A Brand New Strategy

So, let’s see. Today is the day before Rita’s funeral. Having gone to see her while she was still here, we can’t make it to the funeral in person, so we’ve come away to Dover for the weekend. Rita had a connection to the White Cliffs, inasmuch as the song about what were technically North American birds, of a certain…shall we say, blue…variety and their prophesied flightpath over said cliffs made a big impression on her during the war years, and we only really came here the first time, years ago, because it had made that impression on her, and thus on d, for many years.

So here we are, in a beautiful hotel, with a view of the harbour, and the Cliffs just outside our door (look left).

And I’ve discovered a brand new strategy for this whole weight loss thing. It’s this:

Simply put a lot of inedible stuff on a plate. Then you can legitimately not eat very much of it, and go for long walks along the seashore to make up for it.

Clever, huh?

I’m at perhaps my most dazzlingly brilliant on days like this. So far, I’ve booked a ferry, perplexed at the idea that it takes ‘two and a half hours’ to go from Britain to France, and only half an hour to get back, schlepped from Stratford to St Pancras only to catch a train whose first stop turned out, in fact, to be Stratford, and suggested Tangled as a great evening's pre-funeral entertainment for my wife. A story of a princess trappped in a tower, with songs like "Mother Knows Best" and scenes of the poor girl on a day trip where she's enjoying herself one minute, and feeling horrible about being happy and what her happiness will mean to her mother the next.

So clearly, I'm batting three for three today, and have total confidence in my new weightloss strategy. In fairness, I can't claim this is entirely original to me. It's the brainchild of a local restaurant, which served up leek and potato soup which was actually black pepper soup, and a plaice dish that, once d had beheaded it and ripped its spine out, was basically a couple of spoonfuls of watery flake-flesh, further ruined by a vermouth sauce of unparallelled nastiness, and accompanied by a salad that was - and clearly, this takes a lot of admitting for a big, butch, hairy-testicled hunk of moderately wobbly man-flesh like myself - the best thing on the table, and of which I still only managed a handful of bites.

But it occurs to me that there are plenty of different pathways to go down - you can eat nice things, and struggle like a bastard to lose an occasional pound or two. Or you can face yourself with with platefuls of rubbery goo and bizarre sauces and even blue cheese, and not want to eat a single damn morsel, and probably end up looking like Prince Freakin' Charming (sorry, Disney-overload!) in about half a handful of heartbeats...

There will be those who think I'm just being mindlessly facetious.

Y'know, those who have been paying attention...