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.
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