Fifty Shades of Dorian Gray

And so it's what I'm rather callously thinking of as Freebie Thursday. Had breakfast at the hotel this morning, skipped the ghastliness of a post-breakfast weigh-in then came home and have been working on an edit all day.

So now I'm sitting here, editing, writing this, and watching The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The book has always eluded my reading, because the beginning of it always seems to high-minded and impenetrable. But the idea of Gray has always fascinated me. The idea of escaping the consequences of one's actions of course is always going to appeal to a glutton and an addict. The notion that there would be a way of shifting the effects of actions onto an inanimate stooge, leaving one free to indulge, and indulge, and indulge every passion, every desire, every want...

Who would we be if that were possible? Where would be stop? Why would we stop?

Of course, the point of Dorian Gray is that there is a price to pay, that effects can only be delayed, that consequences will catch up with us - an analogue of our modern lives if there has ever yet been one: we don't see the immediate consequences of each cheeseburger, each sundae, each cigarette in some cases, each mad and unprotected fuck. But chemistry, biology and time conspire to teach us all eventually - they teach us with fat, and arterial thickening, and contamination, and ultimately, the choices we make about what we do and what we take into ourselves teach us the lesson of a date-stamp and a toe-tag.

Which is why of course it's important to learn the lessons of Dorian Gray before the reckoning gets too high.
I've had a Christmas of quite extraordinary excess that would be perfectly simple to turn into a lifestyle of extraordinary excess all over again.

But no.
I've almost entirely escaped the harm that my ludicrous lifestyle of decades should by now have inflicted on me. There has been some damage, certainly, but nothing in the league I should expect. It's past time to learn my lesson and be a better man again.