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.