All You Can Eat?

Sigh...
Thigh-burn is still giving me serious trouble - in fact, this evening, if anything, it looks redder and angrier and altogether more ready to  turn horrid and septic and kill me (whaddaya mean, stop being a drama queen?). Nevertheless, we actually made it out last night, on a random whim. Went to see Thor, the movie - big, Shakespearian, and pretty much as loud as you'd expect from a movie about a hammer-weilding thunder 'god'. We came out hungry, and decided to give a local Chinese restaurant a final try.

I say final try because here's the thing - it's sometimes a regular restaurant, charging fairly steep prices for ordinary dishes, and sometimes, it's an 'All You Can Eat' buffet. Not keen to shell out for just a few dishes when we could eat till we were stuffed, we've tried twice to get buffet from it recently, and been turned away because 'it was the wrong time.' We were starting to feel like like they saw us coming and though "Oh Hellno, not offering 'all you can eat' to these fat fucks, everybody, hide the buffet!"

But last night, we must have caught them unawares, because the buffet was in full swing. It was only as we went around the buffet-table that the paucity of the phrase "All You Can Eat" became apparent. Rice - high-carb. Noodles - likewise. Most of the meats were either battered and deep fried, or coated in a sweet syrup...or both (sweet and sour, anyone?). Dumplings - perhaps less grim than most things, diet-wise - protein or vegetation in a thinnish carb-wrap. But you see the point? The very idea of enjoying an "All You Can Eat" buffet pretty much turns to cobwebs and ashes when you're on a quest like this. So really, there's no point trying to be a glutton about the thing - you might as well just pay the price, choose something you really want and can eat without feeling guilty, and move on. It's the same dilemma as having discriminating taste in the age of hundreds of TV channels. Sure, there's plenty to choose from, but would you actually want any of it? Use your diet as you would a remote control, and pick the few items you really want, rather than just sitting through whatever's available for hours on end.

A Grand Day Off

Well...did you watch the wedding?

I'm having the day off, frankly. Not from dieting and sensible eating, of course - let's not go crazy - but a day off from the bike...possibly two.

I should say, I'm not doing this in some kind of tribute to the married couple, or the monarchy, or any of that. By discipline, my first 'career' as such was 'historian', and as such, in Britain, I learned a lot about the history of kings and queens, and make no mistake, they make great stories. From the poisonous machinations of the Angevins to the cataclysmic wars of the Plantagenets, the insane drama of the Tudors, the wars of the Stuarts, the madness of the Georgians, and the travails of the Windsors, there are fantastic stories from every era of royal history. Anyone who's watched The King's Speech can probably relate.

Having said that, there's something inherently republican (in the no-marchy sense of the word) in my nature. Something 21st century, and no-point-to-inherited-privilege, and not-getting-drawn-into-public-hysteria and generally joy-sucking about my relentless rationalism.

That said, as human beings, I have abbbbsolutely no problem with either the Duke or Duchess of Cambridge, and given the goldfish-bowl in which they live, they give the impression of being refreshingly normal and - and this is surely crucial - of being genuinely in love and optimistic and hopeful for their future. I've heard it said several times that 'in the world we live in, with everything that's going on, it's lovely to have something hopeful to all get together on, and have a moment's happy pause.'

(Shrugs) If you like. I think perhaps in the modern world, we're rather dangerously addicted to hope, sometimes at the expense of reason - and we make gods and fairytales out of ordinary human beings, because we need them to keep our addiction fed. You can see the gaps of course as far back as the 'fairytale' romance of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer - in reality a horrifying lockdown into a course of events that saw a Princess Bride already aware as she walked down the aisle that her husband loved someone else, and a couple almost guaranteed to grow strained and estranged. You can see it again in the 'Audacity of Hope' election of Barack Obama - surely one of the most rational politicians of our times, but, as comedian Dylan Moran puts it, 'his biggest problem is everybody else - is us. Cos he says sensisble things like "we've all got to work together, and we're having a tough time," and everyone else goes "No! You do it...You are SuperJesus..."'

So let's not make them into a fairytale. But let's also acknowledge that, unique in recent royal history - I think the last time this happened was with the current Queen and Prince Philip - these two have known and liked each other for a decade. They've laughed, they've rowed, they've even split up before getting to this day. As far as 'keeping it real' is concerned, I reckon this pair might well make it. So good luck to 'em, I say.

But as I say, I'm not having a day off in tribute to them. I'm having a day off because, really rather pathetically, injured myself again. Now blisters from walking too much is perfectly understandable, and not fat-fuck-specific. Today's injury though...is all me.

As I said yesterday, I've taken to doing two or even three stints on the bike per day while I'm at home, to make up for not being able to do the walking. Well last night, I developed a sort of sunburn-sensation on my right thigh, halfway through my first ten miles. I finished it off, looked down, but couldn't see anything, so carried on with my second ten miles, the pain getting higher and sharper and bitchier with every mile I cycled. Oh, I should warn you now, there's one of those raw, did-he-really-say-that moments of way-too-much-information coming up - hide your eyes or stop reading now if you don't really want to know what it's like to be a fat fuck.

Because...there was a reason I couldn't see anything on my leg.
It's called my stomach. I have a fair number of rolling pale blubber-flaps, and a procession of them had been hiding the injury I was doing to myself. Not to menation causing the injury I was doing to myself. It wasn't till I was in the shower, and I managed to pick up a couple of flab-rolls and pull them to one side that I saw it. The skin had been rubbed raw on my right thigh, to the point of breaking open in a thin needle-line of blood. And rubbed raw by what? Well, by my final belly of course, armed with salt-sweat. It had acted like sandpaper, as my legs moved to power the pedals, time after time after time, bringing the pain and concealing the injury.

So that - rather than any royalist servility - is why I'm hanging around for a couple of days with my trousers off and my knees exposed to the world, with Savlon oozing from my thighs. Sadly, this means no swimming tomorrow (Sorry Mae!), and of course the lack of exercise makes me generally worried for Tuesday, but I'm not gonna get panicky about that....yet!

In fact, d's made 'English' Muffins in celebration of the Royal Wedding, and dammit, I'm going away right now to eat one.

Well, maybe not right now, cos they're an excuse to tell you a quick story. d, as most of you know by now, is an American, living over here in London since she madly agreed to marry me. She'd been here about three years when we were wandering through the aisles of the local Sainsburys, and she turned ot me in irritated despair.
"I don't know what it is," she said, "but how come you people don't sell English Muffins anywhere?! I've been here for three years now and I can't find them anywhere!"

I pointed to a packet, staring us almost directly in the face.
"Muffins," it said. "Get your fresh muffins here."
"But..." she said. "But they're not...English Muffins...are they? I thought they were....something else..."
Bless...

Blood was 4.8 this morning. So, not too bad. Now....mufffins...(Oh and if you're reading this, Wendy Gooding, stop chortling!)

The Little Triumphs Of Idiocy

Another ordinary day of working from home.
In theory.
Have to admit, after my dalliane with Klingon sluttery yesterday, I was a bit nervous to wake up and find an email telling me I'd have to go to the Post Office again, this time to post some Nightmare on Elm Street movies. I mean, invites to go drinking with a wannabe Klingon are one thing, but I'm damned if I'm getting the finger from a fake Freddy.

Now, as it happened, I had to do something else in the wider world today. Had to take some money from one bank account and put it in another. Nothing dramatic, just the kind of thing that helps smoothe life out when you have a first-of-the-month, with its attendant bills, disguised as a Bank Holiday.

So I went to the Post Office again, but plenty of people appeared to be panicking about the Bank Holiday - the line extended out of the door, as far as the road and then some. I thought about joining it, but by the time I got there, I was in a bit of a time crunch - you see, I know it doesn't sound like a complicated business, transferring money, but here's the thing - my main bank appears to operate from a base in the nineteenth century, and has only four or five branches in the UK. If I wanted the money to transfer smoothly and in time, I'd have to go and see them personally. Fortunately, they have a branch in Canary Wharf, a short tube ride from home. So, no problem there - I only needed to get to them before 3PM. I went through the barriers at Stratford and went to the Wharf. Pulled out the card from my other bank and made to withdraw some money.
"Nope" said the machine, spitting out my card like a mouthful of mayo. I tried again.
"NO!" it shouted, spitting again, this time with the petulance of a toddler made to eat stewed spinach.
Now, this was tricky. It was the first time I'd used this particular card, it was a replacement for one that expired last September. I tried to find the bank's website, looking for a local branch to go and talk to about why the card didn't work.

Guess where the nearest branch was?

Yep, that's right, it was back in Stratford. So I went back through the barriers, and walked to the branch. Waited in line for a while.
"Any idea why my card doesn't work in the hole in the wall?" I asked the bored, overworked woman behind the counter.
"Wrong card," she said simply. "We should have sent you a new one last September."
"Yeah, you did," I said, "this is it."
"Errr...no, notsomuch," she said.
"Yeah, honestly. I still have the old one in my wallet," I explained. "Look." I pulled out the old card.
"Yep," she said. "That's the one."
Ut took me a whole handful of seconds to understand the simplicity and the idiocy of what had happened. I'd had two cards in my wallet, the old one and the new. I'd automatically assumed the one at the front was the new one, and, when it didn't work, nothing about the experience clued my brain in to try the other one. So I'd schlepped all the way back to Stratford because, when it comes to it, I'm that much of an idiot.

Anyway, I got the cash, and went back through the barriers at Stratford, heading for the Wharf again. Got there at 3.05. Deposited the cash anyway - like I said, it's not urgent, just important, so it'll work just as well. So I went back through the barriers one last time and headed for home.

And as I was coming back through the Stratford barriers, it hit me. Something was different. I'd been going back and forth for three hours, with barriers at both stations. And something was different.
Regular readers will remember a little while ago, the hilarious incident of my getting stuck in a turnstile at Hammersmith station. You won't be surprised then to learn that it's become a learned instinct when approaching tube station barriers to turn just a little sideways, and slide througth that way. But today, I didn't do that. Not once. And that was wonnnnderful.

It's a tiny slice of normalcy that you get numb to, and then pretend to forget, as a fat fuck. I'd actually had another wave of this feeling actually at the Wharf, when passing an expensive off-the-peg suit shop.
"That'll be a day," I thought to myself. "That'll be a landmark day, when I can just walk in off the street and get a suit." It reminded me, queasily, of the only time I've ever tried to hire a tuxedo. There's a store here that hires out this kind of outfit, called Moss Bros. I walked in, and said "Do you have-"
"Oh, I hardly think so, sir," said the rakelike shop assistant. I felt so furious it burned, but the humiliation burned more and I left the store.

Clawing back those tiny slices of normalcy, of...acceptability, somehow, is as much a series of landmark as the stones and pounds I'm losing. I said this to d when she got home, and it was something with which she could identify.
"Yeah - I've been sitting in normal tube seats, and not feeling squashed," she enthused. (Tubes now have 'normal' seats, and seats with an extra third to them, which we habitually think of as 'fat seats', and which we've made it a point, previously, to seek out).

So yeah, I schlepped back and forth needlessly today and made myself late for my 19th century bank. But the little triumph it gave me was worth all the schlepping. And so much more.

For those still following, my blood was 5.9 this morning - a little elevated, but probably explicable by the fact that I've had cereal breakfasts for the last couple of days. Nothing to sweat over, I shouldn't think. Not on a day like this.

Looking For par'Mach In All The Wrong Places

Most of today was thoroughly uneventful, Disappearing-Man-wise. It was one of my regular deadline days at work, except of course technically I wasn't at work, I was here at home. Most of the time, when I work from home, I love it, because there's something of a teenage me-wear-a-tie?-Ffffffffuckyou! vibe about working in your jim-jams (or indeed in your Victoria's Secrets, come to that), but today, I was under pressure from the start, and the damn thing just didn't let up. I've gotten into the habit over the last few days of doing two or three separate cycling sessions a day while I'm at home, to make up for the lack of walking. Today, I simply didn't have time to get on the bike until after d had come home. Finally got done with the main body of my work by about 2ish, and had to go into town to a) get some lunch before the lion in my gut tore my damn fool head off, and b) to post a couple of packages.

That's where my day went a bit weird, really.
I had my packages under my arm, and the line in the Post Office was almost to the front door. I joined it, and waited for the auto-announcer to give me the counter to go to.
I registered the fact that a guy had joined the line behind me, but this is London, you don't think anything of it - it's the rules.

"You a Trekkie?" he asked, peering round my shoulder.
Now, I should say - it's possible there's more to this than some creepy Simpsons-Comic-Book-Guy version of gaydar. As it happened, the packages I was there to post were two seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I've watched all seven seasons of that show, and now I'm selling them off, because life is too short to watch Deep Space Nine twice. I had bought the envelopes in the Post Office, and put them in. It's entirely possible he spotted me doing this before I ever noticed him, because, as I say, it's almost against the rules of social protocol to notice people in London. At least, I'm clinging to the idea that he saw me doing this, because if he didn't, if he was, as I assumed at the time, a complete stranger off the street making stereotypical, if friendly, assumptions about me, I think I might just go and headbutt the wall till I knock it down.
"Erm..." I said. It's a tricky question. I'm not, really, a Trekkie. I mean, yes, I have all the Original Series. And, come to that, all the Next Generation. And, as I say, I'd picked up all of Deep Space Nine, and watched them all. And...ahem...all the movies. But in my defence, I only picked up the Original Series and the Next Gen because d said she'd watch them with me, cos she enjoyed them too. We've watched the Original Series Pilot, and both, at the time, fell asleep. None of the rest have had the seal broken on them. We are making our way through the movies, but we've already agreed that, once we've watched them all once, I can sell them too, and frankly by then, I'll want to. But I don't have memorabilia, I don't have books, I don't have figurines, and I don't, don't, don't do the costume thing.

Ahem...not for Star Trek anyway.
So I'd paused, trying to work out a) what he meant, b) why he was asking, and c) whether, by anyone else's standards, I really was a Trekkie.
"Erm..." I said again. "Not really. I mean, I watch it, but..."
"I've got everything," he said, rather overestimating his own potential. "I'm Jazz, by the way," he explained. "I'm 45." Extraneous information, I think you'll agree. Then Jazz offered me his hand. I smiled weakly and shook it.
"Cashier Number Two please..." said the auto-caller, and we shuffled forward.
"Yeah," said Jazz. "I have phasers, and tricorders, original and next gen...I have chess sets, two and three dimensional, y'know, the one with the extra levels and stuff...all perfect. Never took them out of the box. I work in security, and it's funny," he said, again overestimating himself. "Cos I have a Security uniform, you know, the gold one for security and engineering, like Chief O'Brien. And sometimes at work, I put it on, and everybody's cool. I've had photos and everything. Course, I've got a couple of other costumes too. Got some Klingon ridges..."
"Erm...niiiice," I nodded, no longer sure how to play this at all.
"Cashier Number Four please..."
"So..." said Jazz. "Where d'you go drinking? D'you go to Trek Bars, or what?"
"Trek...bars?" I asked, blinking.
"Yeah, y'know...dress-up bars."
"Riiiight," I said. "I...erm...I don't really go drinking. Sorry."
"Oh...I mean, I don't drink," he said. "I dress up and go and drink Diet Coke and watch my friends drink...D'you wanna..."
"Cashier Number Eight please..."
"Oh...erm...sorry, that's me," I said, scurrying away.

Typical. I lose a stone and suddenly I'm being chatted up by 45 year old wannabe Klingon warriors. In the line at the freakin' POST OFFICE.

Now, in itself, this was weird enough. But coming on the heels of last night, it was a double weird sundae with extra scoops of freakish and bizarro sprinkles. Y'see, last night, d was telling me some of the things she occasionally tells me when she wants to disquiet and disturb me. We met in an online writers' group, you see, and she maintains that she 'won', and that several of the group members, back in the day, were 'playing' for me. She says things like this every now and then to make me squirm, bless her. She was chuckling by the end of it, telling me "Oh baby, trust me, you were a catch...and I caught you."

You might think this is good for the ego. It isn't. I find it weird, and freakish, and not a little disquieting, because of course traditionally, people make plays for the aesthetically pleasing, so the idea that people were 'playing' for me simply does not compute. And it's probably a good thing that it doesn't - can you imagine the levels to which my egomania would soar if I thought I was attractive? (Shudders)....Doesn't bear thinking about.

So when I got home, I had to call her.
"I've been invited to a Trek Bar," I said.
"A Shrek Bar?" she said. "OK..."
"A Trek bar," I said, louder. "A dress-up joint in the city, where they set phasers to stun."
I told her the whole story. She had to go away to breathe for laughing so hard.

"See?" she gasped. "Told you you were a catch!"

T'riffic. I can pull 45-year-old wanna be Klingons, looking for par'Mach* at the Post Office.

What a day...

* par'Mach is the Klingon love ritual. Shuttup! Knowing that does NOT make me a Trekkie...oh, sod the lot of you, I'm going to bed!

Xen and the Art of Expectation Management

Ohhhhkay. Well, that's weird.

I should say at this point I'm not doing this deliberately. I'm not going 'ohhhh woooooeeee is meeee,' and ringing my little leper-bell, and coming off all flabby and gross, only to turn the tables on a Tuesday and go "Ahaaaaa! Only joking!! Look how fab I am!!!"

Seriously - not doing that. Yesterday I really did think I'd have put on a small, reasonably accommodating shedload of weight, and I really did pedal my desperate ass off. And last night, just before bed, I went to do my usual pre-bed ablutions, and ended up glued to the sonofabitch toilet again for the best part of forty minutes. Both of which, I'm assuming, help to explain the fact that today, blog-watchers, we are strapping on our party hats and handing out the kazoos, because today's weigh-in revealed the following:

Weight at eight weeks: 19 stone 6.5 pounds!!!

Awoogadewoogadewoowoohoo, awoogadewoogadewoo!!! That's one stone, one pound, or fifteen pounds in total. For those keeping up, that means I'm just one tiny little pound behind my stated schedule of two pounds per week.

This is the moment to pull out any spare bunting you have that hasn't already been strung up to celebrate having a day off cos some young toffs are getting married this week, wrap it round yourself and do a conga, baby!

It's easy, on days like this, to feel more than a little smug. Doesn't last though, and believe me, you wouldn't want it to, I'd be even more insufferable than usual. In other news, no, I still haven't taken the weights out of their box and yes, I went to the doctor about the blisters. It was an interestingly...erm...socialised...experience. Arrived at 8.30, asked to see a doctor. Was rather fabulously given an appointment at 9.10, so figured I'd hang around. At 9.30, I got called to see a Dr. Roy in Room 5. Which would have been fine, if Room 5 hadn't been both locked and empty. I went back out to the waiting room.
"It's Room 5," said a fellow waiting-person.
"Yeah," I said. "That's what I thought..."
I went back and tried it again. Nope. Still locked, still empty. I was heading back to the waiting room a second time, when the door to Room 2 flew open and a beady-eyed beetley litle man popped his head out and beckoned me in. Room 2 had "Dr Aziz" stuck on the front of it. But this wasn't Dr Aziz.
"Ah, yes, sorry about that. Did something wrong," he explained.
"Err...yes," I said.
"I'm Dr Roy, I'm new...well I say new, I'm only here for today. Covering, you know..."
"Right," I said. "...Long as you're qualified..." I murmured to myself.
I explained about the blisters and the diabetic feet and yadda yadda yadda....it occurs to me I could have just printed out a couple of blog entries, but they tend to look at you strangely if you do that kind of thing. I had my sock off and the beetley little man was peering at my toes when the door burst open again.
"Look," said the new man, "I know you're with someone, but I really am gonna need my room back at some point."
Ah.
"Morning Dr Aziz," I said, grinning rather broadly given the time of day.
"Yes yes, of course," said Dr Roy, prodding my blisters as though they had just solved differential calculus and he wanted to see what else they were capable of.
Dr Aziz backed out of the doorway, shutting it behind him. Fair play to the man, there's only so much weird you should have to put up with in any given minute.
"They'll be fine," said Dr Roy, coming back down to Earth. "But don't go mad."
"You mean, I can't do proper walking on them for a bit longer?" I asked.
"Walking? Well of course you can do walking," he said. "You can't just sit about because of a blister, can you?"
"Nono," I said. "I mean...long walking. Fast walking. Weightloss walking."
He sniffed, as if the very idea of weightloss walking had farted in his face.
"Noooo, best not. It's healing, after all. You don't want to inflame it, do you?"
I sighed.
"No, I suppose not..." I said, getting the Hell out of the place before he decided to amputate something, just to keep his hand in.

So - still notsomuch on the walking, but the biking remains fine, and I daresay the dumb-bells would be damn useful if I could work up the gumption to get them out of their box.

On another note, I made a new Facebook friend recently, called Donna. She's a Doctor Who fan, and a Mitch Benn fan, so she's two thirds of the way to fabulousness before we start. But, perhaps more imminently relevant, she's going for the gastric band...or sleeve, I forget - will have to ask her again - within the next six months. We were talking about this and she explained that before they even let you have the op, you have to sort of prove your commitment to the life-change it involves by losing 5% of your starting bodyweight. Maths-fans will be able to work out quickly that since I started at 20 stone 7.5, one-twentieth of that is one stone and a smidgen. So technically, from where I started out, were I to stay right here, I'd be op-ready.

Of course, another way of looking at it is that I'm a little more than one-ninth of the way to what the medical nightmare-squad who define things like the Body Mass Index say would be my 'healthy weight' - 11 stone 1.

Annnnd so it's back to the bike we go.

Oh yeah - blood sugar this morning was positively omenic too - down to 4.5. Not sure whether that's good for a diabetic, or wheher, as a fat fuck, I'm flirting with the ludicrous territory of having a 'hypo' reaction - blood sugar too low(!). (Rolls eyes). If it's not one thing it's another I guess. Anyhow, a good, bunting-worthy day, blog-watchers. Second ten miles of cycling, here we come...

I Don't Like Tuesdays

As a kid, I always used to identify with cartoon cat Garfield.
1. He was a grinning podgy smartarse, and so was I.
2. He was a pasta fiend, and so was I.
3. He came out with two of my own personal mantras - There is never a need to outrun what you can out-think, and I never met a carbohydrate I didn't like.
4. That cat had a very sensible, straightforward approach to Mondays.

Now I'm not about to go all Brenda Ann Spencer on your asses, declare I don't like Mondays and go out and shoot eleven people, but Garfield would start suffering from Mondays, often, before they arrived. In fact, he often suffered from Mondays that launched sneak attacks, creeping round corners to catch him unawares.

That's kind of how today feels. We were having a lovely holiday, each doing our own thing, and then doing our shared things - for a minute there it was like we didn't need to work for a living, and could just live as we wanted to. Now suddenly, Monday has launched a sneak attack, and before you know it, it'll be Tuesday. 

Now Tuesdays....yeah, just conceivably, Tuesdays might make me pick up a semi-automatic weapon...
This Tuesday in particular sucks more of Satan's ass than usual, because it means d goes back to work after we've been together for four days. And you're gonna think we're soppy, but that'll be hard. We'll miss each other after being together 24/7 for four whole days. And of course, Tuesday also means another weigh-in, which has likewise sprung itself on me as if out of nowhere, from a clear blue sky and a lovely warm Easter break, and that's frankly not bloody fair.

This Tuesday has already stolen some of the pleasure out of this Monday for me, because weighing tomorrow means panic and desperation today, all man-breast beating and creeping fear of the scales and their Tuesday morning judgment. Those who've been keeping score will know that this week I've been, if not exactly hamstrung, then at least moderately blisterstruck, kept from my newly-normal walking regime. I've also been eating rather more freely than has been the case since I started this experiment, so it's not as though I don't have good reason to fear. I've been feeling huge and flabby pretty much all week, but somehow, in the glorious sunshine we've had this week, it's been easier to feel good, and free, and somehow as though nothing matters quite as much. It's only now, with my back up against a Tuesday weigh-in, that reality appears to be slamming back into place.

Am I really worried? To be honest, a lot will depend on exactly what the weigh-in says. That I'll have made progress and lost any weight seems vastly unlikely - but then it seemed vastly unlikely to me last week too, and that worked out just dandy. I should say I don't expect to have lost anything this week (and I haven't really expected to since this week began with blisters, as you'll know). If I've maintained, I'll be thrilled. If I've put on two pounds, I'll grin well enough and bear it. More than that and I'll start to be irritated with myself. More than four pounds and I'll feel it as a serious setback. So, we'll see what happens tomorrow.

So today, with the faintly perverse desperation of a last-minute penitent, I've done 25 miles of cycling. I did plan to do more than simply look at my dumb-bells too, but somehow that hasn't materialised. Tomorrow, dammit. Tomorrow, I take them out of the box. Tomorrow, I'm also going to see the doctor, to hopefully get the all-clear about the blisters so I can start walking properly again. So all in all, I'm feeling like I'm in a recoverable position. I'm just hoping there's not too much to recover come the morning...

Me, me, me, it's all about me...

Soooo...was the Easter Bunny kind to you all? Lots of chocolate eggs, everyone? It's OK, you can tell me...s'not like I'll hit you in the face with a frying pan for every egg...or...anything...

Of course, it's only at ten o'clock on Easter Sunday that I realise I've been so enormously self-centred (mmm...gooey centred, like a melting chocolate truffle, or a warm double-toffee cake, just ooooozing with sugary goodness...)...

Ahem...where was I?
Oh yeah, only now do I realise I've been so enormously self-centred as to not get my beautiful wife a damn thing for Easter. No bunnies, no eggs, no expensive Belgian sin-fests, nothing. In fact, I've spent the day largely sitting on my still-humungo-ass, doing - of all things - proper work that I didn't manage to get done on Thursday. She on the other hand has been out in the kitchen all day, and has presented me with two gorgeous meals, prepared by hand, prepared from scratch, and perhaps most importantly of all, presented without the additional gift of a clonk round the head and a scowl. No no, with smiles, and jokes and genuine love, she's done all this, while I've been so wrapped up in myself that I've pretty much pissed the day away. Could we be any more 1950s?

I guess I've never really been an Easter person. We all have different memories of the holiday of course, but mine were mainly death-related. Fitting, I guess, given the 'story' of this moveable feast. But every Good Friday (seriously, I know it's all about the conquest of Death and Sin and all that, but really? You couldn't find a better name for the day your hero bled and suffocated to death? Cos if I was him, I'd take that personally. Likewise all the crosses - I think Bill Hicks said it best, when he said 'You think, if Jesus comes back, he ever wants to see another cross?), my mother and I would go up to the cemetary and visit graves. First my grandfather, then he and my gran together...then both of them and one of my best childhood friends. I'm fairly sure we had a big Easter dinner, and of course, I used to get eggs and (in later years) book tokens and the like...

Y'know I'm not sure what kind of self-pity party I was trying to get into here, but clearly it's bullshit. I didn't grow into an unthinking ass at Easter cos I went grave-visiting or cos I didn't get enough Easter eggs as a child...cos clearly I got plenty, and the cemetary visits were actually quite nice. No, clearly, I grew into an unthinking ass at Easter because when all's said and done, it's my default position. Yep, my name's Tony, and I'm a selfish prick. Hey, at least you don't have to live with me, right?

Of course, the slightly sick thing is that even as I'm writing this, d's gone back out to the kitchen...to bake. Annnnd even sicker than that, what she really wants to bake is hot cross buns, but she's not doing that because I can't eat them. So she's out there now, making cheese scones (which, granted, I also shouldn't eat at this time of night, but y'know, there comes a point when ya just have to say bite me and move on), that we can share.

And you wanna know the really stupid thing? While, for some reason, she trusts me to write whatever I need to write, sometimes d's worried that she comes off badly in these blogs.
Thing is, I'd be in the weeds without her. You can't be as toweringly egotistical as I am, and still function in any kind of healthy way, without someone to balance you out, to slap you sensible when you go mad, to hold you close when you get scared, and to hold you up when you get weak. And when my ego fails me, I am all of those things - I'm weak, and scared, and raging and stupid and mad and I want to give in and I want to give up and I want to just throw myself off a chocolate-coated cliff. And d will look up, and catch my eye, and notice, and not look away. And she'll reach out a hand for mine, and squeeze it. And everything will be alright again. And I'll be home.

(Sigh).

You'd think I'd learn to treat her better, really, wouldn't you?

Weight Watchers

Well, they've arrived. I am now the slightly bemused owner of a set of dumb-bells. So far, I've sat there, pedalling and looking at them, wondering exactly what possessed me. Panic, I think, at the elongated holiday and its attendant break from routine.

Yeah, I know, we should all have my problems, right?

They're kinda cool, it has to be said, They're all sort of rubbery, and heavy as Hell, and they come with an instruction manual - which of course, when you're my particular kind of arse, is handy...although it rather ruins the potential for blog entries about broken toes and torn ligaments and the like...Ah well, so much for that.

But I haven't yet had the courage to actually do anything as dangerous as lift them out of the box. After all, one thing at a time.

What I have done is worn the other thing that, apparently, d told me she was buying, but to which I didn't listen.
You may be aware of a trend a while back - chiefly, as far as I'm aware, among women - for strapping velcro-patches with weights in them to their wrists and ankles, so that 'doing ordinary tasks' becomes a kind of allegedly low-impact workout. We now own a set of those too. Of course, being a humungo-bloke, nothing's quite that straightforward. So for a while this afternoon, I wore what were supposed to be ankle-weights on my wrists. Five pounds apiece. It was kind of like wearing huge Hulk hands, except notsomuch "Hulk Smash!" as "Tony Swing Huge Heavy Hands Like Orang-Utan, Get Knackered, Tear Off Heavy Hands In Stroppy Fit And Sit Sulking On Bike, Staring At Weights, Feeling Altogether Mental..."

So what else has today involved? Not a huge amount, to be fair - Blood was 5.0, so pretty good. Haven't actually moved outside the door, but that's to be expected - start of a new season of Doctor Who, bad things, complicated things, can happen if you go outside, altogether not worth the risk. Ate a meal about which I'm not going to tell you anything, for no particular reason other than I've been asked not to tell you anything (really rather inkeeping with The Impossible Astronaut, for those that saw it, no?). Did fifteen miles of cycling. Other than that, not a whole Hell of a lot. On the upside, things are progressing - weights, bought. First swimming session, agreed: Mae's free next Saturday, so we've pencilled in a session of water-toddling for then.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and stare at my new weights some more...

Living Like Lent

Hehehe...
Forgive my dark, brown-sugar chuckles from the corner. d just reminded me that there's more to this time off than a new series of Doctor Who starting tomorrow.
"Can't wait for Easter Sunday," she almost-growled, as I flopped sweatily off the bike after a tough fifteen miles.
"Whyzzat?" I gasped, picking my sweat-damp underwear out of my several cheesy folds.
"End of Lent," she grinned. "I gave up creme caramels...for Lent."
Oh yeah. I swear I did know that, but as you'll have noticed by now, I'm nothing if not huuuuuugely self-revolving.
"Aww...cool," I said. "Welcome...welcome to this suck-ass world of self-denial."
To her credit, she didn't throw anything at me.

In fairness, I wasn't taking the piss out of d. More, it was a sudden slap upside the head. Lent is 40 days of self-denial, whether you do it for religious reasons, or as an exercise in personal strength. It occurred to me that the last time I remembered creme caramels being in this house was the night I sniffed the Boobies of Doom (scroll through the entries, you won't miss that one!). That means I've been writing this blog longer than Lent. I had to blink at that realisation. I'm living la vida lenta...

And then of course, once I'd realised that, the thought occurred to me that people give up particular, specific things for Lent. Creme caramels...chocolate...smoking, whatever...I'd done a year of no desserts before we even began this fun-fest. A year of no fizzy drinks, which once were pretty much the only things I drank. I rediscovered the joy of coffee, and have now had to give that up too. A tiny, stupid part of me rose up and yelled "You wanna piece of me, o-givers-up-of-stuff-for-Lent!" But it died quickly, and then, just as quickly, I felt like a heel.

Because yeah, did this, did that, yadda yadda yadda...but as any of you who read d's blog will know (and if you don't, what the Hell do you do online? Go here now!), she's recently been diagnosed as diabetic. At the moment, it's not having too much of an impact on her, and as I did for a good solid 15 years, she's not denying herself sweet things en masse - though she's being sensible, continuing to lose weight, and evidently, giving up particular sweet things for Lent.

The point, really, is that I cannot, and will not, lie to any of you about this; as far as I personally am concerned, there is no correlation between giving things up and feeling better, or happier, or even particularly healthier. It might, as things go further, for all I know - but as yet, I can honestly say I was a happier human being when I wasn't denying myself all the things that I've grown to enjoy. So living like Lent is ONLY better because technically, running the numbers, you'll probably live longer, and with less in terms of health issues. But fun? No. And so, any raving and posturing and look-at-meing I would want to do is made mute and somehow shameful.

So yay for you, all you givers-up-of-stuff-for-Lent. Not long to go now. Stand by your fridges...

Sink Or Swim

So...
Easter. A festival combining heat, chocolate and the story of a man being nailed to a tree for saying how cool it would be to be nice to each other for a change, to paraphrase Douglas Adams. Goody.

In my case, with Easter merging into the Royal Wedding, I've got 11 days at home. Ordinarily, this is where my bitch-fest would come in, about how I'm gonna have to work extra hard at home to make up for not walking, but we all know I'm not walking any damn where at the minute anyway - wretched blisters - apparently there are more of them now. So am just gonna have to pedal my ass off.

Maybe.

I miss swimming.

I discovered this last weekend, when in rock and roll Bognor Regis, we had the luxury of an indoor swimming pool to faff around in. Only managed to make it there for one session, sadly, but while we were there, it was great. One thing though became patently obvious.

“Your shape’s changing,” said d, putting it into words. “All the biking you’re doing is strengthening up your legs. Not doing a thing for your man-breasts though.”

She’s right. I’m developing thighs like a carthorse, but I still have flabby, weedy nerd-arms, and tits like Jordan if Jordan were a hairy transsexual...which I’m happy to believe she isn’t... for now.

Swimming regularly would probably help with this disparity, but I have an issue with public pools. Comes of growing up as a fat fuck in the Welsh Valleys, where man-boys roam the streets in packs, looking for people to pick on. I used to go swimming back home, on my own (only child mentality of course – you go on your own or you don’t tend to go). I got picked on for being ‘the boy with tits’ by the gangs, and then shouted at by the lifeguards when I determined to wear a dark T-shirt into the pool to save me from the gangs. I have, at present, very little confidence that East London man-boy gangs are any more compassionate to the fat fucks in their midst, and of course these days, they’re properly armed (I think it’s a gang rule or something). Going swimming again on a regular basis would be great, but I’m not prepared to die for the pleasure!

Maybe it’s a ‘lone fat-fuck’ thing. Inspired by that thought, I asked d if she’d be interested in going swimming with me in a public pool in East London (she’s part-fish, I’ve discovered, entirely in her element in the water).

“With...kids?” she asked. “Eww...I know what kids do in swimming pools. I was a kid myself once...”

I put on my puppy-dog eyes. “Ohhh, if you really want to go swimming regularly, sure, I’ll go with you honey,” she said. So yay – that’ll be swimming added to the mix at some point in the near future.

Every possibility I’ll still get killed though – I have just as little sense of direction in the water as I do on land, apparently. Swimming diagonally – how come that’s not in the Olympics, eh? I'll tell you how come? Cos it's freakin' stupid, that's how...

So - pedalling like a lunatic, swimming at some point when it's possible (not sure what chlorine would do to icky sticky red blisters, or even if I'm supposed to to a public pool with 'em). Also, on Saturday, am fairly well resolved to buying some dumb bells. Anything I can add to the mix for now, I'm adding, cos I don't know when I'll be clear to do proper walking again. And if I'm honest, I've been eating too much fast food this week - had pizza yesterday and Chinese tonight, so am looking at a chunky weight gain come Tuesday unless I start doing something now. 

Annnnd we're back on the bike.

Bloods this morning - 5.3, so again, clearly the comparative lack of exercise isn't affecting my blood.

Everything else of course, but not my blood.

Greasing the Steps on the Road To Hell

A weird mixture of emotions this morning. On the one hand, three separate people have messaged me to say they're following and enjoying the blog, which was very gratifying (although two of them complained that I never post how much weight I've lost - every Tuesday folks, and not before, because, as we've seen, weighing randomly is a path to saw-the-top-of-your-head-off bonkersness for me). On the other hand, today feels like a genuinely low ebb in the process, and again, it's all wrapped up in the catacombs of my own brain.

Yesterday, I told you that I was having to stop the proper walking for a while so a blister on my foot could heal properly and not go all horrid and diabetic and oozy and grim. What I didn't mention is just how eeeeeasy it was to slip back into habits, once I had what I considered to be a genuine reason to do so. Truly, the blistering is not an excuse, it's a proper health-related reason not to push my luck, but all that pap about going further and longer and better on the bike shattered into gibberish the moment I approached the bike last night. It was as though my body had had a day of taking buses, and had used the time to pause for breath and take stock of everything I've been doing to it. It hurt. My bones hurt. My back ached, my knees trembled, my head was pounding, and I said "sod it" and turned my back on the bike. d even went as far as to say "you could do the tube station hill walk and see if it hurts" - but this morning I took the bus again. This is the point at which the blistering becomes an excuse, and I know it, because it doesn't hurt, and it's gooped and plastered, and she's perfectly right, I could have done it, but I chose not to. What is probably worse, when I went to buy my daily water in Kensington this morning, my normal, safe breakfast wasn't available, and some instinct made me pick up an individual chicken and mushroom pie.

For breakfast!

Now of course, it's entirely possible that the Xenical will take care of this misdemeanour for me, but there's something inherently self-disappointing about this action. If I let it, it could shatter my perspex boxes of resolve and swamp my progress, and drag me roaring and swallowing back to a depressing Square One. Clearly, I need to get a spine from somewhere and get back on the bike tonight as promised.

Oddly enough, I knew something was wrong last night even before I got home. I went to Oxford Street, to get my hair cut at the second attempt. I meant to say yesterday, when I claim that I 'walked to Oxford Street', at least in the Summer, don't let it fool you. What I mean is I walked to Marble Arch and then shuffled frustratedly along the pavement with seven million other bastards who all want to take up exactly the same space, and who all tut and mutter at the fact that they're digging up the road on Oxford Street again. But last night it was worse. Last night, I went beyond my normal whingy apparently funny bitchfest.

People were eating ice-cream.
In the Summer. The Bastards!
I think it was the ease with which they did it that made me furious. Buying it, licking it, swallowing, enjoying as though there was no consequence. As if they wouldn't have to pedal their asses off for a day and a half to atone for such actions. I wanted to punch them. I wanted to punch them and punch them and punch them and really not stop, all for the ease of their lives. Of course, with a rational head on, this is lunacy, as I've mentioned before - my own life is massively more easy than most people's on this planet, so what I have to bitch about is really nursery-school stuff. But again, as it's done several times already in this process, it gave me an insight into where religion, and particularly religious persecution, comes from. It's that idea that people are enjoying something from which you're excluded by virtue of a path you've chosen to walk. It can make you want to steal that pleasure from them, make them as miserable as you are, and then some. I never understood before that you can actually grow to genuinely resent people for just being who they are, because as d has rightly pointed out, I've never properly denied myself anything. Clearly, the wider lessen here is that self-denial can make you go very very strange if you let it. The trick, I suppose, if you find your path of self-denial worthwhile, is to find some self-awareness, and realise what's going on (certainly before you start to believe you're special or that fairies are talking to you, cos that's when people start to die), and rise above the negative impulses that wash over you from time to time.

And actually, writing that has just done me some genuine good. I've purged it. That feeling of discontent that has followed me round since yesterday and made me reckless this morning has sort of dissipated. It's Summer, enjoy all the ice-cream you like. I'd enjoy it with you if I could, but I have to do a different thing for now. Peace, love, happiness and ice-cream for all, I reckon. Low ebbs be damned, I'm getting back on track.

Phew...that was a close one.

Oh, and blood this morning is 5.4. Last night, after eating, it was 7.4, which is still within the acceptable range (and on a day of no exercise), so that's pleasing to know.

Blistering

So, weight this morning was 19 stone, 9.5. Against all odds, I've actually lost my regulation two pounds. Which is moderately exciting, because it means that I'm one standard-week away from my first stone of weight loss.

I know! Seven weeks, 12 pounds. Not bad at all, really.

But before we all jump out of our seats and do more silly dancing, it's come at something of a price, which I need to get around if I'm not to hopelessly backslide.

You'll remember me wittering on yesterday about how I'd ended up walking all over the district. Well, when I pulled off my sock last night, it turned out that I'd not only developed, but also burst a whacking great blister on my right foot.

d frowned, and invoked her right as spouse.
"No more walking for a while," she said. "Not till that's healed."
Now, if you're a regular reader, you'll imagine I whined, and bitched, and got around it somehow.

Nope. d's got the right to pull this veto, because a) she's my wife, and b) she knows I'm diabetic, and diabetics and foot weirdness are a bad mix.

I know this particularly because of my biological dad. He was an...erm...epic character. When I knew him as a kid, he was a desperate drunk. In later life, when I got back in touch with him, he was a diabetic. He got what was essentially a hangnail. Being the man that he was, he thought "Ach, it's just a hangnail," and went about his business - which, by then, didn't so much include being a roaring alcoholic as being a warm, laughing step-dad and grandad to a whole new generation. The hangnail turned septic. And then gangrenous. And then started creeping up his foot. And then his leg. Waiting for the NHS to do its thing, it wasn't until the gangrene was halfway up his leg that they took him in, and by then it was to amputate the green half. They took half his leg off, and he'd been in such pain for so long that his heart gave out, and he died.

Like I say, diabetics and foot weirdness - not a good mix. So if d says don't walk till your foot's healed, you can bet your gangrenous ass, I'm not walking till my foot's healed. Which - again, as a diabetic - might take a while longer than you'd expect for your common-or-garden blister.

I'm thinking I'll be fine on the bike, so I'm gonna have to increase pace and distance for this week - or rather, this fortnight (more on that later in the week), to maintain the weight loss, let alone try and push on forward. But still, for the day, a good result.

Oh and blood - 5.2 this morning.

The Wrong Trousers

Anyone here believe in the doctrine of the subconscious? That there's no such thing as genuine coincidence, and that we're all merely acting out in our conscious, waking state the dictates of our subconscious mind?

Just wondering, because last night I was being a moany git. It's something I do rather well and ridiculously frequently for someone as lucky as I am.

"Ohhhh Hell," I whinged. "Think I might have put some weight back on over the weekend away..."
Shrugged, went to sleep, snored like a fool, got up and walked to my tube station as normal. Pulled my travelcard out.

Ah.

Bugger.

Couldn't pull my travelcard out. A sudden flash of clarity showed me that it was still on the table at home. See, I'm all for fresh clothes and not being a stinky public menace, honest I am. When you get to be this big and flabby, it's always a good thing. But I'm a bloke who lives out of his pockets. It's something of a gag...or a bone of contention, depending on your point of view...between d and I. I have what she calls 'Chipmunk Pockets' that bulge significantly - as indeed would yours if your whole life was carried in them. Ipod, phone, keys, wallet at one time, (though now, d has persuaded me to keep my debit and credit cards, driving license etc all in my travelcard wallet), three types of pills, at least two pens, endless wodges of snot-rag that appear to rise up in geological strata depending on age and state-of-usedness, spare shrapnel-change, USB sticks, occasionally a stick-on red nose, talismanic bottle of Fool's Gold...you name it, it's in my pockets.

So when I change my trousers, as I had this morning, there's a big long checklist I have to mentally go through before I'm safe and prepared to step out through the door. I'd done this checklist this morning, reciting each item to myself as I shuffled round the flat trying to find them all. I must have got distracted at some point, because obviously when I went through the door, I thought I had everything.

Or did I?

I daresay advocates of the doctrine of the subconscious would say that reeeeallly what went on in my brain was that the subconscious, being concerned that I haven't lost any weight this week, and might even have put some back on, made me think I had everything, just so I could have the fun of walking up to the tube station, realising I hadn't got my pass, walking back down the hill to pick it up, and then walking back up it again to get my tube. That was the first hour of my experience of the outside world this morning. And then of course I still had to walk up Kensington High Street...

I know what you're thinking - d is often there ahead of you. "Well you didn't have to walk up Kensington High Street," she pointed out reasonably. "You could have taken a bus at some point, as soon as you had your pass..." And of course, she - and you - are absolutely right as far as you go. But you don't go where angels and sane people fear to tread, which is inside the catacombs of my brain, where the calculation-monkeys chitter-chatter all day long, going "Well, if you take a bus for the Kensington bit, then walking the tube station hill three times actually leaves you having done less walking than normal...and on a Monday before a Tuesday weigh-in at that...and if you took the bus for the second tube station hill, you're just wussing out of normal activity that you've already done once, and that's a license to wuss out of it any time you feel like, just because it hurts or you're late or some other convenient excuse comes along..."

Did I mention it's often not fun in the catacombs of my brain? Those damn monkeys spoil everything!

And they're still chattering right now - when I leave work tonight, I'm going to extend my normal across-Hyde-Park walk onto Oxford Street, where my barber is, because my face-fuzz is now somewhere between Grizzly Adams and a Yeti...getting more walking in while I'm at it...and then go home to a 10 mile bike ride. All on the day before a weigh-in. You've got to work extra hard to be that neurotic, I think.

Incidentally, this wasn't the entry I was going to write today - obviously, I didn't consciously know I was going to do the triple-schlepp up tube station hill. I've also had a talk with another pal of mine called Karen (I live in a world of Karens!), which has given me a whole other post to think about and write. There's a possibility that this might become a multiple-post-per-day blog if I ever find myself just that interesting, but I'm fighting shy of that at the moment, firstly because as yet, I don't find myself that interesting (though I'm hugely gratified by the number of people who have said they're enjoying the blog...."This means you love me...you really love me"...Ahem...), but also because the chatter-monkeys in my brain would only fret: some of you might remember it was just last week that I determined to make this a one-post-per-day blog for a whole year unless emergency circumstances intervened? Well, if I start doing multiple-entries, not only will I fret that there'll be an untidiness to the filing - at the moment, you can look at a Tuesday weigh-in, count back seven entries and find the previous Tuesday weigh-in. If there are eight or nine entries between Tuesdays, it's just numerical anarchy! And secondly, if I do multiple-entries-per-day, there's a little niggling part of me that will start doing algebra with the numbers - "Well, I did two entries that day, so I can skip today..." and that way lies not only filing anarchy, but a breakdown of the discipline of daily reports which I'm genuinely getting from having to write this blog the way I've set out to do it. The only real consequence of having too much to say one day is that some entries might come across as a little random, just dropped in here or there when I finally get a day where nothing else happened, but I remember a really cool talk I had with a friend two weeks before that I've been dying to tell you about ever since...

So as long as we're all OK with occasional slices of randomness (I'll try and give you the back-story whenever possible), that should be fine.

Oh yeah - blood sugar this morning, even after all the toing and froing - 6.5. And yes, you're right, I didn't post them while I was away in Bognor, for the very simple reason that we had a hotel room on the second floor (or third if you're American), and, as perhaps you might be suspecting by now, I'm not at my brightest first thing in the morning. It was often just too much like hard work to schlepp back up the stairs to get the testing kit once I'd come down.

In fact, thinking about it, this "too much work to go back for it" mentality is probably where the Chipmunk Pockets come from too.

On a subconscious level, of course.

Experiments With Weirdo-Tea

Well...I did it. I tried the de-caff.

Now, this is a weird admission for someone who prides himself on his rationalism (to the point of pedantry, buffoonery and, as I’ve proved a few times even in this short weekend, spoiling a perfectly good emotionally-centred mood), but my position is utterly at variance with proper evidence, as provided by scientists. They say there’s really no way of tasting caffeine in products. Well, I don’t know what to tell you, scientists, but in the version I tasted, there was a noticeable limpness to the taste, to the point of being...well, pointless. Now it’s true that the de-caff I tried was made with (I think) practically fat-free milk and no sweetener, so it was different and less robust in several ways – meaning I’ll have to try again with a version made the way I like, but honestly, the one I tried was enough to make me kiss goodbye to coffee forever.

So yesterday I sold a little more of my testicles down the river in an attempt to have a hot drink that wouldn’t kill me. That’s right, goddammit, I tried Fruit Tea.

D handed it to me in a cafe with the kind of disdain usually reserved for things that go bang and blow your hand off, or things that have just shat all over you, and to which you have no genetic connection.

“Your weirdo-tea, dear,” she murmured, in case there was any lingering doubt.

It smelled amazing. This could be it, I thought. OK, so it’ll cost me most of my gonads and a good healthy chunk of my cynicism about the whole health food revolution, but Hell, it could be a hot cup of something that I could have to finish a meal...

It was lemon and ginger, and in fact, smelled like a non-congested Lemsip. I took a hopeful sip.

Hot water. It was hot water, with a fantastic smell...absolutely none of which made it to a single one of my taste buds.

I swirled the teabag around for about ten minutes, mashing it against the side of the cup, and stirring, and straining the essence out of it by hand. The smell grew richer and more complex. The taste?

Hot water.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not like I want to be the guy who raises his hand in that tentative way and says “Erm...what fruit teas do you have?”, so the staff wander off and giggle about his pretentious tastes. In short, “the weirdo.” It would just have filled a gap between water, juice and the corner of dry oblivion into which I feel like I’ve been painted by a combination of diabetes, Xenical and tachycardia. So I went to bed last night feeling like another hopeful avenue had been closed off by a leering, tasteless, lemon and ginger scented disappointment. Well, in point of fact, i went to bed last night like a sulky six-year old who thinks the world is just...SO...UNFAIR!! (Insert pillow-punching, duvet kicking tantrum, complete with own-hair-pulling).

Went down for breakfast this morning, and was resigned to my juicy fate. D though was a revelation. Firstly, she said, she'd only considered the lemon and ginger to be 'weirdo-tea' because she has a personal loathing of hot lemon. Secondly, she wasn’t prepared to let me do my whole breast-beating, clothes-rending “Oh woe is the martyr that is me” routine, so she asked about the fruit tea options, while I, with a somewhat British mortification, mumbled into my beard that I’d...erm...I’d try the cranberry and raspberry one if that was OK with the waitress, sorry, I know, I’m weird, beat me with sticks and fling poo at me, it’s all I really deserve, I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...

Well...the verdict on Twinings cranberry and raspberry is...not bad. I think I need to shift my expectations somewhat, because the scent of these teas makes you believe they’re gonna taste like hot, strong juices, whereas what you’re actually drinking of course is simply an infusion, rather than a juice. As they’d say in the Valleys of my childhood, it’s “like they threw the fruit in from Cardiff”. But once you adjust your sensory expectations to take account of that fact...it’s not bad.  

So, I guess I might have to hang up my testicles, grow what’s left of my hair into long hippy strands, invest in some tye-die and start listening to Sergeant Pepper, because the future could well be bright. The future could well be fruity.

Making Adjustments

Is there anything bad for you that doesn't smell a thousand times better at the seaside than it does in day-to-day life in the city? I mean...anything?
We arrived yesterday and went for a quick bite of lunch because we hadn't had the chance to get anything at the train station. Most of Bognor appeared to be closed, so we stopped at a pub. Given the action of the Xenical, I really should have been thinking more clearly when I ordered the quiche. Eggs, milk, cheese...yeah, no excess fat in that...

It was the dessert menu that killed me, brought me back to life, cloned me exactly and then killed me again. Ordinary, bog-standard seaside pub desserts of course, but soemthing about the sensation of being - even briefly - on holiday flips some sort of brain-switch and amplifies the devil-voice on your shoulder going "Ooooohhhh yeah...go on...."
Suddenly I was having fantasies of diving naked into an enormo-sundae, nibbling on human-sized chocolate chunks, making flabby angels in puddles of strawberry sauce, doing appalling, not remotely erotic pole dancing around a Cadbury's Flake the size of Nelson's Column, before sinking my teeth in good and hard, and generally having a fine old time. Sitting there, reading the menu, I also got an idea for a short story, about which, probably, more in due course.

The thing is, I'm trying not to make this all about me, my diet, my heart and my freaking bowels, but just occasionally, they're fighting back - I was just done with dinner last night when I had to disappear for half an hour as the quiche and the Xenical had an argument, and whoever ended up winning, I lost. Incidentally, I should say - I swear, I'm not doing these things just to have something to write about, I just really, truly, genuinely am that stupid!

This morning at breakfast, it surfaced in a slightly different way - when on holiday, I tend to enjoy a pot of tea with breakfast, but of course being on caffeine embargo nixed that. My next, most natural choice, would be a glass of milk, but after the quiche encounter, I finally learned my lesson, and had to eschew that too. So - juice and water, woohoo, let's all do a freakin' celebration jig around the breakfast bar...

Actually, on a side note, it's slightly weird these days getting my mother and I together. d and I arrived downstairs first for breakfast this morning, and they were playing Stevie Nicks over the speakers - Edge of Seventeen. So I actually did do a little celebration jig around the breakfast bar, till d told me I was scaring the staff. So I sat down and ordered my breakfast. Two minutes later, my folks came into the breakfast room. Ma, without thinking about it, started doing a little celebration jig around the breakfast bar. Nature or nurture? Who knows, it's just a little freaky to find yourself as a hairy, balding, flabby nearly-40-year-old man turning into your own mother!

Anyway - after breakfast, we went strolling along the pier into town to visit the world best second hand book store, and along the way, every poxy little stall or stand or shop might as well have been doing the dance of the seven doughnuts, or reading seductively from the hot dog sutra. Every sense - including memory - was ratcheted up to 11, and I had real trouble stopping myself from diving, rugby-tackle style, at more than one vendor and demanding they let me eat everything they owned, guilt-free, cos goddammit, I'm on holiday!!!!

(Takes a Zen breath of acceptance or somesuch nonsense).

Right. Off to go swimming now. Bike be damned, just call me Orca, the Whale-Boy!

Feeling The Love

Have to tell you, all day yesterday I was seriously not feeling the love as a fat fuck in a big city.

First of all, the humungoid expanse of my ass finally succeeded in destroying our toilet seat. I mean, completely snapping the thing off its hinge, and dumping me halfway to the floor in the middle of the night – thankfully, my clench reflex has yet to be entirely destroyed  by the slam-dunk action of the Xenical. Of course, I really should have mentioned the whole ‘toilet seat placed delicately back into place, but likely to surf towards the floor at the slightest pressure’ thing to d, but you know how it is when you’re married – you come back to bed, and they’re...erm, well let’s say purring, shall we?...and you just can’t bear to wake them to tell them of the mighty power of your ass.

Needless to say, she found out for herself anyway. About an hour or so later, when she too found herself heading to the ground at a rate of knots, having to clench to avoid catastrophe. Bless her, she refrained from throwing the detached toilet seat at me at four in the morning.

And then I got stuck in a turnstile.

No, really, I did. I needed a pee, and we were at Hammersmith bus station. Not only have they upped the price to 50p per pee, but they appear to have narrowed their turnstiles, so only thin fucks can get what used to be called ‘sanitary relief’ I had to turn sideways to even approach the thing, then put in my money, shuffled sideways a couple of steps, and realised that the turnstile had stuck. Didn’t really help that I now had one rod stuck in my thigh, and another that was threatening to get the kind of intimate that would need a good meal and a smoke to make it acceptable.

There was, of course, no-one to help me out, and if there had been, I’d have been too mortified to ask them. When faced with this kind of problem, I’ve discovered that brute force and ignorance are your friends. I waggled my flab back and forth a bit, and pushed forward, hard. The turnstile shifted, and I ended up almost cartwheeling into the gents, with hands and head hurtling downwards fast. Which any gent will tell you is not how you want to announce your presence in the gents...

So, as I say, yesterday, not feeling the love. Had all this still in my mind when I went to work this morning. Then I saw a frail old woman, shivering, apparently with fear as she walked up the Kensington High Street. She was blind, and tapping along with her stick. And it hit me like a train how little I actually have to worry or bitch about. I cannot fathom how brave you have to be, to be without your most generally-used sense, and afraid to go out in the busy, mad, insensitive world, and yet to do it anyway.

And then of course today, I did half a day’s work and came away to the seaside, with my beautiful wife, and my mad but – as I get older, increasingly cool – parents. Yeah – feeling the love right now, right enough.

Blood this morning, quite high – 7.6. Blood later on today, better – 6.5.