Work-Work-Work-Work-Fun-Disappearing-Life Balance

Blood was 6.1 this morning. Took a walk down the Taff Trail before work, and, as it happened, spotted my pal Lee pottering around his back garden, and had a quick chat. He invited me for coffee on my way back up.

Which is the interesting thing about geographic incompetence, in a way. He and I share an inability to navigate, though arguably, he's better at it than I am. On the way back up the Trail - the Trail that I've walked up and down many many times since we got back here - he wasn't in his garden, annnnd I missed his house. Missed it completely, and wouldn't be able to categorically point it out to you again, were we to take a trip down the Trail right now.

Meant to do some biking at lunchtime, but, since Lee had the day off, he called and invited me for coffee and lunch. Went, oddly enough, to the Busy Bee Cafe and Fish Bar - the place d and I went for my first fish and chips in two years. Lee and his sister were both already there, and they had the fish and chips which is so good there. I went for a simple jacket potato with butter and ground teeth. It's the thing I've said many times - this thing is like being an alcoholic: you have to be able to sit with people drinking, and not rip their head off out of pure elemental jealousy.

Meant to do some biking this afternoon, but my publisher popped up having not been around for days, so I had to crack on and send him some stuff, cos I'm on a tight deadline there.

Meant to do some biking this evening, but kept working and finishing some work.

Could go do some biking right now, but have missed d all day and wanna spend some time actually with her, so am simply gonna do that. Tomorrow, there's spinning before I'm wise, and blood donation at lunchtime (my first time, so that'll be interesting). Today's been all about getting the balance right, or rather....not getting the balance right. Gonna have to work on that going forward - making more moments count, get more done in the (and let's make no bones about this!) swaaaaaathes of time at my disposal, to be more effective at work, work, work, work, fun, life and Disappearing.

An Honorary Tuesday

"You've got thin legs..."

It's an observation I've heard before, but usually only from d, because let's face facts here, she's probably the only person I'm generally comfortable showing my bike-honed pins to on a regular basis.

This time the observation came from Phil, my friend who's been over from New Zealand for a couple of weeks. We grabbed a final lunchtime coffee together before he bogged off back to the other side of the world where clearly, given the evidence of his happiness, he belongs.

Not that Phil's in the habit of looking at guys' legs - as d would say, he's just Welsh. But this week has been unashamedly shorts weather, so I've been unashamedly wearing them.
"Yeah," I agreed. "That's cos you can exercise your legs pretty much sitting down. It was my exercise of choice in the early days of this Disappearing lark."
He sniffed.
"Worked," he acknowledged.

And so it did. I now have a look less like the classic Sontaran (a sci-fi race essentially like a short, bald Mr Potato-head in a suit of neckless armour), and more like a frog in dissection class - all spindly legs and bulbous body. And come Friday morning and my next spin class, I'll probably also have the bulging eyes, too.

This week of gorgeous but slightly ridiculous warm weather though has also had a lethargic effect on me - I did no walking today. I did no biking today. No gymming, no swimming, no spinning, no nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilcho!

If my body is a temple, then today there have been polite but forceful signs put up all over it saying "Do Not Disturb!"

I've been busy - don't get me wrong - but busy doing a range of things that can be done from a comfy sofa. When I explained this to d, with a tinge of guilt, she grinned.
"Let it go, Disappearoboy. You can have a day off to have a Real Life..."
I guess, technically, she's right. Normally, I have Tuesday 'off' from exercise, as it's a) the day after Monday with its ubercommute and b) the furthest I can get from a weigh-in! but this week, I spun and swam on Tuesday, so maybe I should declare today an Honorary Tuesday and have done with it.

Yes. I declare this Honorary Tuesday...open.

Annnnd now I declare it over with. Bedtime beckons. Tomorrow, there must be exercise.

Part 2

"Oh. Them..." said Ruth as I sweated almost over her, wishing her dead before I was. She was looking at the new 'biking' shoes we bought last weekend, as though a dog had dropped them unceremoniously under her nose.
"The..." I said, the shadow of an 'M' taking too much air to actually make it out of my lungs.
She sniffed.
"You'd have to turn the pedals over. Not all the bikes here can do that..."
"OKIdon'care..." I gasped, spinning through a fine red mist and the screams of muscles I have known not at all.
"Were the straps broke last time or summin'?"
I shook my head, gathering oxygen.
"Nnno..." I told her. "'mjustanumpty....didn't put...my feet...in properly..."
"Oh. Well there you are then. Take 'em back, I would, get your money back..." she said, losing interest and turning away.
She turned back, yanked up the resistance on the razorbike and danced out to the middle of our semi-circle again.

Later, when I could see again, I went from spinning to swimming. My legs enjoyed that. Oddly enough, my arms resisted the very idea of moving. Ever again. Don't know what to tell you.

Crawled home and weighed. As with last week, there are two weighs (see what I did there?) of looking at the results.

15 stone 10 pounds.

Which either means I put on two pounds in the space of a week which included a round the world buffet, incredible quantities of dessert and a bit of an explosive foodfest late yesterday...or, for those of you with a sunnier disposition, I've got a four pound head-start on the second half of this Disappearance, given that I expected to be AT LEAST 16 stone this morning...what with all the round the world buffet, incredible quantities of dessert and the explosive foodfest late last night and all...

So giddy-up, pals, we're on the Disappearing Trail...Part 2. And this time, it's personal...

Written On The Brain

There are people I just shouldn’t read. Jeanette Winterson, whose “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal” I’m close to finishing, is probably one. Winterson has a gift for navel-gazing that borders (if not actually crossing that border) on the pathological, and while I couldn’t do a vocal impression to save my life, I am something of a sponge for style – when I read, or even in some instances, watch, something that digs in deep to me, I tend to mimic it for at least a little while, till the mundanity of Stuff To Do or proper conversations brings me round. So reading Winterson, who appears to take her own existence with a degree of seriousness that normally baffles me, is probably not good for me – as though her self-regard is catching, like cooties or coldsores.

I was thinking about this, stuck on Cardiff Central train station after delays outside of Reading had made me miss my connection. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, under the surface – one of the most amazing human beings I’ve ever known was known, to me at least, as Emmie (though in her native Austria, her name was Hermina. She was a spiritualist, for whatever you find that worth, and, perhaps weirdly given the fact that she was in her late 60s and I was just a teenager when I knew her, she was the first person to let me have her manuscript to edit. I did it shamefully wrong, bringing my own style and essentially scrawling all over her work, unable to swallow my own pride down, and certain I could do a better job of her book than she could. It’s a lesson in humility I think I’ve learned by now, but it still shamed me when she told me she wouldn’t be using my version. Actually, it was my own rage that shamed me. “Go ahead, then!” I thought, silently, about this calm, amazing, insightful woman. “Go ahead, use your version. Bet you it’ll fail!”

I don’t know if it did or not; she didn’t live long after that and her daughter ended up with both versions of the manuscript.  While I burned in youthful, arrogant rejection though, Emmie continued in her beatific, pain-wracked, tender care.

“You’ll go far,” she once told me. “You’ll get there...but only if you raise your voice. No-one can hear you if you mutter...”

It’s the best advice I’ve ever known to be true and conspicuously not taken, and it’s been biting me in the ass recently. There’s the potential, round about now, for a turning point in my life. I could very easily grow old and bitter, my written work souring into piss and vinegar at those who I increasingly consider to be mediocre, but who finish their work, and promote it, and get the lives they want, and make connections with the people they admire on an equal footing, while I (and please excuse the Wintersonian self-regard here) while believing I can do better, go nowhere for the want of taking myself seriously, and sink beneath a weight of normality, and, perhaps, an abnormality of weight.

Which is why reading Winterson right now is probably not a good idea. Every time I read her stories of escape, of flight, of love and what she calls a lost loss, I find myself raging to write rebuttals. Of escape-routes crushed, of love burned bitter and away, of loss unreconciled by lifetime or by fiction, and of life lived daily dimmer to the grave. The one thing I’ll say about reading Winterson is that she makes me want to write – even if what she makes me want to write sounds like the ramblings of a bitter drunk, bloated on loathing of the species, and its secrets and its silences that kill.

Before this comes off sounding like an anti-Winterson campaign, it’s entirely impersonal – other writers have reached in and punched me in the lungs before, or twisted fingers into my brain and not let go. Shakespeare’s Othello, read as a fat and unpopular teen, gave me a model. Richard III, read around the same time, put it into words – “I that am rudely cast and want love’s majesty to strut before a wanton, ambling nymph...this world afford no joy to me but to command, to check, to overbear such as are of better person than myself...” It was by following this model that I began to meddle in the lives of others, and, perhaps inexplicably except to Shakspeare himself, made friendships that have lasted 25 years by virtue of throwing others under buses of various kinds.

This is the point – as a human being, I’ve been thoroughly influenced I’ve changed my world several times, based on this kind of effect. My friend Phil, over now from New Zealand, would never understand that part of the reason why, about seven years ago, I turned into what we both now agree was ‘an arse’ was because I read some Irvine Welsh, identified us with some characters, and decided to break the pattern Welsh had set for ‘us’.

A previous relationship  was doomed for all sorts of reasons, but along with the suicide of a close friend, its break-up was also – and this, surely, must be scary for anyone who values their relationship with me, at whatever level – somewhat fuelled by a handful of songs that reached in and showed me myself. Thank you Nickelback, Elton John, U2 (ick!) and Kate “Who the fuck knew she could sing?” Winslet for making some things clear that needed clearing.

Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth, read entirely too early as a child in single-digits, and then again throughout the course of life, has informed my notions of lust, of family, of identity, ambition and the gulf between the public and the private realities we show.

The Bride Stripped Bare, by Nikki Gemmell, punched me in the heart with a paranoia from which, almost ten years on, I have yet I think to recover. Of course, that wasn’t helped by having so many women friends prepared to tell me a disinterested truth, and confirm its excoriating likelihoods. Some people are scared to open particularly gruesome horror novels. I have always had to own  that book since reading it, but have never had the courage yet to re-read it. Once was enough.

The same is true in theatrical terms for The Woman in Black. Opening up a bottomless pit of will, of what the human being might yet be capable of – and, incidentally, scaring the bejeesus out of me – was a potent thing to do to an unwary Welshman. I’ve now seen Phantom of the Opera several times, and yes, it’s popular entertainment, but the issues it raises – contagion of the body vs contagion of the brain, the mirror darkly peered through with the hero and the villain each reflected in each other, and how the choice of the heroine flits from the daytime and its wholesomeness to the passion and the music of the night...ach.

d tends to let me churn a little while whenever we see the show, knowing that I’ll come back to her, but not until I’ve pushed my Phantom out...

All of which I simply felt like sharing tonight. There are other books I’ve read, other things I’ve seen, that have had impacts on me – Hitch-Hiker’s Guide...Russell T Davies’ Second Coming, Aristotle’s bloody Ethics, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds...but those I’ve named above are twisting into me tonight, and making something positive out of what feels like quite a dark syringeful of influences. What I’m getting at is that I am striving not to let my spongy brain take in the self-regard of Winterson and make it fling me off in some mad new direction. I’m striving (perhaps ironically) towards an idea she identifies – to live with life, rather than in the excesses of control or snapped elastic. And tonight, I seem to be winning. All those influences, that dark, deep, bloody little syringe of impacts, are feeding in, but far from twisting me tonight, they’re energising me, in a gritty, let’s-get-it-done kind of way. Tomorrow, as I’ve said, we begin again in earnest – most likely from the half-way point of four and a half stone. It’s not time to mourn the stone I’ve probably put back on. It’s time to grit the teeth, do the work, produce the results and push on forward. It’s time to finish this damned thing, the right way, the only way I will or can, by pushing forward to the end.

Back on the spin bike in seven hours from now. But this time I’m going prepared. This time I’m ready. And this time, it’s not a drop in an ocean of vague intent. This time, we go on!

Living La Vida Lycra

"It's a...a thingummy..."
"A what, dear?" asked d.
"A...a...y'know, like a corset..."
"Nnnnno dear. I think you mean a girdle."
"I do! Yes...a girdle. I'm wearing a girdle!"

Ahem... There are very, very good reasons why fat men should never, under any circumstances, wear Lycra. Lycra is not a flattering invention. It's pretty much the clothing equivalent of a plastic bag, into which, if you happen to be a fat fuck and penis-owner, you ladle the pallid overcooked custard of your flab should you decide to succumb to gym convention and wear sports clothing. I'm faaaairly certain I've taken more than one oath during the course of my life, to the effect that I would never be seen, alive, dead, or in any appreciable state of zombification, in Lycra by another human being. And Tuesday will see those oaths broken, rendered ineffectual by the simple desire to be able to sit down painlessly after less than three days following a spin class. We got a pair of proper Lycra cycling shorts on Saturday, with what amounts to a foamy diaper inserted for the protection of the cycler's ass. I look, as you might expect, inexpressibly hideous in them, with a muffin-top of blackened, bruised belly flesh drooping over their elasticated nastiness. I look like the bastard love child of Homer Simpson and Wolverine! I'm living la Vida Lycra, baby - let's get spinning!

Around the World in 80 Minutes

Blood continues high. 6.4 yesterday, 6.4 this morning.
Went to Cardiff today...partly to take the advice of Ruth the demented spinner and get some proper spin shoes, and partly...
Sigh...
Partly cos I can't forgive the Olympic Torch.
Four years ago, the Olympic Torch did us wrong, dammit, and I don't know what to tell you...I'm still bitter about it, I guess. We did the "it'll be a once-in-lifetime thing" thing, went out on the streets of Stratford, wave our little flags and waited. And the Torch was diverted due to protests against China, the host nation. Then the day after the London Olympics was announced, people bombed the bejesus out of us. The Olympics brought us extra congestion, higher prices, more roadworks than the mind can comfortably conceive, and bastards by the million. So frankly, the Olympics can kiss my hairy fat ass. And then came the notice that, for reasons beyond my immediate comprehension, the Olympic Torch was coming through our town today.
"Sod that," I said, "let's get out of town..."
"Yeah," said d. "If the Torch wants to see us, it can come up to the balcony and knock on our door...right?"
So we went to Cardiff early. Too early for breakfast, as it happened. So by the time we paused for breath, it was nearly lunchtime. We decided to go buffet, at a place we hadn't been before. A ten-pound buffet from around the world...which meant platefuls of roast potatoes, chicken Korea, risotto and quesadillas.
I should say that before we left the house, I made the mistake of weighing, and discovered that, as last week, I was closer to 16 stone than anything else. So, faced with a round the world buffet including desserts, it would be fair to say I dived, Olympic swan style, off the cliff of rationality and hope, almost striving towards 16 stone with all my might. I had more desserts today than at any point in the last two years...as if to add a degree of sense to what felt like an inevitable Tuesday result.
"At least now, when it says I'm 16 stone again, it'll make sense," I rationalised. "cos it didn't..."
Of course, what you need when you're in that kind of self-deluding mood is a partner who'll tell your ass the truth.
"Yeah, it did," said d. "Need to get back to the old diet, the strict one, cos clearly that was working..."
"And clearly...this isn't," I acknowledged.
So come Tuesday, the Bitchy Old Days are here again. Strict planning, strict Perspex walls, strict bloody everything. What that means is a renaissance, starting the Disappearing all over again, probably from a four-and-a half stone marker point...halfway, in fact. There's a certain mathematical appeal to that idea. Not a culinary appeal...or an emotional appeal, but certainly a mathematical appeal...

In A Spin

"You're doing a spin class?" asked Wendy after reading yesterday's blog. You could almost feel her blinking through the text.
"Erm...enjoy!" she added.

Wendy, I should explain, is one of the two fittest people I know. She's ex-Army, runs for fun, and recently showed me a 'guaranteed' sit-up to aid weightloss. She lay on the floor and basically folded herself up like a lever arch file in the middle. While she did this, smoothly and without apparent effort, she kept up a witty banter about wedding dresses.
Some weeks later, she asked me, in all apparent seriousness, how the sit-ups were going. I laughed, by email.
"Honestly honey, if I tried to do even a single one of those demented things, I'd just die. Plain, simple...die. Apart from anything else, I simply don't have the co-ordination..."

(This is sadly true - I've brough aquacise classes almost to a standstill by the sheer mental effort it takes me to change from left arm out, left foot behind to right arm out, right leg behind. To do it twice, I need vast amounts of love and encouragement, not to mention a cup of tea and a nice lie down. And yes, every woman in the class was probably thinking "Wow, if he's this unco-ordinated during exercise...")

So getting the "rather you than me" vibe from Wend was fairly daunting. To be sure, I checked with the other contender for the title "fittest person I know" - my pal Sian. Sian, for reasons largely to do with a perverse sense of what constitutes 'fun', runs marathons. And ultra-marathons. And, for all I know, super-duper triple-distilled, 100-year-old sipping marathons.

"Wow...really?" said Sian by text. "I'd rather run 50 miles than do one spin class..."

So - no pressure there then.

I rocked up to the leisure centre for 7 this morning, and walked into an almost empty sports hall. Down the far end was a smallish semi-circle of people on the most anorexic exercise bikes I've ever seen. I got one. Much to my dismay, everyone was already pedalling, before the instructress had instructed them. Smacked of over-eagerness to me, but I kept an open mind and started pedalling.
After a couple of minutes, I was getting cocky, thinking "Well, if this is spin, this is fiiiine. Dunno what everyone was worried about.

This wasn't spin.

Spin began with the introduction of another chacter in the Pantheon of Exercise Hell - Ruth.
"Right, you lot. I don't want a dry patch left on anyone!" she shouted, playing the Drill Sergeant. She started some music on her iPod, and we all began pedalling, while the seats of the razorbikes began their daily duty of cutting us all in half.
Then something insane happened.
Ruth gave a cry, and the rest of the maniacs stood up...and kept pedalling!
"Are you freakin' kidding me?" I said, unheard underneath the music and the fury of pedalling. There was nothing to do but stand and pedal.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!" I said about thirty seconds later, as some muscles I didn't know I had exploded into twanging, shredding, painful life.
"Annnnnnd....SPRINT!" yelled Ruth.
"WHHHHHHAAAAATTTT????!" I practically begged. I looked around. People were sitting back down for the sprinting bits. I thanked a god I don't believe in, sat my ass back on the razorblade and pedalled.
"And UP!" she yelled.
"OH FUCK!" I yelled right back, and got up...

This was Song 1!
And on it went. Song after song. I was in a filth-sweat by the end of song 1. By the end of song 3, I couldn't really see, the sweat was coming so fast. At some point in Song 3, we went from sprinting to standing, my knees were caught unawares, buckled slightly, found my ankles coming up at them too fast, and the razorbike actually threw me! My feet cmae out of the pedals, I spent a panicky second in the air, and then one of my flab-rolls was being forced down onto the handlebars, by the rest of me and the power of gravity.

Ever seen a cheese-grater in action? It was a bit like that, only with me playing the part of Cheddar.I fell off the bike and landed in a moderately sprawled, sweat-slippery heap, with one leg jutting up in a kind of Nazi salute.
"Back on the bike, Tony!" yelled Ruth. "Your trainers are too thick for this, get thinner ones for next time! Unless you wanna go and have a little sit-down!"
"Bitch", I muttered, clambering back on the evil seat, strapping in, and pedalling, just to show her.

After song 4, she made us stop for a drink. I downled almost a litre of water, and wiped the sweat out of my eyes.
"Nearly done!" she told us. "Just two more songs to go..."
"Kill me," I muttered. "Kill me now..." But by the time she said that, I knew I was going to finish the lesson. No pausing, no sitting out, no running out screaming for mercy in a cruel, cruel world. And, about ten minutes of unmitigated agony later, that's what I did. I finished.

And I'm gonna go back. Yes, it's evil. Yes it hurts like a sonofabitch. Yes, my ass stopped talking to me this morning and is still thoroughly pissed. And yes, living on the first floor absolutely sucks after a spin class, as though the last few steps you have to take will be the last few steps you ever take.
But it makes a certain amount of sado-masochistic sense. You work, you sweat, you curse the cruel world and you pedal your ass clean off. It's the kind of thing that both works, and feels like it works, and hurts just enough to make you feel all sorts of righteaous about what you've done.

So this is me - Spinderella of the Valleys. Going to Cardiff tomorrow to get some thinner trainers, cos there's pain and there's pain, and falling off the damn bike at speed is a pain in far more than the ass.

Also, meeting up tomorrow with a pal of mine from school days, who's now living in New Zealand. Philip pops up every handful of years, comes in, is Philip, usually leaves a trail of devastation in his wake, and bogs off back down to New Zealand. So that'll be fun - finding out how the 40-year-old Phil ticks.

But for now, there are fans to put together, cos in case anyone missed this...it's damned hot this week!

You Spin Me Right Round Baby, Right Round...

Blood was 6.6 this morning - still too high, but we'll see what happens this week.
Started taking advantage of our membership of the leisure centre today - went gymming before work this morning. Then, at lunch, with the sun being so bright, I went walking down the Taff Trail as well.

I'm still not convinced I won't try and get some biking in tonight too, but whether that half-formed idea solidifies into anything of purpose, we'll see.

What I did solidify into a purpose earlier though was my first class.
My first non-GP Referral class kicks off at the generally Godawful time of 07.15 tomorow morning.

I'm doing a spin class. I've heard what it entails, and I'm doing it anyway. Not entirely sure this speaks well of my sanity, btu what the hell, it's booked now (I can hear Karen Slinky laughing her ass off in the background, incidentally; she's been trying to get me to go to a spin class with her for months now - come on over, Kar, now the world is my exercising oyster!)

I may well not post an entry tomorrow. I may be dead. I only survived the Zumba by hiding at the back and doing very little of it (and that was easy lard-arse zumba for wusses). This full-fat, unpasteurised, burn your ass off spin class may be the final nail in my coffin, or may prove positively addicting to the stubborn bastard in what others would call my soul.

Let's have some fun!

An Ode To Agent Orange

Blood was high this morning - 6.9. Went walking at lunchtime, which was glorious in the sunshine.

Locked myself out when I did that of course. Was standing on the balcony, frustrated, when I got a text from Ma. "Apparently, the new doors are really tricky, so be careful..."

Yeah...thanks Ma...

Also had a text this morning from Karen Pulley.
"What's your email address? Want to send you something," she said. I waited with batied breath, and when it arrived, I laughed so hard that in days gone by, there would have been an orange accident.

You all know that this blog is basically All About Me. But Karen gave me permission to share this with you, and it's all her - though you also all know I can identify whole...well...assedly, with it. I give you "Oh Xenical How I've Missed You"...

Oh Xenical how I've missed you

Oh Xenical how I've missed that pale blue twinkle in your eye;
Your innocent appearance that we know is just a lie;
It's been a while, but let's get this clearly understood,
I know your game and am doing this only for my own good!

Oh Xenical how I've missed you and your messy orange goo,
Impossible to miss everytime I now go to the loo;
You do the job remarkably, for that i can be sure,
I just pray now for a toilet behind every single door!

Oh Xenical how I've missed you, unpredictable to the last,
I no longer trust the farts that echo from my arse;
Knowing that a follow through is likely every time,
I pity the poor bugger who is in the firing line!

Oh Xenical how I've missed the warning stomach cramps,
The racing to the toilet before things get mighty damp,
But credit, where credits due, you do your job quite adequately,
And stop the lardy fatty shit from flushing down the lavatory!

Oh Xenical how I've missed you - I'm serious, I have!
Had I taken you sooner, then things might not be so bad;
It's me and you now kiddo, you know it just makes sense,
You have to help me reach my goal before my time is spent.


For me, while there are laughs aplenty in this thing, that last verse is the killer. That's me. Hated taking the stuff, but miss the hard chemical truncheon-slap that would stop certain things even being an option in my life. Needed it when I began this journey, and possibly need it again even now, despite what my doctor says.

Oh, and on taking all the comments I've had on it, including from Christine, our Gym Instructress, I have decided against going the Atkins route. Which I guess means just pushing on with the hard-ass, rather than the lard-ass, approach to life.

Now, where's that frozen yoghurt...? Oh, right, the freezer - d'uh!

As One Door Closes...

Blood was 5.4 this morning, and the weigh-in wasn't so much a bell tolling as a triangle tinkling. The headline, really, depends on your outlook. The headline is either "Sonofabitch, put on 2.5 pounds!"...or it's "Yay, only put on 2.5 pounds!"

15 stone 8 this morning. So like I say, the headline is all in how you look at it. Me, right now, I'm looking at it in a sunny manner, so it can bite me. Wednesday tomorrow, with all its exercisey potential.

The big news today though is about our blue front door...

A little background. One of the movies d and I had in common before we met was Notting Hill. When we met, it had extra significane - bumbling Brit bloke gets together with classy American, aeons out of his league - although of course, I did point out that, apart from the fact he was skinny as a hairy rake, I had more in common with Spike, the 'masturbating Welshman' who was waiting at home for Hugh Grant's character. Still, she seemed to still want to know me, so, as I had to change flats, I found a place in Stratford with a blue front door - if you haven't seen the movie, a) are you serious? Stop reading this drivel, go and watch it now, and b) Hugh Grant waxes lyrical about his house in Notting Hill in the movie - the house with the blue front door.

And while Notting Hill was more a place to not go to recipe book shops, to eat in and spend pleasant nights in bookstores than to ever dream of affording to live in, we played out our own transatlantic love story behind our own blue front door.

Sinc emoving here, we've had a white door, punctured with windows. But for some reason or other, the company that manages the flats we're in has put out a decree, claiming that all the flats here need a new door. So today, they came and put one on for us - and because d got to choose, we are now the proud owners of another blue front door.

Thing is...it's a little complicated, as front doors go.
We went out for a stroll and dinner, managing to lock the door after us. Then, coming back, we walked up to our balcony following our next door neighbour.

We haven't particularly got on with this neighbour since our arrival, and there's no love lost between us. We reached the door, and d slid in her key. turned it, as the instructions had told us to do. Pulled down on the handle. Tried to the turn the key again - it wouldn't budge. She turned the key back, raised the handle, turned again. Nothing.
"Goddamnedsonofabitchin'bastard..." muttered d. It's kind of her trademark curse.
It was enough.
From seemingly nowhere, a sticky young urchin appeared, sucking on a lolly and with grubby, play-encrusted hands.
"Wossamarrer?" he demanded. "You locked out?" He stared at us with a frank, intense manner.
"Yes," we said, compelled by the silence, which this young Torquemada weilded like a club.
He shoved us aside, turned the key, jiggled the handle, turned the key again.
"You're completely locked out," he diagnosed - though without entirely revealing whether we'd always been in this predicament, or whether his certainty sprang from his knowledge of what he himself had just sticky-fingeredly done to us. There are gangs in the city that will clamp your car illegally until you pay them to remove the efforts of their own handiwork. I eyed him suspiciously.
"Ohhhhhhh!" he called over the balcony to an Urchin, Second-Class. "Come up and help these people!" he yelled, adding, with a certain deadly, uncompromising accuracy, "who've locked 'emselves out of their flat!!!"
Deputy Urchin came up, turned the key, jiggled the handle, wiped his extra sticky hand on the doorframe.
"'s'locked," he pronounced, revealing why he was just Deptury Urchin. Chief Urchin, meanwhile, was eyeing our kitchen window meaningfully. Since it'd been hot all day, we'd left it open. He sniffed.
"Could open it from inside," he judged. "He can fit through this gap," he said, pointing at his Deputy.
"Noooo," said d. "He really can't."
"Get the girl," said Deputy Urchin.
This was quite a production we we at the centre of by now. There was going to be The Girl.

There was a girl. She was the daughter of the neighbour next door. She breezed through, turned, twiddled, pulled, then dropped her arms.
"Oh," she said. "Usually works. I can open mine like that every time."
"Thanks for trying," we mumbled. Now our little stretch of balcony held me, d, Chief and Deputy Urchins, and The Girl.
"Call your mom," said d.
"What can she do?" I asked. "She hasn't got a key."
"No, I mean like 'We're coming up, might have to stay the night...'"
"Ah."
"Tha's an idea," said The Girl, disappearing into her flat. The Urchins frowned and buggered off. Clearly, we were losing our appeal as a spectacle.
The Woman came out - The neighbour we'd followed up the stairs.
"Locked, eh?" she asked, redundantly.
"New door," I mumbled.
"Bastards, ain't they?" she mumbled right back, taking the key in her hand like some sort of soothsaying harridan. She twiddled, turned, pushed, turned some more, shoved her shoulder up against the door...

And let us in. At that moment, my pocket erupted. I was getting a phone call. It's probably worth mentioning at this point that my ringtone is the Doctor Who theme from 1980. There were...erm...Looks.
"Thanks!" we said, stumbling into our place.
It's entirely possible that when I leave for the gym tomorrow morning (cos I can!), and d goes to work, that neither of us will be able to get back in under our own steam. So...Hell, I may have to live at the gym tomorrow. Cos clearly, as one door closes...well, that's about all that really happens.
 But for now, here we are, back behind our blue front door, like Notting Hillers.
"Oh," said d, when I mentioned this. "Yeah, that too."
I looked at her.
"What do you mean, that too?" I asked. "What...erm...else?"
"Oh, I chose it cos it was Tardis blue, baby. Tardis blue for you..."

Did I mention that me American was aeons out of my league?

Turns out we're as sentimental as each other, just occasionally in surprising directions. How can I be worried about a couple of extra pounds on a Tardis-blue day? Could you?

For Whom The Bell Tolls

Monday, Monday, Monday... Nice day all round - sunny weather, trip to London, boss out of the office, happy happy feedback from the first customer for my business. Am now sitting in a Starbucks, waiting for a train. Tomorrow's impending Tuesdayness weighs a little heavy on me (d'you think I could get away with that as an excuse tomorrow? "It's not me, it's the weight of the worry..." Nah, me neither). Still, the day has been more or less informed by the music of Australian comedian Tim Minchin, and in particular a song of his that tells the world "some people have it worse an me..." Sure, I could be 16 stone again and have it all to do...but hey, it's Summer, I'm more alive than ever before, and haven the love of a good woman. What's to bitch about? Sure, the bell of Tuesday tolls and I'll bew held accountablew, but you know what...? I rather liked the sound of bells, so bring 'em on!

I Scream...

For those who've asked, and for those who didn't ask, but were quietly wondering - no, last night was not another inebriated rant.

Last night was me blogging on an iPad.

Worked well enough in terms of typing, but suffered from what I've experienced time and again with Apple products - the damn thing is convinced it knows better than any paltry human, just cos it looks pretty - honestly, it's the supermodel of computers...

In every line, it would find at least a couple of words that it didn't like, and would change them without asking my permission. Also - I swear the damn thing had paragraphs in it when I wrote it. But when it appeared, it turned me into a ranting numpty.

Sigh - so, blogging on the iPad - only if you really, really have to.

In contrast, I've met a piece of equipment today with which I intend to have a deep, committed relationship for many years to come.

Given my recent adventures with ice cream (and the subsequent, though not entirely resultant weight gain), d made a suggestion a week or so ago that I should try frozen yoghurt.

Yoghurt, of course, we have. The key to frozen...ness was a churny, chilly oojamaflip called an ice-cream maker.

We did whatever the polar opposite of firing it up would be (chilling it down?) for the first time today - bananas and vanilla extract and sweetener and low fat yoghurt...gotta tall you, positively orgasmic. There's cherry and toasted almond goo hardening moderately in our freezer right now. It doesn't have a particularly promising future, cos I know where it sleeps.

We liiiiiiiiike frozen yoghurt. It's kinda most of the best things about ice-cream, while containing only some gorgeous percentage of the harm and the fat and the sugar and the actually best things about ice-cream. I'm gonna dream of demented flavour combinations all night long...duck a l'orange frozen yoghurt? Macadamia and black cherry frozen yoghurt? cheese and apople pie frozen yoghurt....mmmmmm....Then Tuesday, back to the leisure centre for a whole world of new pain.

Woo...erm...hoo?

Sweet Sixteen

Blood yesterday was 6.0, whereas this morning it was 5.8...and that concludes this edition of Vampire's News... Woke up this morning with the distinct bodily determination not to move again...pretty much ever. d on the other hand. Got up, pootled about and generally got her shit together. When I finally stumbled out of my pit, scratching myself and farting, I observed her togetherness with envy and not a little bitterness. "'m comings withya..." I mumbled, meaning to accompany her to early morning Aquacise. "Yes dear," she said, "Of course dear...it's ten to eight dear, see you later. "Mmmph," I agreed. When I'd cleared the fluff out of my earholes, I decided to feel good about myself, against the odds of the day. Decided that, on such a positive-feeling day, even the Nazi Scales would be nice to me. They weren't. I mean they really weren't. I decided to not feel good about myself after all, but to rail and rage against the unfairness of a skinny universe and the tribulations of the Disappearing Community. Funnily enough, that changed absolutely bloody nothing. I emerged into the world for 9AM, and grunted my way over to the leisure centre. Christine, our instruct rests, saw me waiting, and called me in for my 16 week appraisal on the GP Referral Scheme. When d dutifully emerged from the changing rooms after Aquacising her ass off, she came and joined us. Turns out that in the space of the last 16 weeks, I've lost a net smidgen. This is little more than an ogrefart of actual weight in four long months of whining and bitching and working and sweating and gymming and swimming and whining oh my. d too has lost a smidgen over the last four months. As I bitched about yesterday to the point of inducing nausea and vomiting in what I somewhat pathetically think of as 'my public', the interpretation of this is all in the perspective of the thing. Yes, technically, it's a smidgen lost while on the scheme. But on the other, altogether heavier hand, I've actually lost so much more than a smidgen during this time...it's just that I've put so much of it back on over the last few weeks! Also of course, this was dreadful confirmation that the Nazi Scales don't have it in for me...I really have put on half a shed load of weight over these weeks. But, on the upside, we have now both graduated from the scheme, which means we can both use all the facilities of the leisure centre, any time day or night, for one simple, small monthly fee. Given the palaver in the States over socialised healthcare, I imagine this would be viewed as a fairly Communistic idea, but this is a gym run by the local authority, for the benefit of everyone. I'll just leave I to ponder that one for a while, shall I? Anyway, with our graduation from the scheme, not only does our exercise life become far less rigid and regimented, it opens up to whole new vistas of pain and humiliation - we were given brand new timetables, to replace the scheme-only ones we'd been using up till this point. Proper Zumba classes...proper Aquacise classes, come to that. Spin classes. Pump it up classes, whatever the hell they turn out to be. Kettle bell classes. Tai chi,yoga, sucking ourselves up through our navels, all that kind of caper. Plus endless access to the gym, the pool, the sauna and steam room...you name it, we can now do it. Pop quiz. How would you celebrate passing a health check and opening up a whole new world of exercise opportunity? If you didn't say "with a McDonalds' breakfast, of course," go away and go away now, Because I clearly haven't taught you anything. We had a proper greasy breakfast, on two bases - firstly, dammit, if I'm gonna tip the scales at bugger-it stone on Tuesday, I'm gonna bloody well deserve it, and secondly, I now havew a LOT more opportunities to work that sucker off. In a similar spirit of optimistic recklessness, we went down to Cardiff, to do some indow-shopping. Didn't GET any windows, as it happened, but that's about all we forgot. Came back with a couple of bag fully of assorted Stuff, none of which was technically necessary, but all of which helped maintain the spirit of the day - the spirit of the world being our lobster (we're not keen on oysters, what can I tellya?). Bottom line, might tip the scales at 16 stone again come Tuesday. Am sort of resigned to this, if I'm honest. Sort of making my mind up to having the whole of the 15s to do again, after what has been an extended period of either backsliding or, as d put it when she ad the word last night, "making conscious choices to be bigger." At the time I thought that was harsh. But today has been pretty much exactly that - doing things with consequences, knowing about the consequences, and determining to deal with them in due course. The only way that works of course is if you convince yourself that there's been a fundamental change in your world that makes those consequences easier to deal with...which today, there really has. I'm supposed to be going running tomorrow morning, but as I have a delivery deadline for my first editing client tomorrow too, I don't see that happening. But I genuinely think that, to misquote Scarlett o'Hara...next week is another week. Change has come, the spiral will be addressed, and a normal Disappearing service will be resumed.

Perspective

Perspective's a peculiar beast.

Weighed at a stupid point in time today, and found myself to be vastly over what I felt I was. Thing is, on the way down, I still remember being thrilled when I reached...say...the 16 stone mark, or the 15 stone 6 mark - they were both important landmarks, and I found myself looking, vainly, in the mirror, thinking "you've not been this thin for almost two decades..."

Now, when I look, I find myself thinking "Eesh - fat and lumpy again..."

See? The shift in perspective given by the bounce. Having made progress, a once-positive result feels entirely negative.

Is there an up-side to that?
Possibly. Certainly then, there won't be any joyful backsliding all the way to 20 stone or more.

There may still be backsliding, but if there is, it'll be painful, bloody and many-clawed, and I'll bitch every step of the way.

Perspective's on my mind today - 4-dimensional perspective, mainly - perspective in time. This is probably because I re-made contact today with someone who's been out of my life for quite some time. We didn't part well, and part of that - not all, but part - was my fault. So I find myself looking back at the person I was then (who at the time was adamant he was right), with a faint bemusement and no real pleasure.

The thing is, I'm also seeing perspective shy away from me, forward into the future. And I don't think I'll like the person I am right now very much either. I've been told that at some point, we all acquire a desire to be taken seriously. I've never particularly had the desire to be taken seriously, except inasmuch as the talent I think I have is concerned. And seeing time march on, and others - some undoubtedly more talented than I will ever know how to be, and others...not - succeed simply by virtue of getting things done, while I think about them, essentially, has the potential to turn me sour and embittered and cankerous, which will hurt no-one, really, except me, and those around me. It's a kind of madness, probably, and I'm melodramatic enough, on some nights, to want to give in to it. It'll pass, of course - everything passes, even resolution - but tonight it feels like everything's on shifting sand, and I have lost the heels to dig in and stand upright against the tide.

Which is why I'm not sure that future-me - hopefully successful, Disappeared me - will like the maudlin, self-indulgent me of nights like this, of days like today.

Hehe...Douglas Adams was right about perspective. He said that given the infinite scale of the universe, and the infinite reaches of time, the one thing any being could really do without if it wanted to get on in life was a sense of perspective.

Perspective sucks, all in all.

16 Weeks

Blood was 6.2 this morning. Did a six mile walk, came home. Did an hour in the gym at lunchtime, seemed to do a lot better in terms of eating today. Did a blood test after dinner, and it had gone down to 5.4.

Got a call from the gym this afternoon, saying that d and I have reached our 16 week point on this GP Referral scheme...which means, once we get through our final interview, we should have half-price access to all the leisure centre's facilities, any time, day or night. That's gonna be fantastic - it's gonna mean I can probably afford monthly anytime-swimming and gymming, which is going to free up our scope for exercise.

In other news, the chorus of anti-Atkins feeling continues to grow. I've had another couple of people today tell me it's probably not a good idea. So on the whole, the Atkins decision is still on hold. Most people tell me I should just continue as I've been going, just tighten everything up - the eating discipline, the exercise regime etc.

The thing is, the doc's logic makes some sort of sense to me - beating up the part of my brain that's content to coast, pushing on down into new territory. But is it worth it? I don't know...I just don't know.

Of course, passing the 16-week mark will make pushing the exercise barrier easier (although it's not lost on me I have an exercise biker right freakin' here, so exactly how much easier I want it I'm not entirely sure...).

Let's see - let's get the interview done on Saturday, and see what shocks or reliefs Tuesday has in store, and see how necessary a radical change of direction feels at that point? After all, what we're actually talking about here is two solid months of no progress, followed by two weeks of backsliding. A total weight gain of less than six pounds, after ten weeks. This is what I'm putting on one side of the scales...versus a radical extremely low-carb, ketosis-based regime that would undoubtedly drive me more insane, and which might mean regaining weight at the end at a rate of knots...

Sigh...Let's see...

A Chorus of Disapproval

Bzzzz...
"Hey hon. Just read your blog. Don't do the Atkins - it's extreme, and dangerous and doesn't work...oh and it makes your breath just stink!"
That came through to me within minutes of posting last night's entry from my fantastic pal Wendy.
As I was replying to her, the phone buzzed again.

"Ohhhh hun...just read the blog. What was that doctor smokin'? Don't do the Atkins, it's extreme!"
This was Karen Pulley, who offered to hit the doc up the side of the head for 'recommending fad diets".

Before she'd even read the blog, I was discussing the Atkins diet with d. Mentioned that on the Atkins website, they have daily meal plans, recommending the purchase of their own special snacks and shakes.
"Oh, I don't agree with that," she said instinctively.

Checking Facebook today, I spotted a comment by my pal Mae: "Ugh - Atkins? Don't think you should do that, Tone - you put weight back on quicker once you stop and start eating carbs again!"

Tonight, was out for a meal with Lee and Rebecca. I mentioned I was probably going to start doing the Atkins soon.
"Nooooooo!" yelled Rebecca. "You should never cut out a complete food group, that's dangerous, and you'll put all the weight back on in spades the minute you start eating carbs again. You've done it this far slowly, sensibly..."
"Stubbornly," d muttered approvingly.
"Stubbornly," agreed Reb.
"Every time I think about dieting," said Lee in the Welsh sage voice he occasionally uses to deliver profound insights, "it just makes me want to eat more...oh, and the Atkins is crap..."

 So all in all, I now have voices from a lot of corners of my life telling me they don't think I should do this. The voices certainly chime in with the part of me that says "Bloody Hell, that'd be hard..." - and it's true that the Atkins is apparently a lifestyle, rather than a diet, so if you want to avoid putting the weight back on, you have to keep on it pretty much for the rest of your life at one level or another, and I really don't hate carbs that much...

So we shall see.
Blood was 5.5 this morning - so it continues well. Didn't do any damn exercise at all today, for reasons I may go into tomorrow. But for now, it's 11PM and I'm falling asleep, so peace, out!

A Farewell To Carbs?

Is it me, or do some people become seized with a passion, go through years of intensive training in all forms of general anatomy, graduate, struggle through years of junior posts on very little sleep and then set up practice as doctors....just to act like superior pricks to patients?

Is that not, maybe, a little psychotic?

Please don’t get the wrong idea here – I’m not saying that the doc I saw this morning was wrong in any way, shape or form (though personally, I think he was less right than he clearly thought he was). There’s just something about some doctors that allows them to pronounce the words “And what can I do to help you?” with an inflection that translates directly as “You are beneath me, you insignificant, grovelling sack of dirty water, and one day, I shall crush you like a bug. Perhaps that day will be today. Please, feel free to speak...”

As I say, I’m not claiming he was wrong to tell me that the Xenical is pretty much entirely a punitive measure (I myself have described it as aversion therapy in handy capsule form). I’m not saying he’s technically wrong to claim that the alternatives – which he won’t prescribe – “have dangerous side-effects, including death.” I’ve watched American TV commercials, damnit, I know that death can be a side-effect of practically anything, from Athelete’s Foot cream to Viagra.

And while this creeps me out, I can’t say for definite that he was wrong to “prescribe” one of two dietary regimes (one of which seems fairly intent on selling you its own products). There was just something about him that smacked of the Grand Viziers of Disney legend.

Anyhow, that’s what he advised. Because, he said, I’ve now lost a chunk of weight, I’m using an out-dated calorie calculation for what I should be taking in on any given day – so I’d need to cut down my calorie intake further to get my brain to take notice. My brain’s diet-regulation HQ, he said, had reached a plateau-point, where it’s now all happy and comfy and content with itself, going “Cool, let’s stop here, we like here...”. Meanwhile, my consciousness is going “Nnnono, we need to keep going, foooooooorwwwwwaAAAARD!!!”...and Diet Control is whistling a happy tune and ignoring the bejeesus out of me. I need to do something drastic to shock it out of its complacent-assed state and push on down.

“Try Atkins,” he said. “You won’t do more than three months of it, because it’s so boring, I guarantee you. But it’ll jump start you back in the right direction.”

I asked for an explanation of the famous Atkins Diet – which I’m happy to admit I’ve avoided like the freakin’ plague.

“It’s all on the internet,” he sniffed, as if realising he was clearly dealing with a chimp too retarded to find things out for itself. He sighed. “Mind you, there’s a lot of conflicting stuff on the internet. Dr Atkins absolutely didn’t die from following his diet, no matter what people say...” he said.

“No?” I asked.

“No,” he sniffed. “He fell over in New York and hit his head.”

“So this is a diet that increases your chances of fatal head-splitting during rapid interfaces with the ground?” I asked, “because I’m already pretty good at falling over and breaking bits of myself...”

He shot me a withering look.

“Hmm,” he said, as if trying to play an invisible comb-and-paper.

“Or there’s the Second-Day Fast,” he considered.

“The What-Now?”

“One day you eat about what you should be eating – 1300-1500 calories a day. The next day, you only have 500. And so on, day after day...”

“500?”

“500.”

“So it’s a starvation diet?”

“No. Did you not hear me – the day after, you have 1500 calories to look forward to.”

“It’s ridiculously difficult to stick to 1500,” I muttered. “Best I’ve ever managed is about 900...”

“Hmm...” he said, playing his comb-and-paper again.

So – it’s apparently a choice between Atkins for three months and two states of relative starvation on an ongoing basis. And all to wake up my brain, which I’d rather foolishly assumed would be on my side in all this. So much for “I think, therefore I am” – rather humbling when whatever you think, another part of your brain can simply ignore you. Mind you, on that basis, much of biology gives the lie to “I think, therefore I am”...

I went and did some Atkins research. God, it’s miserable.

It tries to put a brave face on things though – protein is good! Meat, fish, green leafy veg, all that good healthy cobblers. And of course, I could survive perfectly well on this kind of diet, it just flies rather in the face of the fundamental learning that’s in my brain, which says that meat and veg are basically side dishes that balance out the carb that comes with them.

Carbohydrates, on the Atkins Diet, are the Great Satans. There is of course a vastly depressing amount of logic to this way of thinking – if you don’t take in carbs, you a) don’t have an excess to be stored as fat, and b) have to burn the reserves already stored as fat in order to get up and move around. So under no circumstances am I claiming that Atkins wouldn’t work. It’s just the part of my brain that says ‘every protein’s best friend is a carb’ that rebels against it.

Sigh...Going to give this Atkins lark a go in all likelihood – but it’s not a thing that can be done on a dime. Takes shopping, takes preparation, takes work and takes another moment of giving stuff a kiss goodbye for a while.  Not remotely sure I’m ready tonight to kiss carbs goodbye. But then you hear the figures – “lose 15 pounds in just two weeks” claims the Atkins website. That would put me at my 6 stone marker by the end of May if I started right now.

And so, you sell a little bit of your Disappearing soul to a system, which I didn’t want to do when this all began, for the promise of progress.

Oh – weigh-in today puts me at 15 stone 5.5. Hence the “15 pounds in two weeks” putting me where I want to be, and quickly.

Desperation much?

The Castor Oil Conundrum

“Hey there Skinny! Looking all svelte today!”

See?! It’s not just me that’s confused about the disparity between the Nazi Scales’ judgment of my rapid re-blimping and all other available evidence. This was my pal Sally-Anne when I walked into the office this morning, dressed in the skinnyish jeans and a short-sleeved shirt (having been monstrously fooled by two days of gorgeous weather into thinking it might be Summery...And only to be made the butt of the Drizzle Imp’s jokes once a-bloody-gain).

I tried to get my Xenical prescription filled again on the weekend – no such luck. Pharmacists in Merthyr are still unable to give me a date when the stuff might be available. At this point, something needs to be done...

Did I ever tell you about my platinum-level kidneys?

No?

I have platinum-level kidneys, apparently. When the BUPA doctor first told me this during a ridiculously expensive check-up three months before I started this Disappearing lark, I thought I’d finally found my superpower.  Is it a bird, is it a plane, no it’s SuperPisser!

Yeah – platinum-level kidneys. Kidneys that function above and beyond the call of duty. Special Ops kidneys, if you like. For some reason, when d anthropomorphises them (and the fact that she does should come as no surprise to anyone who remembers we have a Cuddle of teddy bears at home...), she does their voices as sort of rock-hard Cockney Bouncers.

While I was particularly gratified to be told that my kidneys were the Green Berets of the organ world (especially as this was shortly after I’d had things inserted into me to find the cause of some bizarre and disturbing bleeding, and been told it was probably just a kink!), having Special Ops kidneys  does seem to have a downside. It tends to mean that I can ingest any amount of liquid, and the kidneys go “Leave it, fuck off, it’s mine!” And while I’m perfectly aware this is not how the body works, the rest of me does seem  rather liquid-impoverished in correlation. I’ve had dry skin for years, to the extent of what can only be described as beard-dandruff (or bearddruff if you really insist). Sometimes, of a morning, I have to squeeze a thumb white to persuade a single globule of thick, high-juice blood through my pores in order to rate its sugar-content. And...to pull no further punches, without a little oily orange assistance, I have an overwhelming tendency to shit carving knives that tear me up and bleed me and which, when produced, look (as d, once again displaying her gifts for description) like little more than Cuddle-turds.

I’m on the point of giving up and trying something in the way of what are called with depressing coyness “stool softeners”, simply to avoid the sensation of having been buggered from the inside out on a depressingly regular basis. In the old days of course, my gran would have simply threatened me with a big heaped tablespoon of raw and decidedly budget castor oil to “help you along. I’d take it now except I know my bloody metabolism, and putting a tablespoon of neat oil into my body is just giving it an excuse to find a protein molecule to glom onto and stick around, bulging out my belly and making the Nazi Scales laugh their thin, humourless laugh.

So am going back to see my Doctor at an unconscionable hour of the morning tomorrow, to get...freakin’ something. Something that is in stock, in this country, legal and effective.

And yes, for the record, this is me, officially pining for the evils of the Orange Dietary Truncheon. It was deeply, deeply inconvenient, but at least it didn’t feel like I had an navigationally incompetent alien inside me, taking a wrong turn when trying to burst out of my chest!

Tuesday tomorrow, results are gonna suck. But – my sugar walls (to horribly horribly misinterpret an 80s pop song by, I think, Sheena Easton), are back up. Back to healthy living, back to proper, sweaty exercise, back to only an occasional Aristotelian experiment. It’s Go Time, dammnit...

Or at least it will be once I can go...