Meant to mention - blood yesterday was 5.6. Blood this morning on the high side - 6.4.
So here we are on Leap-Day, the day that only appears every four years. Nothing much to note from the day - again, very little exercise, and a reasonable calorific load. Ma had her eyeballs punctured, and is now resplendant behind rock-star shades.
Was talking to a pal earlier today. She raised a spectre of which I've been vaguely aware during this process. In fact, I've mentioned it before here and there - Inside every fat person is a skinny bitch screaming to get out.
What I mean by that is the idea that if you lose a lot of weight, you notice other people who are still carrying theirs much more than you ever did when you had it yourself. In fact, you have to fight the urge to judge your once-fellow fat fucks for still being fat fucks, when you're less fat than you used to be. It's basically ex-smoker syndrome, and while I know several rabid ex-smokers who now appear to hate and judge the behaviour of current smokers, for myself, I think it's a point of principle to not be a whiny, judgmental skinny bitch (even when I get to actually be a skinny bitch) to my fellow fat fucks.
Of course, ex-smokers would undoubtedly argue that there's a fundamental point of difference, in that smokers pollute the breathable atmosphere, where fat fucks don't (farts notwithstanding). But for me, it's just a 'fellow-feeling' thing - if you've been there, you know what got you there, and why you stayed there as long as you did, so there's no reason to judge those who are still where you used to be. We all either come to this point in our own time, or we don't. There's no 'right' answer, despite what the medics will shout at you. It's whatever is right for you at the time.
But hey - that's just me. There are plenty of ex-fat fucks out there looking down on their current fat fuck friends, I'm guessing.
So consider this a message from Briga-day. If you feel the little demon on your shoulder, telling you to judge your fat friends for being fat...don't be a dick, just bitchslap that thing and have a laugh with your pals. ALL your pals.
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
Before We Begin Again
"Final weigh-in of year one tomorrow. Oooh, the drama - will I reach the 5.5 stone mark? Will I see my first 14 stone reading? Or will it just be another of the Inbetween-Tuesdays, of which there are so many between landmarks on this journey? Tune in tomorrow, and let's see..."
Well...yes I will.
Just about.
Weigh-in this morning was:
14 stone 13.75
So that's a big statistical whoop. Last official weigh-in of Year One, and we've jussssst about squeaked into a total weightloss of 5.5 stone, or 77 pounds, or 35 kgs.
Of course, then I had a glass of water and in all likelihood weighed 15 stone again, but that's only the long-term point. In the short term, I saw my first 14 today. My plan is that by the end of March, I'll be at my six-stone mark, or 14 stone 7.5 End of April, I intend to see my first 13.
Today was all about eyes, really. Went up to the hospital with Ma, who had 'suspected' Glaucoma. The doc took one look at her and upgraded her to 'definite' Glaucoma, but reassured her not to worry about it.
Well, not before the blisteringly high intra-occular pressures that were doing...something weird to her iris, anyhow.
So she's going urgently to the Big Regional Hospital tomorrow to...and yes, even as I type this, I'm squirming...to have laser eye surgery that will punch a hole in her iris to relieve the presures. Then, at some point, they'll treat the Glaucoma. And then, just for shits and giggles, they'll treat the brand new lump under her eyelid that no-one knew was there at all until the doc stared at her eye this morning and said "What on Earth is that?"
d and I are moving in with the folks for a couple of nights, just to make sure that One-Eyed Ma and her gallant crew get proper meals, and regular cuppas, and generally don't freak out.
Meanwhile, I've only got one more UberCommute on the bus, as I'm not going to London on the 12th of March - because both d and I have retinopathy screenings that morning. Did I mention, all about eyeballs at the minute.
Which I suppose is a fitting metaphor for the day really - it's all in the eys you look through - One year ago today I did my final preparatory blog, ready for the start of Disappearing Proper in the morning. Looking backward over that year, with my statistician's eyes in, I can officially say I've lost 5.5 stone, which is a great start and means I've got just four stone to lose. Looking forward with my bloody knackered eyes in, I can officially say I've got four more friggin' stone to lose...and then sigh, and go to bed, and get up in the morning and - thanks to the piggin' Leap Year, still not officially be a year into this bloody thing.
Which I suppose is a fitting metaphor for the day really - it's all in the eys you look through - One year ago today I did my final preparatory blog, ready for the start of Disappearing Proper in the morning. Looking backward over that year, with my statistician's eyes in, I can officially say I've lost 5.5 stone, which is a great start and means I've got just four stone to lose. Looking forward with my bloody knackered eyes in, I can officially say I've got four more friggin' stone to lose...and then sigh, and go to bed, and get up in the morning and - thanks to the piggin' Leap Year, still not officially be a year into this bloody thing.
Haven't done well at all today - quite a few calories consumed, buggerall in the way of exercise done. Annnd now I'm about to have a yoghurty banana, just because, dammit. Walking....must...do...more...walking this week...
Oh yeah - just did some calculations.
"Ohhhhh god," I murmured to d.
"What?" she said, looking up.
"We could have sex tonight-"
"You incorrigible old romantic you..."
"-And have a child born, in the amount of time it took me to lose originally the amount of weight I have left. Nine months and a week..."
"Well," said d, rubbing her nose, "if we had a kid, wouldn't I be gaining all the weight you lost?"
"Errr....yeah, more than likely."
There was a moment of considered silence between us.
"So - yoghurty banana dear?" said d...
Oh yeah - just did some calculations.
"Ohhhhh god," I murmured to d.
"What?" she said, looking up.
"We could have sex tonight-"
"You incorrigible old romantic you..."
"-And have a child born, in the amount of time it took me to lose originally the amount of weight I have left. Nine months and a week..."
"Well," said d, rubbing her nose, "if we had a kid, wouldn't I be gaining all the weight you lost?"
"Errr....yeah, more than likely."
There was a moment of considered silence between us.
"So - yoghurty banana dear?" said d...
Monday, 27 February 2012
Happy Blogiversary
Occurs to me that I've allowed a blogiversary to go entirely unnoticed. it was on the 26th February 2011 that I first made a blog entry in this experiment. Rather weirdly, the next one was on 28th, and then the experiment began in earnest on 1st March. So yesterday was my first anniversary as a blogger, if not as The Disappearing Man. That blogiversary will be Thursday of this week.
It's been an up-and-downy sort of year, I think you'd agree. From fantasising about slaughtering TV chefs to being hit on by wannabe-Klingons in the Post Office, from leaving my mark on Camden Town to falling over plant pots and breaking a toe, from sniffing the Boobies of Doom to sniffing desserts at a posh dinner. To BWI (blogging while intoxicated) in Croatia to farewell dashes to the States to moving from London to the familiar territory of my home town, and inbetween it all, the relentless misery of self-denial and exercise, and the periodic explosions of joy that come from losing a semi-shitload of weight.
Something was brought home to me yesterday. Ma has spotted a suit she thinks I should get, and asked when it was that we picked up my Master suit, and what I weighed then. It was September last year, and I weighed 17 stone 4.75 pounds. That's (roughly) two stone heavier than I am now. On the one hand, put like that, it gives you a nice warm glow...and then on the other hand, you realise it took five months to achieve that. Five long-ass months. And of course seven months to do the previous three stone.
That's ridiculously long, hard bloody slogging. I'd be lying if I told you that a very large part of me didn't wanna throw its toys out of the pram at the prospect of doing all that alllllll over again for the next twelve months. But then one has to think of the goal, I guess - freedom from diabetes if life is lived within limits, a life lived longer, and freer, and fuller, and this year could give the whole kit and caboodle to me, cos I'm technically on the downhill slope at this point...
Sigh...
Final weigh-in of year one tomorrow. Oooh, the drama - will I reach the 5.5 stone mark? Will I see my first 14 stone reading? Or will it just be another of the Inbetween-Tuesdays, of which there are so many between landmarks on this journey? Tune in tomorrow, and let's see...
Blood, by the way, at Ugh o'clock this morning was 5.2. Again, I maintain it's too bleary and sleepy at that time to properly respond to the needle. I know I am...
It's been an up-and-downy sort of year, I think you'd agree. From fantasising about slaughtering TV chefs to being hit on by wannabe-Klingons in the Post Office, from leaving my mark on Camden Town to falling over plant pots and breaking a toe, from sniffing the Boobies of Doom to sniffing desserts at a posh dinner. To BWI (blogging while intoxicated) in Croatia to farewell dashes to the States to moving from London to the familiar territory of my home town, and inbetween it all, the relentless misery of self-denial and exercise, and the periodic explosions of joy that come from losing a semi-shitload of weight.
Something was brought home to me yesterday. Ma has spotted a suit she thinks I should get, and asked when it was that we picked up my Master suit, and what I weighed then. It was September last year, and I weighed 17 stone 4.75 pounds. That's (roughly) two stone heavier than I am now. On the one hand, put like that, it gives you a nice warm glow...and then on the other hand, you realise it took five months to achieve that. Five long-ass months. And of course seven months to do the previous three stone.
That's ridiculously long, hard bloody slogging. I'd be lying if I told you that a very large part of me didn't wanna throw its toys out of the pram at the prospect of doing all that alllllll over again for the next twelve months. But then one has to think of the goal, I guess - freedom from diabetes if life is lived within limits, a life lived longer, and freer, and fuller, and this year could give the whole kit and caboodle to me, cos I'm technically on the downhill slope at this point...
Sigh...
Final weigh-in of year one tomorrow. Oooh, the drama - will I reach the 5.5 stone mark? Will I see my first 14 stone reading? Or will it just be another of the Inbetween-Tuesdays, of which there are so many between landmarks on this journey? Tune in tomorrow, and let's see...
Blood, by the way, at Ugh o'clock this morning was 5.2. Again, I maintain it's too bleary and sleepy at that time to properly respond to the needle. I know I am...
Sunday, 26 February 2012
Led Astray
I went in search of the Taff Trail again yesterday - this legendary walking path that everyone tells me I should get on and walk.
Which would be all very well if I could find and stay on the bloody thing!
I followed the map, got onto something that looked a bit...erm...traily, and then came to a crossroads. One road went downhill, and the other, marked with a picture of a walker on it, led up and over a hill.
Yeah, go figure. I followed the upward path. Which shortly dissolved into a mudbath. I picked my way through it warily, and, seeing that this went on as far as the eye could see, got off it as quickly as possible. There was a dead end. That didn't bode well. At the opposite end of the dead end, so to speak, was a business park. I walked around it for a while, thinking that if it had a dead end at one...erm...end of it, there had to be another way out.
There wasn't.
Against all my instincts, I turned round and walked in the third of two directions...and finally found myself on the Taff Trail...going backwards, towards my flat. I posted my lostness to facebook, looped an irritated loop and tried to find the path again. Pretty much found it. Then I got a text from Lee.
You remember Lee...he's the pal of mine with allllmost as little navigational nous as me.
"Which direction you going?" he asked.
"Well, your way..." I replied. "At least theoretically."
"I'll bring the dog and meet you on the way," he offered, rather magnanimously I thought.
True enough, he met me on the way, and we walked a while, with Chip, the dog, running away and back to us with a kind of excitement that pretty much suggested he'd never actually seen the Outdoors before.
"You up for going a bit...off-road?" he asked, as we encountered a kind of gate leading up one side of what I've since learned is called Aberdare Mountain.
It's important to remember I've learned that since I said "Sure, why not?"
Let me tell you why not.
Why not is because a) it's back to mud and stones and a freaking stream, b) because, halfway up the mountain, it'll occur to you that Chip the Dog, with his Outdoors Excitement Syndrome, still has more navigational understanding than the two human beings combined.
"Ahhh, crap," I muttered, slipping on a stone.
"Shoulda read the small print, man," said Lee. "May contain lots of mud and stones..."
"And a stream," I muttered.
"Fuck..." said Lee at one point.
"What?" I asked, looking up, alerted by the tone of his voice.
"I...erm...I think we've gone wrong."
"We did," I said. "Round about the time you asked if I wanted to go off-road, and I said yes."
He rolled his eyes."City boy..." he muttered.
"Soooo - we've gone wrong?"
He looked up and sniffed, as if taking a scent-bearing.
"Yyyyyeah, I think so," he said. "Think we should have taken a fork back there."
I sighed.
"If I start to hear banjos, I'm runnin'" I said.
"Runnin'?" he said, raising an eyebrow.
"Wellllll alright, maybe I'll kick you in the shins and walk really fast..." I conceded.
Towards the end of the walk, we came to another crossroads.
"Bugger," said Lee. "A choice is needed."
"What, combining our legendary decision-making skills?"
"Ah...well..."
"How 'bout this?" I asked. "Put Chip on the lead, and whichever way he decides is right, we'll go..."
"OK," he said.
"Alllrighty, I was actually joking, but whatever works..."
And it did. Fair play to the daft dog, he continued to have more sense than the two of us primates put together, and he got us home in pretty much perfect time.
Today, went out walking with Ma. Back down the Taff Trail for a while, then back up on the road.
"Ohh, look," she said, spotting a gate at the side of the road. The opposite side of the road to Lee's side, but still...the path went up the side of the other mountain that forms our Valley.
"Shall we go a bit off the beaten track?" said Ma.
I sighed.
"Sure, why the Hell not?" I said.
Why the Hell not in this case was simply pain. Sheer, sweet, simple, folded, like Danish pastry dough, pain. The pain of going up, right to left diagonally, followed by more up, left to right diagonally...followed by a little more up, right to left diagonally. Not quite sure where we ended up, but I'm happy to tell you there was no mud, no stream, no banjo-playing yokels that could be tempted out of their fairly smart little houses, stuck improbably on a freakin' mountainside.
Them, for some reason I can't really explain, I came home and biked for about 900 caloriesworth. Still hoping to get the tiniest possible dip into the 14-zone on Tuesday, though I'm really not holding my breath. Tomorrow - UberCommute...woohoo...
Oh, blood was high this morning, by the way - 6.4.
Which would be all very well if I could find and stay on the bloody thing!
I followed the map, got onto something that looked a bit...erm...traily, and then came to a crossroads. One road went downhill, and the other, marked with a picture of a walker on it, led up and over a hill.
Yeah, go figure. I followed the upward path. Which shortly dissolved into a mudbath. I picked my way through it warily, and, seeing that this went on as far as the eye could see, got off it as quickly as possible. There was a dead end. That didn't bode well. At the opposite end of the dead end, so to speak, was a business park. I walked around it for a while, thinking that if it had a dead end at one...erm...end of it, there had to be another way out.
There wasn't.
Against all my instincts, I turned round and walked in the third of two directions...and finally found myself on the Taff Trail...going backwards, towards my flat. I posted my lostness to facebook, looped an irritated loop and tried to find the path again. Pretty much found it. Then I got a text from Lee.
You remember Lee...he's the pal of mine with allllmost as little navigational nous as me.
"Which direction you going?" he asked.
"Well, your way..." I replied. "At least theoretically."
"I'll bring the dog and meet you on the way," he offered, rather magnanimously I thought.
True enough, he met me on the way, and we walked a while, with Chip, the dog, running away and back to us with a kind of excitement that pretty much suggested he'd never actually seen the Outdoors before.
"You up for going a bit...off-road?" he asked, as we encountered a kind of gate leading up one side of what I've since learned is called Aberdare Mountain.
It's important to remember I've learned that since I said "Sure, why not?"
Let me tell you why not.
Why not is because a) it's back to mud and stones and a freaking stream, b) because, halfway up the mountain, it'll occur to you that Chip the Dog, with his Outdoors Excitement Syndrome, still has more navigational understanding than the two human beings combined.
"Ahhh, crap," I muttered, slipping on a stone.
"Shoulda read the small print, man," said Lee. "May contain lots of mud and stones..."
"And a stream," I muttered.
"Fuck..." said Lee at one point.
"What?" I asked, looking up, alerted by the tone of his voice.
"I...erm...I think we've gone wrong."
"We did," I said. "Round about the time you asked if I wanted to go off-road, and I said yes."
He rolled his eyes."City boy..." he muttered.
"Soooo - we've gone wrong?"
He looked up and sniffed, as if taking a scent-bearing.
"Yyyyyeah, I think so," he said. "Think we should have taken a fork back there."
I sighed.
"If I start to hear banjos, I'm runnin'" I said.
"Runnin'?" he said, raising an eyebrow.
"Wellllll alright, maybe I'll kick you in the shins and walk really fast..." I conceded.
Towards the end of the walk, we came to another crossroads.
"Bugger," said Lee. "A choice is needed."
"What, combining our legendary decision-making skills?"
"Ah...well..."
"How 'bout this?" I asked. "Put Chip on the lead, and whichever way he decides is right, we'll go..."
"OK," he said.
"Alllrighty, I was actually joking, but whatever works..."
And it did. Fair play to the daft dog, he continued to have more sense than the two of us primates put together, and he got us home in pretty much perfect time.
Today, went out walking with Ma. Back down the Taff Trail for a while, then back up on the road.
"Ohh, look," she said, spotting a gate at the side of the road. The opposite side of the road to Lee's side, but still...the path went up the side of the other mountain that forms our Valley.
"Shall we go a bit off the beaten track?" said Ma.
I sighed.
"Sure, why the Hell not?" I said.
Why the Hell not in this case was simply pain. Sheer, sweet, simple, folded, like Danish pastry dough, pain. The pain of going up, right to left diagonally, followed by more up, left to right diagonally...followed by a little more up, right to left diagonally. Not quite sure where we ended up, but I'm happy to tell you there was no mud, no stream, no banjo-playing yokels that could be tempted out of their fairly smart little houses, stuck improbably on a freakin' mountainside.
Them, for some reason I can't really explain, I came home and biked for about 900 caloriesworth. Still hoping to get the tiniest possible dip into the 14-zone on Tuesday, though I'm really not holding my breath. Tomorrow - UberCommute...woohoo...
Oh, blood was high this morning, by the way - 6.4.
Saturday, 25 February 2012
Just Desserts
I've made something of a boast since I started this experiment that I haven't in fact eaten a dessert in two years. It's been the source of much whinging and bitching, as longer-term readers will know.
But now I'm forced to consider a fundamental question: What exactly constitutes a dessert?
After all, I've eaten corn bread after a meal, which is only a bread by virtue of a wink-wink convention that stops short of actually calling it corn cake (but which might be a more accurate description of that heavenly creation). I've eaten fruit salads after meals, composed of nothing but...well, fruit, clearly...but haven't classed them as desserts for some reason.
But the issue was rather forcibly brought to mind last night, because last night, I did something new. I had a banana, cut up, and covered in a low fat, low sugar, low calorie yoghurt...
After my main meal...
And suddenly, afterwards, realised that it felt like a dessert.
Now this is potentially dangerous, as anyone familiar with the madness of my perspex walls will understand. The perspex walls principle, for those who don't go back the whole year with me, is that there are things I cannot eat, not because they are intrinsically dangerous or fattening in themselves, but because they lead me on in quick succession to things which are intrinsically dangerous or fattening. I've previously used exactly this example - today I have a low fat yoghurt. Tomorrow, I go and buy an extra creamy yoghurt. The day after, I switch from yoghurt to buying a tub of custard. And by the end of the week, I'm eating four custard tarts for breakfast and a gateau for lunch.
This is not comical overstatement - this is something I have done before. It's not the low fat yoghurt that's the danger, but the place it occupies in my psyche as a dessert. Previously, I have slid down a rapid and slippery slope of equivocation - one dessert's as good or bad as another (even though my rational mind knows this is not the case), and before I know it, I'm up to my ears in whipped cream and chocolate, and so incredibly, briefly, ecstatic that I don't give a damn about anything else.
And last night I had a low fat yoghurt.
To be honest, I didn't actually think about perspex walls when we bought the yoghurts, or when I ate it. It was only afterwards that I felt the danger ot the perspex walls that have, for all their frank and unabashed mentalness, seen me right throughout the first year of this process.
I guess the question really becomes whether, as well as being the Disappearing Man for the course of this year, I might, in some ways, have actually grown too. Have I reached a place of mental safety where low-calorie 'substitute' desserts can just be themselves, without leading me inexorably to equivocation and abandonment?
I honestly don't know.
I can honestly tell you that, while there's always a low-grade atmosphere of sugar-lust around me these days, and that I would love, would truly love, to dive into a whorishly extravagant sundae right now, at at practically every waking moment of every day. But I can also honestly report that throughout the course of today, that sugar-lust hasn't been any greater than normal, my determination any weaker, or my goals for this Disappearing any less achievable. I haven't been hounded through the world in search of chocolate - as I would have been before all this began. So who knows? Perhaps I've reached a stage where, to badly bastardise Freud for you, a yoghurt is just a yoghurt...
I guess we'll see. Incidentally, last night's indulgence clearly had no impact on my blood - woke to see it was 5.5 this morning - picture perfect for a British diabetic.
But now I'm forced to consider a fundamental question: What exactly constitutes a dessert?
After all, I've eaten corn bread after a meal, which is only a bread by virtue of a wink-wink convention that stops short of actually calling it corn cake (but which might be a more accurate description of that heavenly creation). I've eaten fruit salads after meals, composed of nothing but...well, fruit, clearly...but haven't classed them as desserts for some reason.
But the issue was rather forcibly brought to mind last night, because last night, I did something new. I had a banana, cut up, and covered in a low fat, low sugar, low calorie yoghurt...
After my main meal...
And suddenly, afterwards, realised that it felt like a dessert.
Now this is potentially dangerous, as anyone familiar with the madness of my perspex walls will understand. The perspex walls principle, for those who don't go back the whole year with me, is that there are things I cannot eat, not because they are intrinsically dangerous or fattening in themselves, but because they lead me on in quick succession to things which are intrinsically dangerous or fattening. I've previously used exactly this example - today I have a low fat yoghurt. Tomorrow, I go and buy an extra creamy yoghurt. The day after, I switch from yoghurt to buying a tub of custard. And by the end of the week, I'm eating four custard tarts for breakfast and a gateau for lunch.
This is not comical overstatement - this is something I have done before. It's not the low fat yoghurt that's the danger, but the place it occupies in my psyche as a dessert. Previously, I have slid down a rapid and slippery slope of equivocation - one dessert's as good or bad as another (even though my rational mind knows this is not the case), and before I know it, I'm up to my ears in whipped cream and chocolate, and so incredibly, briefly, ecstatic that I don't give a damn about anything else.
And last night I had a low fat yoghurt.
To be honest, I didn't actually think about perspex walls when we bought the yoghurts, or when I ate it. It was only afterwards that I felt the danger ot the perspex walls that have, for all their frank and unabashed mentalness, seen me right throughout the first year of this process.
I guess the question really becomes whether, as well as being the Disappearing Man for the course of this year, I might, in some ways, have actually grown too. Have I reached a place of mental safety where low-calorie 'substitute' desserts can just be themselves, without leading me inexorably to equivocation and abandonment?
I honestly don't know.
I can honestly tell you that, while there's always a low-grade atmosphere of sugar-lust around me these days, and that I would love, would truly love, to dive into a whorishly extravagant sundae right now, at at practically every waking moment of every day. But I can also honestly report that throughout the course of today, that sugar-lust hasn't been any greater than normal, my determination any weaker, or my goals for this Disappearing any less achievable. I haven't been hounded through the world in search of chocolate - as I would have been before all this began. So who knows? Perhaps I've reached a stage where, to badly bastardise Freud for you, a yoghurt is just a yoghurt...
I guess we'll see. Incidentally, last night's indulgence clearly had no impact on my blood - woke to see it was 5.5 this morning - picture perfect for a British diabetic.
Friday, 24 February 2012
Eat Your Heart Out
Sometimes, having friends with medical degrees is really fascinating.
Got involved in a conversation with a couple of pals this morning, Jessica and Steve, both of which have had some medical training.
"Fat's yellow," said Jess at one point, when the conversation had turned (as it occasionally does when talking to medics) to cadavers and autopsies. "Looks like little corn kernels. And it's all slippery and greasy..."
"So butter undergoes no particularly impressive change from the moment you spread it on your toast to the moment you haul it round on your ass?" I asked, thinking this might be an impressive visual deterrent for me the next time I have toast for breakfast. (Y'know, because the Xenical effect is such old hat by now!).
"Pretty much," she agreed, more in jest than in medical expertise.
"Doesn't fat accumulate round the heart?" asked Steve.
"I thought it accumulated round the heart so the heart could, y'know, 'eat' it to keep pumping?"
"It accumulates in the grooves and the vessels of the heart, yeah," said Jess.
"So the groovier your heart is, the more chance you have of dying because of cardio-fat?" I asked, thinking about it.
"That must really piss off the hippies."
"How would you tell if a hippie was pissed off?" asked Jess, not unfairly.
"Mind you," she added, "the heart would eat itself to keep pumping. It'll use muscle as a fuel given the opportunity, rather than fat."
I blinked.
"So you really can 'eat your heart out?" I asked.
"Yep," said Jess.
"Well..." I said. "That's...erm...interesting."
To be honest, it was more than interesting - it gave me another great element for the Faustian story I started last night. And now, I guess, it's given me a blog on a night when all I can tell you is I walked a few miles and bikes a few hundred calories and ate some toast and fruit today, ta-dah!
Oh, and that my blood was 6.0 this morning, which was pretty much to be expected, as last night's dinner included some gorgeous corn bread. Spread with butter...
Damn 'corn kernels'!
Got involved in a conversation with a couple of pals this morning, Jessica and Steve, both of which have had some medical training.
"Fat's yellow," said Jess at one point, when the conversation had turned (as it occasionally does when talking to medics) to cadavers and autopsies. "Looks like little corn kernels. And it's all slippery and greasy..."
"So butter undergoes no particularly impressive change from the moment you spread it on your toast to the moment you haul it round on your ass?" I asked, thinking this might be an impressive visual deterrent for me the next time I have toast for breakfast. (Y'know, because the Xenical effect is such old hat by now!).
"Pretty much," she agreed, more in jest than in medical expertise.
"Doesn't fat accumulate round the heart?" asked Steve.
"I thought it accumulated round the heart so the heart could, y'know, 'eat' it to keep pumping?"
"It accumulates in the grooves and the vessels of the heart, yeah," said Jess.
"So the groovier your heart is, the more chance you have of dying because of cardio-fat?" I asked, thinking about it.
"That must really piss off the hippies."
"How would you tell if a hippie was pissed off?" asked Jess, not unfairly.
"Mind you," she added, "the heart would eat itself to keep pumping. It'll use muscle as a fuel given the opportunity, rather than fat."
I blinked.
"So you really can 'eat your heart out?" I asked.
"Yep," said Jess.
"Well..." I said. "That's...erm...interesting."
To be honest, it was more than interesting - it gave me another great element for the Faustian story I started last night. And now, I guess, it's given me a blog on a night when all I can tell you is I walked a few miles and bikes a few hundred calories and ate some toast and fruit today, ta-dah!
Oh, and that my blood was 6.0 this morning, which was pretty much to be expected, as last night's dinner included some gorgeous corn bread. Spread with butter...
Damn 'corn kernels'!
Thursday, 23 February 2012
The Faustus Factor
Blood was 5.8 today, my little Lestats.
Nothing much of great Disappearing interest today - went to hospital with my dad, seemed to go OK, waiting for results of his CT scan now. Ate two meals, and have just biked away 700 caloriesworth of them. Walked up to the folks' place, and discovered that, since I've plugged the bike back in, I'm well out of practice at the walking lark...which bodes well for September(!).
While biking, was chatting via text to Karen Pulley.
"Why is everything that tastes nice bad for you?" she asked.
"Because there really is a god, and he's still a little pissed about that whole 'Forbidden Fruit' thing?" I suggested.
"Hmm...Maybe. On the other hand, you could say that something like that was the Devil's work. Eating our souls to death and all that..." she mused.
"Mmm...Gluttony. One of the very best sins," I murmured, drifting for really rather a long moment into a cake-shop fantasy moment. It was like Fantasia, except instead of hippos and flamingos, there were Danishes and eclairs. It was looooooovely.
Then it hit me.
What would you give to achieve your version of perfection overnight? And to maintain it, effortlessly, in spite of your actions, for the rest of your life?
Of course 'perfection' is a very dodgy idea, and walking even half a mile in perfection's shoes will show you there's no such thing, but imagine someone from whom their own bodyweight was robbing the opportunities of life - we've probably all seen programmes on these people. Imagine if an opportunity were given to them to lose the weight in an instant - no effort, no exercise, no costly and painful surgery...and then they got the 'perfect' body, and the perfect metabolism, that allowed them to continue their eating habits while suffering none of the consequences. What would they...what would we I should say, because while not extreme enough to have a show made about me, my original weight was certinaly limiting my life-opportunities...what would we be prepared to give for that? To sacrifice for it?
I mention this merely because one of the items on my list of goals for achieving before the end of March is to enter every writing competition I can, and just as with the walking, if you let it go for a while, you get painfully rusty, so with the writing (outside of a novel the plot of which you already know, I mean). So I'd been staring at my competitions spreadsheet for a few days, willing my creative juices to get flowing.
I reckon there might be meat to this story (mmmm....meeeeaty.....juices...), so may well chain myself to the computer for the rest of the night and see what comes...I guess the question really is whether Fat is a Faustian Issue?
Nothing much of great Disappearing interest today - went to hospital with my dad, seemed to go OK, waiting for results of his CT scan now. Ate two meals, and have just biked away 700 caloriesworth of them. Walked up to the folks' place, and discovered that, since I've plugged the bike back in, I'm well out of practice at the walking lark...which bodes well for September(!).
While biking, was chatting via text to Karen Pulley.
"Why is everything that tastes nice bad for you?" she asked.
"Because there really is a god, and he's still a little pissed about that whole 'Forbidden Fruit' thing?" I suggested.
"Hmm...Maybe. On the other hand, you could say that something like that was the Devil's work. Eating our souls to death and all that..." she mused.
"Mmm...Gluttony. One of the very best sins," I murmured, drifting for really rather a long moment into a cake-shop fantasy moment. It was like Fantasia, except instead of hippos and flamingos, there were Danishes and eclairs. It was looooooovely.
Then it hit me.
What would you give to achieve your version of perfection overnight? And to maintain it, effortlessly, in spite of your actions, for the rest of your life?
Of course 'perfection' is a very dodgy idea, and walking even half a mile in perfection's shoes will show you there's no such thing, but imagine someone from whom their own bodyweight was robbing the opportunities of life - we've probably all seen programmes on these people. Imagine if an opportunity were given to them to lose the weight in an instant - no effort, no exercise, no costly and painful surgery...and then they got the 'perfect' body, and the perfect metabolism, that allowed them to continue their eating habits while suffering none of the consequences. What would they...what would we I should say, because while not extreme enough to have a show made about me, my original weight was certinaly limiting my life-opportunities...what would we be prepared to give for that? To sacrifice for it?
I mention this merely because one of the items on my list of goals for achieving before the end of March is to enter every writing competition I can, and just as with the walking, if you let it go for a while, you get painfully rusty, so with the writing (outside of a novel the plot of which you already know, I mean). So I'd been staring at my competitions spreadsheet for a few days, willing my creative juices to get flowing.
I reckon there might be meat to this story (mmmm....meeeeaty.....juices...), so may well chain myself to the computer for the rest of the night and see what comes...I guess the question really is whether Fat is a Faustian Issue?
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Busy Doing Sod-Buggerall
Blood was a practically perfect 5.5 today - smack in the centre of the safe zone, so a mini-wave of appreciation coming from me to my own corpuscles today (yes, I'm really that egotistical).
Had an interview booked in for work at 10AM, and an interview with my new bank booked in at 11. With those in mind, I did precisely sod-buggerall in terms of exercise. If I could be done with the bank by 1, there was always the chance of going on a pathways walk. So, got the work interview done (Colin McGregor, brother of Ewan and damned interesting dude in his own right, let me tellya), made it to the bank for 11...only to discover my interview with the bank was actually supposed to be at 10.
Bugger.
"Got anything else to do in town?" the teller asked. "I'll get him to call you when he's free." Him in this instance being the guy with whom I was due to meet an hour ago. I shrugged. "I'll go and have coffee across the road," I said.
I went and had coffee across the road...(You're glad you're still reading this, aren't you? It's not like I didn't tell you what kind of day it was, right there in the title!)
I stayed there for an hour and a half, phone on table, book in hand, and, as it happened, two fairly gorgeous de-caff lattes in my short-term future, one after the other. Lovely stuff. But now it was 12.30, and I really had to get back to work. I popped back into the bank to tell them I'd reschedule.
"Oh, he has been ringing you," said the teller, "but it's gone to voicemail all the time..."
I coughed a little, to dislodge the bullshit from my ears, and rearranged our appointment. An hour and a half of lunch pretty much put paid to my 'lunchtime' walking plans, so I came back home, and Got On With Stuff too dull to bother you with. I figured I might still get some biking in. Then Ma said she'd be down in a bit, and I remembered I still had some tiny domestic chores to make a big deal of doing (it's a guy thing). So did them, and had Ma round. Then I did something moderately peculiar.
I made my first ever YouTube video.
It's not up there yet - at this moment, it's been uploading for something in the region of six hours(!), and it's only six minutes long. It's also nothing to do with the Disappearing Man blog, but I wanted to take your mind - would any of you bother clicking on Youtube videos if, for instance, I did some of the better blogs as 'performance pieces'? Those of you who know me personally can probably hear my voice when you read the words any way, and those of you who don't have very little reason to give a toss (though I'm thankful when you do, obviously). Have never personally embraced the business of talking to yourself and putting it out there for the world to happily ignore, but hey - I just might...seriously, gimme your thoughts on this, they'll pretty much determine whether I bother.
Then, before I knew what was what, it was time to get over to the leisure centre for aquacising and gymming and pain and resentment and a protein-high meal and now, frankly, it's time to get off this machine (leaving a window open for the video to keep on churning its way to uploaded status), go have a coffee and snore.
Tomorrow's probably going ot be similar in terms of its busyness and its general avoidance of a great deal of exercise - my dad has a bodyscan tomorrow, and a lung function test on Friday, and I want to be there for both of them...I know what I said about getting the couple of pounds lost this week, but if I can attend both those tests, I'll happily sacrifice the exercise time and the result on Tuesday. Priorities and all that.
Had an interview booked in for work at 10AM, and an interview with my new bank booked in at 11. With those in mind, I did precisely sod-buggerall in terms of exercise. If I could be done with the bank by 1, there was always the chance of going on a pathways walk. So, got the work interview done (Colin McGregor, brother of Ewan and damned interesting dude in his own right, let me tellya), made it to the bank for 11...only to discover my interview with the bank was actually supposed to be at 10.
Bugger.
"Got anything else to do in town?" the teller asked. "I'll get him to call you when he's free." Him in this instance being the guy with whom I was due to meet an hour ago. I shrugged. "I'll go and have coffee across the road," I said.
I went and had coffee across the road...(You're glad you're still reading this, aren't you? It's not like I didn't tell you what kind of day it was, right there in the title!)
I stayed there for an hour and a half, phone on table, book in hand, and, as it happened, two fairly gorgeous de-caff lattes in my short-term future, one after the other. Lovely stuff. But now it was 12.30, and I really had to get back to work. I popped back into the bank to tell them I'd reschedule.
"Oh, he has been ringing you," said the teller, "but it's gone to voicemail all the time..."
I coughed a little, to dislodge the bullshit from my ears, and rearranged our appointment. An hour and a half of lunch pretty much put paid to my 'lunchtime' walking plans, so I came back home, and Got On With Stuff too dull to bother you with. I figured I might still get some biking in. Then Ma said she'd be down in a bit, and I remembered I still had some tiny domestic chores to make a big deal of doing (it's a guy thing). So did them, and had Ma round. Then I did something moderately peculiar.
I made my first ever YouTube video.
It's not up there yet - at this moment, it's been uploading for something in the region of six hours(!), and it's only six minutes long. It's also nothing to do with the Disappearing Man blog, but I wanted to take your mind - would any of you bother clicking on Youtube videos if, for instance, I did some of the better blogs as 'performance pieces'? Those of you who know me personally can probably hear my voice when you read the words any way, and those of you who don't have very little reason to give a toss (though I'm thankful when you do, obviously). Have never personally embraced the business of talking to yourself and putting it out there for the world to happily ignore, but hey - I just might...seriously, gimme your thoughts on this, they'll pretty much determine whether I bother.
Then, before I knew what was what, it was time to get over to the leisure centre for aquacising and gymming and pain and resentment and a protein-high meal and now, frankly, it's time to get off this machine (leaving a window open for the video to keep on churning its way to uploaded status), go have a coffee and snore.
Tomorrow's probably going ot be similar in terms of its busyness and its general avoidance of a great deal of exercise - my dad has a bodyscan tomorrow, and a lung function test on Friday, and I want to be there for both of them...I know what I said about getting the couple of pounds lost this week, but if I can attend both those tests, I'll happily sacrifice the exercise time and the result on Tuesday. Priorities and all that.
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Take A Hike!
Blood this morning a deeply dodgy 6.9 - making up for yesterday's 4.9 I guess.
Weigh-in results this morning: 15 stone 1.25
That's a textbook two-pound loss on last week. Also means if I can repeat last week, this week, I'll achieve my 5.5 stone 'badge', as it were, within my first year as a Disappearing Man. Which is actually a stone more than halfway. In fact, if I achieve that marker, I'll have lost 77 of the original 104 pounds I was aiming to lose in the first year (putting me fractionally less than two stone behind the curve. Given that I started without any real idea whether I'd make it through a year of this...ahem...endeavour, I'm happy enough if I can get there. Should also of course mean that within the scope of Year 2, I'll hit my target, and then be left with...(shrugs)...no more Disappearing to do. Which will be extremely weird.
Cool, but extremely weird.
In other news, followed through on my ramblings of a couple of days ago, I signed on today to do the Maggie's Night Hike on September 21st this year.
If I've done it right, there should be a now-permanent link to it on the right of this blog.
Maggie's Cancer Care Centres do a kick-ass job. If you need more than the four words with the inital capital letters to get that, check them out riiiiight here.
The Night Hike is 20 miles of walking...in one night. Nearly died trying to do that, frankly. Ended up exhausted, self-righteous and so completely blistered I didn't want to move any part of my body for about a fortnight. So...yaaaaay, let's get another steamin;' hunk of that, right?
Last time I did it, it was back in 2009. At the time, I was something like 18 stone. It was enjoyable, and in the aftermath of all the preparation for doing it, I decided to get fit and healthy, joined a gym, never went to it, ate like I lived there and put on two stone of pure flab. Sooooo that worked. You've already seen those stones - they were the early, bitchy stones.
Thing is, right now, I'm three-stone-or-thereabouts lighter than last time (as well as three fairly crucial years older), so I'm kinda wondering whether I'll still be able to pull it offf.
I'm also kinda wondering how many of you lovely lovely people (at least 40 of you read the "We're Gonna Need A Bigger Spreadsheet" entry, which is frankly mental), will either a) give me some dosh to push me through the later, entirely eeeeevil miles of this thing, or b) spread the word to people who either have more money, or biggger hearts than you do!
In the event that the link on the right doesn't work, I'm gonna have to keep posting THIS LINK in pretty much every entry....jusssst to piss you off. As a teeny tiny incentive to give me your money and force me to hurt through twenty - count 'em, that's ten...then a whoooole other ten we knew nothing about - long-ass miles, if you click the link, you'll not only get a surname, for the first time in almost a year of Disappearing, you'll also get a picture. It's a picture from before annny of this - before the extra two stone went on, before the first Night Hike, at one of the only two times in my life when a camera was pointed at me and I personally thought I looked pretty cool. C'mon, if the sheer evil agony of me walking twenty miles in a night doesn't get you all shook up, a picture of me thinking I look all that (at at least a couple of stone heavier than I am right now, awoohoo!) - that's gotta be worth the price of admission, hasn't it?
Weigh-in results this morning: 15 stone 1.25
That's a textbook two-pound loss on last week. Also means if I can repeat last week, this week, I'll achieve my 5.5 stone 'badge', as it were, within my first year as a Disappearing Man. Which is actually a stone more than halfway. In fact, if I achieve that marker, I'll have lost 77 of the original 104 pounds I was aiming to lose in the first year (putting me fractionally less than two stone behind the curve. Given that I started without any real idea whether I'd make it through a year of this...ahem...endeavour, I'm happy enough if I can get there. Should also of course mean that within the scope of Year 2, I'll hit my target, and then be left with...(shrugs)...no more Disappearing to do. Which will be extremely weird.
Cool, but extremely weird.
In other news, followed through on my ramblings of a couple of days ago, I signed on today to do the Maggie's Night Hike on September 21st this year.
If I've done it right, there should be a now-permanent link to it on the right of this blog.
Maggie's Cancer Care Centres do a kick-ass job. If you need more than the four words with the inital capital letters to get that, check them out riiiiight here.
The Night Hike is 20 miles of walking...in one night. Nearly died trying to do that, frankly. Ended up exhausted, self-righteous and so completely blistered I didn't want to move any part of my body for about a fortnight. So...yaaaaay, let's get another steamin;' hunk of that, right?
Last time I did it, it was back in 2009. At the time, I was something like 18 stone. It was enjoyable, and in the aftermath of all the preparation for doing it, I decided to get fit and healthy, joined a gym, never went to it, ate like I lived there and put on two stone of pure flab. Sooooo that worked. You've already seen those stones - they were the early, bitchy stones.
Thing is, right now, I'm three-stone-or-thereabouts lighter than last time (as well as three fairly crucial years older), so I'm kinda wondering whether I'll still be able to pull it offf.
I'm also kinda wondering how many of you lovely lovely people (at least 40 of you read the "We're Gonna Need A Bigger Spreadsheet" entry, which is frankly mental), will either a) give me some dosh to push me through the later, entirely eeeeevil miles of this thing, or b) spread the word to people who either have more money, or biggger hearts than you do!
In the event that the link on the right doesn't work, I'm gonna have to keep posting THIS LINK in pretty much every entry....jusssst to piss you off. As a teeny tiny incentive to give me your money and force me to hurt through twenty - count 'em, that's ten...then a whoooole other ten we knew nothing about - long-ass miles, if you click the link, you'll not only get a surname, for the first time in almost a year of Disappearing, you'll also get a picture. It's a picture from before annny of this - before the extra two stone went on, before the first Night Hike, at one of the only two times in my life when a camera was pointed at me and I personally thought I looked pretty cool. C'mon, if the sheer evil agony of me walking twenty miles in a night doesn't get you all shook up, a picture of me thinking I look all that (at at least a couple of stone heavier than I am right now, awoohoo!) - that's gotta be worth the price of admission, hasn't it?
Monday, 20 February 2012
Back To Bastardville By Bus
Bing Bing ke Bing Bing ke Bing!
"Waaaaaaaaaugh!"
Thud!
Bing Bing ke Bing Bing ke Bing!
"Shurrup!"
Bing Bing ke Bing Bing ke Bing!
"No, seriously, you evil-minded little piece of techno-crap..."
Bing Bing ke Bing Bing ke Bing!
"Bastard fiddly-buttoned little fuck!
Bing Bing ke Bing Bing ke-
"Ahhh.... "
I sat there in the dark, having finally vanquished the 'evil-minded little piece of techno-crap' - It's a term I use so often, my phone has been known to come when it's called.
I rubbed my hip. The Thud! had been the noise of me hitting the floor, having had my system shocked by the audio equivalent of a few thousand volts at a time when it really didn't deserve that sort of treatment.
"Morning," said d sleepily, entirely unphased by my antics.
"Yessss," I hissed like a Spiderman super-villain. "Yessss, it is, isn't it? Just about..."
Seriously - this bus bullshit has got to stop. Trains - they're the way of the future. Come pay day...
Blood this morning was 4.9 - although, to be fair, I think my blood was pretty much still as deeply asleep as the rest of me, so it hadn't had a chance to think about saturating with sugar just yet.
The day in London has been, if I'm honest, just fine - got a shedload of proper work done, and got introduced to TV's Maggie Philbin (Proto-geek-crush for men of a certain age in the UK). She took my magazine away with her, to throw into the nearest trashcan when she was safely outside the building. No real exercise today except a little walking here and there - hardly enough to wake up my sleepy system. And no real writing done either, except on the inside of my skull, ready to be transcribed, possibly, on the long-ass bus ride home. But nevertheless a productive day of actual business. Back to the routine of gym visits and biking and sweating and weighing-in tomorrow. Oh, and possibly some news of a follow-up to yesterday's blog, if I can pull my finger out. But for now, this is me, still practically asleep, trudging back to another damn bus to burn away four or five more hours of my existence.
Hey ho - mustn't grumble. Compared to about 93% of people, my life pretty much kicks ass right now. Time to move to QuitchaBitchin, Missouri and get on home...
"Waaaaaaaaaugh!"
Thud!
Bing Bing ke Bing Bing ke Bing!
"Shurrup!"
Bing Bing ke Bing Bing ke Bing!
"No, seriously, you evil-minded little piece of techno-crap..."
Bing Bing ke Bing Bing ke Bing!
"Bastard fiddly-buttoned little fuck!
Bing Bing ke Bing Bing ke-
"Ahhh.... "
I sat there in the dark, having finally vanquished the 'evil-minded little piece of techno-crap' - It's a term I use so often, my phone has been known to come when it's called.
I rubbed my hip. The Thud! had been the noise of me hitting the floor, having had my system shocked by the audio equivalent of a few thousand volts at a time when it really didn't deserve that sort of treatment.
"Morning," said d sleepily, entirely unphased by my antics.
"Yessss," I hissed like a Spiderman super-villain. "Yessss, it is, isn't it? Just about..."
Seriously - this bus bullshit has got to stop. Trains - they're the way of the future. Come pay day...
Blood this morning was 4.9 - although, to be fair, I think my blood was pretty much still as deeply asleep as the rest of me, so it hadn't had a chance to think about saturating with sugar just yet.
The day in London has been, if I'm honest, just fine - got a shedload of proper work done, and got introduced to TV's Maggie Philbin (Proto-geek-crush for men of a certain age in the UK). She took my magazine away with her, to throw into the nearest trashcan when she was safely outside the building. No real exercise today except a little walking here and there - hardly enough to wake up my sleepy system. And no real writing done either, except on the inside of my skull, ready to be transcribed, possibly, on the long-ass bus ride home. But nevertheless a productive day of actual business. Back to the routine of gym visits and biking and sweating and weighing-in tomorrow. Oh, and possibly some news of a follow-up to yesterday's blog, if I can pull my finger out. But for now, this is me, still practically asleep, trudging back to another damn bus to burn away four or five more hours of my existence.
Hey ho - mustn't grumble. Compared to about 93% of people, my life pretty much kicks ass right now. Time to move to QuitchaBitchin, Missouri and get on home...
Sunday, 19 February 2012
We're Gonna Need A Bigger Spreadsheet...
Breakfast out this morning, with Rebecca and Lee. Great fun, though the breakfast itself was calorie-laden and not that great.
Lunch out with d. Great fun, though the lunch itself was calorie-laden annnnd not that great.
Spent the afternoon not-writing. Instead, went through a bunch of writers magazines, creating a spreadsheet of competitions to enter. Now it's 5.30, I've done no exercise, the spreadsheet's only about half done, and I'm going away to the damn bike, because the weekend should in no way come to a close without my doing any kind of exercise. Interesting to discover though how many opportunities I've been missing up to now. There are literally dozens of opportunities to get my ego punctured out there.
It's all about this work-life-Disappearing-writing-every-other-thing balance concept. In general, as of this moment, I'm quite happy with what I've managed to get done this weekend. But I know that I won't continue to be happy with it come Tuesday morning if I don't do something now and the result then is disappointing. So - back to it I go, while admittedly, turning ideas around for at least five of those competitions, and for the scene in my novel on which I'm currently working.
Not exactly multi-tasking, I know, but of course, on the upside, I have about four hours on a bus tomorrow morning, and the same tomorrow night to devote to the actual writing of these things. Four hours...Oh gods, up at 4.30 again...sigh...
To the EvilBastardBike, DisappearingMan!
Lunch out with d. Great fun, though the lunch itself was calorie-laden annnnd not that great.
Spent the afternoon not-writing. Instead, went through a bunch of writers magazines, creating a spreadsheet of competitions to enter. Now it's 5.30, I've done no exercise, the spreadsheet's only about half done, and I'm going away to the damn bike, because the weekend should in no way come to a close without my doing any kind of exercise. Interesting to discover though how many opportunities I've been missing up to now. There are literally dozens of opportunities to get my ego punctured out there.
It's all about this work-life-Disappearing-writing-every-other-thing balance concept. In general, as of this moment, I'm quite happy with what I've managed to get done this weekend. But I know that I won't continue to be happy with it come Tuesday morning if I don't do something now and the result then is disappointing. So - back to it I go, while admittedly, turning ideas around for at least five of those competitions, and for the scene in my novel on which I'm currently working.
Not exactly multi-tasking, I know, but of course, on the upside, I have about four hours on a bus tomorrow morning, and the same tomorrow night to devote to the actual writing of these things. Four hours...Oh gods, up at 4.30 again...sigh...
To the EvilBastardBike, DisappearingMan!
Saturday, 18 February 2012
Waking Up
"You ever thought of hibernation?" asked my pal (and mother of two) Sian (she of the Transit trips to get us here) recently. "Hibernation sounds gooooood..." she added dreamily. I had to laugh.
"Sometimes feel like I've been in hibernation for the last twelve years," I said. "Kinda befuddled and sleep-drowsy and surrounded in fat. Not that it's impaired my judgement or anything, but I feel so much more awake now than I've done at any time in the last twelve years."
I mention this mainly because today has been a kind of waking-up day. Got struck heavily yesterday by how clever some of my friends are, and how well they're doing - Sian herself, on being made redundant, has turned her situation around, launched a company, and is now pulling in business. My pal Rebecca, who I'm joining for breakfast tomorrow, is a niche broadcasting legend, and recently had the guts not only to go it alone and launch her own company, but has already hooked herself a joyfully juicy major contract to float the exploit. Wendy, who I mentioned yesterday, is a brilliant - I mean, almost clinically brilliant IT specialist, being ex-forces, and now earns absolutely squillions for her analytical (and this is not a word I use lightly) genius. d - did I mention d? How breathtaking is it, in this economy, to give up a paying job, spend nine weeks or so making a home, go on one interview and get a new job?
I have impressive friends, and I am, it seems to me, surrounded by reliably brilliant people (there are more of them than I list here, and they're all in some way special - I merely list here the ones who've made an impression this week). I don't kid myself that I'm as reliably brilliant, but the one thing people have always told me I can do whenever I want to is write. So today I've been putting the office into some sort of order, and both writing and doing some of the dull but necessary mechanics you need to do in order to sell your writing - putting together a synopsis and a letter and a CV and a this and a that (basically dressing your red-lit window!). It's time to come around from hibernation, time to take this new energy that losing half the weight has given me and put it to some sort of use.
That said, one highly productive use for all that energy would have been to have jumped on the bike, which I signally haven't done. But as part of the whole office-plus-energy thing, I've written myself a set of long, medium and short-term goals, and a set of intentions for March 2012. A few of which are decidedly Disappearing-based. I intend, by the end of March, to have hit my six-stone mark (84 pounds, for the Americans). And that whole thing I thought of a little while ago - the idea of running a mile without dying. Want to give that a go. I'm not - obviously - talking about running properly. I mean jogging, probably. But just the idea of being able to sustain something for a while without collapsing on the side of the road appeals to me.
Oh also, I'm going to start looking into the possibility of doing another Night Hike. Got a great feeling of accomplishment (and admittedly blisters!) when I did my first one, something like five years ago, when I was...roughly...three stone heavier, maybe four, than I am right now. Would be fascinating to see how much the ratio of stubborn bloody-mindedness to healthiness will have affected my ability to do, for instance, a 20-mile walk.
So, as I say, various elements of Disappearing have made themselves apparent today, but the general sense of the day has been waking up and preparing to get on with what, if I'm lucky, will be the second half of my life in an entirely different spirit to how I spent most of the first half.
Which I suppose, when you consider how I spent most of the first half, can only be a good thing.
Blood was back up to 5.8 this morning, but that'll do for me right now, still on only one type of medication for the diabetes. Woohoo!
"Sometimes feel like I've been in hibernation for the last twelve years," I said. "Kinda befuddled and sleep-drowsy and surrounded in fat. Not that it's impaired my judgement or anything, but I feel so much more awake now than I've done at any time in the last twelve years."
I mention this mainly because today has been a kind of waking-up day. Got struck heavily yesterday by how clever some of my friends are, and how well they're doing - Sian herself, on being made redundant, has turned her situation around, launched a company, and is now pulling in business. My pal Rebecca, who I'm joining for breakfast tomorrow, is a niche broadcasting legend, and recently had the guts not only to go it alone and launch her own company, but has already hooked herself a joyfully juicy major contract to float the exploit. Wendy, who I mentioned yesterday, is a brilliant - I mean, almost clinically brilliant IT specialist, being ex-forces, and now earns absolutely squillions for her analytical (and this is not a word I use lightly) genius. d - did I mention d? How breathtaking is it, in this economy, to give up a paying job, spend nine weeks or so making a home, go on one interview and get a new job?
I have impressive friends, and I am, it seems to me, surrounded by reliably brilliant people (there are more of them than I list here, and they're all in some way special - I merely list here the ones who've made an impression this week). I don't kid myself that I'm as reliably brilliant, but the one thing people have always told me I can do whenever I want to is write. So today I've been putting the office into some sort of order, and both writing and doing some of the dull but necessary mechanics you need to do in order to sell your writing - putting together a synopsis and a letter and a CV and a this and a that (basically dressing your red-lit window!). It's time to come around from hibernation, time to take this new energy that losing half the weight has given me and put it to some sort of use.
That said, one highly productive use for all that energy would have been to have jumped on the bike, which I signally haven't done. But as part of the whole office-plus-energy thing, I've written myself a set of long, medium and short-term goals, and a set of intentions for March 2012. A few of which are decidedly Disappearing-based. I intend, by the end of March, to have hit my six-stone mark (84 pounds, for the Americans). And that whole thing I thought of a little while ago - the idea of running a mile without dying. Want to give that a go. I'm not - obviously - talking about running properly. I mean jogging, probably. But just the idea of being able to sustain something for a while without collapsing on the side of the road appeals to me.
Oh also, I'm going to start looking into the possibility of doing another Night Hike. Got a great feeling of accomplishment (and admittedly blisters!) when I did my first one, something like five years ago, when I was...roughly...three stone heavier, maybe four, than I am right now. Would be fascinating to see how much the ratio of stubborn bloody-mindedness to healthiness will have affected my ability to do, for instance, a 20-mile walk.
So, as I say, various elements of Disappearing have made themselves apparent today, but the general sense of the day has been waking up and preparing to get on with what, if I'm lucky, will be the second half of my life in an entirely different spirit to how I spent most of the first half.
Which I suppose, when you consider how I spent most of the first half, can only be a good thing.
Blood was back up to 5.8 this morning, but that'll do for me right now, still on only one type of medication for the diabetes. Woohoo!
Friday, 17 February 2012
The Metabolic Safety Net
Vzzzzzzzzzzt!
"If that's anyone other than the Pizza Sub and Chocolate Sundae delivery fairy, you can fuck right off," I muttered. I was sweaty, and bitchy, and pedaling.
This was last week some time. The sweat blurred my vision, and I felt hopelessly out of practice at biking, despite having a heavy exercise-day.
Vzzzzzzzzzzt!
My phone went off again.
"Seriously, have food or fuck off," I muttered, but then I sighed, and picked it up.
It was Wendy.
Wendy's a pal of mine from over a decade ago. She's one of those apallingly fit people who actively enjoy the business of exercising till she drops, whippet-thin and serious about her fitness and her work and her love, and funny as Hell about everything else.
"Hey Honey" said her text. "Whatcha doin'?" said the second.
"Goddamnsonofabitch bikin'" I replied.
Vzzzzzzzzzzt!
"Y'know," she said, "you don't have to exercise every day, right?"
I stopped pedalling.
"What the Hell?" I asked, pushing against the pedals again, and wincing.
Vzzzzzzzzzzt!
"It's the metabolic safety net, innit?"
I stopped pedalling again.
"I say again...what the Hell?"
The bike told me I had shedloads of miles left to go. I whinged, and pushed on.
This time it took a few painful minutes, then
Vzzzzzzzzzzt!
"Did you have a metabolism when you started this? No you didn't. But now you're a few stone in, your metabolism's probably woken up. It kinda 'wants' to take care of you, to help digest all the food. You don't need to exercise madly every day, your metabolism'll take care of you..."
This was pretty much a trumpets-from-on-high moment. A Ten Commandments moments. A surely-that-can't-be-right moment. Certainly it didn't stope me biking at the time.
In fact, I only mention it at all because today, above all, I'm relying on the Metabolic Safety Net. Been a day of working, and visiting the folks and my brother while he's here. Went back to the restaurant from last night, and had a less-wise dinner than yesterday. Have done abbbbbsolutely nothing in the way of exercise - hence the reliance on the safety net. And a vaguely desperate hope that Wendy wasn't talking out of her ass.
Blood this morning was 5.2. So yay. Maybe the net has something to it after all...
"If that's anyone other than the Pizza Sub and Chocolate Sundae delivery fairy, you can fuck right off," I muttered. I was sweaty, and bitchy, and pedaling.
This was last week some time. The sweat blurred my vision, and I felt hopelessly out of practice at biking, despite having a heavy exercise-day.
Vzzzzzzzzzzt!
My phone went off again.
"Seriously, have food or fuck off," I muttered, but then I sighed, and picked it up.
It was Wendy.
Wendy's a pal of mine from over a decade ago. She's one of those apallingly fit people who actively enjoy the business of exercising till she drops, whippet-thin and serious about her fitness and her work and her love, and funny as Hell about everything else.
"Hey Honey" said her text. "Whatcha doin'?" said the second.
"Goddamnsonofabitch bikin'" I replied.
Vzzzzzzzzzzt!
"Y'know," she said, "you don't have to exercise every day, right?"
I stopped pedalling.
"What the Hell?" I asked, pushing against the pedals again, and wincing.
Vzzzzzzzzzzt!
"It's the metabolic safety net, innit?"
I stopped pedalling again.
"I say again...what the Hell?"
The bike told me I had shedloads of miles left to go. I whinged, and pushed on.
This time it took a few painful minutes, then
Vzzzzzzzzzzt!
"Did you have a metabolism when you started this? No you didn't. But now you're a few stone in, your metabolism's probably woken up. It kinda 'wants' to take care of you, to help digest all the food. You don't need to exercise madly every day, your metabolism'll take care of you..."
This was pretty much a trumpets-from-on-high moment. A Ten Commandments moments. A surely-that-can't-be-right moment. Certainly it didn't stope me biking at the time.
In fact, I only mention it at all because today, above all, I'm relying on the Metabolic Safety Net. Been a day of working, and visiting the folks and my brother while he's here. Went back to the restaurant from last night, and had a less-wise dinner than yesterday. Have done abbbbbsolutely nothing in the way of exercise - hence the reliance on the safety net. And a vaguely desperate hope that Wendy wasn't talking out of her ass.
Blood this morning was 5.2. So yay. Maybe the net has something to it after all...
Thursday, 16 February 2012
The Shadow
I'd been to the gym, and jussst had to pop to the post office on what was technically my lunch hour. Dropped a package off, and was making to leave. I screwed my ear-buds back in and started singing along...as I do.
"I can't do what ten people tell me to do..." Otis Redding and I seemed instinctively to agree. "So I guess I'll remain the sa-aaaaaarrrrrrrgh!!!!"
Otis and I appeared to have a disagreement about remaining the same. I decided to go down the 'having heart failure route'. It's just a choice.
It's a choice that's easier to make when, while singing away happily to yourself, you feel a hand on your shoulder out of nowhere.
The hand, as it happened, belonged to my brother.
The odds of this happening are about 360-5, because he doesn't live around here. In fact, he lives very distinctly not-here, but in a town called Thurles in Ireland. He and his wife, and their 5-year old, Rory, had arrived at something like 3AM last night though, and are here, staying with our folks, till Sunday.
"sa-aaaaaaaaargh!!!!" is perhaps not the conversation-starter he'd been expecting. He blinked at me mildly.
"'Ello," he said, smiling. It took me a few seconds to collect myself. He had a faintly grey look to him, and reminded me in that moment of no-one more than Mort, the apprentice to Death in Terry Pratchett's eponymous novel. Driving and ferrying and driving some more till three in the morning will apparently do that to you. Puts my wuss-ass UberCommute to shame, frankly.
"'Ello," I managed, when my brain had recovered from having a girder of surprise dropped across it.
"A shadow of your former self," he said.
I should explain - we tend to converse in these non-sequiturs. Often they're loaded with what we still, at 40 and 39 probably like to think are pop culture references, even though they're from decades ago. It's a kind of linguistic shorthand - not, perhaps, as creepy as the twin-thing where they finish each other's sentences, but more often than not probably bloody annoying to anyone else who happens to be there. In a weird twist of fate that I purposefully won't explain here, just to leave you pondering, we were actually friends first, for almost a decade before we became brothers, and used to delight, on weekends, in confusing the bejeesus out of local Merthyr kids by pretending, for no terribly good reason other than addiction to the musical Grease, to be from America. So we have form in terms of confusing and annoying people.
Also, as it turns out, Geraint and his wife Mary are among the most terrifyingly dedicated readers of this blog. I have no particular idea why, but they're of course very welcome.
"A shadow of your former self," he said.
"Getting there," I acknowledged. "How's work?"
He shrugged.
"Look knackered," I observed.
"3AM," he explained.
"Ah."
Then, with that kind of slow suddenness that Grand Viziers are most particularly famous for, Mary appeared at his side. I blinked, trying to remember if she'd been there all along. I decided probably not, and we said our hellos.
"Still on for tonight?" he asked - there was a plan for the whole family to get together at a local restaurant.
"D'pends on your dad," I said (an obvious clue to our intertwined family history there, Sherlock-fans).
"Seems on good form at the minute," said Geraint. Dad hasn't been terribly well these last few weeks, so the whole 'family meal' plan was being kept flexible, in case he thought that, after all, he couldn't make it.
"Right. See you tonight then," I agreed. "Gotta go - should have been back at my desk eighteen minutes ago..."
And that was that.
Tonight we all met up in a place we haven't tried since we've been home, and d discovered they do a great fish and chips (one of very few British things we hadn't yet found in the town), so that was positive. Also positive, they had a 'calorie-counting' section of their menu, so I could suck the joy out of the party by having something nutritional and calorie-controlled. Things got moderately awkward when Mary ordered a Double Chocolate Fuck-You, with extra cream, and the two of them shared it, but we managed to avoid bloodshed, and I don't think anyone noticed me chewing the heavy china coffee cup. Have to say, it was quite tasty, as these things go. I even managed not to mug Rory the 5-year-old for his Smartie ice-cream cup, despite the legendary easiness of taking candy from babies, so a good night was had, with three generations around a single table.
Have been thinking about the shadow all day though (inbetween Getting On With Stuff, obviously). It struck me what a curious expression it actually is. Given that a) I used to cast much more of a shadow, and b) I used to do a whole Hell of a lot less than I do now, I think, on balance, I used to be the shadow of my future self - and indeed, right now, I'm actually the shadow of a further future self. The weight is the darkness that followed me around, rather than me now being a refraction of that old version of myself...
Of course, as you may be beginning to suspect, it's possible I've been thinking about this waaaaaaay too freakin' hard!
Got back to a fairly disciplined routine today - swam before work (because of course there's "no excuse" not to - seriously, thanks for that one, Ma!), went gymming during lunch, and prior to my disagreement with Otis. Then biked for about a couple of hundred calories towards the latter end of the day. Not swimming tomorrow - going for a second and final (in a good way) refresher driving lesson, and lunching up with the folks and the Irish contingent. Will presumably have to bike my ass off later in the day tomorrow, but hey, it's Friday - that's what they make nights for, right?
Incidentally, blood this morning was either 5.7 or 5.5, depending on whether you believe the pre-callibration result or the post. Am starting to believe I have Wheel of Fortune blood, that changes its sugar content on a whim, whenever it's called on to perform. Hey ho - on to Friday...
"I can't do what ten people tell me to do..." Otis Redding and I seemed instinctively to agree. "So I guess I'll remain the sa-aaaaaarrrrrrrgh!!!!"
Otis and I appeared to have a disagreement about remaining the same. I decided to go down the 'having heart failure route'. It's just a choice.
It's a choice that's easier to make when, while singing away happily to yourself, you feel a hand on your shoulder out of nowhere.
The hand, as it happened, belonged to my brother.
The odds of this happening are about 360-5, because he doesn't live around here. In fact, he lives very distinctly not-here, but in a town called Thurles in Ireland. He and his wife, and their 5-year old, Rory, had arrived at something like 3AM last night though, and are here, staying with our folks, till Sunday.
"sa-aaaaaaaaargh!!!!" is perhaps not the conversation-starter he'd been expecting. He blinked at me mildly.
"'Ello," he said, smiling. It took me a few seconds to collect myself. He had a faintly grey look to him, and reminded me in that moment of no-one more than Mort, the apprentice to Death in Terry Pratchett's eponymous novel. Driving and ferrying and driving some more till three in the morning will apparently do that to you. Puts my wuss-ass UberCommute to shame, frankly.
"'Ello," I managed, when my brain had recovered from having a girder of surprise dropped across it.
"A shadow of your former self," he said.
I should explain - we tend to converse in these non-sequiturs. Often they're loaded with what we still, at 40 and 39 probably like to think are pop culture references, even though they're from decades ago. It's a kind of linguistic shorthand - not, perhaps, as creepy as the twin-thing where they finish each other's sentences, but more often than not probably bloody annoying to anyone else who happens to be there. In a weird twist of fate that I purposefully won't explain here, just to leave you pondering, we were actually friends first, for almost a decade before we became brothers, and used to delight, on weekends, in confusing the bejeesus out of local Merthyr kids by pretending, for no terribly good reason other than addiction to the musical Grease, to be from America. So we have form in terms of confusing and annoying people.
Also, as it turns out, Geraint and his wife Mary are among the most terrifyingly dedicated readers of this blog. I have no particular idea why, but they're of course very welcome.
"A shadow of your former self," he said.
"Getting there," I acknowledged. "How's work?"
He shrugged.
"Look knackered," I observed.
"3AM," he explained.
"Ah."
Then, with that kind of slow suddenness that Grand Viziers are most particularly famous for, Mary appeared at his side. I blinked, trying to remember if she'd been there all along. I decided probably not, and we said our hellos.
"Still on for tonight?" he asked - there was a plan for the whole family to get together at a local restaurant.
"D'pends on your dad," I said (an obvious clue to our intertwined family history there, Sherlock-fans).
"Seems on good form at the minute," said Geraint. Dad hasn't been terribly well these last few weeks, so the whole 'family meal' plan was being kept flexible, in case he thought that, after all, he couldn't make it.
"Right. See you tonight then," I agreed. "Gotta go - should have been back at my desk eighteen minutes ago..."
And that was that.
Tonight we all met up in a place we haven't tried since we've been home, and d discovered they do a great fish and chips (one of very few British things we hadn't yet found in the town), so that was positive. Also positive, they had a 'calorie-counting' section of their menu, so I could suck the joy out of the party by having something nutritional and calorie-controlled. Things got moderately awkward when Mary ordered a Double Chocolate Fuck-You, with extra cream, and the two of them shared it, but we managed to avoid bloodshed, and I don't think anyone noticed me chewing the heavy china coffee cup. Have to say, it was quite tasty, as these things go. I even managed not to mug Rory the 5-year-old for his Smartie ice-cream cup, despite the legendary easiness of taking candy from babies, so a good night was had, with three generations around a single table.
Have been thinking about the shadow all day though (inbetween Getting On With Stuff, obviously). It struck me what a curious expression it actually is. Given that a) I used to cast much more of a shadow, and b) I used to do a whole Hell of a lot less than I do now, I think, on balance, I used to be the shadow of my future self - and indeed, right now, I'm actually the shadow of a further future self. The weight is the darkness that followed me around, rather than me now being a refraction of that old version of myself...
Of course, as you may be beginning to suspect, it's possible I've been thinking about this waaaaaaay too freakin' hard!
Got back to a fairly disciplined routine today - swam before work (because of course there's "no excuse" not to - seriously, thanks for that one, Ma!), went gymming during lunch, and prior to my disagreement with Otis. Then biked for about a couple of hundred calories towards the latter end of the day. Not swimming tomorrow - going for a second and final (in a good way) refresher driving lesson, and lunching up with the folks and the Irish contingent. Will presumably have to bike my ass off later in the day tomorrow, but hey, it's Friday - that's what they make nights for, right?
Incidentally, blood this morning was either 5.7 or 5.5, depending on whether you believe the pre-callibration result or the post. Am starting to believe I have Wheel of Fortune blood, that changes its sugar content on a whim, whenever it's called on to perform. Hey ho - on to Friday...
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Idle Mouths
Blood was 6.2 before calllibration this morning, and just 5.5 after it. Frankly, I no longer know what to think of the blood results, though if this post-callibration result is genuine, then it's plenty welcome. Hell, if the pre-callibration result is true, it's welcome enough after flirting with the borderlines of the safe zone yesterday.
Today was d's first day in work in Wales. Which of course meant it was also the first day since I've been here that I've been left entirely to my own devices.
They say the Devil makes work for idle hands. Clearly, he makes work for idle mouths, too - had breakfast, and lunch, and then around 2PM, felt the real need for what I'm tentatively calling "Lunch-2", and inbetween, there were endless cups of coffee, fruit snacks and handfuls of trail mix. Every time I got off my ass today, I seemed intent on filling it with something or other.
Of course, today was weird and aberrant - I had to stay in all day, as we were waiting for a delivery and a service call, so a) I couldn't make it to the gym for the lunchtime session that normally marks out a Wednesday, and I pretty much bullshitted myself throughout the day to avoid getting on the bike - "Oh well, if I have the music on, I might miss the door", and "Oh well, I don't want to be interrupted after just an hour, do I?" and the like: pure, unbridled bullshit, but there it is.
So by the time d came home from her first day, I'd eaten loads and done nothing. We put that to right with appalling alacrity though - a double header of aquacise and the gym have taken up the last two hours, and now, I hurt in unfamiliar places. Going to have a dinner I don't really deserve, and then, in all likelihood, snore. Tomorrow - swimming and biking and normal, oh my...
Probably...
Today was d's first day in work in Wales. Which of course meant it was also the first day since I've been here that I've been left entirely to my own devices.
They say the Devil makes work for idle hands. Clearly, he makes work for idle mouths, too - had breakfast, and lunch, and then around 2PM, felt the real need for what I'm tentatively calling "Lunch-2", and inbetween, there were endless cups of coffee, fruit snacks and handfuls of trail mix. Every time I got off my ass today, I seemed intent on filling it with something or other.
Of course, today was weird and aberrant - I had to stay in all day, as we were waiting for a delivery and a service call, so a) I couldn't make it to the gym for the lunchtime session that normally marks out a Wednesday, and I pretty much bullshitted myself throughout the day to avoid getting on the bike - "Oh well, if I have the music on, I might miss the door", and "Oh well, I don't want to be interrupted after just an hour, do I?" and the like: pure, unbridled bullshit, but there it is.
So by the time d came home from her first day, I'd eaten loads and done nothing. We put that to right with appalling alacrity though - a double header of aquacise and the gym have taken up the last two hours, and now, I hurt in unfamiliar places. Going to have a dinner I don't really deserve, and then, in all likelihood, snore. Tomorrow - swimming and biking and normal, oh my...
Probably...
Tuesday, 14 February 2012
WIWO and V-Day
Blood was a fairly damning 6.7 this morning, rather suggesting the first suggestion I made about it recently - that without any of the one particular med I've been taking, I'm slipping further and further towards the top end of the safe blood sugar zone.
On the other hand, as d pointed out, neither Mondays, nor the last week since Wednesday, have been particularly high-energy for me - I've done some biking, certainly, but nothing compared to the range of different mad activities of recent weeks. Should undoubtedly get my swim back on (got new goggles now!), and even vaguely wonder about paying full price for the next month at the gym (while maintaining my GP referral schedule), to really push on through.
Can't afford to do that, if I'm honest, but it sort of glistens there, all twinkly and possible on the horizon of my mind.
Things will change weirdly from tomorrow though. And why will things change weirdly from tomorrow, I hear you all entirely fail to mutter.
Well, things will change from tomorrow because, in a fairly stunning example of why she's the brains of the outfit, d has been for one job interview since she's been in Wales - and got the job. She starts tomorrow. Which means a change in our world, from lots of lovely shared time, to her getting out by 8 in the morning, leaving me here to do...whatever it is I'm supposed to do for a living. I forget, frankly.
If nothing else, that'll be an incentive to get up earlier, and get back to some sort of early morning exercise routine (yep, probably back to the swimming I should think). So while in very many ways, it's a suckass development, in terms of getting some extra cash into our lives and in terms of force-feeding me routine, it's a positive thing.
We talked about what we'd do with our day, being as it was both Valentine's Day and the last day of d's home-making freedom. In the end, she said she wanted 'a normal day,' so I've been here in my little white cupboard-room most of the day, and she's been in her kitchen. We both blew off aquacising and the gym today, and I'm telling you now, I'm not even going to bike tonight, so nehh! It's Valentine's Day, I'm having it off...so to speak.
Oh yeah - Tuesday. Woohoo. Weigh-in results this morning:
15 stone 3.75.
Down a whole revolutionary pound on last week. At this rate I won't quite make it to the 5.5 stone mark by the time the first Disappearing Year ends. Still, as I say, things change tomorrow, maybe I can pick up enough pace to get there.
Not that it'll bring me anywhere close to this guy. This is Zac Smith, apparently - bloke from Rhoose, near Cardiff, who went the other way - the surgical way - after hitting 50 stone. That's 317 kg or 700 pounds. He's had a good year, by the looks of things, dropping a shedload of weight, and starting to live again.
If the schmaltz of Valentine's Day is too much for you and you happen to live in Wales, you can catch Zac's story tonight on Week In Week Out at 22.35 on BBC 1 Wales.
I don't normally do commercials of course, but WIWO is something special - it's the first place ever to pay me money for anything even resembling journalistic work, way back in the day. So unless you get a better V-Day offer, catch Zac's story - if nothing else, it'll show you a) that Disappearing is a road we all go down in our own way and our own time, and b) that having the surgery's not a one-stop solution, and that it's still bloody hard work. It'll also show you what I think both Zac and I could tell you till the cows come home, get bored and go out again - it's so bloody worth it we could cry.
On the other hand, as d pointed out, neither Mondays, nor the last week since Wednesday, have been particularly high-energy for me - I've done some biking, certainly, but nothing compared to the range of different mad activities of recent weeks. Should undoubtedly get my swim back on (got new goggles now!), and even vaguely wonder about paying full price for the next month at the gym (while maintaining my GP referral schedule), to really push on through.
Can't afford to do that, if I'm honest, but it sort of glistens there, all twinkly and possible on the horizon of my mind.
Things will change weirdly from tomorrow though. And why will things change weirdly from tomorrow, I hear you all entirely fail to mutter.
Well, things will change from tomorrow because, in a fairly stunning example of why she's the brains of the outfit, d has been for one job interview since she's been in Wales - and got the job. She starts tomorrow. Which means a change in our world, from lots of lovely shared time, to her getting out by 8 in the morning, leaving me here to do...whatever it is I'm supposed to do for a living. I forget, frankly.
If nothing else, that'll be an incentive to get up earlier, and get back to some sort of early morning exercise routine (yep, probably back to the swimming I should think). So while in very many ways, it's a suckass development, in terms of getting some extra cash into our lives and in terms of force-feeding me routine, it's a positive thing.
We talked about what we'd do with our day, being as it was both Valentine's Day and the last day of d's home-making freedom. In the end, she said she wanted 'a normal day,' so I've been here in my little white cupboard-room most of the day, and she's been in her kitchen. We both blew off aquacising and the gym today, and I'm telling you now, I'm not even going to bike tonight, so nehh! It's Valentine's Day, I'm having it off...so to speak.
Oh yeah - Tuesday. Woohoo. Weigh-in results this morning:
15 stone 3.75.
Down a whole revolutionary pound on last week. At this rate I won't quite make it to the 5.5 stone mark by the time the first Disappearing Year ends. Still, as I say, things change tomorrow, maybe I can pick up enough pace to get there.
Not that it'll bring me anywhere close to this guy. This is Zac Smith, apparently - bloke from Rhoose, near Cardiff, who went the other way - the surgical way - after hitting 50 stone. That's 317 kg or 700 pounds. He's had a good year, by the looks of things, dropping a shedload of weight, and starting to live again.
If the schmaltz of Valentine's Day is too much for you and you happen to live in Wales, you can catch Zac's story tonight on Week In Week Out at 22.35 on BBC 1 Wales.
I don't normally do commercials of course, but WIWO is something special - it's the first place ever to pay me money for anything even resembling journalistic work, way back in the day. So unless you get a better V-Day offer, catch Zac's story - if nothing else, it'll show you a) that Disappearing is a road we all go down in our own way and our own time, and b) that having the surgery's not a one-stop solution, and that it's still bloody hard work. It'll also show you what I think both Zac and I could tell you till the cows come home, get bored and go out again - it's so bloody worth it we could cry.
Monday, 13 February 2012
The Bookkeeper's Mars bar.
Yep, yep, yep, yep yep...Dragon very definitely rampant in me today (is this a good moment to remember it's now the Chinese YEAR of the Dragon?...Nnnnno, notsomuch. OK, good, glad I checked).
Got on a train this morning (yes, a train - pinnacle of civilisation compared to the normal UberCommute on a bus. There will be more trains in my future), and the guy opposite me sat there, carelessly swigging on a can of Pepsi Max and eating a kind of "healthy" snack bar, including cranberries, macadamia nuts and dark chocolate. Then the prick got up and left the train, leaving half the bar carelessly behind him, in its wrapper...
I wanted to chase after him and shove the remaining bar of wonderment up his cavalier, toss-aside nose, while explaining to him that a life in which you throw away half a bar like that was a life half-lived, and therefore wasted, and that ergo he himself was a waste of chemical electrical energy and should vacate the planet forthwith to make way for someone who understood what Pleasure was all about!
Sigh...
I didn't, obviously. Wretched pinko liberal commie bastard laws we have in this country...
Popped into a store on High Street Kensington on my way into the office, mainly to browse. They had a Dunkin' Doughnuts case in there, with a Valentine's Special in. It was called a Strawberry Gloss. An ordinary ring doughnut (fuck you, America, the way you spell it is just wrong, don't mess with me today or I'll torch your ass!), in this case slightly squished into an oval shape, and then layered with bright, glistening pink goo. I swear, these people are trying to kill me. Can I just say, if you're gonna take something with a hole in the middle, make it vaguely oval and then slather it with that kind of dripping pink sweetness, you're fooling no-one, OK, Mr Subliminal? You might as well just have the courage of your bastardy and come out with it - Dunkin' Doughnuts' Valentine Vaginas, six to a box, go ahead, single guy fat fucks, make a disgusting night of it....mmmm, freakin' sweet...
Stopped in at lunchtime of course for my weekly Starbucks. A young (for which read dreadlocked and clueless) PA was getting lunch. She held up a croissant.
"Anybody know what a-mental is?" she asked the line.
Yeah, took me a second too.
"Emmenthal," I said. "It's a cheese."
"A cheese?" she asked, as if the concept was bizarre and new to her. It was almost as if I'd suggested she was about to chow down on fresh foetus-in-a-bun.
"Yeah, a cheese," I maintained. "That's the yellow stuff you can see."
"Oh..." she said. "Riiiight." She put the croissant back on the shelf as though it might explode if handled roughly, and ordered a piece of chocolate cake instead. I closed my eyes and imagined banging her head against the milk frother repeatedly. I was still lost in this vision when the guy asked me what I wanted, to the extent that I genuinely couldn't remember for a moment, and almost had to be reminded what kind of store I was in.
And then there's the bookkeeper.
Perfect nice human being, our bookkeeper. Nice in the kind of way that, even on a good day, makes you want to do him physical harm, just to see whether he'd react. Today though....today he had the temerity...the indecency...the downright mild-mannered fuck-youishness to have a Mars bar on his desk.
All...
Damn...
Day.
There it was, just fucking staring at me while I tried to get on with proper, serious, grown-up work. At one point I swear it got up and started doing the Dance of the Seven Wrappers.
He left it behind.
It's still there, on his desk, as I write this now. And I'm going to confess a big, dirty secret here. I'm tempted to go and sniff it.
Now, this crosses a dangerous, positively pathological line. Sniffing desserts is all very well and good, but you have to be up front about it. Sniffing someone's chocolate bar behind their back, when they're not even there, is pretty much on a dietary par with sniffing someone's underwear in similar circumstances - you just don't do it, and if you do, it's probably the start of a slippery slope into madness and deviancy (Really? Like you're so fucking well-adjusted anyway at the moment??)
So I'm leaving now, before I do something I really, really regret. Gong back to Paddington Station, where the only things to do are eat, shop or hate the soul-festering rest of humanity...
Daresay I'll do a little of everything. Just to take my mind off the bookkeeper's Mars bar.
Got on a train this morning (yes, a train - pinnacle of civilisation compared to the normal UberCommute on a bus. There will be more trains in my future), and the guy opposite me sat there, carelessly swigging on a can of Pepsi Max and eating a kind of "healthy" snack bar, including cranberries, macadamia nuts and dark chocolate. Then the prick got up and left the train, leaving half the bar carelessly behind him, in its wrapper...
I wanted to chase after him and shove the remaining bar of wonderment up his cavalier, toss-aside nose, while explaining to him that a life in which you throw away half a bar like that was a life half-lived, and therefore wasted, and that ergo he himself was a waste of chemical electrical energy and should vacate the planet forthwith to make way for someone who understood what Pleasure was all about!
Sigh...
I didn't, obviously. Wretched pinko liberal commie bastard laws we have in this country...
Popped into a store on High Street Kensington on my way into the office, mainly to browse. They had a Dunkin' Doughnuts case in there, with a Valentine's Special in. It was called a Strawberry Gloss. An ordinary ring doughnut (fuck you, America, the way you spell it is just wrong, don't mess with me today or I'll torch your ass!), in this case slightly squished into an oval shape, and then layered with bright, glistening pink goo. I swear, these people are trying to kill me. Can I just say, if you're gonna take something with a hole in the middle, make it vaguely oval and then slather it with that kind of dripping pink sweetness, you're fooling no-one, OK, Mr Subliminal? You might as well just have the courage of your bastardy and come out with it - Dunkin' Doughnuts' Valentine Vaginas, six to a box, go ahead, single guy fat fucks, make a disgusting night of it....mmmm, freakin' sweet...
Stopped in at lunchtime of course for my weekly Starbucks. A young (for which read dreadlocked and clueless) PA was getting lunch. She held up a croissant.
"Anybody know what a-mental is?" she asked the line.
Yeah, took me a second too.
"Emmenthal," I said. "It's a cheese."
"A cheese?" she asked, as if the concept was bizarre and new to her. It was almost as if I'd suggested she was about to chow down on fresh foetus-in-a-bun.
"Yeah, a cheese," I maintained. "That's the yellow stuff you can see."
"Oh..." she said. "Riiiight." She put the croissant back on the shelf as though it might explode if handled roughly, and ordered a piece of chocolate cake instead. I closed my eyes and imagined banging her head against the milk frother repeatedly. I was still lost in this vision when the guy asked me what I wanted, to the extent that I genuinely couldn't remember for a moment, and almost had to be reminded what kind of store I was in.
And then there's the bookkeeper.
Perfect nice human being, our bookkeeper. Nice in the kind of way that, even on a good day, makes you want to do him physical harm, just to see whether he'd react. Today though....today he had the temerity...the indecency...the downright mild-mannered fuck-youishness to have a Mars bar on his desk.
All...
Damn...
Day.
There it was, just fucking staring at me while I tried to get on with proper, serious, grown-up work. At one point I swear it got up and started doing the Dance of the Seven Wrappers.
He left it behind.
It's still there, on his desk, as I write this now. And I'm going to confess a big, dirty secret here. I'm tempted to go and sniff it.
Now, this crosses a dangerous, positively pathological line. Sniffing desserts is all very well and good, but you have to be up front about it. Sniffing someone's chocolate bar behind their back, when they're not even there, is pretty much on a dietary par with sniffing someone's underwear in similar circumstances - you just don't do it, and if you do, it's probably the start of a slippery slope into madness and deviancy (Really? Like you're so fucking well-adjusted anyway at the moment??)
So I'm leaving now, before I do something I really, really regret. Gong back to Paddington Station, where the only things to do are eat, shop or hate the soul-festering rest of humanity...
Daresay I'll do a little of everything. Just to take my mind off the bookkeeper's Mars bar.
Sunday, 12 February 2012
Null and Void
6.2, Twilight-fans. Getting interestingly higher day by day - can't help wondering if that's anything to do with the actual meals I'm eating each progressive day, or whether the last of the meds I was invited to drop last Monday is leaving my system and either a) it was a bad move after all, or b) I'm normalising at the higher end of the safe spectrum, which will presumably decrease over time as the weight comes off.
Went up to see my folks this afternoon, and stayed for dinner. Traditional Sunday dinner - two kinds of potato, Yorkshire pudding, pork, stuffing, gravy, all that. It was frankly gorgeous, and I ate it eagerly.
Then we came home, and I jumped straight on the bike.
It occurred to me, as I pedalled away a (by this stage) piddling little 600 caloriesworth of energy, that there's something altogether pointless about this kind of behaviour - taking in the calories only to burn them off again. It would be soooo much simpler not to eat a damn thing in the first place. Except of course, biochemistry doesn't work that way. If you stop eating, your system hordes what you've got (or so I'm told), in a kind of Hell-no, We won't go protest against weightloss. So - until there's a better way - I eat, and then burn, and eat and burn and try to find some sort of null space in the middle, where I end up just a little ahead of the game each week.
I'm sure, when my death-bed, or death-cliff, or (my personal preference), my death-5-items-or-fewer-aisle catches up with me, there'll be a moment when I resent the Hell out of biochemistry and all the time I spent trying to achieve, essentially, a null, void space from twice as much time and effort as doing nothing would have taken.
The point, as I occasionally have to remind myself, is to put off the death-aisle for as long as Disappearingly possible.
Oh, and while I remember - had a punch in the nose from my own nature tonight. Long-timers will remember my disbelief that people can leave sweet stuff on a plate, or be offered it and simply turn it down. At my folks, I followed dinner with a fruit salad, while d had strudel and ice cream.
"One scoop or two?" asked Ma.
"Oh, just the one," said d.
And from deep in the depths of my Disappearing soul, a three-headed dragon rose up and roared "ONNNNNNNEEEE????!!! DO YOU NOT REALISE IT'S IIIIIIIIICE-CREEEEEEEAM, DAMMMMNIT????!!!!"
I speared a chunk of pineapple, instead of allowing the dragon to burn through my skin and fly around the living room incinerating every ice-cream-eating body in the house.
Funny - thought I'd put all that kind of sweet-demon Hell behind me. Guess that whole "One day at a time" schtick actually never gets old after all.
Sonofabitch.
Went up to see my folks this afternoon, and stayed for dinner. Traditional Sunday dinner - two kinds of potato, Yorkshire pudding, pork, stuffing, gravy, all that. It was frankly gorgeous, and I ate it eagerly.
Then we came home, and I jumped straight on the bike.
It occurred to me, as I pedalled away a (by this stage) piddling little 600 caloriesworth of energy, that there's something altogether pointless about this kind of behaviour - taking in the calories only to burn them off again. It would be soooo much simpler not to eat a damn thing in the first place. Except of course, biochemistry doesn't work that way. If you stop eating, your system hordes what you've got (or so I'm told), in a kind of Hell-no, We won't go protest against weightloss. So - until there's a better way - I eat, and then burn, and eat and burn and try to find some sort of null space in the middle, where I end up just a little ahead of the game each week.
I'm sure, when my death-bed, or death-cliff, or (my personal preference), my death-5-items-or-fewer-aisle catches up with me, there'll be a moment when I resent the Hell out of biochemistry and all the time I spent trying to achieve, essentially, a null, void space from twice as much time and effort as doing nothing would have taken.
The point, as I occasionally have to remind myself, is to put off the death-aisle for as long as Disappearingly possible.
Oh, and while I remember - had a punch in the nose from my own nature tonight. Long-timers will remember my disbelief that people can leave sweet stuff on a plate, or be offered it and simply turn it down. At my folks, I followed dinner with a fruit salad, while d had strudel and ice cream.
"One scoop or two?" asked Ma.
"Oh, just the one," said d.
And from deep in the depths of my Disappearing soul, a three-headed dragon rose up and roared "ONNNNNNNEEEE????!!! DO YOU NOT REALISE IT'S IIIIIIIIICE-CREEEEEEEAM, DAMMMMNIT????!!!!"
I speared a chunk of pineapple, instead of allowing the dragon to burn through my skin and fly around the living room incinerating every ice-cream-eating body in the house.
Funny - thought I'd put all that kind of sweet-demon Hell behind me. Guess that whole "One day at a time" schtick actually never gets old after all.
Sonofabitch.
Perfect Day
Ever had a day so thoroughly pleasant you couldn't think of a way to improve it?
That was today. Slept long and deep, breakfasted out at a cafe.
"You shouldn't eat again for the rest of the day," said d, eyeing my plate of cheese and beans on toast. She shrugged. "Just saying..."
"Ha...way to steal the joy out of the moment," I muttered, smirking at her and biting deep onto a cheesy, beany mouthful of joy.
"Thousand calories in what you're eating," she chuckled.
"Per mouthful," she added.
"Love ya," I muttered, through a beany grin.
When breakfast was done, we decided we'd been in Merthyr long enough without Having An Adventure. Went and hung out at a bus stop where there were two possible buses, each with a different destination. It's our equivalent ot flipping a coin.
The X4 to Cardiff turned up first.
"Cardiff?" I asked. d grinned at me. She's got a great grin has my girl - A Vegas grin, all bright lights and roll your dice.
We got on the bus, and headed down to Our Nation's Capital.
"Ohhhh," I said, almost immediately when we got off the bus. "They have Starbucks here, oh canwe, canwe, canwe, canwe, canwe???"
"Sure honey," said d, laughing at my six-year-oldness. Picked up a Starbucks, and felt even more that all was right with the world.
Wandered round the city, going with the flow of a shitload less people than a Saturday afternoon in London, and frankly, unashamedly, gloating about it. Wandered into John Lewis and entirely forgot why we'd done it. Examined some scones closely, which I'd recommend when you can't remember why you went in somewhere. Laughed, ate, drank, it was like being on a brand new honeymoon, and then, when we decided we'd had enough honeymooning in our new capital, we came home, and I bought fruit.
I'm not entirely sure how that plays in to the perfect dayness, but somehow it did. d had a nap, I went and biked away the breakfast and a couple of Starbucks. Had a fantastic dinner - steak and potato. And now, at something past midnight, I'm going to start writing down the scenes that have been writing themselves on the inside of my skull at intervals throughout the day - often, with d's help and encouragement.
See - perfect day.
I know, I know - Lottery win, day spent plumbing the depths of the Karma Sutra, day without vegetables, and with far more double-chocolate sundaes, yadda yadda yadda...
But here's the thing. I never entirely understood people who claimed to be people 'of simple tastes'. I figured there's nothing simple that can't be improved with strategic whipped cream and chocolate shavings. But today, the simple pleasure of spending the whole day with my girl was life affirming, love inspiring, and better than anything that money or chocolate can give you.
Mmmm...yay. Now, on with the writing....
That was today. Slept long and deep, breakfasted out at a cafe.
"You shouldn't eat again for the rest of the day," said d, eyeing my plate of cheese and beans on toast. She shrugged. "Just saying..."
"Ha...way to steal the joy out of the moment," I muttered, smirking at her and biting deep onto a cheesy, beany mouthful of joy.
"Thousand calories in what you're eating," she chuckled.
"Per mouthful," she added.
"Love ya," I muttered, through a beany grin.
When breakfast was done, we decided we'd been in Merthyr long enough without Having An Adventure. Went and hung out at a bus stop where there were two possible buses, each with a different destination. It's our equivalent ot flipping a coin.
The X4 to Cardiff turned up first.
"Cardiff?" I asked. d grinned at me. She's got a great grin has my girl - A Vegas grin, all bright lights and roll your dice.
We got on the bus, and headed down to Our Nation's Capital.
"Ohhhh," I said, almost immediately when we got off the bus. "They have Starbucks here, oh canwe, canwe, canwe, canwe, canwe???"
"Sure honey," said d, laughing at my six-year-oldness. Picked up a Starbucks, and felt even more that all was right with the world.
Wandered round the city, going with the flow of a shitload less people than a Saturday afternoon in London, and frankly, unashamedly, gloating about it. Wandered into John Lewis and entirely forgot why we'd done it. Examined some scones closely, which I'd recommend when you can't remember why you went in somewhere. Laughed, ate, drank, it was like being on a brand new honeymoon, and then, when we decided we'd had enough honeymooning in our new capital, we came home, and I bought fruit.
I'm not entirely sure how that plays in to the perfect dayness, but somehow it did. d had a nap, I went and biked away the breakfast and a couple of Starbucks. Had a fantastic dinner - steak and potato. And now, at something past midnight, I'm going to start writing down the scenes that have been writing themselves on the inside of my skull at intervals throughout the day - often, with d's help and encouragement.
See - perfect day.
I know, I know - Lottery win, day spent plumbing the depths of the Karma Sutra, day without vegetables, and with far more double-chocolate sundaes, yadda yadda yadda...
But here's the thing. I never entirely understood people who claimed to be people 'of simple tastes'. I figured there's nothing simple that can't be improved with strategic whipped cream and chocolate shavings. But today, the simple pleasure of spending the whole day with my girl was life affirming, love inspiring, and better than anything that money or chocolate can give you.
Mmmm...yay. Now, on with the writing....
Friday, 10 February 2012
The Point Of Existential Angst
Blood was 5.8 this morning, my little Vampire friends.
Let me ask you this: If we take away all the existential balancing systems, like an equalising afterlife, what, ultimately is the point of any action? If we choose to do something, and not something else, to what are we accountable, other than our own eventual store of memories and experiences?
Yeah, I know, it's not exactly light-hanted banter about exercise bikes and greasy shit, is it? Stick with me though - who knows, there may even be a point to it all...
I've had a day of unexpected existential angst (which, now I come to write it out, would be a pretty kick-ass tongue-twister, but anyway...). My getting behind the wheel of a car again for the first time in a decade has, I know, given plenty of people a dose of existential today - that's why many many people in the Merthyr area decided they didn't really need to be outside today after all, and barricaded themselves behind concrete walls. Me, I drove like a stainless steel stick-puppet for about half an hour, so angsty was I about my own existence...then I relaxed and pretty much stopped caring about oncoming buses, and started to take pleasure in the experience.
Then I went to see my dad, which was highly pleasurable at first, as I haven't seen him in over a week, but the ongoing illness of one's parents is a good solid kick in the head full of existential angst too - if you've learned to rely on a view of the world that has them in it, and has their characters writ large across your sky, then their illness acts as a cloud of necessary adjustment, a shift in your worldview like the fist that shakes a snowglobe, seen by the snowman inside.
And then I heard a name from my past, and it briefly made me seethe and rage with pure unbridled self-revolving me-me-me style existential angst. The name was Simon Spanton.
Anyone? Any literary fucks among us?
Simon Spanton's a publisher. I 'met' him on the radio about 14 years ago, when I was still young and idealistic and trying to avoid gainful employment like the plague. I'd written a book, and I got picked up by local radio, for a show where they put your work in front of big-shot publishers. Spanton liked my stuff, as indeed did a few other publishers. I ended up in long discussion not with Spanton as it turned out, but with the folks at HarperCollins. The discussions were so long in fact that ultimately, the idea of a deal collapsed, and I went into journalism in retalliation, feeling that that'd show them!
It didn't, of course. Didn't show anyone anything except that when all is said and done, I'm not that good at being a journalist, because in most cases, I simply don't care long enough to sustain an investigation. And I see far too many sides to most stories, which might be all very zen and balanced and all that, but it plays merry hell with your narrative flow. The point was, I stopped writing for the best part of a decade, and have only really taken it up again in the last couple of years. I've written one massively overlong but still quite funny book which needs a good hard pruning, and I've been working on a 'simpler' one for about a year now, being stuck in Galileo's Italy for far too long.
Simon Spanton resurfaced in my life today by offering someone else a two-book deal for a high five-figure sum. Someone who, up to this point, has been very successful in their own sphere, but has no particular experience of novel-writing behind them. And perversely, that made me seethe. For about ten minutes there, it was like someone had stolen my life at the age of 24, and was living it more successfully than I was.
This of course is clearly bullshit. There's no connection between events, and - I should add - the books that Spanton's commissioned will in all likelihood be hugely funny, and I'll probably read them. It's just one of those moments of feeling overtaken that can push you face down in the dirt if you're not careful, without any intention (or indeed, any knowledge) by those you can too easily blame. I had the same feeling once about Terry Pratchett - I was writing a book with a bunch of themes, and then he published one with the same themes. I tried a different tack, and perversely, he published one along those lines too. Actually, Practchett's managed to gazump me three times like that in total. Ironic, really - on that radio show where I first met Spanton, I was described as 'like a new Terry Pratchett'. Now of course I know that'a a label given to anyone who does funny fantasy at some point. Does rather depend on the 'old Terry Pratchett' not being able to beat you to the punch by already being published though!
All of which led me down a weird way of thinking - we know the point of pleasure. Pleasure is an enticement to action, and a sensory reward for necessary action performed. Nectar is sweet to entice pollinators to do their job, for example, and there's some evidence to believe the pleasurable sensations of sexual reproduction too are merely an evolutionary enticement to get the right bits of people together to pass on genes. But what about existential angst?
If we go - rather generously - beyond the idea that existential angst is just self-indulgence personified, then what is it for, in the wider scheme of things. We understand the pleasure of eating a piece of cake, but if, then, one is wracked with guilt and loathing and - once more with feeling, everybody - existential angst about ourselves, what purpose does that serve?
Well, here I can only speak for myself, but for me, I think if pleasure is the reward or the destination, then existential angst is the accelerator pedal and fifth gear. Existential angst on the road made me determined to be as safe as I possibly could, to make sure d and I survived (didn't particularly care if the instructor survived, but his continuing existence could be seens as a fringe benefit if you like). Existential angst about my dad makes me determined to spend time with him, to make him laugh, to make him proud where I can, and at the very least, to avoid giving him additional causes for grief. Existential angst over my future as a writer has made me pound this keyboard for the last couple of hours on my own creative project, locked away here in my little white room looking out over a school, and then my town, determined, more than anything, to be done with bloody Galileo and move on. And existential angst about being a Disappearing Man will drive me back here before I sleep, to get back on my bike and peddle, determined not to let the almost-two-days of doing nothing, of letting my blisters heal and Being Normal, drag me backwards in my quest to live at least long enough to publish something!
Don't worry about a little existential angst. If you don't let it grind you down, it can be phenomenally useful.
Let me ask you this: If we take away all the existential balancing systems, like an equalising afterlife, what, ultimately is the point of any action? If we choose to do something, and not something else, to what are we accountable, other than our own eventual store of memories and experiences?
Yeah, I know, it's not exactly light-hanted banter about exercise bikes and greasy shit, is it? Stick with me though - who knows, there may even be a point to it all...
I've had a day of unexpected existential angst (which, now I come to write it out, would be a pretty kick-ass tongue-twister, but anyway...). My getting behind the wheel of a car again for the first time in a decade has, I know, given plenty of people a dose of existential today - that's why many many people in the Merthyr area decided they didn't really need to be outside today after all, and barricaded themselves behind concrete walls. Me, I drove like a stainless steel stick-puppet for about half an hour, so angsty was I about my own existence...then I relaxed and pretty much stopped caring about oncoming buses, and started to take pleasure in the experience.
Then I went to see my dad, which was highly pleasurable at first, as I haven't seen him in over a week, but the ongoing illness of one's parents is a good solid kick in the head full of existential angst too - if you've learned to rely on a view of the world that has them in it, and has their characters writ large across your sky, then their illness acts as a cloud of necessary adjustment, a shift in your worldview like the fist that shakes a snowglobe, seen by the snowman inside.
And then I heard a name from my past, and it briefly made me seethe and rage with pure unbridled self-revolving me-me-me style existential angst. The name was Simon Spanton.
Anyone? Any literary fucks among us?
Simon Spanton's a publisher. I 'met' him on the radio about 14 years ago, when I was still young and idealistic and trying to avoid gainful employment like the plague. I'd written a book, and I got picked up by local radio, for a show where they put your work in front of big-shot publishers. Spanton liked my stuff, as indeed did a few other publishers. I ended up in long discussion not with Spanton as it turned out, but with the folks at HarperCollins. The discussions were so long in fact that ultimately, the idea of a deal collapsed, and I went into journalism in retalliation, feeling that that'd show them!
It didn't, of course. Didn't show anyone anything except that when all is said and done, I'm not that good at being a journalist, because in most cases, I simply don't care long enough to sustain an investigation. And I see far too many sides to most stories, which might be all very zen and balanced and all that, but it plays merry hell with your narrative flow. The point was, I stopped writing for the best part of a decade, and have only really taken it up again in the last couple of years. I've written one massively overlong but still quite funny book which needs a good hard pruning, and I've been working on a 'simpler' one for about a year now, being stuck in Galileo's Italy for far too long.
Simon Spanton resurfaced in my life today by offering someone else a two-book deal for a high five-figure sum. Someone who, up to this point, has been very successful in their own sphere, but has no particular experience of novel-writing behind them. And perversely, that made me seethe. For about ten minutes there, it was like someone had stolen my life at the age of 24, and was living it more successfully than I was.
This of course is clearly bullshit. There's no connection between events, and - I should add - the books that Spanton's commissioned will in all likelihood be hugely funny, and I'll probably read them. It's just one of those moments of feeling overtaken that can push you face down in the dirt if you're not careful, without any intention (or indeed, any knowledge) by those you can too easily blame. I had the same feeling once about Terry Pratchett - I was writing a book with a bunch of themes, and then he published one with the same themes. I tried a different tack, and perversely, he published one along those lines too. Actually, Practchett's managed to gazump me three times like that in total. Ironic, really - on that radio show where I first met Spanton, I was described as 'like a new Terry Pratchett'. Now of course I know that'a a label given to anyone who does funny fantasy at some point. Does rather depend on the 'old Terry Pratchett' not being able to beat you to the punch by already being published though!
All of which led me down a weird way of thinking - we know the point of pleasure. Pleasure is an enticement to action, and a sensory reward for necessary action performed. Nectar is sweet to entice pollinators to do their job, for example, and there's some evidence to believe the pleasurable sensations of sexual reproduction too are merely an evolutionary enticement to get the right bits of people together to pass on genes. But what about existential angst?
If we go - rather generously - beyond the idea that existential angst is just self-indulgence personified, then what is it for, in the wider scheme of things. We understand the pleasure of eating a piece of cake, but if, then, one is wracked with guilt and loathing and - once more with feeling, everybody - existential angst about ourselves, what purpose does that serve?
Well, here I can only speak for myself, but for me, I think if pleasure is the reward or the destination, then existential angst is the accelerator pedal and fifth gear. Existential angst on the road made me determined to be as safe as I possibly could, to make sure d and I survived (didn't particularly care if the instructor survived, but his continuing existence could be seens as a fringe benefit if you like). Existential angst about my dad makes me determined to spend time with him, to make him laugh, to make him proud where I can, and at the very least, to avoid giving him additional causes for grief. Existential angst over my future as a writer has made me pound this keyboard for the last couple of hours on my own creative project, locked away here in my little white room looking out over a school, and then my town, determined, more than anything, to be done with bloody Galileo and move on. And existential angst about being a Disappearing Man will drive me back here before I sleep, to get back on my bike and peddle, determined not to let the almost-two-days of doing nothing, of letting my blisters heal and Being Normal, drag me backwards in my quest to live at least long enough to publish something!
Don't worry about a little existential angst. If you don't let it grind you down, it can be phenomenally useful.
Thursday, 9 February 2012
Car Trouble
Blood was 5.6 this morning, for those who care.
Today has been pretty much a sit-on-your-ass kinda day, as we discovered that after my UberActive day yesterday I'd given myself a foot-blister that felt (and looked, in actual fact) more like a burn than anything else.
Tomorrow though...
Tomorrow will be Interesting.
Tomorrow, you see, sees me get behind the wheel of a car for the first time in a decade or more.
That sound you hear is the sound of my friends barricading themselves in bunkers at least ten feet underground.
I have something of a volatile relationship with cars.
It took my five attempts to pass my test, each of which was marked by, if not tragedy, then at least panic and gibbering on the part of my examiner. The first time I took it, I was halfway round a roundabout when the examiner told me he'd said "turn left." Without thinking, I turned left - into the path of oncoming traffic. Oddly enough though, that's not what I failed on.
I failed because of the bus.
There was a narrow street, with parking on both sides and perversely two way traffic. I happened to think the gap was big enough for both me and the oncoming bus. The examiner took a different view, and grew at least a little greyer that day.
To be fair, it wasn't just me - it's something of a family legend that the same instructor taught my mother, my brother, and me to drive. And then dropped dead of a massive heart attack.
Once I'd passed my test (weirdly enough, the day I finally achieved it, we were burgled to buggery while I was out), my mother put me on the insurance for her ancient, automatic white Mini. It was like a bumper car! Well, it was the way I used to drive it, anyway - I actually went over a couple of roundabouts, inclusing one time in the company of my pal Rebecca - who now, oddly enough, gets paid to report on mad fucks in very fast cars, driving like weirdly responsible lunatics. Nearly killed Karen Pulley one night, when, faced with one of the many hugely steep hills in this area, she asked me how fast the Mini would go. We hit 90 going downhill, and then we hit a kerb...We were on two wheels for a moment there, skidding downhill into the path of - yep, you guess it - oncoming traffic. Fortunately, my fat fuckery saved us that night, as I leaned heavily over to one side and convinced gravity to be our friend...
It was perhaps inevitable that my first job in print journalism would turn out to be for a motoring magazine.
I got lost in almost every country in Europe. In Naples, the Mazda press team and the rest of the journalists ended up having to comb the area for me, which is the kind of thing that really loses you face in the bunfight...
Inbetween the European...well, embarrassments, frankly...I was able to borrow a range of cars direct from teh manufacturers...
Yes, seriously. They let Crazy Mini Boy loose with some proper vehicles.
I crashed a Kia at two miles an hour in a Tesco car park. Interesting conversation ensued:
"Is this your car?"
"Ermmm....no."
"Got the paperwork for it?"
"Errrm...welll...notsomuch, no."
"Well, who does the car belong to?"
"Erm...well, Kia, really..."
It's the kind of conversation almost guaranteed to get you slapped.
I scraped the bejeesus out of a Jaguar when I radically misjudged its width in a parking situation. Turned a Mitsubishi 4x4 completely over in the Highlands of Scotland, nearly killed a group of New Year revellers - also, coincidentally, in the Highlands (the Highlands appears to hate me). Annnnd so on.
Probably the most typical example of my...erm...prowess was the Porsche Boxster.
It had become something of a legend in the office that I could blag any car from any manufacturer, despite, as it turned out, never actually writing anything about the cars I borrowed..
"Betcha couldn't get a Porsche!" said my fellow journo, Louise.
"You're on," I said.
By the end of the week, I'd done it.
"Soooo, who can't get a Porsche again?" I asked, taunting her.
"I've got Wimbledon tickets," she batted back.
"LlllikeIgiveafuck," I grinned.
Then I thought again. As it happened, the woman I was with at the time lived across the country in Bristol, and she was a tennis fan.
"Hmm," I said. "Alright. I'll bring you back the Porsche, you fashion-obsessed maniac, you give met the tickets."
"Done," she agreed.
Then I buggered off - as I say, I was involved with a woman living in Bristol at the time, and I used to go across the country on a Friday night and come back on a Monday. This time, I was going across in something useless like a Subaru, getting that piece of shit picked up, and having the Porsche delivered to Bristol, then driving it back to Surrey.
Come Monday morning, it was abbbbbsolutely pissing down, and I got into the Porsche miserably. It was horrible, frankly - if you were ever thinking of buying one, don't, they suck. I drove it a couple of hundred miles in the sheeting rain at speeds at which it shouldn't have been driven. Then, on the M25 London ring road, I saw a stick on the road. I don't, to this day, know what possessed me, but I remember actively thinking "Ooh, a stick. I'm gonna drive right over that." I even swerved slightly to make sure I hit it properly.
BANG!
Ah, I thought.
Fuck, I thought.
That was no stick, I thought. I was right. It had been a metal rod with somejagged bits. And suddenly I was driving a borrowed three-wheeled Porsche at 90 miles an hour, about 60 miles away from the office of a car magazine.
Now...I know this sounds stupid now, but this is how my brain worked in those circumstances.
1) I need to change my tyre.
2) I've never changed a tyre...in my life.
3) I'm not about to start in a borrowed Porsche in the pissing down rain.
So I drove it.
I drove this poor, wretched Porsche on three wheels and a tyre shredding into uselessness, 60 miles around London and into Surrey.
When I got into the office, late, I had to explain to three seasoned motoring journalists what I'd done. One of them came out and jacked up the car, and changed the tyre, putting on its low-quality 'replacement' tyre. Then I had to call Porsche and tell them what I'd done. They weren't amused, and came and took away their car. I never did get those Wimbledon tickets either...
Anyhow - that was probably the pinnacle of my history with cars. I haven't driven one in a decade because I've been living in London. Now - mad as this is - my mother has added me back onto her insurance, so I can help, for instance, take her to appointments to get her dodgy eyes looked at.
Which means tomorrow, I'm having the first of my 'refresher' lessons.
If I make it out alive, I'll be back to my Disappearing ways tomorrow night...
Today has been pretty much a sit-on-your-ass kinda day, as we discovered that after my UberActive day yesterday I'd given myself a foot-blister that felt (and looked, in actual fact) more like a burn than anything else.
Tomorrow though...
Tomorrow will be Interesting.
Tomorrow, you see, sees me get behind the wheel of a car for the first time in a decade or more.
That sound you hear is the sound of my friends barricading themselves in bunkers at least ten feet underground.
I have something of a volatile relationship with cars.
It took my five attempts to pass my test, each of which was marked by, if not tragedy, then at least panic and gibbering on the part of my examiner. The first time I took it, I was halfway round a roundabout when the examiner told me he'd said "turn left." Without thinking, I turned left - into the path of oncoming traffic. Oddly enough though, that's not what I failed on.
I failed because of the bus.
There was a narrow street, with parking on both sides and perversely two way traffic. I happened to think the gap was big enough for both me and the oncoming bus. The examiner took a different view, and grew at least a little greyer that day.
To be fair, it wasn't just me - it's something of a family legend that the same instructor taught my mother, my brother, and me to drive. And then dropped dead of a massive heart attack.
Once I'd passed my test (weirdly enough, the day I finally achieved it, we were burgled to buggery while I was out), my mother put me on the insurance for her ancient, automatic white Mini. It was like a bumper car! Well, it was the way I used to drive it, anyway - I actually went over a couple of roundabouts, inclusing one time in the company of my pal Rebecca - who now, oddly enough, gets paid to report on mad fucks in very fast cars, driving like weirdly responsible lunatics. Nearly killed Karen Pulley one night, when, faced with one of the many hugely steep hills in this area, she asked me how fast the Mini would go. We hit 90 going downhill, and then we hit a kerb...We were on two wheels for a moment there, skidding downhill into the path of - yep, you guess it - oncoming traffic. Fortunately, my fat fuckery saved us that night, as I leaned heavily over to one side and convinced gravity to be our friend...
It was perhaps inevitable that my first job in print journalism would turn out to be for a motoring magazine.
I got lost in almost every country in Europe. In Naples, the Mazda press team and the rest of the journalists ended up having to comb the area for me, which is the kind of thing that really loses you face in the bunfight...
Inbetween the European...well, embarrassments, frankly...I was able to borrow a range of cars direct from teh manufacturers...
Yes, seriously. They let Crazy Mini Boy loose with some proper vehicles.
I crashed a Kia at two miles an hour in a Tesco car park. Interesting conversation ensued:
"Is this your car?"
"Ermmm....no."
"Got the paperwork for it?"
"Errrm...welll...notsomuch, no."
"Well, who does the car belong to?"
"Erm...well, Kia, really..."
It's the kind of conversation almost guaranteed to get you slapped.
I scraped the bejeesus out of a Jaguar when I radically misjudged its width in a parking situation. Turned a Mitsubishi 4x4 completely over in the Highlands of Scotland, nearly killed a group of New Year revellers - also, coincidentally, in the Highlands (the Highlands appears to hate me). Annnnd so on.
Probably the most typical example of my...erm...prowess was the Porsche Boxster.
It had become something of a legend in the office that I could blag any car from any manufacturer, despite, as it turned out, never actually writing anything about the cars I borrowed..
"Betcha couldn't get a Porsche!" said my fellow journo, Louise.
"You're on," I said.
By the end of the week, I'd done it.
"Soooo, who can't get a Porsche again?" I asked, taunting her.
"I've got Wimbledon tickets," she batted back.
"LlllikeIgiveafuck," I grinned.
Then I thought again. As it happened, the woman I was with at the time lived across the country in Bristol, and she was a tennis fan.
"Hmm," I said. "Alright. I'll bring you back the Porsche, you fashion-obsessed maniac, you give met the tickets."
"Done," she agreed.
Then I buggered off - as I say, I was involved with a woman living in Bristol at the time, and I used to go across the country on a Friday night and come back on a Monday. This time, I was going across in something useless like a Subaru, getting that piece of shit picked up, and having the Porsche delivered to Bristol, then driving it back to Surrey.
Come Monday morning, it was abbbbbsolutely pissing down, and I got into the Porsche miserably. It was horrible, frankly - if you were ever thinking of buying one, don't, they suck. I drove it a couple of hundred miles in the sheeting rain at speeds at which it shouldn't have been driven. Then, on the M25 London ring road, I saw a stick on the road. I don't, to this day, know what possessed me, but I remember actively thinking "Ooh, a stick. I'm gonna drive right over that." I even swerved slightly to make sure I hit it properly.
BANG!
Ah, I thought.
Fuck, I thought.
That was no stick, I thought. I was right. It had been a metal rod with somejagged bits. And suddenly I was driving a borrowed three-wheeled Porsche at 90 miles an hour, about 60 miles away from the office of a car magazine.
Now...I know this sounds stupid now, but this is how my brain worked in those circumstances.
1) I need to change my tyre.
2) I've never changed a tyre...in my life.
3) I'm not about to start in a borrowed Porsche in the pissing down rain.
So I drove it.
I drove this poor, wretched Porsche on three wheels and a tyre shredding into uselessness, 60 miles around London and into Surrey.
When I got into the office, late, I had to explain to three seasoned motoring journalists what I'd done. One of them came out and jacked up the car, and changed the tyre, putting on its low-quality 'replacement' tyre. Then I had to call Porsche and tell them what I'd done. They weren't amused, and came and took away their car. I never did get those Wimbledon tickets either...
Anyhow - that was probably the pinnacle of my history with cars. I haven't driven one in a decade because I've been living in London. Now - mad as this is - my mother has added me back onto her insurance, so I can help, for instance, take her to appointments to get her dodgy eyes looked at.
Which means tomorrow, I'm having the first of my 'refresher' lessons.
If I make it out alive, I'll be back to my Disappearing ways tomorrow night...
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
The Aquacise Smirk
"It's five o'clock, honest, I saw it written there plain as day."
d looked at me, and at the scene in front of her.
Then she looked at me again, rather more squintily.
"A...ha.." she said.
The scene in front of her was mainly kids jumping in the pool and twimming, or jumping in the pool and trying to swim, or, mainly, just jumping in the pool and sinking like pink-suited stones, and spluttering helplessly till helped.
This, it was clear to even the meanest of intelligences - by which I mean everyone's but mine - was not a GP Referral aquacise class.
I had rushed and bustled us out of the house to make sure we got there by five, because the class started at five.
I think, to be honest, the jig was up when new people started arriving, perfectly dry kids in hand, and leaving them in the instructor's care.
"Go and ask the lifeguard," said d. "I dare ya."
I did.
"Well, that'll be me not able to read English any more," I said, after miming her to come and meet me halfway round the pool. "That...could be tricky, given what I do for a living..."
"Oh I don't know..." said d with a grin.
Now of course, I could have done some lengths, leaving d in the jacuzzi-pool, but frankly - and I can't stress how important this is - fuck that for a game of soldiers! I'd biked away 300 calories before breakfast, then had the breakfast that those calories comprised of. I'd had a lunch of leftover curry and rice, then walked five miles or so in an hour and a half in the company of Ricky The Git, and Christine, a nice woman who had originally registered us on the GP Referral Programme. It had been just me and them, because they (fairly obviously, if you think about it) don't do the pathways walk unless someone turns up to do it with them, and I was the only one who did.
Now we were about to aquacise our asses off, and then go straight into the gym. I figured I deserved a little bit of jacuzzi-time too!
There's an enormous aqua slide at our pool. It's never been operational while we've been there before, but tonight they turned it on.
"Oh I wanna have a go!" said d. "Come with me?"
"Sure," I said...then, as we approached the steps leading up to it, she added.
"Ohhh, I wanna see you come down. can I see you come down?"
"Sure," I said, doing the Manly Thing.
I slalomed down the thing, smashing myself into a slide-pool at the end and getting water up my nose.
"That was great!" said d.
"Right, now up you go," I said.
"What am I, fuckin' nuts?" said d.
We both slouched off to the jacuzzi, some of us a little more slouchy than others.
The Aquacise was...frankly...what exercise must be like in Hell. I've discovered Ricky's not such a git - it's just there's a face...a face people pull when they are dry and warm and on the side of the pool, watching a bunch of fat fucks and old fucks try and bend themselves repeatedly into unlikely positions. It's the Aquacise Smirk, and this evening, we took our opportunity to loathe and despise Christine for it. Nothing personal.
Then we stumbled, barely aware of our surroundings, up to the gym. We wouldn't have even done this, I'm sure, if we hadn't pre-paid for it on the way in. There was biking and pulling and a new machine from Hell's private stockpile that stetches your leg muscles almost to the point of twanging...and then there was freedom and freezing and discovering that Nandos was just there. Nandos meant protein, and protein was goooooood. And now we're home, altogether more damaged than one should be on a Wednesday, contemplating hot water bottles and snoring with a degree of delight that only those who's worked their asses off can understand.
Blood was 5.5 this morning by the way (after recalibrating. 5.0 originally), so presumably, the half-meds life is going OK. So far (all of three days in, clearly...)
Ni'night blogosphere, I'm sooo out of here...
d looked at me, and at the scene in front of her.
Then she looked at me again, rather more squintily.
"A...ha.." she said.
The scene in front of her was mainly kids jumping in the pool and twimming, or jumping in the pool and trying to swim, or, mainly, just jumping in the pool and sinking like pink-suited stones, and spluttering helplessly till helped.
This, it was clear to even the meanest of intelligences - by which I mean everyone's but mine - was not a GP Referral aquacise class.
I had rushed and bustled us out of the house to make sure we got there by five, because the class started at five.
I think, to be honest, the jig was up when new people started arriving, perfectly dry kids in hand, and leaving them in the instructor's care.
"Go and ask the lifeguard," said d. "I dare ya."
I did.
"Well, that'll be me not able to read English any more," I said, after miming her to come and meet me halfway round the pool. "That...could be tricky, given what I do for a living..."
"Oh I don't know..." said d with a grin.
Now of course, I could have done some lengths, leaving d in the jacuzzi-pool, but frankly - and I can't stress how important this is - fuck that for a game of soldiers! I'd biked away 300 calories before breakfast, then had the breakfast that those calories comprised of. I'd had a lunch of leftover curry and rice, then walked five miles or so in an hour and a half in the company of Ricky The Git, and Christine, a nice woman who had originally registered us on the GP Referral Programme. It had been just me and them, because they (fairly obviously, if you think about it) don't do the pathways walk unless someone turns up to do it with them, and I was the only one who did.
Now we were about to aquacise our asses off, and then go straight into the gym. I figured I deserved a little bit of jacuzzi-time too!
There's an enormous aqua slide at our pool. It's never been operational while we've been there before, but tonight they turned it on.
"Oh I wanna have a go!" said d. "Come with me?"
"Sure," I said...then, as we approached the steps leading up to it, she added.
"Ohhh, I wanna see you come down. can I see you come down?"
"Sure," I said, doing the Manly Thing.
I slalomed down the thing, smashing myself into a slide-pool at the end and getting water up my nose.
"That was great!" said d.
"Right, now up you go," I said.
"What am I, fuckin' nuts?" said d.
We both slouched off to the jacuzzi, some of us a little more slouchy than others.
The Aquacise was...frankly...what exercise must be like in Hell. I've discovered Ricky's not such a git - it's just there's a face...a face people pull when they are dry and warm and on the side of the pool, watching a bunch of fat fucks and old fucks try and bend themselves repeatedly into unlikely positions. It's the Aquacise Smirk, and this evening, we took our opportunity to loathe and despise Christine for it. Nothing personal.
Then we stumbled, barely aware of our surroundings, up to the gym. We wouldn't have even done this, I'm sure, if we hadn't pre-paid for it on the way in. There was biking and pulling and a new machine from Hell's private stockpile that stetches your leg muscles almost to the point of twanging...and then there was freedom and freezing and discovering that Nandos was just there. Nandos meant protein, and protein was goooooood. And now we're home, altogether more damaged than one should be on a Wednesday, contemplating hot water bottles and snoring with a degree of delight that only those who's worked their asses off can understand.
Blood was 5.5 this morning by the way (after recalibrating. 5.0 originally), so presumably, the half-meds life is going OK. So far (all of three days in, clearly...)
Ni'night blogosphere, I'm sooo out of here...
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
The Final Three....and a bit
What's that line again? Philosophical in defeat, magnanimous in victory, or somesuch thing?
Yyyyyeah, that really doesn't sound like me. Weigh-in results today:
I did it three times, just to make sure it wasn't just the Nazi Scales having a laugh. But apparently, the Nazi Scales don't laugh.
Ever.
So that's officially five stone, and then some. Five stone, two and a quarter, if ya wanna be picky.
What that means is that technically, I've got less than four stone left to lose. Three stone, 11 and three quarters, picky fucks.
I've come across this phenomenon before, but I have to tell you, that feels like a Hell of a lot less than four stone. Clearly, it isn't, it's a couple of pounds, but it's the psychological effect of thinking in threes, rather than fours, and that's huge.
Now, just for the sake of full disclosure I should say - the real truth probably isn't as good as this result makes it look. Mondays now, with their UberCommute, tend to be ultra-light days, calorie-wise, and today's result is probably an outlier, much in the way I think the first time I recorded 15 stone 8 was, and then the following week, I found myself back up in the 15 stone 12 area. I've done a solid couple of daily unofficial weigh-ins this week that record me as 15 stone 7, so I think it's fair to say I've officially gone through the 5 stone barrier, but I wouldn't be at all surprised, next Tuesday, to find myself higher up despite trying to have a good week.
But for now, while there's news to be obnoxious about, excuse me while I do some football-chanting:
"Fiiiiiiiiiiiiive twoandabit, Fiiiive twoandabit,
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiive twoandabit, Fiiiiiive twoandabit..."
Magnanimous in victory, my Disappearing arse!
Yyyyyeah, that really doesn't sound like me. Weigh-in results today:
15 stone 4.75!
I did it three times, just to make sure it wasn't just the Nazi Scales having a laugh. But apparently, the Nazi Scales don't laugh.
Ever.
So that's officially five stone, and then some. Five stone, two and a quarter, if ya wanna be picky.
What that means is that technically, I've got less than four stone left to lose. Three stone, 11 and three quarters, picky fucks.
I've come across this phenomenon before, but I have to tell you, that feels like a Hell of a lot less than four stone. Clearly, it isn't, it's a couple of pounds, but it's the psychological effect of thinking in threes, rather than fours, and that's huge.
Now, just for the sake of full disclosure I should say - the real truth probably isn't as good as this result makes it look. Mondays now, with their UberCommute, tend to be ultra-light days, calorie-wise, and today's result is probably an outlier, much in the way I think the first time I recorded 15 stone 8 was, and then the following week, I found myself back up in the 15 stone 12 area. I've done a solid couple of daily unofficial weigh-ins this week that record me as 15 stone 7, so I think it's fair to say I've officially gone through the 5 stone barrier, but I wouldn't be at all surprised, next Tuesday, to find myself higher up despite trying to have a good week.
But for now, while there's news to be obnoxious about, excuse me while I do some football-chanting:
"Fiiiiiiiiiiiiive twoandabit, Fiiiive twoandabit,
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiive twoandabit, Fiiiiiive twoandabit..."
Magnanimous in victory, my Disappearing arse!
Monday, 6 February 2012
Good Call
No blood result today - well, not exactly anyway. Some might say the whole day has revolved around a blood result, but more of that in a minute. Basically, was out the door this morning before the birds were awake, so no real time to bleed.
The UberCommute was fine, although I had the same grumpy-assed driver as a few weeks ago, when he dropped us all unceremoniously at Heathrow. Today, I can only presume he must have got some last night, as he drove into London sweet as a nut, dropping me in Hammersmith. Just before we arrived though, I got a call.
It was my doctor's surgery. I swallowed.
"Hello," said, all trepidation and whispering - the grumpy sod had told us to keep our mobile conversations short and quiet if they happened at all, so as not to annoy him.
"Hello Anthony," said a vaguely familiar voice. It was the Diabetic Nurse d and I had been to see last week. "About your results, it is," she said, in that perverse Yoda-style delivery peculiar to the Valleys.
"Oh yes?" I asked, steeling myself. Can't be good when your nurse rings you to talk about your results...surely?
"Lovely, they were," she said. "Your long-term diabetic control is really excellent. Wondered if you'd like to stop taking one of your medications all together..."
What? Are you freakin' nuts? OF COURSE I'd like to do that!
So, as of today, I've eliminated one of my diabetic meds - the same one I've been gradually reducing over time - from four pills a day when this began to now...none. Zero. To anyone who knows what's what, I am now a Gliclazide-free body. So - mini happy dances were done on the bus coming into Hammersmith.
Of course, these things are always conditional - gotta go back for another long-term diabetic control blood test in a couple of months, to see whether my system can, as yet, actually cope with none of this particular medication, and if it can't of course, I'll go back on it. But hey - that'll be the headline on that day. Today's headline - half of what I really wanted to achieve with this Disappearing programme has been accomplished - I'm on only one diabetic medication, instead of two. Next step is to prove I can do without it, and then, as we keep on reducing the weight, to attack my dependence on the other of the other medication I take. big milestone though, this - this Disappearing lark was never really about looking thin. It was about not dying quite yet, and it was about the tantalising prospect dangled before me by my doctor back in Stratford - that if I got down to something like 11 stone, I could actually cure myself of my diabetes. Who knows? This might be a short-lived little happy dance, but today who-ah, I rule all, mini-wave in celebration of kicking one medication to the curb!
Tomorrow of course it's weigh-in day. I'm hopeful and optimistic, and will try my very best not to be pathetic and whingy if I don't get the result I'm looking for. And then it's back to the work-from-home routine - Gym taster at lunchtime. Some time this week, I need to buy new Favourite Goggles and get back to the upper-body-building funfest of early morning swimming...Ah, the joy of routine. Still - there's joy today in eliminating one little chunk of a routine that's been in place for a good few years now. Stick with me folks, this next month could be interesting...
The UberCommute was fine, although I had the same grumpy-assed driver as a few weeks ago, when he dropped us all unceremoniously at Heathrow. Today, I can only presume he must have got some last night, as he drove into London sweet as a nut, dropping me in Hammersmith. Just before we arrived though, I got a call.
It was my doctor's surgery. I swallowed.
"Hello," said, all trepidation and whispering - the grumpy sod had told us to keep our mobile conversations short and quiet if they happened at all, so as not to annoy him.
"Hello Anthony," said a vaguely familiar voice. It was the Diabetic Nurse d and I had been to see last week. "About your results, it is," she said, in that perverse Yoda-style delivery peculiar to the Valleys.
"Oh yes?" I asked, steeling myself. Can't be good when your nurse rings you to talk about your results...surely?
"Lovely, they were," she said. "Your long-term diabetic control is really excellent. Wondered if you'd like to stop taking one of your medications all together..."
What? Are you freakin' nuts? OF COURSE I'd like to do that!
So, as of today, I've eliminated one of my diabetic meds - the same one I've been gradually reducing over time - from four pills a day when this began to now...none. Zero. To anyone who knows what's what, I am now a Gliclazide-free body. So - mini happy dances were done on the bus coming into Hammersmith.
Of course, these things are always conditional - gotta go back for another long-term diabetic control blood test in a couple of months, to see whether my system can, as yet, actually cope with none of this particular medication, and if it can't of course, I'll go back on it. But hey - that'll be the headline on that day. Today's headline - half of what I really wanted to achieve with this Disappearing programme has been accomplished - I'm on only one diabetic medication, instead of two. Next step is to prove I can do without it, and then, as we keep on reducing the weight, to attack my dependence on the other of the other medication I take. big milestone though, this - this Disappearing lark was never really about looking thin. It was about not dying quite yet, and it was about the tantalising prospect dangled before me by my doctor back in Stratford - that if I got down to something like 11 stone, I could actually cure myself of my diabetes. Who knows? This might be a short-lived little happy dance, but today who-ah, I rule all, mini-wave in celebration of kicking one medication to the curb!
Tomorrow of course it's weigh-in day. I'm hopeful and optimistic, and will try my very best not to be pathetic and whingy if I don't get the result I'm looking for. And then it's back to the work-from-home routine - Gym taster at lunchtime. Some time this week, I need to buy new Favourite Goggles and get back to the upper-body-building funfest of early morning swimming...Ah, the joy of routine. Still - there's joy today in eliminating one little chunk of a routine that's been in place for a good few years now. Stick with me folks, this next month could be interesting...
Sunday, 5 February 2012
In Apology For Lunch, And In Praise of Dinner
Blood yesterday was 6.0 by the way. Didn't remember to take my blood this morning, because I took a glorious herbal sleeping pill last night, woke up at 10.30 this morning, and we went for brunch at the Harvester.
In an attempt not to be boring, and not to have the same thing as usual, I chose some lamb...thing. All the while, I was counting up the calories - 350 for the meat, about 110 for the potatoes, roughly 110 for a dry bread roll, 150 for a simple soup, 150 for a smoothie and so on. Worked out that the meal in total would suck up about a thousand calories of whatever my daily allotment should be. Don't actually know what that allotment is, which makes the whole thing moderately meaningless, but I generally aim for 1600 calories or less...
Ah! Just done a little quick research. Average healthy calorific intake for a man is 2500. To lose a pound a week, they say you should reduce calorific intake by 500 calories a day - so presumably for a two pound loss, you should reduce by 1000 calories, which means my half-arsed pseudo maths is frankly not bad...
Anyhow, lunch would have sucked about a thousand calories out of my day...which would have been OK, if it had been good, but it wasn't. Somehow, that annoyed me - like I say, spending the calories is fine, so long as the experience is good, but when you've spent the calories and the experience was bad, you feel short-changed, in exactly the same way as you do if you spend cash on something that turns out to be disappointing.
Came home, moved the office around as I'd intended, and then took to the bike for an hour and ten. Managed to claw back 600 calories, pedalling as though I was apologising to the calorie-gods for the travesty that had been lunch. 600 is not, all in all, as many as I wanted to pedal, but will have to do on a Sunday night, ahead of an UberCommute.
Then d served dinner.
Phenomenal stuff, this dinner. Simple ingredients, treated with stunning respect to make something far more impresive than the sum of its parts. Brined pork, flavoured with cloves, black pepper and a pinch of chilli. Cooked apples. Brussels sprouts. And mashed potato, with sweet onions and an egg mixed in to lighten it.
Can't tell you how good that was - even I, Mr Wordsmith, can't do it justice in something as clunky as words. My wife has some serious skill. And eating it, I didn't count calories, didn't care what it cost. Whatever it cost, it was beautiful.
I'm still hoping for a positive result on Tuesday, but dinner tonight was a reality check - every now and then, you have to get in touch with what makes the experience of being alive different from the experience of just surviving from day to day. Top Tip for the day - Be married to a culinary genius, it really helps you reconnect.
In an attempt not to be boring, and not to have the same thing as usual, I chose some lamb...thing. All the while, I was counting up the calories - 350 for the meat, about 110 for the potatoes, roughly 110 for a dry bread roll, 150 for a simple soup, 150 for a smoothie and so on. Worked out that the meal in total would suck up about a thousand calories of whatever my daily allotment should be. Don't actually know what that allotment is, which makes the whole thing moderately meaningless, but I generally aim for 1600 calories or less...
Ah! Just done a little quick research. Average healthy calorific intake for a man is 2500. To lose a pound a week, they say you should reduce calorific intake by 500 calories a day - so presumably for a two pound loss, you should reduce by 1000 calories, which means my half-arsed pseudo maths is frankly not bad...
Anyhow, lunch would have sucked about a thousand calories out of my day...which would have been OK, if it had been good, but it wasn't. Somehow, that annoyed me - like I say, spending the calories is fine, so long as the experience is good, but when you've spent the calories and the experience was bad, you feel short-changed, in exactly the same way as you do if you spend cash on something that turns out to be disappointing.
Came home, moved the office around as I'd intended, and then took to the bike for an hour and ten. Managed to claw back 600 calories, pedalling as though I was apologising to the calorie-gods for the travesty that had been lunch. 600 is not, all in all, as many as I wanted to pedal, but will have to do on a Sunday night, ahead of an UberCommute.
Then d served dinner.
Phenomenal stuff, this dinner. Simple ingredients, treated with stunning respect to make something far more impresive than the sum of its parts. Brined pork, flavoured with cloves, black pepper and a pinch of chilli. Cooked apples. Brussels sprouts. And mashed potato, with sweet onions and an egg mixed in to lighten it.
Can't tell you how good that was - even I, Mr Wordsmith, can't do it justice in something as clunky as words. My wife has some serious skill. And eating it, I didn't count calories, didn't care what it cost. Whatever it cost, it was beautiful.
I'm still hoping for a positive result on Tuesday, but dinner tonight was a reality check - every now and then, you have to get in touch with what makes the experience of being alive different from the experience of just surviving from day to day. Top Tip for the day - Be married to a culinary genius, it really helps you reconnect.
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Going Commando In The Snow
"Your moobs have shrunk again dear," d observed, raising her knees almost resentfully.
"That's nice dear," I panted. "Waah!" I added, swaying a little sideways.
"Focus baby," said d, going a little red in the face and breathing out hard.
"Sorry, yeah," I said, concentrating on my moves.
"Annnnd pull yourselves to the shallow end!" called Ricky, the aquacise instructor. He's a cheerful soul, is Ricky. I frequently want to slap him. I most frequently want to slap him on Saturday morning, when aquacise takes place before anyone sensible is awake.
This morning, Ricky punished us with cold water, loud music and a cheerfulness only marginally dented by the fact that he'd drunk wine the night before. We swam, and star jumped, and beggared about getting exhausted and stretchy.
It started snowing while we were jazz-handsing.
"Brr," said d and I simultaneously as we got out into the cold again and buggered off home as quickly as we could.
When we got in, I gave in to the whispering voices and did an unofficial weigh-in. That was fun. Unofficial fun goddammit, but fun nevertheless. Then I went back out for gym tasting. With Ricky The Git.
Ahem...
Now, there's a little bit of magicianry you need to understand here. To go back to the gym, I wore my gym shorts in place of underwear, and covered them with sweatpants. To do the actual gym work, I got rid of the sweatpants, and then to come home, I got out of the then-sweaty shorts, and went commando in the sweatpants.
Did I mention the snow? To make sure I didn't end up with soggy pant-bottoms, I tucked the sweats into my socks. That meant I was then walking through the snow, commando, in sweatpants that were pulling away from their useful position with every step.
"Please, gods I don't believe in, don't fuck me over today," I muttered, yanking up the pants against the demands of gravity.
Oh yeah, did I mention the snow? d had asked me to pick up some milk when I came out of the gym, so I was headed for the store before home. Except....it had snowed. Which meant half the Valley was in the store before me, panic-buying like consumerism and groceries were going out of fashion. I met d at the store, and we ended up with two big heavy bagfuls of assorted stuff. Now of course, it's in the Gentleman's Code (and also, as it happens, in the Douchebag Who Wants To Get Laid's Code) that when there are big heavy bags of groceries to be caried, the technical penis-owner is the one who gets to carry them. So now I was waddling, Chaplin-like, with a bag in each hand, trying, essentially to hula my trousers with every step so the action of each step didn't yank them over my newishly revealed hips.
"What...the...Hell?" said d, watching me.
I explained.
"Oh for God's..." she chuckled. "C'mere..."
And there, in a Merthyr arcade, she yanked up my sweater, undid the knot holding my trousers together, and re-did me.
"How you doin'?" I tried.
"Focus, dear...Fuck me," muttered d.
"Alrighty," I agreed. "Here and now?"
"Not on a bet, dear," said d. "I meant Fuck me, it's cold..."
"Mmm," I said, not quite ready to let go of the idea. "They say things work better when they're cold..."
"You maybe," said d, knotting the string in my pants extra tight as if to permanently seal the deal. "Me...notsomuch! Besides, I have one word for you..."
"Yeah?"
"Shrinkage."
"Point taken," I said, picking up the bags again.
Didn't rearrange the office as I'd planned today - we learned fairly early that our now-usual Sunday car boot sale had been all sorts of cancelled tomorrow, probably for fear of freezing people to death in the unheated chapel hall that is the venue. So we have all of tomorrow to do stuff to the apartment, and no gym appointments to attend.
Of course, all of this nonsense was on the backdrop of Merthyr Snow. Normally, on the 4th of February, we're busy dealing with Western New York Snow. Proper, ass-kicking, seriously-you-people-need-to-take-the-hint-that-weather-hates-you Snow. Because, every previous year, tomorrow, February 5th, we've tried to be over there for the celebration of d's mom's birthday. I'm not at all sure how we'll mark the occasion tomorrow. Guess we'll just take the day as it comes. I'd be lying if I said I missed the Healthcare Centre where she lived for the last handful of her years, but Lori and Dom, American food stores, American diners....goddamnsonofabitch pizza subs...Ahhh...I have a relatively new overdraft facility...hmmm...
"That's nice dear," I panted. "Waah!" I added, swaying a little sideways.
"Focus baby," said d, going a little red in the face and breathing out hard.
"Sorry, yeah," I said, concentrating on my moves.
"Annnnd pull yourselves to the shallow end!" called Ricky, the aquacise instructor. He's a cheerful soul, is Ricky. I frequently want to slap him. I most frequently want to slap him on Saturday morning, when aquacise takes place before anyone sensible is awake.
This morning, Ricky punished us with cold water, loud music and a cheerfulness only marginally dented by the fact that he'd drunk wine the night before. We swam, and star jumped, and beggared about getting exhausted and stretchy.
It started snowing while we were jazz-handsing.
"Brr," said d and I simultaneously as we got out into the cold again and buggered off home as quickly as we could.
When we got in, I gave in to the whispering voices and did an unofficial weigh-in. That was fun. Unofficial fun goddammit, but fun nevertheless. Then I went back out for gym tasting. With Ricky The Git.
Ahem...
Now, there's a little bit of magicianry you need to understand here. To go back to the gym, I wore my gym shorts in place of underwear, and covered them with sweatpants. To do the actual gym work, I got rid of the sweatpants, and then to come home, I got out of the then-sweaty shorts, and went commando in the sweatpants.
Did I mention the snow? To make sure I didn't end up with soggy pant-bottoms, I tucked the sweats into my socks. That meant I was then walking through the snow, commando, in sweatpants that were pulling away from their useful position with every step.
"Please, gods I don't believe in, don't fuck me over today," I muttered, yanking up the pants against the demands of gravity.
Oh yeah, did I mention the snow? d had asked me to pick up some milk when I came out of the gym, so I was headed for the store before home. Except....it had snowed. Which meant half the Valley was in the store before me, panic-buying like consumerism and groceries were going out of fashion. I met d at the store, and we ended up with two big heavy bagfuls of assorted stuff. Now of course, it's in the Gentleman's Code (and also, as it happens, in the Douchebag Who Wants To Get Laid's Code) that when there are big heavy bags of groceries to be caried, the technical penis-owner is the one who gets to carry them. So now I was waddling, Chaplin-like, with a bag in each hand, trying, essentially to hula my trousers with every step so the action of each step didn't yank them over my newishly revealed hips.
"What...the...Hell?" said d, watching me.
I explained.
"Oh for God's..." she chuckled. "C'mere..."
And there, in a Merthyr arcade, she yanked up my sweater, undid the knot holding my trousers together, and re-did me.
"How you doin'?" I tried.
"Focus, dear...Fuck me," muttered d.
"Alrighty," I agreed. "Here and now?"
"Not on a bet, dear," said d. "I meant Fuck me, it's cold..."
"Mmm," I said, not quite ready to let go of the idea. "They say things work better when they're cold..."
"You maybe," said d, knotting the string in my pants extra tight as if to permanently seal the deal. "Me...notsomuch! Besides, I have one word for you..."
"Yeah?"
"Shrinkage."
"Point taken," I said, picking up the bags again.
Didn't rearrange the office as I'd planned today - we learned fairly early that our now-usual Sunday car boot sale had been all sorts of cancelled tomorrow, probably for fear of freezing people to death in the unheated chapel hall that is the venue. So we have all of tomorrow to do stuff to the apartment, and no gym appointments to attend.
Of course, all of this nonsense was on the backdrop of Merthyr Snow. Normally, on the 4th of February, we're busy dealing with Western New York Snow. Proper, ass-kicking, seriously-you-people-need-to-take-the-hint-that-weather-hates-you Snow. Because, every previous year, tomorrow, February 5th, we've tried to be over there for the celebration of d's mom's birthday. I'm not at all sure how we'll mark the occasion tomorrow. Guess we'll just take the day as it comes. I'd be lying if I said I missed the Healthcare Centre where she lived for the last handful of her years, but Lori and Dom, American food stores, American diners....goddamnsonofabitch pizza subs...Ahhh...I have a relatively new overdraft facility...hmmm...
Friday, 3 February 2012
Cupboard Living
Blood was 5.4 this morning. d was out for the morning, so no zumba. Mainly, I've been office-bound all day (deadline week for my mag). My office is white, and smallish, and rectangular, and packed with, frankly, my stuff. And I've been pretty much in there all day, working on the mag, pondering moving furniture around this weekend, and eventually, almost resentfully, biking half an ass off. Am also, as it happens, trying not to go mental. Been bouncing round in my head thinking about weighing every day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes more. Been bouncing round in my head thinking that I should be lighter by now, bitching about plateaus and why I'm not making progress and yadda yadda pity-me freakin yadda. So, probably, locking myself in a small white rectangular room wasn't the smartest thing to do.
Keeping busy though has pretty much kept the whining self-pitying, self-revolving bullshit at bay. So yay for a day of living in a really cool cupboard.
Tomorrow - back to the pool for aquacising, back to the gym for tasting, back to my cute little white cupboard to rearrange the shit out of it, and get me some systems in place for going forward.
Going away to watch some stuff now, to block the whispers in my brain.
Keeping busy though has pretty much kept the whining self-pitying, self-revolving bullshit at bay. So yay for a day of living in a really cool cupboard.
Tomorrow - back to the pool for aquacising, back to the gym for tasting, back to my cute little white cupboard to rearrange the shit out of it, and get me some systems in place for going forward.
Going away to watch some stuff now, to block the whispers in my brain.
Thursday, 2 February 2012
The Ferret Dance and The Greasy Path To Hell
Blood was 4.2 this morning...whatever that means any more.
Went aquacising again with d last night. A generally mixed-gender class of middle-aged-to-older fucks now know I have absolutely no sense of natural rhythm whatsoever, and gaze piteously at d whenever they stop water-punching and star-jumping and jazz-handsing, vaguely envisaging (or so I pananoically imagine) what our love life must be like, and mentally noting that she could do so much better.
It's an odd thing, but my demented sense of syncopation has, so far in all the world, found its best, most acceptable expression through the art of Zumba - to which I'm not going tomorrow, as d has an appointment elsewhere, and I'll be stone dead and fucked before I Zumbalone! Somehow, in the insane, sweaty, shouty Latin fug, my normal 'fat man having a spasm while trying to disengage ferrets from his fingers' dancing style makes a certain kind of moderately uninhibited sense. At all other times and in all other places...no! This is a fat fuck who doesn't dance - not because he doesn't want to, or is particularly self-conscious of looking like a dick...well, actually, let me re-phrase that...absolutely because he's not particularly self-conscious of looking like a dick. The general public feel a concerted need to be protected from my particular styler of fat fuck dancing.
But when there are moves, actual instructions of what goes where and when, I freeze. Most especially if there's more than one instruction at a time. So - standing in Aquacise, being told to put one leg forward and the opposite arm...and then hop and switch, then hop and switch, and so on...fried my brain. When the instructor added disco twists into the thing, I felt myself sinking relentlessly beneath the cool, cool water.
No pool today, because, really rather irritatingly, I lost my goggles on the way out of the pool. Think I left them in a locker, and when I went back to look for them, some other git had used the locker, locked it and gone in. Humph. d patiently reminds me that we have more than one set of goggles, but that's not really the point. They were my favourite goggles...(reverts to a pouting six-year-old, at least for the length of one day).
Did uber-cycle today though, to make up for not going anywhere near the pool. Then d came home and we went out to a local cafe for a spot of lunch. Nothing fancy - toasties and a bowl of sautee potatoes. Now, weirdly, these have never particularly registered with me as 'fried food', and so haven't been the subject of my perspex walls of dietary banishment. Then, today, d asked the waitress for some more information on them (no, really - more information on sauteed potatoes - did I mention my girl's a Foodie?!), and the waitress said "Oh, well...erm...they're just flat chips really..." (Rolls eyes - can't get proper culinary pretension in this town for love nor money...). Thing is, I still shared them. Felt guilty most of the afternoon of course, and am now awaiting the rumbling retribution of a trip to Xenical Hell, but I'm sort of working on the principle (really? A principle? You're not just making this shit up as you go along and justifying your own actions? Hmm...) that freaking out about every little thing puts the body in stress and doesn't let it lose anything anyway. Am going back on the bike a bit later, if I get a chance and can maintain the desire, but either way, the uberbiking session this morning should pretty much have made lunch calorifically null and void...I'm thinking...so...in a word...nehh!
Back to the novel tonight - Work-Life Balance and all that, ya know?
Went aquacising again with d last night. A generally mixed-gender class of middle-aged-to-older fucks now know I have absolutely no sense of natural rhythm whatsoever, and gaze piteously at d whenever they stop water-punching and star-jumping and jazz-handsing, vaguely envisaging (or so I pananoically imagine) what our love life must be like, and mentally noting that she could do so much better.
It's an odd thing, but my demented sense of syncopation has, so far in all the world, found its best, most acceptable expression through the art of Zumba - to which I'm not going tomorrow, as d has an appointment elsewhere, and I'll be stone dead and fucked before I Zumbalone! Somehow, in the insane, sweaty, shouty Latin fug, my normal 'fat man having a spasm while trying to disengage ferrets from his fingers' dancing style makes a certain kind of moderately uninhibited sense. At all other times and in all other places...no! This is a fat fuck who doesn't dance - not because he doesn't want to, or is particularly self-conscious of looking like a dick...well, actually, let me re-phrase that...absolutely because he's not particularly self-conscious of looking like a dick. The general public feel a concerted need to be protected from my particular styler of fat fuck dancing.
But when there are moves, actual instructions of what goes where and when, I freeze. Most especially if there's more than one instruction at a time. So - standing in Aquacise, being told to put one leg forward and the opposite arm...and then hop and switch, then hop and switch, and so on...fried my brain. When the instructor added disco twists into the thing, I felt myself sinking relentlessly beneath the cool, cool water.
No pool today, because, really rather irritatingly, I lost my goggles on the way out of the pool. Think I left them in a locker, and when I went back to look for them, some other git had used the locker, locked it and gone in. Humph. d patiently reminds me that we have more than one set of goggles, but that's not really the point. They were my favourite goggles...(reverts to a pouting six-year-old, at least for the length of one day).
Did uber-cycle today though, to make up for not going anywhere near the pool. Then d came home and we went out to a local cafe for a spot of lunch. Nothing fancy - toasties and a bowl of sautee potatoes. Now, weirdly, these have never particularly registered with me as 'fried food', and so haven't been the subject of my perspex walls of dietary banishment. Then, today, d asked the waitress for some more information on them (no, really - more information on sauteed potatoes - did I mention my girl's a Foodie?!), and the waitress said "Oh, well...erm...they're just flat chips really..." (Rolls eyes - can't get proper culinary pretension in this town for love nor money...). Thing is, I still shared them. Felt guilty most of the afternoon of course, and am now awaiting the rumbling retribution of a trip to Xenical Hell, but I'm sort of working on the principle (really? A principle? You're not just making this shit up as you go along and justifying your own actions? Hmm...) that freaking out about every little thing puts the body in stress and doesn't let it lose anything anyway. Am going back on the bike a bit later, if I get a chance and can maintain the desire, but either way, the uberbiking session this morning should pretty much have made lunch calorifically null and void...I'm thinking...so...in a word...nehh!
Back to the novel tonight - Work-Life Balance and all that, ya know?
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