The Psychopath Dial

Yes, yes, yes, hello again.

I always feel a little diffident these days when I come back to this blog, as though I'm creeping back in with a blanket over my head. No interviews, please - The Calorific Criminal is back for another period of self-flagellation, till he gets too busy and/or leaps off the Disappearing Wagon again and then doesn't come back for aaaaaages.

Well....yeah, kinda. If a blog is anything worth writing, it's a reflection of the real world. Annnnd that's my real world. So - take me while you get me, folks; I seem unlikely at this stage to get anything book-length together, so right now, it's this or nothing.

So, where were we? Oh yes, Tuesday.
Tuesday is weigh-in day.

I don't know how to explain this, because at the moment I look rather like Santa Claus' less reputable, gutter-living brother, but weigh-in this morning was:
18st 8.

260 pounds, for those not staring down the barrel of a Brexit. Near-as damnit 118 kg, for the metriphiles.

Now in cold hard black and white those may not look like great numbers for a nearly-47 male of five feet six, or...oh gods, hold on...1.68 metres (if you're British or French) or 1.68 meters (if you're not).
Nevertheless, in recent times when I've felt the need to restart the blog, I've usually been at least a stone (14 pounds) heavier than that, strugglling to 'see an 18'. So if nothing else, we start this time out slightly ahead of the previous game.

I'm also under orders to test my blood sugars - which, thanks once again to a refusal to have any kind of internationally standard system, will mean buggerall to anyone, but let's just say I was told that between 6-8 is ideal, and anything in single figures will do in a pinch. After having quite a reasonable stint on single-figure results, recently I've been having a bunch that are jusssst the wrong side of that that. Today is 10.5, yesterday 10.6, the day before 10.3 etc. So clearly, something needs doing that hasn't been happening recently. To be fair though, my lifestyle's been pretty unhealthy again lately. So yyyyeah - tackling that seems to be A Thing To Do.

On the distinctly up side, most of the tourists have now fucked off from our little seaside town, which will mean it will be possible to go for more walks without feeling the surging, seething need to hit people with sticks. I mean, I might still feel the need as we hurtle toward a calamitous Brexit, but if they're harder to find, I probably won't click over on the psychopath dial to actively hunt them down.

So here we are again. for those who don't know the rules of the game, the aim is to lose two pounds per week, which is the medically advised weight loss. There'll be weeks when that doesn't happen, there'll be weeks when things go catastrophically in the other direction. But the intention is to push down, and down, and down, over the course of one year. Two pounds a week is 104 pounds a year, which would put me at 154 pounds, or 11 stone. Believe it or not, at that point, I'd still have 14 pounds or 1 more stone to lose to achieve me ideal weight, according to bastards who probably eat pizza every day and never get fat...

So...yyyyeah. Here we jolly well go again - though this time, in a town mostly comprising of fish and chip shops, cake shops, an old-fashioned sweet shop, cafes, gastropubs, restaurants and a fatally delicious kebab shop.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Rediscovery Of Legs

So - as promised, there's been action.

Not bullet from a gun, 'holy crap I'm going to die now' action, but action nevertheless.

In a nutshell, I have rediscovered my legs, and determined to put them to some use. Yesterday, I walked 8875 of my ideal 10,000 steps, while eschewing all the fun things in food life.

Well, I say that and it's monstrously unfair - actually, d (taking her inspiration from Tom Kerridge), did something remarkable with chicken and rice and tinned tomatoes, that saw me have a tasty baked chicken burger for lunch, and chicken, rice and stewed tomatoes for dinner. I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. Give me a bowl of stewed tomatoes and I'm a happy little camper. Similarly a bowl of boiled Brussel sprouts. If there's a tiny tump of boiled rice with it too, so much the better - these are the meals of my childhood, when my grandmother was poor enough to give us just carb and Something To Make It Exciting.

So - happy Tony yesterday, despite, when I came back from my walk, having to sit for about fifteen minutes in the town centre and cough up technically more lung that I'm probably supposed to own.

Today, due to an uphill detour to visit the local doctors and pick up registration forms, I tapped out at over 9000 steps, and have so far had a couple of cold Starbucks drinks - about 160 calories a shot, since you ask. Yes, technically they're caffeinated, and so I'll have to knock them on the head sooner or later, but for now, there's enough of a sensation of richness about them to get me started in the morning without especially craving what has the potential to be my downfall meal of the day, which is breakfast.

There are more stewed tomatoes in my immediate short-term future, along with potatoes tonight. The compulsion to eat a late, heavy supper, and to demand something sweet, is still there after a meal like that, but the compulsion can pretty much do one. I know, technically it's been two days, big whoop, but currently, I'm focussed forward, not letting the fatty lifestyle tempt me.

The rediscovery of legs has also undergone its first mild challenge - by the time I'd gone a few hundred yards today, the drizzle started, and my immediate reaction was positively catlike. 'Blech. Wet,' I muttered to myself, taking a look back at the flat, with its warmth, and dryness and work to be done.

'Fuck it. It's drizzle. Onward!' I said, and marched on, to the accompaniment of an audio drama.

In other news, my laptop appears to be dead and currently is refusing to rouse itself to any stimulus.
So...that's annoying.
But from a purely Disappearing standpoint - a pretty good day.

Winky

So – hoorah. Started pre-Disappearing today. For the uninitiated, pre-Disappearing is what happens before the first official weigh-in, which given that d made a mercy dash to a local hardware store this afternoon, will now be tomorrow. Pre-Disappearing is nothing terribly special, it’s just not doing the things I used to do, and doing some new things instead. 

Was going to be up in time to growl at larks on the wing and flick snails off the thorn and all that, but…what can I tell you, I live at the seaside now, and that seems to bring a lethargy with it that allows larks and snails to race about the place unimpeded. To be fair, I was up at 6…something-or-other to enjoy that delightful middle-aged need to pee in the night, but it was still pitch black outside at that time, because  it’s November and the sun’s having none of it either. So, I turned over, listened to an episode of Survivors (a bleak audio drama about the world after a pandemic plague wipes out more than 90 per cent of us – check it out, it’s from bigfinish.com, and it’s excellent), and then, when d woke up, all smiles and bounciness and greeting the day, I felt the need to humph, turn over and snore. Cos I’m just Mr Personality like that.

So – got a post-lark-and-snail start on the day, but, determined to make it at least a Disappearing start, got dressed and naffed officially off on the first walk of the week. Nothing dramatic, nothing overly taxing, just a slowish walk from Saundersfoot to Wiseman’s Bridge and back, but my phone (Oracle of All Things as it is), tells me that amounts to 7691 steps, 5.89 km (with a twiddly uphill bit at the end), and a somewhat cracking 543 calories burned – which given that it felt like more or less tokenism, I’m happy to take before breakfast. It only rained torrentially down on me twice during the walk too, so that was a result, and something else happened along the way.  

You know how, if you’ve been desperate to pee, and worried about making it home in time, you reach your bathroom, finally, blessedly, and it’s like all the pressing concerns of the world condense into one thought – that you’ve made it, and you’re alright – and as you pee, you smile because something that was in doubt has been safely achieved, and for those moments, you don’t care about anything else in the world?

It was like that, only less urinocentric. On the way back from Wiseman’s Bridge, I felt the sudden need to look out to sea, and did, and it was like crossing the point of no return, only for a different kind of relief. I breathed deeply in, and slowly out, and the stress of the last year, of trying to sell our flat, and having buyer after buyer frustrate us, of being made redundant right at the point when we were hoping to start looking at mortgages, of the last undotted i’s and the last uncrossed t’s that meant further and further delay as the money ran out and we were flung upon the kindness not of strangers but of friends and family, all shuddered out of me on that out-breath, and the smile that grew on my face probably disturbed the ever-living fuck out of an elderly couple coming the other way with the perverse determination to walk a Dachshund.

So, in stress, if not in actual blubber, I feel lighter today.

Then, of course, the deep fat fryer arrived, like the Fuck-You of the Gods.

I’m joking, really – I knew it was coming. d has phases of learning and re-practice where she feels the call of the culinary deities upon her shoulders, which is why, for instance, she makes kickass bread, and fudge and the like. When the money from the flat came through, her single indulgence was to get a deep fat fryer. It’s not that she’s about to set herself up in competition with the many exquisite fish fry restaurants in the area – honest. It’s more that there are things called cannolis, and these other things called doughnuts, and so there’s a need for deep domestic fat.

Not, now, of course, for me, but in general these things are needed, and so now, we have one. I’m calling it Winky…or possibly, for reasons no-one will understand, P’diddle, at least until its presence becomes a giant mocking outrage in my grease-starved life, which is at least a little down the line. And at which point, I’ll probably start calling it ‘Pieces of Winky.’

Popped into the local Tesco Express on the way home, and the attitude adjustment hit me. ‘Ooh, chocolate biscuits,’ I thought. ‘Fuck that, fool, the chocolate bars are right here,’ said a different, rather more Mr T part of my brain. Then in floated the Inner Hippy. ‘We don’t do that any more,’ he said, in precisely the tone of voice most likely to get the shit kicked out of him. The thing is of course, in my recently post-stress relief, he was easy to listen to. Things will by no means always be that way, but today at least, in what I like to think of as the real battle of Man Versus Food…Man won.

Man came home with a box of Weetabix in fact, for easier, more measurable breakfast cerealing than Rice Krispies allow. To show willing though, I downsized the size of my Krispie bowl this morning. And didn’t add a base layer of cookies. And didn’t ‘mount’ the bowl with double cream and sugar, so as to get that ‘Executive Rice Krispy Treat’ coagulation going on.

No – really. That’s been my breakfast, and occasionally lunch, for weeks now. You want lessons on force feeding, come to Papa.

Lunch was going to be beans on toast, but as it happened, d grew increasingly busy with an editing client on the phone, and lunch became dinner prep. I’ve just eaten two home-made cheeseburgers – as in patties made from scratch, grated cheese, bought buns, along with two small but gorgeous potato cakes, which were technically shallow fried, and so which, gorgeous as they were, I won’t be having again for a while. And some beans, left over from the beans on toast idea.

And that’s me done. When I finish and post this – broadband is still non-existent here in our new place, and the wifi’s ropy at best – I’m going to jump on the exercise bike and pedal for at least half an hour, so as to begin reintroducing my body and my brain to the idea that this is a thing it does now. That’s the game for now, I think – reconditioning. No chocolate biscuits, but a short walk and a short biking session each day, so the brain and the body start to build new patterns of expectation.

Thankfully, as I say, entirely due to a mercy dash from d, there will be the first weigh-in tomorrow morning, which is when the Disappearing starts in earnest.

The deep fat fryer may be winking at me, but tonight at least, I have a date with a bike.

Disappearing Tip #1: Retrain your brain.

Disappearing Tip #2: Yes, this will suck.

Disappearing Tip #3: It’s supposed to suck. Get through it, and eventually, it will feel like normality. This is a good thing. Honest.

The Seaside Years

Err...hello?

Is this thing on?

This is The Disappearing Man, a blog about one fat bloke's efforts not to die quite as soon as he's currently scheduled to do, through the application of sheer bloody-minded stubborn-bastardy.

This blog's been in existence now for about seven or eight years. When it started, I was living in London, and was 20 stone 7.25 lbs, or 287.25 lbs for my American friends, or...oh hold on, talk among yourselves, I haven't quite got enough fingers for this bit...just over 130 kg, the web informs me.

That was heavy. My doctor had decided it was heavy enough to recommend me for bariatric surgery. And that was a genuine option for me. I faced a long dark tea-time of the stubborn bastard, and decided I couldn't personally go for the surgery until I'd tried my own implacable determination against the training I'd had in being a fat bastard and killing myself, mouthful by mouthful.

I did it for a little over a year, and lost six stone, or 84 lbs, or 38 kg. Along the way there was much fun, much ranting and sweating and hatred of the human race, and a progression from being the bloke who struggled to put on his own socks to a marathon-walking, spin-classing, gym-understanding bloke who confidently swore he'd never go back to the way he was before.

The thing is...my brain, as I'm coming to realise more and more as the years go by, works a little differently to many people's. Intellectually, I'm all about doubt and grey areas and live and let live - I'm among the hippiest of hippies in many ways. But in terms of my own existence, I seem to live a binary, inflexible life - one thing or the other.

The way I got to be over 20 stone was by allowing myself total, childlike freedom. If I wanted something, I had it, and devil take the consequences. I was at one and the same time entirely content with this approach and deeply self-loathing - I was Schodinger's Fat Fuck.

The way I Disappeared the first time was to radically and rapidly change the nature of my behaviour - to switch from total liberty to almost-total self-denial. I made a decision, and instantly, overnight, cut out fried foods, chocolate, desserts, fizzy drinks and overt sugar, while changing my approach to portion size, protein and even the dreaded salad vegetables (which I maintain to this day are more or less nature's garnish and should not be taken at all seriously as a food group). I began walking - first short distances, then longer, and longer. I invested in an exercise bike heavy enough to take my ass (not as easy a thing as you might think to find), and I began to pedal that ass viciously off, plugging in my iPod to keep me up to pace and avoid the running stream of obscenities in my brain. I started drinking water for the first time in my life, replacing all my seductive fizzies with clear boredomjuice.

And the way that worked was what I think of as my 'perspex boxes.' I have to live in a world where other people are able to eat and drink what they like, and not want to pound their skulls in - I'm married to a foodie with a baking fetish and mad skills, it simply can't be an option to ban all the good things in life from my world. That means I erected these 'perspex boxes' all around me. I was in the box, and all the tempting, delicious stuff was outside - visible but unreachable as far as my brain was concerned.

As I say, it's not for everyone, but it worked for me. During the course of that year I moved, with d, my wife, from London back to my childhood home,  the Welsh Valleys town of Merthyr Tydfil. And it was there that, one night, d asked me whether I could, after that successful year, experiment with re-introducing treat-foods into my diet. It began with a battered cod and chips.

And the boxes were broken. The digital, black-and-white world in which I live couldn't sustain just one treat, in the way an alcoholic's world can't really sustain just one drink.

Over the next handful of years, I tried time and time again to resurrect my boxes, and failed. And the weight came back as more and more I ate and drank precisely what I wanted. Precisely what I wanted, of course, wass mostly carb, and fried things, and sugar, and chocolate. Because Dopamine, right?

We don't live in Merthyr any more. In the last two months, we've finally achieved a long-held dream and moved to the Welsh coast, to the Anti-London that is Saundersfoot. The last year has been insanely stressful for us both, as we've been trying to sell our Merthyr flat, while both being made redundant.

This week, the flat finally sold. Money transferred. Debts were paid off.
The new chapter of our lives, this seaside chapter that hopefully sees us through to the end, began this week. And I'd made a pledge that after a year of extra-special stress-eating (something to which I've never knowingly been prone before - I always copped to eating for the sake of gluttony, or just because I wanted the tasty stuff), when the flat sold, and the stress lifted, I would get the hell back to my Disappearing.

The blog's part of the process, it seems - that sensation of reporting to someone on the ups, the downs, the issues of Fat Fuckery and Stubborn Gittishness, and which will win in a clash of those titans. It's like having an electronic Father Confessor, an audience, a bunch of eyes I have to meet if I go wrong. So here we are again, preparing to erect the perspex boxes. Preparing to bike, and walk, and ignore the fact that I now live in one of the many HOMES of battered cod and chips, with tea shops, cake shops and chip shops everywhere I look.

The rule is that I AIM to lose the medically-safe amount each week - 2lb. There'll be regular weekly weigh-ins on a Tuesday morning (slightly hampered at launch by the fact that a great deal of our stuff is still in Merthyr - including my scales), by which progress and setbacks will both be recorded. Suffice it to say that I firmly believe I'm now heavier than I was when I began my first Disappearance, but the official launch weight will be whatever the scales first records when it gets here. That means the goal will be to lose 104 lbs in the first year - 2lbs per week, on average, over 52 weeks.

That's goal 1: Lose nearly 7.5 stone in 52 weeks. I have no expectation of actually achieving that of course, but having the goal is useful as an aspirational stick with which to beat myself. If and when I DO achieve the 7.5 stone loss marker, I'll still have around 2.5 stone to go to be at my medically advised weight, being a shortarse at just 5ft 6. But one goal at a time, eh?

As is the way with most people about to embark on a diet, we've just more or less finished all the 'bad' food in the house. While writing this, I ate the last slice of d's homemade Thanksgiving apple pie, and a chunk of Christmas pudding. It's in me now, and it's done. This part of my life is done.

Perspex boxes - up.

Come along for the ride if you like. Welcome to The Disappearing Man: The Seaside Years.

The Birthday Reawakening

Well hello all over again.

Yes, I've been away from the blog. Yes, I'm back now. Yes, the being away denotes notsomuch a falling off the wagon as a slowing up, stepping off and lighting the fucker on fire. And yes, it's time to break out the fire extinguisher, see what can be salvaged, preserve some roasted horsemeat for the journey and start all over again. Faiiiiirly convinced that tomorrow I'll actually be heavier than I was when re-starting the Disappearing. But, on the other hand, there has been, today, a degree of consciousness-raising (S'kinda like barn-raising, except you have to keep pulling your shirt down to avoid exposing your gigunda-belly). And there has also been some proper walking - as in painful, not-stopping, 'Holy CRAP I'm out of practice at this shit!' walking - so I can at least face the morning with a modicum of 'Yes, but I'm back on board now' rationalisation.

Decided to get back onto the blog discipline too, notsomuch because of the cathartic effect of confession - 'Forgive me, readers, I have sinned. It's been two weeks since my last confession' - but more because I have a pal who reads the blog pretty compulsively (I have the weird sensation she may conceivably have read all of it, which I'm not even sure I have once it was written. So this one's for Ruth, as a kind of birthday reawakening, and a promise to do better both in terms of the Disappearing and the blogging.

Happy Birthday, pal o'mine - the Disappearing Man is back. Again.

The Walk of Shame

Yep, Monday.
Monday, which brought meetings, a magazine that's prolapsed - with features at both front and back ends dropping out suddenly, the death of a coffee maker that's barely a month old (Well hell, January was a month of death in the headlines, why should the coffeemaker survive into February), and the apparent arrival of the latest storm to bring wind, more rain, with a sprinkling of pigging rain on top.

Sigh - got to love Wales. No really, it's the law - the locals turn against you if you dare to complain.

Anyhow, before the storm hit, I met up with my mother. She's begun her own Disappearing act again, though she's much more hardcore and hardass than me - she was on a 500 calorie day. Personally I think it's a gerbil diet or somesuch, because I'm fairly sure it can't be healthy to try and sustain a human existence on that, but hey, it's her thing.

We did five revolutions of the local Thomastown Park - barely a mile, I imagine, but some of it agreeably uphill, and not a bad way to spend a lunch hour. Not as good a way as say, having lunch would have been, but at least it allows me to mark the day in the calendar as beign the moment at which I started walking again as part of the Disappearing.

Now, five revolutions of Thomastown Park, for all it was a promising beginning, is fairly pathetic. We were up to ten revolutions in just over an hour the last time we stopped doing this. So it's pretty much a walk of shame to find ourselves unfit enough to have to go back to what amounts to basics and do just the five. But - a beginning.

Healthy dinner tonight - chicken, green veg and such. Remotely influenced by the fact that tomorrow's Tuesday, and Tuesday is weigh-in day? Hell yes. I've become vaguely fixated by the idea of making a certain amount of progress by tomorrow morning, and so I was delighted with d's concoction. More biking too, but again, inspired by Daredevil, only about 40 minutes worth. That clearly needs to change. Perhaps tomorrow I'll go back to music.

If, that is, there's any biking at all tomorrow. d's mentioned a last chance to see Judi Dench on stage via the movie theatre in Cardiff, so we may go out tomorrow night. I'm certainly doing a Starbucks day tomorrow as there's work going on involving the road outside our flat, and it simply wouldn't do to go out and stick some poor guy's pneumatic drill in him sideways.

So we'll see what happens. Here's to weigh-in day.

The Day One Enthusiasm

So here we go again.
This is where we begin another year of Disappearing. The first time, the majority of the positive journey took just a year. The majority of the backsliding took three.

The original was inspired by health concerns. The odd thing is, this time round, it really isn't - no-one's offering me gastric surgery anymore, and I know now I wouldn't take it if they did. Works for lots of people, and good on them for having that courage, commitment and stamina. I need to do this my way.

Nor am I particularly freaked out any more by my heart condition - it gave me episodes at 20 stone, and it gave me episodes at 15 stone. I'm now fairly convinced it's just 'a thing' I need to accommodate, a battle-scar from the bloody business of just being alive - like the metal in my ankle and the gwretched pigging deafness in my right ear (though I'd be lying if I said I'd entirely come to terms with that yet).

Oddly, when I started originally, I was on a lot of diabetic medication, and through the course of the first Disappearing year, I reduced and then cut out an entire pill (from four each day). But equally strangely, when my blood was tested just last Sunday when I had my latest heart escapade, it was pretty much textbook - 7.7. While I'm sure my body wouldn't mind at all if I lost a shitload of weight, I'd be lying if I said I was doing it this time to live longer.

I just need to do it for me.

I need to do lots of things for me, quite frankly. Me, me, me - this year, I've decided, is all about me. I finished draft 1 of a book last year, but draft 2 has been stuck in a queue ever since while I've been busy doing edits for other people. Have put myself under quite a bit of deadine pressure that way, which I'm sure my body wouldn't mind not being under either. I didn't run an editing company four years ago when I did this first, and this year, I'm pretty much going to own as little of one as possible again - I'm farming out more work to my editors, who are all massively capable. I can't exactly go entirely back-seat, but the heart thing has made me question whether I need to be breaking every bone in my back running a company. Clearly not, though I may just possibly need one more editor. We'll see. But this year is going to be about making some necessary changes in my life. Draft 2, edited, and out the door. Book 2, between October-December 31st. But mainly, Disappearing again.

The thing about making a big song and dance when you start something like this is that it quickly wears out its welcome. It's like fanfaring every time someone's supposed to come into the room, if they persistently don't arrive. The more false starts you have, the less inclined you are to blow your horn when you begin, because you're more aware of people going 'Oh aye, that'll be right. I'll be over here if you actually do something.'

I weighed in yesterday at 19st 3 lbs. That means that while the first year of the Disappearing Man saw me lose just about 6 stone from my initial starting weight of 20st 7.5 lbs, over the course of the last four years, I've only actually lost 1st 4lbs (18 lbs to my American friends). That entirely sucks. I feel sluggish, I've begun avoiding my reflection again, and have even begun investing in a stupid waste of time - giving a toss what people think of me. I've never done that in 43 years, I'm fucked if I start doing it now, so that needs to stop, which means I need to dislocate my own sense of nosediving self-esteem.

So here we go. Usual rules apply - no fizzy, no fried, low sugar, low carb, more exercise, more metabolic stimulation. Clearly need to rethink my Starbucks choices and probably visit-frequency too, cos even in terms of skinny, that much milk is probably not ideal.

Let's do some math for a quick refresher. The medically advised safe amount to lose per week is 2 lbs. There are 52 weeks in a year. That makes 104 safe pounds of loss advisable in a year, of the (dashes away to calculator) 231 lbs of me there currently is. In British, that means near as dammit, 7.5 stone, which would take me to 11st 10 lbs. Just around a stone or 14 lbs away from the medically advised ideal weight for someone of my height, 5ft 6 inches (curse you, short parents, why couldn't just one of you have fucked a supermodel?!).

Will this happen? Shouldn't think so - barely scraped a loss of 6 stone the first time round, and now I'm four years older and the flab is harder, fortysomething flab that sort of looks up at you and sniggers every time you play energetic music at it. But something will. If I can lose 6 stone in a year again, I'll be happy. To be honest, if I can come away with a net loss of 5 stone 4 lbs, I'll be chuffed as fuck. So the hard goal is 104 lbs. Soft goal, 74 lbs. Annnnywhere in between the two, happy happy Tony, dancing about the place.

So now you're all sitting there going 'Yeah, OK, but what have you actually done? Y'know, today?'
Well, as with the original Disappearing, I'm starting slow, so as to neither surprise the bejesus out of of the heart and make it panic, nor waste the enthusiasm of starting this again on a quick effort that gets nowhere and then is disappointed.

Walked five revolutions of a local lake this morning - equivalent to 6000 steps, 3 miles or 300 calories. Breakfasted on McDonalds plain porridge - couple of hundred calories. So far, had a bottle of water for lunch, though there's a meat and veg stew with my name on it for lunch proper. Tonight's dinner - pasta, but with portion control. And I'm aiming to do a little exercise biking later today too, to up the calories-burned count.

Yeah, I know, big whoop - it's Day One all over again, whaddaya want from me?
What will be happening is more frequent blog entries here again, because if I just rant at the wall, I'll look like a crazy person, and there are other Disappearers out there who quite enjoyed the ride the first time round. Hopefully tomorrow, I'll begin adding the tedium of blood test numbers daily - because I know you won't sleep at night if you don't have those.

I've restarted the Disappearing Man so often over the last three years it's not even funny to Ricky Gervais. But in the words of Bill Hicks, 'excuse me while I plaster on a fake smile and plough through this shit one more time.' Anyone still up for the ride?