get six-year-old and whingy.
"This is bullshit!" I said, through chattering teeth.
"Yep," said d, thinly. She blinked. Sighed.
"What is?" she was almost forced to ask.
"This goddamnsonofabitch cold!"
"Did nobody mention the idea behind December to you, Marty?" asked Sian, scanning the burger-joint menu. (I should say - she calls me Marty, as a result of an ancient, exhausted joke that has its origins in a Martini commercial. Let it go. We probably should have, but haven't. Moving on...)
"Y-y-yyeah," I noted. "I'm familiar with the concept. But why's it so cooooold?!"
"It's December!" they chorused.
"But it was never this cold!" I whined.
d sighed again.
"You were never this thin dear," she reminded me. "Well, not in living memory, anyway..."
"T'riffic," I said, shooting her A Look. "So glad I bothered with all this Disappearing shit."
"Hey, suck it up dear," said d. "I'm turning [figure removed so the author has a hope of ever getting laid again] next month."
I blinked at what seemed like a non-sequitur.
"And?" I asked.
"And I look it!" she almost-growled.
"You don't!" I said, not for the first time.
"I always looked younger than I am," she explained. "People used to ask me how I did it, and I used to tell them - it's the fat. It fills in all the wrinkles and makes me look all smooth and healthy. I lost two stone, and now everything's sagging!"
It isn't, incidentally, but I figure with what she puts up with, she's allowed to whinge about whatever the hell she wants.
But oddly enough, this was the second time in two days that I'd heard about the Downside. The day before, I'd met up with Rhiannon, Sian's sister. She's never really needed to Disappear, but she's done some almost accidentally recently.
"Hey, lookin' good Rhi'," I mentioned to her. She mumbled and muttered darkly.
"Nothing fits!" she said.
"Well, no, but that's all part of the Adventure, isn't it?"
"Huh," she muttered. "I just bought a car, I can't afford to have Adventures..."
Back in Magor, I blinked at d's Downside. Something occurred to me.
"Freakin' BRRRRRR!!!" I said.
"D'you ever want to put the conversations you have with him on repeat until he get it?" asked Sian idly. d raised an eyebrow but didn't openly agree.
"So, what are you saying to me?" I clarified. "The end result of all this whining and bitching and pedalling and so on is having to wear more clothes or freezing my ass off every Winter?"
"I think he's got it!" said Sian.
"This is Bullshit!" I said again.
d sighed.
"Yes dear. What do you want to eat?"
"I'll have a double sausage burger, with bacon, dammit," I muttered, kicking imaginary stones."
I thought about it some more.
"And a hot-water-bottle suit..."
"Yes dear," said d and Sian together.
We'd been shifting life-drippings all day yesterday, and now we were shuffling into the Magor service station for a snatched fast food dinner. And I felt like I was turning blue.
"BRRRRRRR!!" I whinged, louder, to get the point across.
"YES DEAR!" said d, who knows how to deal with me when I get six-year-old and whingy.
"This is bullshit!" I said, through chattering teeth.
"Yep," said d, thinly. She blinked. Sighed.
"What is?" she was almost forced to ask.
"This goddamnsonofabitch cold!"
"Did nobody mention the idea behind December to you, Marty?" asked Sian, scanning the burger-joint menu. (I should say - she calls me Marty, as a result of an ancient, exhausted joke that has its origins in a Martini commercial. Let it go. We probably should have, but haven't. Moving on...)
"Y-y-yyeah," I noted. "I'm familiar with the concept. But why's it so cooooold?!"
"It's December!" they chorused.
"But it was never this cold!" I whined.
d sighed again.
"You were never this thin dear," she reminded me. "Well, not in living memory, anyway..."
"T'riffic," I said, shooting her A Look. "So glad I bothered with all this Disappearing shit."
"Hey, suck it up dear," said d. "I'm turning [figure removed so the author has a hope of ever getting laid again] next month."
I blinked at what seemed like a non-sequitur.
"And?" I asked.
"And I look it!" she almost-growled.
"You don't!" I said, not for the first time.
"I always looked younger than I am," she explained. "People used to ask me how I did it, and I used to tell them - it's the fat. It fills in all the wrinkles and makes me look all smooth and healthy. I lost two stone, and now everything's sagging!"
It isn't, incidentally, but I figure with what she puts up with, she's allowed to whinge about whatever the hell she wants.
But oddly enough, this was the second time in two days that I'd heard about the Downside. The day before, I'd met up with Rhiannon, Sian's sister. She's never really needed to Disappear, but she's done some almost accidentally recently.
"Hey, lookin' good Rhi'," I mentioned to her. She mumbled and muttered darkly.
"Nothing fits!" she said.
"Well, no, but that's all part of the Adventure, isn't it?"
"Huh," she muttered. "I just bought a car, I can't afford to have Adventures..."
Back in Magor, I blinked at d's Downside. Something occurred to me.
"Freakin' BRRRRRR!!!" I said.
"D'you ever want to put the conversations you have with him on repeat until he get it?" asked Sian idly. d raised an eyebrow but didn't openly agree.
"So, what are you saying to me?" I clarified. "The end result of all this whining and bitching and pedalling and so on is having to wear more clothes or freezing my ass off every Winter?"
"I think he's got it!" said Sian.
"This is Bullshit!" I said again.
d sighed.
"Yes dear. What do you want to eat?"
"I'll have a double sausage burger, with bacon, dammit," I muttered, kicking imaginary stones."
I thought about it some more.
"And a hot-water-bottle suit..."
Sunday, 11 December 2011
Jewel of the Taff
Those with an attentive nature will have noticed my complete sense-of-humour failure last night - almost hand in hand with my consciousness failure. Sian was due to reappear at six this morning, and when my alarm went off, there was swearing from both our couches. We turned my phone off with extreme prejudice, and put it on snooze. When it exploded into life again fifteen minutes later, I was punching myself on the chest, where it had fallen when I went back to sleep.
Nothing quite gets you awake like punching yourself in the chest, trust me. d woke up and snarled, at me and it, and I turned it off again.
"Wait a minute," said d, as I slid back into sleep again. "What the Hell time is it?"
"Mmmff..." I groaned, the staggering pain in my arms and shoulders waking up and bitching at me.
"It's not 5.45!" said d, announcing the time it was supposed to be when the phone woke us up.
"It's 4.45!!" she announced.
"Ni'night..."I mumbled, turning over on my couch. At some point int he next time, I went to pee. Took the phone with me. Left it in the bathroom.
Next time we woke up it was nearly 7 o'clock. I stumbled back to the bathroom, picked up the phone.
"So - gonna let me in?" said the message I'd received while snoring my head off.
Sian was outside the door, in the van...pretty much preparing to put the seats back and get some extra kip herself.
We ran around, finding clothes like characters in a West End farce. I'm fairly sure there was a Bo Peep costume at some point. There was definitely a vicar's collar. I put on and took off a pair of trousers at least three times. By the time we opened the door, we didn't know what day it was, let alone what time it was, who we were, or why we were running around at this ridiculous time of day.
"Sardines!" I yelled, almost instinctively.
"Not before the first coffee of the day, thankyou," said Sian, striding purposefully into the chaos of our living room. The next hour was a whirlwind of props and movement, as we shoved what we knew we were moving into the van, and then ran around again, improvising madly, making impromptu boxes, emptying bits of furniture we hadn'teven realised were there (that's what being 'part of the furniture' means, after all). A couple of wooden komodo dragons found themselves whisked to Wales. Suddenly, in the space of fifty minutes, our living room looked empty. Our bedroom was emptier. The kitchen...granted, there was still a lot of stuff in the kitchen, but it looked like a naked ass - suddenly and dementedly revealed. It looked achievable to pack up the whole of our lives in mainly one more week, with a couple of extra days at the end. There wasn't time to reflect on that though, we had a date with the motorway. Made it to Merthyr in good solid time today, rather than piddling about round Gloucester.
When we got there, there was plenty to do before we even dared unpack the van. First, and perhaps most important, there was boggling to do. It was the first time d had seen the place since it had been an idea, dunked in the dinge of a previous tenant. Now...
Now it's a thing of real beauty. Light, and bright and newly equipped and newly painted and newly...erm...new. Of course, it was this little oyster shell of a place, with a vanload of yesterday's boxes in it. d boggled, and loved it. Really, she loved it. It was one of those moments where you could see her eyes widen and her heart burst, like a...well, obviously enough, like a kid at Christmas. We opened boxes, and started putting our real identity on the place. Within the space of an hour or two, it felt like not just a jewel on the Taff, but our little jewel on the Taff. We brought one of the couches from London, and our bed. By the end of the day, we had put them both in place, and made the bed up, so that when we both move in on the 23rd of the month, we have a bed to go to.
In other words, this was a wonderful, painful, close connected day.
In Disappearing terms of course, there was a lot of exercise, and my arms are dead right now. As for food intake, it's been simple, but not light, so who knows what'll happen on Tuesday morning. But I wouldn't trade today for a stone of weightloss this week.
Or anything, come to that.
Nothing quite gets you awake like punching yourself in the chest, trust me. d woke up and snarled, at me and it, and I turned it off again.
"Wait a minute," said d, as I slid back into sleep again. "What the Hell time is it?"
"Mmmff..." I groaned, the staggering pain in my arms and shoulders waking up and bitching at me.
"It's not 5.45!" said d, announcing the time it was supposed to be when the phone woke us up.
"It's 4.45!!" she announced.
"Ni'night..."I mumbled, turning over on my couch. At some point int he next time, I went to pee. Took the phone with me. Left it in the bathroom.
Next time we woke up it was nearly 7 o'clock. I stumbled back to the bathroom, picked up the phone.
"So - gonna let me in?" said the message I'd received while snoring my head off.
Sian was outside the door, in the van...pretty much preparing to put the seats back and get some extra kip herself.
We ran around, finding clothes like characters in a West End farce. I'm fairly sure there was a Bo Peep costume at some point. There was definitely a vicar's collar. I put on and took off a pair of trousers at least three times. By the time we opened the door, we didn't know what day it was, let alone what time it was, who we were, or why we were running around at this ridiculous time of day.
"Sardines!" I yelled, almost instinctively.
"Not before the first coffee of the day, thankyou," said Sian, striding purposefully into the chaos of our living room. The next hour was a whirlwind of props and movement, as we shoved what we knew we were moving into the van, and then ran around again, improvising madly, making impromptu boxes, emptying bits of furniture we hadn'teven realised were there (that's what being 'part of the furniture' means, after all). A couple of wooden komodo dragons found themselves whisked to Wales. Suddenly, in the space of fifty minutes, our living room looked empty. Our bedroom was emptier. The kitchen...granted, there was still a lot of stuff in the kitchen, but it looked like a naked ass - suddenly and dementedly revealed. It looked achievable to pack up the whole of our lives in mainly one more week, with a couple of extra days at the end. There wasn't time to reflect on that though, we had a date with the motorway. Made it to Merthyr in good solid time today, rather than piddling about round Gloucester.
When we got there, there was plenty to do before we even dared unpack the van. First, and perhaps most important, there was boggling to do. It was the first time d had seen the place since it had been an idea, dunked in the dinge of a previous tenant. Now...
Now it's a thing of real beauty. Light, and bright and newly equipped and newly painted and newly...erm...new. Of course, it was this little oyster shell of a place, with a vanload of yesterday's boxes in it. d boggled, and loved it. Really, she loved it. It was one of those moments where you could see her eyes widen and her heart burst, like a...well, obviously enough, like a kid at Christmas. We opened boxes, and started putting our real identity on the place. Within the space of an hour or two, it felt like not just a jewel on the Taff, but our little jewel on the Taff. We brought one of the couches from London, and our bed. By the end of the day, we had put them both in place, and made the bed up, so that when we both move in on the 23rd of the month, we have a bed to go to.
In other words, this was a wonderful, painful, close connected day.
In Disappearing terms of course, there was a lot of exercise, and my arms are dead right now. As for food intake, it's been simple, but not light, so who knows what'll happen on Tuesday morning. But I wouldn't trade today for a stone of weightloss this week.
Or anything, come to that.
Saturday, 10 December 2011
An Exhausted Entry
Unff...
Great day. No words, just great day. Christ o'clock we woke up, Christ o'clockish, Sian arrived with the van. Had a McDonalds porridge breakfast that d got for us. Decided, after the events of Camden Town (pretty much the last time I spent the entire day with Sian), not to take my Xenical today.
d, on reflection, decided that after an hour and a half of van-packing, and emptying almost the entire bedroom of boxes, she'd stay home and pack more for tomorrow's trip, while Sian and I did the run to Merthyr and back.
Satnavs, let's agree, are fantastic bits of kit. They will do exactly what you tell them to do, and guide you where you need to go. The one we had this morning though had its own special ideas about how to get from London to Wales. No petty M25 shenanigans for it. It eschewed the straightforward, homely dignity of the M4. We ended up buggering about round Gloucestershire, flirting with Ross-on-Wye, skirting Bristol on the M5, and essentially taking a little more forever than we should have.
Got to the new flat at about 2PM. That's when the hard work really began. Getting everything into the van had largely been a matter of shifting things that were on the same level. Getting the full boxes up to our new first floor flat was serious resistance work. Took us two hours, and by the end of it, we were pretty much dead. Several of our boxes had collapsed, spilling contents all over the balcony as we walked to the fla, just to add to the fun.
Ma had prepared chicken rolls for us, and as the sun plummeted, we tore into them, desperate to get the protein into our system after the hours of shifting. And then we trusted our lives to the satnav again. It took us through some of London's more...erm...populous areas on a Saturday night. We did quite a monopoly tour, from Pentonville Road to Angel Islington to Whitechapel and Bow Road and more...Sian, who ain't from round here, keeping up a monologue about how there was no reason to own a car in London under any circumstances. Not ever.
She dropped me off at home at gone ten tonight. She'll be back at about six tomorrow. Have to be honest with you, there was lots of funny stuff today, and a partial re-enactment of Camden Town (I killed our very first Merthyr toilet-brush, which is just frankly unfair under any circumstances!)...but tonight, I can barely focus, let alone be funny. Just take my word for it. Funny. Haha. Yay. Good feeling to get rid of boxes. Mumblemumblemumble, going to couchzzzzzzzzz.....
Great day. No words, just great day. Christ o'clock we woke up, Christ o'clockish, Sian arrived with the van. Had a McDonalds porridge breakfast that d got for us. Decided, after the events of Camden Town (pretty much the last time I spent the entire day with Sian), not to take my Xenical today.
d, on reflection, decided that after an hour and a half of van-packing, and emptying almost the entire bedroom of boxes, she'd stay home and pack more for tomorrow's trip, while Sian and I did the run to Merthyr and back.
Satnavs, let's agree, are fantastic bits of kit. They will do exactly what you tell them to do, and guide you where you need to go. The one we had this morning though had its own special ideas about how to get from London to Wales. No petty M25 shenanigans for it. It eschewed the straightforward, homely dignity of the M4. We ended up buggering about round Gloucestershire, flirting with Ross-on-Wye, skirting Bristol on the M5, and essentially taking a little more forever than we should have.
Got to the new flat at about 2PM. That's when the hard work really began. Getting everything into the van had largely been a matter of shifting things that were on the same level. Getting the full boxes up to our new first floor flat was serious resistance work. Took us two hours, and by the end of it, we were pretty much dead. Several of our boxes had collapsed, spilling contents all over the balcony as we walked to the fla, just to add to the fun.
Ma had prepared chicken rolls for us, and as the sun plummeted, we tore into them, desperate to get the protein into our system after the hours of shifting. And then we trusted our lives to the satnav again. It took us through some of London's more...erm...populous areas on a Saturday night. We did quite a monopoly tour, from Pentonville Road to Angel Islington to Whitechapel and Bow Road and more...Sian, who ain't from round here, keeping up a monologue about how there was no reason to own a car in London under any circumstances. Not ever.
She dropped me off at home at gone ten tonight. She'll be back at about six tomorrow. Have to be honest with you, there was lots of funny stuff today, and a partial re-enactment of Camden Town (I killed our very first Merthyr toilet-brush, which is just frankly unfair under any circumstances!)...but tonight, I can barely focus, let alone be funny. Just take my word for it. Funny. Haha. Yay. Good feeling to get rid of boxes. Mumblemumblemumble, going to couchzzzzzzzzz.....
Friday, 9 December 2011
Slipping Into The Fog
Have you ever thought what it's like to be the central processing unit of your computer?
I'm generally pretty merciless, and push mine till they squeak - while I realise that having loads of stuff on your desktop makes your CPU addled and slow and basically forget what is, I figure it exists to serve me, rather than vice versa, and so I make it suffer for the convenience of having things where I can see them at a glance.
This week though, I'm starting to get an idea of how it feels. The more plates you spin, with the same physical deadline, the more intense the energy and the less focus yo uhave on any particular thing, until ultimately, everything gets too much and you crash, and fall over yourself, and retreat into a darkened corner of your casing and gibber for mercy.
Kinda feels like the spirit of the day, and the spirit of the week, really - work deadlines, packing deadlines, Disappearing deadlines - waaaagh! - and unless I'm really careful, I'm going to go into lockdown, or meltdown, or somesuch 503 Error.
Since only one of these deadlines is self-imposed, the Disappearing is almost slipping into the fog of the background. It's not that I'm suddenly guzzling handfuls of lard or anything, but I haven't biked in almost two weeks now, and the bottom line is I'm unlikely to get back on it before we leave London.
The fire still burns though - this is not me stumbling to a halt some two months before the end of Year One. It's just a case of spinning the first plates...first, as it were. As I keep wittering on about, when we get to Wales, everything changes. Time, availability of a range of exercise options...y'know, like uphill walking(!). For now though, I'm just having to do whatever I can in the way of not stuffing my gob, feeding myself excuses like the slowing of the metabolism as you lose weight, and, as d has just mentioned, get the 'stairmaster-workout-from-Hell,' carrying boxes up and down to our first floor new home...So if I happen to not have lost on Tuesday, or if I even happen to have put back on, it's just what it is. It's a speed-bump, till this deadline is passed, and that deadline is passed, and we can (to steal a line from a big fat dead guy in a bathtub) break on through to the other side.
Which is two weeks from now. Fourteen little days from right this minute, we'll have closed the door on our new place. As I look around our devastated living room, that seems unreal. But it's really a rollercoaster moment - tomorrow at 6AM, we crest the first hill and start rushing down at about 2G. And from there, we don't really stop for those two weerks. Of course, as I may have mentioned, there's only one more week before both the bike and the scales disappear from my life for a week. So, hold on to your Disappearing hats - this is where things get a bit manic and complicated. Though not noticeably less foggy till Christmas.
I'm generally pretty merciless, and push mine till they squeak - while I realise that having loads of stuff on your desktop makes your CPU addled and slow and basically forget what is, I figure it exists to serve me, rather than vice versa, and so I make it suffer for the convenience of having things where I can see them at a glance.
This week though, I'm starting to get an idea of how it feels. The more plates you spin, with the same physical deadline, the more intense the energy and the less focus yo uhave on any particular thing, until ultimately, everything gets too much and you crash, and fall over yourself, and retreat into a darkened corner of your casing and gibber for mercy.
Kinda feels like the spirit of the day, and the spirit of the week, really - work deadlines, packing deadlines, Disappearing deadlines - waaaagh! - and unless I'm really careful, I'm going to go into lockdown, or meltdown, or somesuch 503 Error.
Since only one of these deadlines is self-imposed, the Disappearing is almost slipping into the fog of the background. It's not that I'm suddenly guzzling handfuls of lard or anything, but I haven't biked in almost two weeks now, and the bottom line is I'm unlikely to get back on it before we leave London.
The fire still burns though - this is not me stumbling to a halt some two months before the end of Year One. It's just a case of spinning the first plates...first, as it were. As I keep wittering on about, when we get to Wales, everything changes. Time, availability of a range of exercise options...y'know, like uphill walking(!). For now though, I'm just having to do whatever I can in the way of not stuffing my gob, feeding myself excuses like the slowing of the metabolism as you lose weight, and, as d has just mentioned, get the 'stairmaster-workout-from-Hell,' carrying boxes up and down to our first floor new home...So if I happen to not have lost on Tuesday, or if I even happen to have put back on, it's just what it is. It's a speed-bump, till this deadline is passed, and that deadline is passed, and we can (to steal a line from a big fat dead guy in a bathtub) break on through to the other side.
Which is two weeks from now. Fourteen little days from right this minute, we'll have closed the door on our new place. As I look around our devastated living room, that seems unreal. But it's really a rollercoaster moment - tomorrow at 6AM, we crest the first hill and start rushing down at about 2G. And from there, we don't really stop for those two weerks. Of course, as I may have mentioned, there's only one more week before both the bike and the scales disappear from my life for a week. So, hold on to your Disappearing hats - this is where things get a bit manic and complicated. Though not noticeably less foggy till Christmas.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
The Sweet Shop Window
I mentioned that I like Nottingham as a place a couple of days ago. Forgot to mention a very particular thing.
Nottingham has the most peculiar sweet shop I've ever seen. Ten months into this Disappearing experiment, I'm mostly past the stage where I stand drooling outside sweet shop windows, mourning over what I can't have. Mostly. But I popped into this particular sweet shop, because of a most extraordinary claim.
Sugar Free Sweets.
I know, I know - there have been sugar free sweets for decades, but normally, they're just a handful of varieties, and they both look and taste like bitter little turds of self-denial and self-loathing - they're kind of like the culinary equivalent of drunk nightclub-sex. You grab them, you have them, you throw up and you feel like crap.
But these were different. These were genuine sweet shop sweets - bonbons and suckables and eclairs - how the fuck do you make a sugar-free eclair? - and wonderful stuff. I pressed my nose to jars, and actually contemplated getting some. After all, they were sugar free. One jar of lime and chocolate sweets though had actual calorie information, and they apparently 'cost' about 250 calories per quarter-pound. And while, don't get me wrong, there are far worse ways of spending those calories, I couldn't bring myself to buy them.
Was pretty much too bhusy being miserable and frozen on the day to focus on this, but today has felt like a real 'sweet shop window' kind of day. Or, if you like, a 'kid on Christmas Week' kind of day. With so much focus on the move, and the steps towards the move, simply going in and doing a day of work and coming home feels like almost bursting out of my skin with anticipation of what's to come. Come January, I'll be there for my folks - which appears just as well, as there's News today that is a little disquieting, though not as bad as it could have been - I'll have time to do more active Disappearing, and I'll have at least a little more time to write. I can see them sparkling in their little jars of Future Time, and I just want to unscrew them right now and guzzle them down.
So this is me...staring in, hopping up and down from one foot to another, counting the change in my palm and knowing, just knowing, it's not time to go in yet.
Not quite yet, dammit.
Oh, for the vampires among us, blood was 5.0 this morning, back to normal after a shocking result yesterday of 6.8. And for those hanging on the idea that I might break all those barriers on Tuesday, I should note - just had myself a big-ass pizza (in so many senses of the phrase). Still - here's hoping. Still hoping.
Nottingham has the most peculiar sweet shop I've ever seen. Ten months into this Disappearing experiment, I'm mostly past the stage where I stand drooling outside sweet shop windows, mourning over what I can't have. Mostly. But I popped into this particular sweet shop, because of a most extraordinary claim.
Sugar Free Sweets.
I know, I know - there have been sugar free sweets for decades, but normally, they're just a handful of varieties, and they both look and taste like bitter little turds of self-denial and self-loathing - they're kind of like the culinary equivalent of drunk nightclub-sex. You grab them, you have them, you throw up and you feel like crap.
But these were different. These were genuine sweet shop sweets - bonbons and suckables and eclairs - how the fuck do you make a sugar-free eclair? - and wonderful stuff. I pressed my nose to jars, and actually contemplated getting some. After all, they were sugar free. One jar of lime and chocolate sweets though had actual calorie information, and they apparently 'cost' about 250 calories per quarter-pound. And while, don't get me wrong, there are far worse ways of spending those calories, I couldn't bring myself to buy them.
Was pretty much too bhusy being miserable and frozen on the day to focus on this, but today has felt like a real 'sweet shop window' kind of day. Or, if you like, a 'kid on Christmas Week' kind of day. With so much focus on the move, and the steps towards the move, simply going in and doing a day of work and coming home feels like almost bursting out of my skin with anticipation of what's to come. Come January, I'll be there for my folks - which appears just as well, as there's News today that is a little disquieting, though not as bad as it could have been - I'll have time to do more active Disappearing, and I'll have at least a little more time to write. I can see them sparkling in their little jars of Future Time, and I just want to unscrew them right now and guzzle them down.
So this is me...staring in, hopping up and down from one foot to another, counting the change in my palm and knowing, just knowing, it's not time to go in yet.
Not quite yet, dammit.
Oh, for the vampires among us, blood was 5.0 this morning, back to normal after a shocking result yesterday of 6.8. And for those hanging on the idea that I might break all those barriers on Tuesday, I should note - just had myself a big-ass pizza (in so many senses of the phrase). Still - here's hoping. Still hoping.
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
Jingle Bells
Ahhhh, and so this is Christmas - when To Do Lists get longer, and tempers get shorter, and the season to be relentlessly shitty to our Fellow Man is upon us all, gracing each face with a sweet-natured snarl, and each lip with a cheery "...Fuck You Too!"
Ain't the human spirit grand?
Somebody stole Harrods this morning - I think it must have been some of those jolly, rosy-cheeked urchins that Dickens was always wittering on about at this time of year. I got off a tube at Knightsbridge, intending to walk the shortish distance into the office, only to discover that Knightsbridge tube station (which I've walked by many a time en route to getting hopelessly lost in Victoria) had been shifted down a back alley somewhere. I found Harrods eventually, but I'd walked so far by then I think it was visiting the Moulin Rouge. Certainly, it wasn't where I'd left it last time. It's kinda weird - now that we've given notice on our flat, we'll come in of an evening and just do a mental checklist of whether anyone's been in to see it - is the bathroom door open, or the toilet lid up? Is there (as there once was when we came back from a holiday and hadn't given notice on our flat), a carrier bag full of ancient printer in the hallway...that type of thing. So now it's kinda like we've given notice on London, and familiar landmarks have been moved, as though the estate agents have come in and shifted things around to impress the new tenants.
Finally found my way back to my office, and had the kind of day that was deeply deeply productive, but only by virtue of jettisoning my To Do List early on (side-note to Kathy - SORRY - tomorrow, images, first thing, I swear!). I was home late, and got on a bus for the last stretch at Stratford. We'd gone one stop when things kicked off. A couple of twenty-something women had been dinging the bell to get the doors opened.
The doors stayed shut.
They dinged some more.
The doors stayed, if anything, shutter than before. It would be fair to say they almost pursed.
"Oi!" shouted one of the women shouted. "Can you open the doors please!"
The doors positively puckered, into a state of shutness that would be the envy of a pharoah's tomb. The bus began to move off.
"OOOOOIIIIII!!!!" yelled the woman. "Open the doors! There's people who wanna get off the bus!"
"Should have rung the bell, innit?" yelled the driver, pulling out into traffic.
It's important at this point to note that I was between the two of them, getting an earful of this positively Shakespearian dialogue each way.
"WE DID RING THE FUCKING BELL, YOU FOOL!!!" The woman had given up on yelling as it clearly wasn't getting her point across, and had moved on to demented Harpy-like screaming instead.
"FUCK OFF!" yelled the bus driver, presumably eschewing the scream as too demonstrably non-masculine.
"The bystander, a man in his forties, was due to leave the city in just two weeks time..." ran the newsreel of my accidental stabbing in my head.
The driver though clearly wasn't thinking this through. The woman would have been more than happy to have fucked off at this point, except she'd have broken at least a couple of nails trying to claw her way out through the hermetically-sealed cast iron doors, and then, in all probability, she'd have been run down by oncoming traffic, assuming her stilletos hadn't snapped on the impact of landing and pitched her under the wheels of her own bus.
He drove off, with her ringing the bell repeatedly every inch of the way.
"I'm RINGING THE BELL, you deaf fucking FOOOOOOOL!!! she screeched. He didn't appear to care. He drove us around a big corner, then stopped in the middle of the road, and opened the door.
"Now FUCK OFF!!!" he yelled again. A cab bacon-sliced right by the side of us. Now it was her turn not to care - clearly several tons of metal, travelling at speed, was less of a danger to life and limb than staying in this bus.
She screamed at his once more as she was leaving, he tried to decapitate her with the deadly doors, and we moved off with a scream of tyres I didn't think buses could achieve unless they were driven by Sandra Bullock.
My stop was next.
"It was the bell-ring that that broke the driver's mind, causing him to strangle the so-called 'Disappearing Man' with his own man-scarf..." said the newsreader in my head. I reached up, tentatively, took a deep breath...and rang the bell.
Clearly though, the driver had vented his day'sworth of fury and fucked-offness. He let me off, and I scurried home.
Merry freakin' Christmas, people. I'm a Welshman - get me out of here!
Ain't the human spirit grand?
Somebody stole Harrods this morning - I think it must have been some of those jolly, rosy-cheeked urchins that Dickens was always wittering on about at this time of year. I got off a tube at Knightsbridge, intending to walk the shortish distance into the office, only to discover that Knightsbridge tube station (which I've walked by many a time en route to getting hopelessly lost in Victoria) had been shifted down a back alley somewhere. I found Harrods eventually, but I'd walked so far by then I think it was visiting the Moulin Rouge. Certainly, it wasn't where I'd left it last time. It's kinda weird - now that we've given notice on our flat, we'll come in of an evening and just do a mental checklist of whether anyone's been in to see it - is the bathroom door open, or the toilet lid up? Is there (as there once was when we came back from a holiday and hadn't given notice on our flat), a carrier bag full of ancient printer in the hallway...that type of thing. So now it's kinda like we've given notice on London, and familiar landmarks have been moved, as though the estate agents have come in and shifted things around to impress the new tenants.
Finally found my way back to my office, and had the kind of day that was deeply deeply productive, but only by virtue of jettisoning my To Do List early on (side-note to Kathy - SORRY - tomorrow, images, first thing, I swear!). I was home late, and got on a bus for the last stretch at Stratford. We'd gone one stop when things kicked off. A couple of twenty-something women had been dinging the bell to get the doors opened.
The doors stayed shut.
They dinged some more.
The doors stayed, if anything, shutter than before. It would be fair to say they almost pursed.
"Oi!" shouted one of the women shouted. "Can you open the doors please!"
The doors positively puckered, into a state of shutness that would be the envy of a pharoah's tomb. The bus began to move off.
"OOOOOIIIIII!!!!" yelled the woman. "Open the doors! There's people who wanna get off the bus!"
"Should have rung the bell, innit?" yelled the driver, pulling out into traffic.
It's important at this point to note that I was between the two of them, getting an earful of this positively Shakespearian dialogue each way.
"WE DID RING THE FUCKING BELL, YOU FOOL!!!" The woman had given up on yelling as it clearly wasn't getting her point across, and had moved on to demented Harpy-like screaming instead.
"FUCK OFF!" yelled the bus driver, presumably eschewing the scream as too demonstrably non-masculine.
"The bystander, a man in his forties, was due to leave the city in just two weeks time..." ran the newsreel of my accidental stabbing in my head.
The driver though clearly wasn't thinking this through. The woman would have been more than happy to have fucked off at this point, except she'd have broken at least a couple of nails trying to claw her way out through the hermetically-sealed cast iron doors, and then, in all probability, she'd have been run down by oncoming traffic, assuming her stilletos hadn't snapped on the impact of landing and pitched her under the wheels of her own bus.
He drove off, with her ringing the bell repeatedly every inch of the way.
"I'm RINGING THE BELL, you deaf fucking FOOOOOOOL!!! she screeched. He didn't appear to care. He drove us around a big corner, then stopped in the middle of the road, and opened the door.
"Now FUCK OFF!!!" he yelled again. A cab bacon-sliced right by the side of us. Now it was her turn not to care - clearly several tons of metal, travelling at speed, was less of a danger to life and limb than staying in this bus.
She screamed at his once more as she was leaving, he tried to decapitate her with the deadly doors, and we moved off with a scream of tyres I didn't think buses could achieve unless they were driven by Sandra Bullock.
My stop was next.
"It was the bell-ring that that broke the driver's mind, causing him to strangle the so-called 'Disappearing Man' with his own man-scarf..." said the newsreader in my head. I reached up, tentatively, took a deep breath...and rang the bell.
Clearly though, the driver had vented his day'sworth of fury and fucked-offness. He let me off, and I scurried home.
Merry freakin' Christmas, people. I'm a Welshman - get me out of here!
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