Friday, 30 November 2012

29th November - The Wedding Hedonism



So there you have it. My mate Wendy walked down an aisle, actually hand in hand with her beloved, Maria, today, and everybody clapped and almost-cried, and burst their hearts with gladness for them both.
Of course, it is true that everybody also nearly pissed themselves, somewhat cruelly but equally unavoidably, at the registrar, who had a most unfortunate lithp when it came to pronouncing words like “Regithrar”…and “Leithterthire”, and perhaps most unavoidably hilarious of all, “Thivil Partnerthipth”. Bless her, she meant well, and was perfectly within the law, but really, I think if you’re going to have a heavy lithp, you might be just as well to stick to marriageth…
But generally, the day went beautifully well – starting with breakfatht…oh stoppit!...breakfast, which was highly professional and, once again, taken in the Orangery, this time by daylight and white and bright and like eating in a beautiful long conservatory.

What is it about hotel breakfasts that turns perfectly rational human beings into the Emperor Caligula on a bender? I ordered the Full English, and that – bar the black pudding, of which I’m not notably a fan – was what arrived: sausage, bacon, egg, tomato, fried bread, so far, so tasty. Then a couple of holderfuls of toast arrived, and I figured “fuck it, I’m on holiday,” so I got stuck into that too. Enough to satisfy the hungriest bloke who ate, all in all, about eight hours before, right?

Yeah, but there was other stuff there. So I gamely tucked into plain yogurt with fruit compote, and fruit juice – which incidentally is by no means the innocent choice people think it is, and more than calorifically deserves the kudos given to it in the 70s as a course of its own. Then I did a hit and run of the cereal bar, scooping spoonful after spoonful of various different breakfasts into the same bowl. Because ti was there, and technically, it was included in the price of the room. Did I want it? Probably not. Did I need it? Certainly not. But yes, I ate it because it was there.
What? It’s a perfectly valid reason when applied to walking up mountains, but not when chowing them down?

Anyhow – the ceremony went off perfectly, lithp notwithstanding, and we thankfully didn’t eat again until about 5ish. Three full courses – soup, steak/chicken and chocolate tart in my case. Then coffee and petit fours. Because they were there, shut up. Then they brought round wedding cakes – generous cup cakes made, I strongly suspect, of chocolate brownie, then iced. I didn’t eat that. I couldn’t. We brought it upstairs and have packed it away…for tomorrow. Fuck you, technically I’m still on my holidays tomorrow – there’s another breakfast in about 9 hours, to which I’m perversely looking forward. I did however have another nightful of cider, and even though technically I didn’t need it, I just ate a chocolate tart from Costa while writing this blog entry.

This, incidentally, is how you end up being 20 stone and 5 feet 6. I would have not the slightest hesitation in guessing that at this moment as I sit here, I weigh more than 18 stone again. And yes, this is the kind of eating and living that got me to my crisis point in the first place – this is what it looks like when you’re almost intentionally self-harming through food.
Except this, I am actively, painfully aware, is on longer a way of life. It’s an aberration, a time of pure hedonistic celebration and involvement with the joy of my friends. It’s the same impulse that has seen me, tonight, get up and boogie. To quote Mitch Benn, “I have plenty of natural rhythm, but it’s all above the waist”, but still, the night was made for dancing, so on and off, here and there, the Disappearing Man…danced.
Once tomorrow has come and gone, and the sun has set on this wonderful holiday, and Wendy and Maria have buggered off to Lapland – gotta love that for a December honeymoon, no? – I will be coming down to the Earth on which I must now live with a bump. I know this, and accept it, and am to some extent looking forward to the rigors of pain and exercise and hard bloody work all over again.

Oh, two nice things as side—notes. I gave a speech as part of the after-dinner celebrations. Went down very well. Made people laugh, made people cry (even a couple of hard nuts, I gather), made people go “Oh wow” a bit, and made a parade of people whose names I couldn’t tell you if you tortured me come up and shake my hand or hug me and tell me I was fab.
Which could be a dangerous association, were my mind connectively inclined – wild calorific hedonism=people telling me I’m fab. But such thoughts must of course be cast out…largely in an abject fear they may be valid.
And I was given a gift, for doing my bit as a witness to the ceremony. A kickass new pen, from Wendy and Maria. There’s a crazy bit of connectivity there too – I always love getting new pens, they inspire me to write new stories. I can’t wait to see what stories this new one has in it.
But whatever they are, I’ll find them out in a world of discipline and exercise, not this world of chocolate-tasting madness. Nehh. I have spoken…
Mmm…breakfast in nine hours…

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