Top of the Flops

When I was a kid, there was a TV show called Top of the Pops. It, along with its radio sister Pick of the Pops, were essential viewing and listening to the entire kid population - even to geek kids like me. To the uninitiated, they were a run through that week's pop charts, counting down from 40 to the number one spot. They were how you knew whether your favourite bands were getting the recognition they deserved and soaring up the charts, and therefore whether your pocket-money devotion was paying off. They were how you knew what was new, what might be worth a listen, and what was clearly not. They were even how you learned whether the Bee Gees actually had all been fed into an enormous mincing machine, or whether that had just been a lovely comforting dream.

The point was that you always followed the ups and downs of your favourite bands. And then there was always a section where the coralled all the unimportant stuff of the week, the why-should-we-give-a-fuck, waste-of-breath stuff that the public had neither cared enough to push up the chart, not disliked enough to damn to musical oblivion. "This week's non-movers" they were called. None of "this week's non-movers" got invited onto the show to perform their songs, unless of course they were non-moving inside the hallowed winners' circle of the Top Ten - The Bay City Rollers could not-move for a month and still be strong at number 6, and (though this was late in my Top of the pops years), every Brit who was alive at the time remembers the inexorable summer of Bryan Adams, when the pillar of crooner-rock refused to be moved from the number one spot for what seemed to be forever with his nauseating Robin Hood ballad.

But outside the Top Ten, it was a cold and loveless thing to be one of "this week's non-movers", you got read out in a list and then the presenters moved on to all the interesting stuff.

Well, today I am one of this week's non-movers - Weigh-in results today are: 17 stone 13.75, exactly as they were a week ago today. It's a delicious irony that the week I do NO exercise, I lose 4.5 pounds, and the week I try and get back to it, I lose nothing. But I did say as long as it was still under 18 stone, I'd be happy enough, and I am.

For those that want to get into the twisty-turniness of this weightloss business, there is at least some positive news. Last week's results were in a state of digestive emptiness, whereas this week's re in a state of fullness. So presumably, in 'real life' I weigh one good crap less than I did last week - could be anything up to a pound and a half...Ahem, I did mention this was just for those interested in the twisty-turniness, right? But this week's official scores are what they are. And on we go...

Oh yeah, talking about the twisty-turniness - blood yesterday was 6.7 after a day of two of my reduced pills. Took three yesterday as an experiment, and blood this morning was 5.0. Clearly, this is the way to go - still a reduction of my diabetic meds, but one that allows me to maintain good blood results. Presumably, further reductions will come as the weight goes down.