The Crawl Of The Ever-So-Slightly Lighter Brigade

Half a pound, half a pound,
Half a pound downward,
Into the Valley of Taking the Frigging Piss trudged the encumbered...

Yes - today's weigh-in figures show me at 19st 3.25 - that's a whole half-pound lighter than last week.

To be fair, this week I've missed a good few days of walking, due to deadline commitments, and last night we did have a pretty rich pasta dinner, to there's that, but all the same, it feels like a proper crawl at the minute.

But that being said, it's not as though my Disappearing is currently making too painful an impact on my life - the walking's pleasant, and I have yet to dedicate enough time or layers of foot-skin to it for it to be uber-effective; the bike is neeearly uncovered but there are two enormo, fuck-off paintings in the way, for which it's fair to say I don't have actual wall-space for, or any practical clue what to do with. I'm still, as foreshadowed, eating pasta - as well as other unwise things like occasional cashew nuts. I'm still drinking chilled Starbucks drinks from Tesco. And while I'm on my meds, I've been rationing them somewhat, due to a situation of being between doctors at the moment, which is hopefully solved now. So it's probably dead right that I should only be losing quarter-pounds. The time will come when I knuckle the hell down and things start moving properly - probably when I fiugure out what to do with those paintings, and add a daily chunk of biking into my regiment. but that's not today.

And as a pal pointed out to me this morning with a properly Girl Scout philosophy, 'still moving in the right direction.' I did point out that if you took pictures of the rate at which I'm 'moving in the right direction,' as of yet, they'd fail to show any movement whatsoever, but hey ho.

Right - on we go. Some bugger pass me my walking boots...

The Disappointment Bubble

The temptation to carve up time into tiny chunks can be dangerous when Disappearing.
That means unofficial weigh-ins between proper weigh-ins can potentially throw you for a loop, and affect your motivation. That's happened to me this week - an unofficial weigh-in showed only slow progress, and a subsequent unofficial weigh-in actually showed no progress, and the temptation then, when you're putting the time in to increase your exercise quotient and very specifically not eating a whole host of things you want to eat, is to feel distinctly pouty and stone-kicky and, not to put too fine a point on it, tantrummy.

I actually expect no progress at all on tomorrow's officiall weigh-in, so any that does come will be a bonus (a psychologically useful thing, this last-minute moving of goalposts to maintain equilibrium in the face of what would otherwise be bad news). The truth, I suspect, is that my body has acclimatized quickly to the things I'm doing, and is sitting there going 'Yeah. What else ya got?'

The additional truth of course is that I've got quite a lot. This has been what I hope it's OK in this absurd Brexitworld we live in to call a Soft Disappearing, at least in terms of its beginnings. I have still yet to clear enough of the carnage of boxes from around my exercise bike to get back on it since this Disappearing began. There have been days this week when deadlines took precedence and I didn't walk. And even on the days when I did, the distance has been sub-10,000 steps (thought I was somewhat heartened to read a news story this week that said the 10,000 step target was pretty much arbitrary).So there are certainly things I can, and will, do to make the Disappearing bite rather harder in the week ahead. But right now, it would be foolish to deny I'm in a bit of a Disappointment Bubble, because almost every time I've tried, I've lost more than this in the first two weeks, and you get used to, and expectant of, that initial bump-down of water-weight to power-surge your ego and push you on.

That hasn't happened yet this time. Perhaps by giving the Disappearing a few more teeth, I can start to impress my system with the fact that this is happening.

The Time Crunch

There's a truism in human life that says that if you don't make time to do something, it can't get done, because it doesn't have the time to happen in.

That's true of everything, from finding the love of your life to baking the perfect souffle to writing the next great novel to changing the socio-political landscape of your nation, to Disappearing. In order for things to happen, they have to have time to happen in.

Which is why I feel like I owe my Disappearing effort an apology today - I was all set to make the time to walk 8 km or so, as I did yesterday, but frankly the tension of deadlines got to me. There's a great expression the Scots have - 'Nippin' at ma head' - for when things or people feel like birds pecking at your skull, at your brain, and won't let you focus on any damn thing else at all.

It's been a 'nippin' at ma head' kind of day. Day-job deadlines, editing deadlines, geeky writing commitments, they've all felt like blackbirds pecking at my head all day long, which means I cancelled my plans to walk tonight, and have spent the time up till now (8pm) focussing on the day-jobbery, because that's my most pressing deadline.

In fact, I was due to be out tonight, canvassing with my pal Ruth, who's standing as one of four brilliant Welsh candidates for Britain's newest, coolest and fastest-growing political party - the Women's Equality Party (May 5th. Get to your polling station and vote WEP!). She texted last night to say she was going to have a hell of a day today, so we'd have to postpone it. As it happened of course, I had one of those days myself, so the good people of Aberdare were spared the appearance on their doorsteps of a baldy, beardy grumpy bloke, growling 'Can we have your vote or what?'

The good people of Aberdare had a lucky escape.

Oddly enough, was just getting this blog entry done and then preparing to go down for dinner and together-time with d.

'Erm...were you gonna do some biking?' she called up the stairs as I was typing line one.

'Errr...' I wasn't, in all honesty, because I didn't think I had time.

'S'gonna be a while before dinner shows up,' she added, 'so you've got time if you want to.'

Serendipity's a fabulous thing, but every now and again, I want to smash it in the face with a chair.
So this is me, going to take advantage of the time I have, to get some biking done.

Good, good...

The Capital Adventure

Apologies - meant to blog last night but the time simply got away from me. d and I went to Cardiff, my girl still streaming with the resurgence of the Boomerang Flu, as she had her first British hen party to go to.
This was her, ten minutes before she had to be out the door

It was gonna be a good night, clearly.

We booked a hotel in Cardiff to have somewhere to retire to at the end of the night, checked in and went to dinner. When we came back to the hotel, it had acquired a couple of bouncers.

Bouncers in some heavy-duty gear. Police bouncers, in fact. Along with a man who clearly liked having his hands behind his back as a restful stance in stressful situations. One of the cops was pulling on a latex glove as we pushed past them into the hotel.
There was what's been described in the news as a 'heavy, armed police presence' in Cardiff last night, because some gentleman enthusiast had a BB gun.
So - perfect night for a hen party, then.

There were about 18 of them in total. I walked d to the first stop, turning on my MapMyWalk app before we left the hotel. Turns out, MapMyWalk's GPS - or my phone's - can't cope with Cardiff Queen Street. It was baffled by the route I took, which was basically two straight lines in the drizzle. As d was introduced to the...uniqueness...of a Valleys hen night, I buggered off back to the hotel room to write. Then as midnight approached, and on a Cinderella principle, I went down to a local nightclub to collect her, and as many of the revellers as we could find, and eventually, with occasional bathroom breaks and burger bar breaks (none for me), we wound our way like a mostly pink-shirted herd of cats through the streets, avoiding the cops, to the pick-up point. I'm reliably informed a good time was had by all...except, just possibly the mystified twentysomething guy who ended up wearing the knickers of one of our party over his jeans. I have no idea, don't ask.
When we finally got back to our hotel at 2am, having gotten everybody to a place where they needed to be, we almost staggered to the lift.
It went 'bing.'
A big cop was standing in it, with an equally big bike.
'Evening all,' he said - yes, really - as he tried to manoeuvre the front wheel out through the lift doors. I have no particular explanation as to where he'd come from, or why he felt the need to have his bike with him.
'Vive la France!' It was the first thing I could think of. He walked his bike away, muttering about 'bloody drunks.'

Today, we've spent the day for the most part wandering from shop to shop in a furniture fantasy, and eating - had a French breakfast, and a Mexican dinner. Tonight, came home and pedalled the bike, but not for long. I'm fairly sure if I'd turned the MapMyWalk on throughout the course of the day, I'd have clocked up maybe a few kilometres, from store to store and department to department, but hey, who knows, because I didn't do that.

Tomorrow's a whole new day, with whole new opportunities to walk my ass off and eat sensibly. Tried to do that today - ate some bacon, but avoided the sumptuous boudin noir, which is insanely rich and fat-filled, and in the Mexican place, went for simple things, nothing deep fried, and not too much. So I feel pretty good about where we are, and there are still two more days before the weigh-in.

Now - important snoring to be done before the morning. To the SnorePit, Batman!

The Curry Divergence

"How does curry and rice sound?"
"Sounds very much like I love you forever."

You see, this is the problem with writing something down. The minute you do, it's set in stone, and you're not, and life has a way of throwing gorgeous tasty curved balls your way.
After I wrote last night's parable, d posed the question to me, and curry and rice was indubitably had. Delivery schedules being what they are though, biking was equally indubitably not done.
So - yay, part of me did a little jig of joy and determined to be nicer to small dogs and maiden aunts, because after all, the world was a lovely place.

The thing is, I could sort of get away with it yesterday. Was rather an active day, given that both my day job and my company involve me, as mentioned, in an awful lot of Sitting Down. By the time d's offer came, my phone was saying "Well done, you, you've hit your active minutes target," and even the Fitbit, which is a rather more gruelling taskmaster, was nodding brusquely and saying "Not bad. Could be better, but not bad."

Today? Notsomuch. The phone is kind of looking up at me with puppydog eyes, asking "Dude, what happened?" The Fitbit has been taken off, to give my wrist an airing and stop the electronic personal trainer from curling up in disgust. Much high-quality Sitting has been done today, with the result that I can cross a number of annoying things off my To Do List, leaving almost entirely fun things for the next week or so. On the other hand, my body's sitting here crying, going all "You don't love me any more!"

Quite where it gets the idea I ever loved it from, I'm not entirely sure. But so it is that this is a shortish entry - I need to bog right off, right now, and jump on the bike for a sliver of sweaty unpleasantness, before showering and dining and doing, tonight, no further work whatsoever.

Life, as far as I can see, is a mixture of getting kicked in the nuts and then, mysteriously, not. Take a curry diversion when one pops up into your life, it's like a bonus level of pleasure, and you deserve it.

Because the exercise bike will always be waiting for your ass to pay it homage.

The Tale of the Disappearing Man, Aspiration and Reality

Once upon a time, there lived a Disappearing Man, and he was strange.

The strange thing about him was he was never sure, from one morning to the next, from one moment to the next, where exactly it was that he lived.

Most mornings, he thought he woke up in a town called Aspiration.
Aspiration was a lovely place to wake up in - it had soft beds, comfy pillows, a friendly bear or two, and even a Mrs Disappearing, whose restless legs were like a friendly alarm clock to get him out of bed.

The Disappearing Man liked living in Aspiration. He had fun, and people paid him to do things that came naturally, like Sitting Down. He was extremely good at Sitting Down, so people paid him nicely to do it, and other people would stop as they rushed by on their way somewhere, just to admire his impressive Sitting Down technique. It was a happy place, with surprisingly few douchebags, because, when he wasn't Sitting Down, the Disappearing Man enjoyed nothing better than clipping a few douchebags round the ear and asking them kindly but firmly not to be douchebags any more, and so they weren't.

The best thing about Aspiration - aside from Mrs Disappearing, and the pillows, was that no matter what the Disappearing Man ate, he never seemed to put on weight. He ate, and he Sat Down, and still he Disappeared. And all was well in Aspiration.

Occasionally though, and without warning, the Disappearing Man would find he wasn't in Aspiration any more, but Reality.

Reality was very much like Aspiration, so at first he hardly noticed the difference. True, there were more douchebags there, but he reasoned that he'd get around to clipping them round the ear as soon as he was done with this important bit of Sitting Down he had to be getting on with.

But Reality, it turned out, was a very long way away from Aspiration, adn they did things differently there. And when the Disappearing Man did his Sitting Down, no-one stopped to admire his technique. They ran about in shorts and told him to 'feel the burn' or else he would most surely turn into a big block of lard with tiny squat arms and legs, so that the only thing he could do was Sit Down.

The Disappearing Man scoffed, and Sat, and ate a little more. And a little more after that.
And when he went home to his house in what he thought was Aspiration, but was actually Reality, Mrs Disappearing looked at him sideways, which it turned out was not a good way to look at him at all.

"I say, my dear, you'll be getting your arse on that there exercise bicycle then, will you?" she asked. And the Disappearing Man said that if it was all the same to her, he had quite a bit of important Sitting Down to do, and if there was a bit of cake going spare, that would be just the thing to tide him over till suppertime.
"Arse, bicycle, now. Dear," she said, explaining that while she herself cared naught if he were as big as a house, that he would take it much unkindly when the children came to throw things at him and call him a Big Fat Bastard, as children in Reality were wont to do.

"Oh," said the Disappearing Man sadly as he climbed the stairs to his fate. "I thought this was Aspiration."
"No dear," Mrs Disappearing corrected him. "You're awake now."

15th February - The Nazi Forgetfulness

No, still haven't put batteries in the Nazi Scales. Which is extra tricky because I'm either not that much heavier than last week, or significantly heavier than last week and damn close to where I started, depending on which faint, weak-ass signal of their forgetfulness we believe.

Weigh-in today put me as either:
19st 00 or
19st 1.25 or
19st 2.

Who the hell knows which if any of these are accurate? Must get round to buying batteries. Must do. Because, y'know, I so want to face the genuine music of my week of more or less exercise-freedom.

One thing I'll tell you - the propensity exists in me for a dangerous new routine. A Costa coffee shop has opened up just round the corner from me, and while I vow my unswerving loyalty to my particular Starbuckers, I also vow my increasing poverty, and it's a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to go round the corner for processed-sandwich lunch and coffee at Costa than it is to jump on a train and spend the day being all productive. In itself, that's probably not so bad, but it is rather facilitating my not-new but new-this-week habit (honestly, it must get exhausting listening to which particular pothole I've fallen down this week) of buying a bag of cashews and chomping my way through them as I plough through work towards a tight deadline.
Clearly, this needs to be stopped at some point soon, because whichever of the weigh-in numbers is actually accurate, it's not good. Also, I need to start biking more properly, and walking more properly again, to kick the living crap out of my metabolism and get it to remember its function.

Walking goooood. Cashews gorgeous little bastards, but basically a tiny individual sack of fat and calories.

When the Nazis get theire memory back, I promise I'll interrogate them in a more rigorous manner - three potential weigh-in figures is just ridiculous.

14th February - The Valentine Conundrum

Part of the point about Disappearing is shifting your mind from a state in which you're doing something you don't want to do to a state in which you're doing something you either do want to do it, or you just do it because it's what you do.

Holidays are legendarily tricky as far as that's concerned, because the messages you get from everywhere, from every societal norm there is, are all geared towards consumption. It's one of those scattergun scenarios where the social convention assumes that every other day of the year, you're a sensible person, despite for the most part a staggering absence of evidence of any such thing. Food that's technically unwise for Disappearers is also imbued in our culture with all kinds of messages of its own - Thanksgiving food equals plenty and togetherness. Christmas food equals...well, plenty, togetherness and screw it, we have January to cope with soon enough. Valentine's Day of course equates sweetness with love.

All of which is something of a lazy introduction to the idea that this year, d and I made each other our Valentine's gifts. Because d has mad wicked skills as a baker, she made me some cake. And it was glorious, thankyouverymuch, and I enjoyed every minute and every mouthful of it.

The point is not "Waaah, I had caaaaake!" Cake is good. We love cake. Especially cake as a representation of time and effort and skill and love. We are entirely pro-cake.

The point is that I've been that guy this week - the guy who's by no means a sensible person the rest of the time. Seem to have developed a fetish for roasted cashew nuts this week, and not just a passing handful of the beautiful salty bastards. Nono - a bagful. At a time. Most days of the week.
This means, effectively, I'm too stupid to eat love-cake this week.

What's undoubtedly more is that I've fallen into that state of deadline panic where I can take time to do all the fun things, like going to see Deadpool twice in one day (which, as a way of spending some time, by the way, I heartily recommend), but when it comes to getting on the bike, I've been all "Noooo, don't have time - have a deadline to meet!"
So - yeah, too stupid for love-cake. But let's not get maudlin about it. There will be consequences. They will be dire. And we pick ourselves the hell back up and Disappear again.

Mercy and the Nazi Scales

Got on the Nazi Scales first thing this morning before my eyes were properly open or my brain properly booted up.

"Lo," they said.

"Lo?" I asked. "What, are we going all gospel now? Is there a child born to us in the east or something? What the hell are you talking about, Lo?"
I got off, the scales wheezed, getting their breath and eventually their cryptic message disappeared. I kick the them again to get them working.
"Lo," they said again.
"Oh." I said. My Inner Editor itched, and I scratched it. "You mean Low," I told them. "Would one more letter have killed you?"
The Nazi Scales, it seems, in some sort of plea for mercy, have exhausted their battery. I suppose, technically speaking, that's what happens when you weigh a ridiculous number of times a day. Fine. At some point, I need to gut the little bastards and find out what kind of batteries they take to make them all bright and shiny and happy again.

But not today. Today has been a time of day-jobbery and moderate panic that an edit that should be relatively simple appears not to be diminishing, no matter how much of it I do. Right now though, I don't even have time to worry about that - somehow it comes to be later than eight at night, and I have to pick up d from work at 9.45, so I have to stop everything, jump on the bike and pedal.

Pedal, fat boy, pedal! The Nazis can wait for another day to get some mercy shown to them.

The Sliding Doors Sunday

I woke up this morning with two potential days stretching out ahead of me, Sliding Doors-style. In one, I sat around at home, possibly ordering in lunch, and eventually biking. In the other, I bogged off to Starbucks, focused on some work, then came home and eventually did some biking. I threw off the covers, intending to go for option 2. Then I sighed, thought about it, pulled the covers back over myself and determined instead to go for option 1. A little while later, when d woke up, we went for breakfast at McDonalds (plain porridge and an orange juice in my case – told you I’d be back on Disappearing form today). Then she went off to work, and I contemplated a long day at home.

Then I contemplated a long day not at home.

That was some pretty enticing contemplation. I jumped on a train and went to Starbucks. If nothing else, you see, it helped me break what could have been the beginning of a dangerous habit, and if we’ve learned anything at all by now, it’s that I am a creature of habit. Having had unhealthy food delivered to me a few times this week, it’s begun to seem like “What I do when I’m home for the day.” Bad habit to get into. Once in a while, sure. Habitually, nooooo.

So I did a Starbucks flip-flop, headed to Cardiff, got an agreeable amount of work done, and, through the course of the day, ate a total of two pots of porridge and one pot of nuts. Now, having come home, it’s time to implement the only element that was nailed into place whichever of the days I went through, and get on the bike, to reintroduce my system to the notion that it moves about a bit now and then. Time, in fact, to re-establish a good habit in my days, to drive myself if not exactly down (making actual weightloss progress seems a bit of a distant dream at this point in the week), then at least to arrest the damage of a couple of days of sloth and Very Hungry Caterpillar-style consumption. Here’s to hurting like a sonofabitch when I stagger off the bike tonight.

The Big Stick

Anyone got a big stick I could borrow?

The plan for last night was to get some dinner inside me, get on the bike and go collect d from work.

In the event I got some dinner inside me....and went to collect d from work. The flaw there, really, is that while my mind is as 21st century and progressive as you like, my body appears to still be a cack-handed 1970s unreconstructed dickhead, who stopped off in student digs along the way to blow up a few cookers.

Yes, really. At least two cookers exploded while I was using them. With a blithe self-regard that I like to think is charming, I succeed in not taking that personally, or indeed seeing it as any kind of message from the cookers of the world to stay the fuck away from them at all costs.

That means that while in the reality of the world, my none-too-ambitious dinner - chicken, brussell sprouts, rice - should have taken a maximum of 25 minutes to cook, and at most the same again to eat, leaving me plenty of time to jump on the bike and pedal, in reality, our kitchen looked like something out of a Buster Keaton movie during the more than forty minutes it took me to persuade the food to become...well, food, really. The kicker of which is that while I cooked two pieces of chicken, I ended up throwing one away, being both full and calorifically conscious.

So that's at least two nights, possibly longer, when I've done no biking. This could eeeeeeasily become a pattern - I have plenty of work to do that whispers seductively to me that sitting on my ass and getting it done is far more important than 'wasting' an hour on the bike, plus showering time, plus yadda yadda yadda.

Which is why I need a big stick. Made of, y'know, willpower and beatings.

Sigh. Tonight, goddammit, there will be biking.

Biking.

Right...

The Magnetic Sausage

"Sausageinabun! Two for a dollar, and I'm cuttin' me own throat!"

Apologies - just a little homage to Sir Terry Pratchett there, and in particular his "Sell anything to anyone" street vendor, Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, most notorious for the selling of a particular comestible on the streets of the ultimate city - the legendarily awful, but utterly irresistible "sausageinabun."

Why this?
Because the sausage in a bun pretty much accounts for my entire food intake today. Yesterday was d's payday, so today, we hot-footed it to Cardiff to celebrate a brief starflash of financial self-delusion in the otherwise unremitting night sky of theoretical poverty in the South Wales Valleys. In case you're wondering, theoretical poverty is like real poverty, but with a roof, and plenty of food, and good couches, and white goods, and enough food to maintain, in my case at least, a fervent need to Disappear.

So - not like real poverty at all, in fact.
Anyway - down to Cardiff we went, at a point somewhere between the hours of 'Feed me!' and 'No, Really, Freakin' Feed Me!'

With many places and cuisines at our temporary disposal, we ended up popping into a French restaurant named Cote, where d had a full breakfast, and I eschewed my normal yoghurt, compote and granola, on the grounds of sugar, and went instead with le sauccison dans un petit pain - sausage in a bun, only posh and French.

It was glorious, in the way many many French things are, and when we parted, me to my Starbucks for a day largely taken up with Chinese algebra (don't ask - day-jobbery), she to probably not spend the John Lewis vouchers burning a hole in her purse (really, really not like actual poverty, the more I think, about it), we were both replete and smiley, she full of boudin noir, the sausage's evil twin, me full of the entirely uncommon and never seen a garden variety of the otherwise humble banger.

The day passed. The algebra flashed in front of my eyes and sodded right the hell off, as I drank a fairly small number of my Starbucks Specials - oh by the way, I now have calorie counts for those: cold=190 calories (1 consumed today). Hot=130 calories (memory fails, but I think three consumed today). Expect more int he way of utterly tedious Starbucks calorie counting going forward. Then, as we were due to get back on the train to come home, d arrived with a paper sack.

"You have a paper sack, my darling," I noted.
She grinned. "I have dinner," she corrected me.
"Ah," I said, nodding.
"Hot dogs!" she explained. "From Five Guys."
Hot dogs from Five Guys are an acceptable substitute for real food in every human experience. They are, if you like, the ultimate rapidly available sausage in a bun. And so, once I've finished writing this entry, and biked my ass off for an hour, I will return, as though magnetised, to the glories and charms of the sausage in a bun, which appears today to hold me in thrall.

If you're going to be held in thrall to anything, you could do worse.

To the HateCycle! Time to pedal myself to a big sweaty mess to earn a cheesy sausage.

The Bikeless Wonder

Humph.

Second day without any biking done. Walking again, roughly the same distance as yesterday – around 450 caloriesworth – and a significantly lighter calorific day – a few of my pleasure-vacuumed hot Starbucks, one cold, all with skimmed milk (and mostly Mistos, so less of that), one Starbucks porridge and half a carton of roasted nuts (roughly 400 calories, and with at least a whiff of protein mixed in with the fat).

That’ll do me for today – very taxing day-jobbery today, so needed to get my head down and push on. Tomorrow though, it’s the weekend, and while I still have work to do, and the weather continues to give a solid series of single-finger salutes to the idea of recreational walking (most of the walking of the last two days has been ‘getting to places out of the pigging rain’ walking, rather than ‘striding off into the wide green yonder for the benefit of my health’ walking), mark these words – there will be biking! If nothing else, I’m at a crucial point in Season 1 of Gotham, goddammit, and I want to know what happens next!

Am I panicking yet? Actually, no. Probably should be – my system is hardly conditioned to the Disappearing lifestyle yet, my metabolism won’t have adjusted enough to burn enough calories just from being alive to let me get away with this nonsense for a couple of days. But the way I see it, this is the difference between a diet and a lifestyle change. There are going to be days and chunks of days like this. The thing is to get back to it as soon as is practically possible and not let the lapse become the lifestyle. So – tomorrow, possibly early if I can haul my ass out of bed – the bikeless wonder will be vanquished, and Biker Boy will return.