The Indian Diversion

Another busy day - back down the Trail this morning...with more vigour and a dreadful admission.

When I took over the day job from my predecessor some...blimey...seven years ago now, she already had an iTunes account set up in the office, and I basically inherited what she had. Over the years I'd dumped a lot of mystic whale music and peruvian nose-fluting, but some of her stuff, I've kept.

Bear in mind please the fact that I was raised on Buddy Holly, Status Quo, Black Sabbath, Queen and Free - these were the vinyl relics of my mother's musical taste. My dad was 70s, fat Elvis, Slim Whitman, Glen Campbell and Charlie Pride.

As a teenager, I was an unrepentant hair-rocker. Of course, as a teenager, I had unrepentent, and indeed entirely present, hair. Twisted Sister, Kiss, Poison, Bon Jovi, Guns 'n' Roses, Whitesnake, Thunder...and on and on it went. I had (and actually somewhere still have) a denim jacket covered in patches bearing true and faithful allegiance to the United States of Rock.

But all this does little to counterbalance the evidence of the last 48 hours, which I quail to tell you reveals one terrifying fact above all others:
The Beatles are not as good, as walking music, as the Greatest Hits of George Formby.

George "turned out nice again" Formby. The name will mean little, I should imagine, to most non-UK readers. George Formby was a cheeky British performer, of the "heavy euphemism and lots of winks" style, who looked dim and played with a ukelele, but was actually a rather unhappy man in his own life, during the Second World War. He sang songs of naughty suggestion about, for instance, the things he saw "when I'm cleaning windows", or what happened when he went "Swimmin' With The Wimmin'". He winked at audiences while singing about what he got up to - or indeed, didn't, "with my little ukelele in my hand"...

The point of all this is that there is no scale - muscial, lyrical, emotional - on which George Formby should work as workout or walking music. There is also no known scale on which, having admitted to listening to him, my hard-rocking friends can possibly fail to rip the unconscionable piss out of me from now to kingdom probably-not-come. But there it is. This morning, George and I blazed a trail.

The day took up its usual tone - head down, bum up, ass-off-working, and tonight, we went to see June, a family friend who has, in all likelihood, days to live, carrying around with her an inoperable stomach cancer and shrinking into huskishness with every day that passes. She's has a difficult journey to get to this stage, but the thing that impressed me most about her was her attitude to death. There was no heaviness about it - she talked about it, laughed about it, we shared good funny memories, we trash-talked, we made sure that her affairs were ordered pretty much as she wants them to be, and she was unsentimental - not looking forward to the moment of death exactly, but apparently sanguine about its imminence and certainty. And there was no palaver about seeing people on the other side. She has a "Church of Wales" faith, which, if it mirrors its Church of England counterpart will have been mainly a social convenience to her, rather than a fundamental position on the idea of an afterlife. If it gives her comfort now, I'm glad. If it makes her able to face this moment with the dignity she displayed tonight, I'm impressed. But actually, I don't think that's a matter of faith or non-faith - I think that's just June. June's cool.

After visiting, we went looking for a bite to eat, and ended up in an Indian restuarant in Aberdare. By that point I'd only had my cereal breakfast today, and had expended more calories than it was worth, so I had, I figured, a little leeway, but nevertheless, finding something reasonably low-calorie that was still worth eating was an interesting challenge. I ended up choosing a Tandoori sizzling platter. Seemed the safest calorific option - basically a plateful of meat, so a good protein shot, but of course, marinated, treated and then fried. We'll see whether this undoes the week's work, or whether I can still coax a 16 out of the Nazi Scales on Tuesday.

I think, to do that, I need to actively take more time over these next few days for biking or gymming or something in addition to the morning walk, to try and surprise the muscles and make them work. Fitting it into deadline structures is, as per recently usual, the tricky part. But - Master of My Own Destiny and all that cobblers: Forward, in the direction of 16 stone 7!