The Push Back

So - this wedding weekend has been frankly and unapologetically off the wagon. I'm expecting and assuming that come Tuesday, I'll be back up to something in the region of 16st 7. And to be honest, I'm OK with that. Had a great weekend, a full weekend, a fun weekend. Tomorrow with the dawn begins a week more in control and within bounds, and we shall see where it gets me. Time, certainly, to push back down, to push back in from this delicious weekend and regain my discipline and control.

Kookily Ever After - 29th June

d has an idea that ‘as long as people are still getting married, there’s still hope in the world.’

I, thinking myself a harder judge of human character, am not so easily swayed by the idea that a single day of perfect, blind  optimism can be used as a barometer of the general human condition. I tend to play the UberCynic and refer her to the opening scene of the movie Dogma, where people meeting at an airport amaze an angel with their simple love and gladness to be back within each other’s arms. A second angel wanders into shot and reminds him that not six hours ago, one of the reunited lovers was having sex with the best friend of the other, ruining the moment. That’s my angel – I tend to try and force the reality of stressful mortgage payments, screaming kids, the diminution of lust with a continuing partner and the allure of the fresh and the new into the scenario – in other words, I focus on all the things that can blow those simple moments of love and optimism to jagged ugly smithereens of pain and recrimination.

Cos…y’know…I’d rather be honest than happy any day of the week. It’s a sickness, frankly.

But this trip to Liverpool – have you ever been, by the way? It’s brilliant, you should go…go on, we’ll wait… - to the wedding of two old friends of ours…gotta tell you, it’s enough to make a romantic of me.

T and H (which, being married to a woman who likes to be known as d is pretty much how I’ve come to think of them over the years) first popped up on my radar something like ten years ago, at which point they were both married to other people, and in bad – or at least let’s say aggressively complicated – situations. I got to know H first, as I’d built a company intranet of sorts, and she sent me some emails from the Liverpool office. H is one of those people who, on meeting her, make you go “Aww…” She’s one of those people with a grin and a giggle and an outlook on life that makes you sigh, and think, maybe, that things are gonna be fine after all. As such of course, she brings the protector out in a cynic like me, cos people who make the world feel like it’s all gonna be alright are prone to the attention, both in work and at play, of out-and-out bastards with an urge to prove that no, really, it won’t.

I don’t want to oversimplify except where absolutely necessary – I’m not trying to sell you H as an angel-character: she’s a real, complex woman with wants and needs and roadblocks just like the rest of us. But spending time in her company still makes you feel that maybe, just maybe, things’ll work out, even when she herself doesn’t think so.

T on the other hand…

T spends his life solving problems. T is, and let’s make no bones of modesty about this, phenomenally good at solving problems. He gets paid for it, and he’s worth the money, having an inherent instinct when to negotiate, when to fold his arms, when to speak and when to say nothing, and when, for instance, the best thing to do is to walk out of the room. The first time I had much to do with T – who, I should point out, at the time worked at the same organisation as both H and I – was when we were both scheduled to spend a couple of nights in the same house in Aberdeen.

You learn a lot about someone sharing a house with them in Aberdeen…

I learned that T, who has the elongated body of a strangely white basketball player, also has the nature of a poet, the conscience of a social worker, the twinkle of the Scouser cliché, a kick-ass set of culinary skills (He cooked. I let him), and a protective instinct rather more out and proud than my own. He wants to help people. Which is why he spends his days solving problems. Without getting gushy about the whole thing, he’s the kind of Bloke you hope your son grows up to be.

When I first discovered they were a kind of maybe-sort-of-hush-now item, I was all for one of my usual quick fixes – my approach to problem-solving tending to resemble a hand grenade – blow the building up and count the remaining limbs. Neither of them wanting to do that and I couldn’t understand why.

“But you’ll be much happier afterwards!” I pointed out to both of them, utterly ignoring (as is my wont) the complex emotional background and all the people in it, and focusing purely on my selfish vision of the happiness of the two people about whom I happened to give a fig.

Today – ten long-ass years later – was the proof that I’m a numpty. These people…these two  staggeringly impressive people…took the long path, unravelling issues as they went, running into more and different levels of complexity with practically every step they took, and facing those together too, and setting about the task of getting through. Ten years, these two have waited, and loved, and struggled and skillfully untied the obstacles in their way. And loved. Still. They have seen such joy and trouble and they've looked each other in the eye and in the heart and said "Forever."

Their ceremony was beautiful and simple and funny as well - their first dance was to Daivd Bowie's "Couple of Kooks" - a theme for the day, and utterly perfect for the short woman and the tall man who find themselves reflected in their hearts. They had me sniffing like a sentimental snotball all day, because in this wedding, I found d's words to be true.

I do not grant that while people get married, there's hope left in this world. But while people as impressive as this get married - while they struggle and hold to each other, and get through all sorts of things, and still get married - then I'm happy to agree. That gives me hope for the human race, and for love, and all that that often-misnamed or misattributed emotion can do in the world. Here's to the impressive people, and to marriage, now and always, kookily ever after.

The Goldilocks Principle

Well hello from Liverpool!

Hello in fact from the shores of the Mersey. Took a while to get here today, but it was all pretty smooth until we arrived at the hotel. We'd booked a deluxe double room with a view. They directed us to the 10th floor.
Lovely room. Lovely view...Twin beds.

Clearly we're already starting to look like one of those couples who, to quote Victoria Wood, "prefer a cup of cocoa and a Ruth Rendell" to a night of unbridled passion in strange hotel rooms. More, I think, to repair the damage to our dignity than because this is necessarily untrue, we complained. They directed us to exactly the same room, seven floors below. Same shaped corner room, double bed...motorway, practically at lung level. As it happened, we were just contemplating what to do about this when Housekeeping came by. We asked them if they had anything with a double bed and a view that wasn't necessarily viewable from cars stuck with their drivers hating each other and their own futile lives as they shuffled along, one wheel arch-length at a time. They directed us six floors up to the same room - just one flight exactly below where we'd started out. Far enough away from the traffic so it's just a distant, rumbling roar, but with a double bed we can ignore the potential of. Right here on the Mersey.

As I write this, I've just met an editing deadline, we've just received ANOTHER two sample chapters - seriously, all of a sudden, everyone loves Jefferson! - and d's fallen to sleep on one side of the bed. The Mersey, with its ferry, is obscured by a blank wall of thick grey fog. So glad we opted for a room with a view.

But here we are, with at least tonight and tomorrow in which to do nothing more than celebrate our friends who are getting married...

(Looks around the room)...

Think I might go and have a bath...Rock and rolllll!!

The Companionable Hermitage

I’ve written about this elsewhere recently, but, sitting on a train without net access, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here in the blog. Either way, it’s almost all there is to say today, so forgive me.

I felt a need this morning for focus in my work, so I dropped a line to my day-job boss and decamped to my favourite Starbucks in all the world.

People who know this particular habit of mine have been scratching their heads for a while over why I do this, and particularly over why I only ever do this at one particular branch of the Coffee Giant’s empire.

This is to mistake the thing slightly – I’m happy to take a Starbucks from any branch, as people who know me know to their cost – it’s kind of like dragging Carrie Bradshaw past a shoe shop: not gonna happen without a quick pop-in and a purchase. And when deadlines have loomed, I’ve sat in other Starbucks in plenty of cities and plenty of locations, with my computer and, for instance, waited for companions to get done with shopping. But I only have one real “home” branch of the UberBeansters.

It’s the St Mary’s Street branch, Cardiff.

And why? Why’s this branch “my branch”? To be honest, it began with laziness – on my Monday UberCommutes from Merthyr to London, it was the nearest to Cardiff Central train station, so I could get off the train in Cardiff, go and grab an early morning wake-up coffee, then get back on a train to London, more awake, more alive and ready to work all the way there.

Quickly though, it got to be about more than that. There was one particular staff member on those early UberCommute mornings, who cheered my heart with a friendly tone and a smile that went beyond  customer service, seeming genuinely happy to see me – and, I noticed, she seemed genuinely happy to see everyone else she served too. That sent me off to London with not just a de-caff non-buzz, but a smile in the thought of happy people doing a job they enjoyed, and spreading that happiness around, just because they could.

I began spending days there last November, when, due to my lack of ability to notice fundamental things, it turned out I had to take a month’s annual leave before the end of the year. With my wife unable to take the same sort of swathe of leave time, I had three options – I could sit in the flat alone, in my pure, white-walled office, I could go off exploring the area on random buses, alone, or I could pour my energies into my editing business, and my own writing. I chose this last option, but again, the options were to sit in my own world in my silent white office at home, or to find a place that stimulated my creative impulses. I tried the second and went back to St Mary’s Street.

While the staff member who had first cheered my heart had gone home to Ireland, I soon found the rest of the crew there were – almost without exception – equally cheery, equally ready with an endless supply of beverages, and endlessly discrete – while they were friendly when needed, they’d also leave me the hell alone to get on with stuff. You do the maths: free wifi, comfy chairs and tables, free power for the computer, cheerful people and an unending stream of coffee-based beverages. What more could you ask for? Well, fine, a bathroom, but there’s obviously one of those. And people. People to watch from a quiet corner, people to add their pulses to your own, to engage your imagination and your spirit of fun.

That of course is the real gift of Starbucks, St Mary’s Street. Working alone, and working from home as I do, I’m absolutely not going to try and tell you it’s anything other than brilliant. But what it also is is quiet. There are no watercooler moments, there is no conviviality, and it’s all too easy to become something of a hermit, saying not a word to anyone throughout a working day.

Starbucks, St Mary’s Street is a place of comfort to me. A place of conviviality. It is, if you like, a companionable hermitage – a place where I can focus on my work, while drawing a buzz of conversation and the pulse of other people into my day. It increases my productivity, puts a smile on my face, and reminds me there are stories all around us, in every half-caff cappuccino guy or sharp-suited double espresso lady, every tourist passing through who grabs a latte, and every local who now just asks for their regular. All of life comes through those doors, and if you sit quiet in your corner, you can see and feel it all, over the brim of your drink-in cup.

I’ll be back soon. Maybe I’ll see you there.

Last Night In The Valley Of The Blues

Went down the Trail this morning. Clearly, Spring has fianlly properly sprung, because it finally, properly sprung into my sinuses. Eyes streaming, red, and itching. Nose sneezing and tender, throat raw and sandpapered. Spring has clearly strapped on its jackboots.

The rest of the day has been deadlinetastic. I have an edit due on Saturday and - being something of an idiot about these things - I'd forgotten that come Friday we're off to Liverpool for three days, to the wedding of two friends of mine (now ours) from two jobs ago, when d and I were still electronically courting at three and a half thousand miles' distance.

So really speaking, I have about 260 pages to do by the end of tomorrow, with eyes that are barely fit for purpose. Humph.

The thing that's noteworthy about the day from a Disappearing standpoint though is that today, I took my final Xenical.

I've been eking them out for weeks now, as of course at my last Diabetic check, I'd put on a couple of stone since the one in 2012, and they don't let you have the pills if you haven't demonstrated a certain percentage of your bodyweight as a loss. So I haven't had any new pills for months. And today, at breakfast time, I took my last little blue pill.

I was still working when d came home, so I went down to the hall to chat with her.
"Yeah, not a bad day," I said, "I-"

At which point, I felt myself moving back up the stairs. I was having a Camden Town moment. For those of you unfamiliar with what Xenical, as a medication, is cutom-built to do, check out the Camden Town link just above.

Yet the record sufficiently show that there was a need to do laundry, and that these little blue pills of orange fluxing evil left my life with at least a parting gift as noxious as their entry had been, or any of their subsequent effects.

Farewell, you little blue pellets of evil. Life's gonna be easier without you.

Disappearing, on the other hand, will probably be significantly harder...

The Aural Vacuum

O...K...well that makes gloriously little sense.

Didn't have time to go down the Trail and lose the usual pound and a half of water before the weigh-in this morning. (I should say, I no longer regard this as cheating because generally, it's been a consistent feature since I re-strted Disappearing - I've tended to go down the Trail most mornings, and certainly from weigh-in to weigh-in, I've gone down the Trail first, so the readings have been consistent).

15st 12.25 said the scales.

"What?" I said. "That make no sense whatsoever! I've had a really dodgy week, exercisewise! Were you not here for the deadline crunches, the non-biking, the non-Trailing....The Nant Ddu!??"

The scales shrugged in a somewhat Brandonian fashion.
"Whaddaya want from us?" they asked, sourly.
"This'll do nicely," I said, suddenly realising the good thing I was on to.

So - if we assume that if I had been down the Trail, I'd have been a pound and a half lighter, we'd be looking at 15st 11.

You're not gonna let me do that, I'm assuming, so here you go - 15st 12.25 UNEXERCISED...(whispers: which is 15st 11 really, cos next week I will have Trailed beforehand, so nehh...)

Anyhow - bizarrely good result. And - the reason I didn't have time to go down the Trail was because I had an audiology appointment. To be fitted for a hearing aid.

Most of the time since the viral labyrinthitis and (I maintain) medical up-fuckery stole a whacking great chunk of my hearing in the right ear, I've been sort of upbeat about the thing. It's a pain in the right buttock, but it is what it is, so on we go - woohoo, one lughole still works like a charm, allowing me to, for example, still sing sort of vaguely in tune (members of the Dowlais Male Choir may tell you otherwise of course...and my wife still describes it cheerfully as "caterwauling", which just goes to show one of the benefits of singing-as-if-you-don't-give-a-fuck-who-hears-you).

This morning, the audiologist shoved some wadding into the offending ear, and then set to with what, as he cheerfully acknowledged, looked remarkably like one of those grouting guns with which one (allegedly - I only know this from watching d) seals baths and showers and, for all I know, diving helmets so the water can't get through. It was a slightly bizarre experience but not an unpleasant one particularly. We carried on chatting while the goo he'd squirted into me hardened, and then he came and pulled it out.

That's sort of when my world changed.

I've pretty much gotten used to the way I don't hear in the right ear. But without even telling me this was what it was thinking, some part of my brain clearly had made up its mind that when something that blcoked up my ear...was removed from my ear...the world would come rushing back in, clear as the proverbial bell, as it always used to when I removed things from my ear - earphones, cotton buds, an exploratory waggling finger and so on.

There was nothing.

No change in the pressure, no in-rush of noisy world...just...nothing.

The audiologist busied about, shaving the rough edges off his red rubber mould of my ear, and then disappeared to drop it off for collection. While he was out, something...I don't know, something punched me. This was it. This was me. Hearing aids are fine and dandy, but this was what I was left with on my own, this...vacuum. This void. This right-sided nothingness that didn't respond...

I...erm...
Ahem...I...ermmmm...cried. A bit. Just a very little bit, mind...but a bit...
And then he was back, and I was muttering about poxy hay fever, and sniffing theatrically, and talking loudly about parking...

Seven to ten weeks from now, I join the hearing-assisted. In itself, this is no bad thing - assistance is groovy, and at least three of the coolest people I know have hearing issues. It just feels so bloody unnecessary, given the way it happened.

Sigh. Right. Enough hay fever and self-pity. Must get on - another sample chapter arrived this morning!

The Jeffersonian Diaries - 24th June

This hasn’t really been a Disappearing Day. It’s been more of a Jeffersonian day. Many of you will know that a little more than a year ago, I started a business, and for reasons of not taking myself seriously enough to have my name plastered over a business, and taking a couple of dead Americans very much more seriously indeed, I called it Jefferson Franklin (d and I always said if we ever had a son, we’d call him Benjamin Thomas, so it also made a perverse kind of sense – which has become more perverse and yet more sensible as time has gone on, and the company has taken more and more of the time that we always took vaguely for granted as “us” time). Today’s been a truly Jeffersonian day.

As part of our business model, we offer authors a free sample chapter edit, because these are hideous hideous economic times and we’re asking people who may not have a great deal of money to give us some of what they may not have, so they deserve to know what they’re getting. Two months ago, one of the authors to whom we gave such a sample edit wrote to a leading writing magazine about us, to praise us to the skies. It was a good day when she shared her letter with us. It was an even better day when another author whose work we edited wrote to tell us she’d seen the letter in the magazine. So we used the letter in an advert, letting the writing world know about our free sample chapter edits.

The world seems to have gone just a little Jefferson-crazy since then. I finished a couple of sample chapter edits on the train to London this morning, only to find another couple waiting for us. One author for whom we did one last week came back to book us for a novel. Annnnnd then so did another. And then a third, whose novel we finished working on just a couple of weeks ago, wrote to say it was already published on Amazon, with the hard copy coming next week, and that she’d added us to her acknowledgments. Always nice when that happens, though I rather cynically maintain that “paying the invoice means never having to say thank you.”

“Can I book my next novel in for September please?” she said.

She couldn’t, as it happened – she’s going to try and get it to us for a cheeky August slot, because we’re already solidly booked through September, which is a nice feeling in the second half of June.

So – very definitely a Jeffersonian kind of day. Says he, sitting in Starbucks, Paddington Station, about to continue a Jefferson edit. There’s something delicious about this whole thing having taken off and resulting in people with a manuscript becoming people with a published book. Only a few days ago, I determined to get one of my own novels into a good enough shape to shop around to agents by new year, when it looked as though I might have some space in the calendar that I could use in delicious authorial self-indulgence, locking myself in a room and not coming out till I had a stack of glowing, wonderful printed pages, my comic genius radiating gleefully off every last one of them.

And I still intend to keep to that. But in the meantime, it’s great to have Jeffersonian days. They make you care less about the imminence of a frowny-faced pair of Nazi Scales on a wild Tuesday weigh-in. In fact, they make you care less about all sorts of potentially negative Stuff. Thanks, authors!

Not to turn this into an out-and-out advertorial, but if you have a book and you want your first chapter edited for free, check us out at www.jefferson-franklin.co.uk

Iiiiiiithankyou.

The Nant Ddu Excitation

Soooo...you know that d and I are pretty big foodies, right? After all, one does not get to write a blog about the need to avoid surgical intervention to lose a shedload of weight by eating salads all one's life.

We've been back in Merthyr a year and a half now, and more than the theatre, more than the pulse of the city, the one thing we've really missed is really good food places. Which is not to say we actually tripped over these little goldmine places in London - they were rare and beautiful jewels, and when we found one, we couldn't stop talking about it for days.

In more than seven years, we found plenty of "good" places to eat, and one or two "really great" places to eat. Then there are the places that we don't even have to name - the ones where we can just look at each other, with the thought in our head, and watch the smile spread across the other's face.

We found our first one in Wales today.

First, it's probably fair to let you in to the secret of a few of our London "look" places.

The first of them would be the Golden Bird - a Chinese restaurant on the Mile End Road. The Chinese restuarant on the Mile End Road in fact, to which we introduced my mother on our trip in March this year. We've probably now been there a few too many times to remain as utterly awestruck as is strictly due to the place, but the first time we found it it was as though choirs of Chinese angels opened up the clouds and sang for just we two.

Then, not to over-enforce the theme here, there was another Chinese restaurant. It was the unassumingly-named Hong Kong restaurant in Barking, run by the family of a friend of ours, and I have to tell you, if the Golden Bird had its brilliance dulled even a little by repetition, this place never did. You want the best Chinese food this side of China, you don't necessarily bother with Chinatown. Go to Mr and Mrs Li in Barking. A proper family atmosphere, the most insanely good food, magic tea with beautiful and bizarre underwater Triffids in it, and occasional, moderately demented Elvis Tribute Nights. This place knocked it out of the park, and was far enough away that it remained, to the very end, a place of majesty and wonder. The very end coming about not with our leaving London, but the apprently necessary close down during compulsory Barking remodelling. For all I know, Barking now looks all kinds of hot and sexy, but damn, it's lost one of its biggest jewels - the only real place to spend Chinese New Year. Or British New Year, come to that...

I don't know the name of the next jewel. We always just knew it at "the place at the top of our street". There was never anyone in it, which was a crime against gastronomy, because the chef there - who perversely always had time to stop and chat - was waaaay above the class of the local area. He created proper gastronomy that satisfied, and charged a pittance for it.

Which is presumably one of the main reasons he went out of business. That place was like a culinary Brigadoon - we were so entranced with it that when we came back from a culinarily mortifying honeymoon in Paris (which is probably what happens when you inadvertantly book a hotel in the red light district!), we ran straight from Heathrow to "the place at the top of our street" with a bottle of our wedding champagne and put instantly right a world of Parisian wrongness. To this day, both of us carry a little guilt in our hearts about not shouting his praise from the rooftops and packing the place out when we could have. It was eventually replaced by a Caribbean chain restaurant...y'know, cos there aren't enough of those in East London...Sigh...

No danger of replacement though for what was probably our final London "look" place. The Mint Leaf on Regent Street was posh from the word go. I booked it for one of d's birthdays and it had the potential to be up its own arse - cocktail lounge before you got to the restaurant, all neon and £6 per drink.
But then the food started coming, and the conversation stopped, as a parade of "mmmm" sounds, all low-key and orgasmic, started sliding their way across the table. Seduction food at its most exact and exquisite...except of course, you don't want to stop eating there until you're far too full to enjoy any attempt at seduction. Not, by any stretch of the imagination, a cheap night out. But worth it.

Ahhhh but enough about London's real crown jewels. You want to know about tonight's Welsh experience, presumably. It's called The Nant Ddu Lodge, and I've been there only once before - about 20 years ago. It wasn't like this back then.

From the moment we sat down in comfortable chairs to peruse the menu, it was evident that someone with an intelligent palette had been at work. There was diversity, there was choice, but every dish was crafted and described with such love and intelligence it took us quite a while to choose what we wanted. In the end, d tried the scallops with sweet chilli jam, and I went for a daily special soup, in this case, sweet potato and chorizo. Sublime. Both of them, sublime. These people know how to really sear scallops. Go there, just for those if you have to.

For the main, it turned out that we'd both chosen the same thing - slow roasted Welsh lamb with sweet potato, onions and a mint jus. I added simple new potatoes to the mix, and d, able now to double back and add to our experience, quickly swapped to what had been our joint second choice - pork in a brandy and peppercorn sauce. When they arrived, we liberally swapped chunks of falling-to-pieces lamb for tender-as-baby's-butt pork. I could happily have eaten both meals, and then finished off Ma's insanely soft and flavoursome gammon steak to boot.

On all the cooking shows, they say a thing - respect the ingredients, and do simple things, well, elevating them to a new experience for your diner if you can.

They can at the Nant Ddu. They do - consistently it seems. So consistently that they forced me out of diet-retirement to have a dessert. I originally chose the chocolate and morello cherry trifle with shortbread fingers...but it's apparently rather popular: it had sold out today by 1 o'clock.

When you need to book an appointment with dessert, you know the restaurant's on to something. Next time, trifle-boy...next time...

I went instead for the bizarre-sounding homemade rice pudding with rhubarb crumble. Yes, I know, it really shouldn't work.

It did. Someone had tried this out mannnnny times, I'm thinking, and tweaked it till the crumble topping, the rhubarb and the rice worked together on the palette, rather than engaging in what should have been war and carnage. d's lemon tart was light and sunny and though technically, Bake-Off judges would say its base was too thick, I for one think it needed it to stand up to the sweet-tart lemon curd in such quantity. It came with a scoop of vanilla ice cream that had a homemade, love-instilled creaminess...if it's not home made, I want to know where the hell it's commercially available!

We finished with complimentary - and again probably home-made - chocolate truffled, and cafetierres of de-caff, and came home raving about every "mmm"-filled mouthful. Birthdays just got a whoooooole lot easier to plan.

If you've never been to the Nant Ddu, do. Travel if you have to - just get there. Yes, it's completely blown my Tuesday weigh-in figures. No, my dear, frankly I don't give a damn. To eat a meal like that is worth whatever comes...

The Vain Nobility

Well....yesterday was fun. Turned into "Everybody Loves Tony" around here - apparently, yesterday's blog post struck a chord or two out there in the world of the interweb. Good, good. Fame and glory gratefully accepted...not to say expected...

It occured to me of course that when I started all this, it was principally as a health measure - when I started, I was radically unhealthy, and had peeing blood for no identifiable reason, but everyone said it was probably weight-related. My diabetes had started kicking if not my ass, then certainly my circulation, my liver and my eyeballs, and it was becoming a question of exactly how stupid I wanted my life to be: Did I want to eat myself to death, or did I want to stand against the flow of the inevitable mathematics of self-destruction and see what my stubborn bastardy could do?

And along the way, certainly, things have changed for the better - I gained a heart condition and lost some hearing, certainly, but in terms of my physical ability, I now live in a whole different world - and of course we're faaaaar from finished yet. I understand that there's yet another world of possibility waiting for me further down the line - in fact, probably there are two - one at around the 13 stone mark, and another when I reach my ultimate goal. I may be coasting at the moment (which of course is ultimately the way to drift back up), but I will get there.

But I think, possibly, the healthy angle has become something of a hypocrisy in me. Am I doing this now to improve my health? Yes, still...but not principally. Now I think it's mainly a vanity thing. Looking at myself in the mirror - which admittedly, I now do far more often than I used to (see - vanity) - I'm still not happy with the way I look. And call me shallow, but I think most of the reason to still be doing this, in my mind, is related to all the things I mentioned yesterday - the cool factor, the sexy factor. I want to look different because then I will feel different about myself. Sure, not peeing blood is great, but I'm already there. If it was all about the health angle any more, there'd be no particularly burning incentive to carry on. You want an incentive to carry on at this point, you have to go to Al Pacino's Satan in The Devil's Advocate:

"Vanity...is definitely my favourite sin. So basic: self-love, the all-natural opiate..."

But fat man vanity is something altogether more interesting than handsome man vanity, or pretty girl vanity. Vanity in our case can actually achieve a kind of hideous nobility - it's the embodiment of the will to power, the idea that you've heard a thousand times from people with no current control over themselves or their lives - "Inside every fat person, there's a thin person trying to get out". How do you think you actually get it out? you don't do that through the threat of surgery or the imminence of illness - no, that's enough to save your life and get you back into the realm of the "generally acceptable". To get you where you want to go...that takes vanity.

The trick of course is knowing when your vanity has done its job, and being able at that point to cut it loose, before any nobility in its nature turns to utter self-regard and self-revolution. If that happens, all you are is a skinny prick - and the point is, you don't need to be skinny to be a prick. you can be a happy, full, calorifically ignorant prick and enjoy your coast over the Grand Falls of this life. Use your vanity to get you where you beileve you want to be...but always, always, always know when to cut it loose before it kills you, just as surely as the fat would have done. When I get without shouting distance fo where I need to be, I may need one or two of you to step up and have the cojones to call me a vain prick...

Deal?

The Bigger Person

A Facebook friend of mine posted a line yesterday. She's very much against what's known as "body-shaming" - the notion that it's ok, indeed even positive, to make people obsessed or depressed about their physical size or shape, because it spurs them to take action about it. She posted the line as a kind of quote, a kind of justification from those who do this sort of thing, mainly to see the multiple reactions of her friends. She has cool friends, who don't do the body-hating thing. I'm one of them, obviously, so clearly this is not a response directly to my friend, who's cool, but to those who speak the line she posted in all seriousnes. The line was this:

"But how will they know they're fat if I don't tell them?"

This kills me. How would we know? Because it's not as if there are any hints in the media that there's a cultural norm to which we must aspire. Not as if clothes shops don't actively discourage us from feeling comfortable in our own skin, or indeed in any trendy clothes - not as if in fact they don't act against their own economic interests by purposefully not making the cool clothes available to us, in case our lack of cool leaves grease stains on their brand. Not as if the concept of sexiness, and the concept of cool, aren't personified everywhere as being entirely Other than us, and not as if when we attempt to stamp our personality on, say, the dating scene, we aren't rebuffed by those who have, like us, been inculcated into the certain knowledge of these realities - fat is not sexy, fat is not cool, fat is not normal, or stylish, or somehow even skilled.

We know all this with the certainty of the age in which we live. And if, somehow, we manage to ride over the crest of all this and still not be fucked up, we still have to look at ourselves in mirrors, windows, and shiny surfaces every morning. Let me save you some time here: There's a fair chance we know we're fat.

What the question seems to actually mean is "How will they know how inappropriate and disgusting their fatness is...if I don't tell them?"

Maybe there's an idea there. Maybe, if the body-police didn't feel that revulsion and that disgust, and didn't express it when they could and do, just maybe it would start a chain reaction. Maybe then we wouldn't learn to feel it ourselves. Maybe there'd be no economic incentive to reinforce body-stereotypes for fashion designers or advertisers. Maybe cool, and smart, and sexy could be things that people just were, or weren't, depending on some deeper factor than their level of fat or their body-shape - or come to that, their physical ability or disability, which is perhaps the deeper prejudice in our society (laced as it is with that saccharine sympathetic nod of pity).

So while I know that none of my readers are likely to be the kind of people to feel the "need" to tell people how fat they are, if you know anyone who does that, tell them this:
We know. Sadly, tragically, we know. There are still plenty of voices in the electronic ether showing us and telling us exactly how fat and wrong and revolting we are. We're still punishing, and hating, and killing ourselves because we know how fat we are, and we know how wrong and how disgusting you think that must be - how wrong and how disgusting you sentence us to be. So how about, just once, you be the bigger person, and say nothing. Maybe your moment of quiet will begin a ripple, begin a wave of sweet acceptance and relief. Maybe, by not saying a thing, you might just change the world.

The Blue Collar Workout

Well, he was a grumpy man, wasn't he boys and girls?

Slept massively late this morning - woke up naturally at 7.50 and poked d with the closest thing to a stick I had to hand...

Too late to go down the Trail. "That's fine," I told myself..."I'll bike...jusssst as soon as I've checked my emails..."

Needless to say, at 7.45 this evening, I was getting on the bike. Only managed a couple of hundred caloriesworth before it was time for dinner.

So I'm thinking, over the last three days, I've probably been over the "net losing" calorific intake on all three of them. So we'll see what Tuesday brings - of course, I do have an UberCommute on Monday, but that's not an excuse to "fix" the Tuesday result. Tomorrow will at least have some physical activity in it - going down the Trail, dammit, and then going up to work at Ma's. Which means lunchtime, there's what I believe the Americans call "Yardwork" to do - lopping tree branches, sweeping leaves (and broken glass - it's that kinda neighbourhood these days), and then shifting some heavy metal equipment from place to place. Gym? Who needs the freakin' gym. Gonna be working out blue collar style tomorrow.

Oh - for those who followed the "going half-deaf" saga, my doctors have responded to my letter of fuck-youness. Apparently, the first person who saw me is now on maternity leave, so they won't be able to "properly" respond till August. Sigh...fiiiiiiiiiine. Audiology appointment next Tuesday, and something called "balance rehabilitiation on July 3rd. Fun fun fun fun fun...

The Worm-Eating Nonsensicality

Ever had one of those days when everything, no matter what, rubs you up as prickly as a porcupine's toothpick?

Not sure whether this is just me, or just me just now, or whether it's a "diet" thing, but fuck me I'm grumpy.

Wasn't, when the day started. Went down the Trail again, in an attempt to regain a sense of normality. Did it, but felt less than normal. Felt, if anything, like I was trying to hard, in an attempt to swing a jury.

The day's been like that in a lot of ways really. Hit a good deadline today, but am also behind on two going forward. Went to Choir tonight, and had some fun with the guys, but wasn't really feeling the singing. Now I'm home, and I'm still grumpy. You know that song? Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll go and eat worms...?

Feels like that. Which I know is stupid, cos it's not like the world's been at all unpleasant to me today. More the reverse, actually. I like no-one, I hate everyone, every bastard on the planet can go and eat worms. If you need me, I'll be over here under a big hatful of poo, feeling wretched about everything. Mehh...
Just ignore me.

The Continuance Question

Weigh-in this morning showed a complete lack of movement either way - 15st 12.25. Happy with that in a week that has included fish and chips, cannoli and a very hit-and-miss exercise regime.

Which hit-and-misness was continued tonight as plans to bike evaporated under the strain of a one-week deadline, due to hit tomorrow. Also, tonight, had a Chinese takeaway. It was delicious, and I enjoyed it, and I'm still not properly off the wagon. Tomorrow, on we go.

Saw a thing on Facebook earlier - one of those funny poster things that tell the truth - and had to share it. Simply said "I do not want to know about your diet, OK?"

That seemed appropriate. Raised a question in my head, which is this:

Is anyone actually still interested in all this? When I started the blog, it was necessary to me, and it helped me get a kind of self-honesty and a sense of discipline, that helped me make initial progress. Now, if I'm honest, I don't feel like I need it to keep me on the straight and narrow. Now, like most things in my life, it's become a habit. I don't promote it as serious bloggers do, and very many days, I know it's much of a muchness these days - Trail, food, bike or excuses not to bike, on we go...

So I guess the question is whether anyone out there's still gtting a kick out of the thing, or should I let the Disappearing Man...Disappear, or at least become a more occasional blog, checking in when there's ACTUALLY something interesting or funny to say?

What do you think, O my increasingly small band of readers...most of whom know me in some capacity anyway...To blog or not to blog. That, it would seem, is the continuance question...

The Re-Tracktion

OK, so this morning, I got back on track for the first time since last Tuesday - went down the Trail and back. Got moderately depressed listening to, of all things given my recent concert experience, Bon Jovi, and had to switch to Buddy Holly to get me out of the funk. Bizarrely, as I sit here not twelve hours later, I cannot remember for the life of me what walking music I turned to when Buddy had warbled his last. No clue. Not a one. If I were a clue shop, I'd have to close up for the night.

Came back, started work, had a meeting, then, with my boss's permission, bogged off to Starbucks for the day. Got a huuuuge amount done, and have to be smacked periodically in the face so as not to look too smug.

Came home, got on the bike - like I used to do, when I was on track. There was a certain contretemps with the machine that beams programes upstairs. Could not get it to work.
"Why aren't you watching anything?" asked d, coming in a hundred calories later.
""Won't woooooork!" I almost wailed. She took the remote, pressed one of the many buttons I'd been pressing for ten minutes before huffily deciding to peddle in silent fury, just to show it who was boss. It worked for her first time.
She left. It stopped working instantly. I tried not to throw it through the window. I just about succeeded.

Heavy dinner tonight. Gorgeous but heavy. Weigh-in tomorrow will be what it will be, but on the upside, deadlines are looking pretty damn good, so on we go.