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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