The Exploding Wagon And The Winter Coat

Apologies all, been away a week and a bit. Not intentionally, just never got round to posting the blog as is expected on my Tuesday weigh-in days.

So let's get some straightforward stuff out of the way. Have been more or less off the Disappearing Wagon for those two weeks. haven't walked but once since I fell over in the nearby tunnels - is it a bit pathetic to still be in my forties and confess I sooooort of have a thing I have to now get over about walking through the tunnels which lead to my best, easiest and most sprawling walks? Mostly a constructed thing - I'm half deaf, and have what the specialist gloriously described as 'a severe insult to the organ of balance' - it's a bit of a party trick now: if I close my eyes and march on the spot, I will inadvertantly rotate a full 180 degrees, without being even remotely aware in the moment that I'm doing it. I even have a pal who didn't believe that till she'd seen it with her own eyes.

What that also brings with it is a tendency towards dizziness and falling over when I move rapidly from light environments to dark ones. Such as tunnels. Or, as we've discovered many a time, from lit rooms to dark corridors. I swear sometimes d's just there counting the seconds under her breath until I fall over or crash into things.

Anyhow, so there's that. Plus of course, I'm a natural born klutz with an intimate relationship with the ground, who's previously broken both ankles, a big toe and a femur, so there's a growing cache of experiences screaming at me when I go into situations of potential up-fuckery. But falling this time, even though I didn't break anything, seems to have left me with a rising tension in the chest when I approach the local tunnels. Have done it once since then, but found it massively easy to find excuses since. Clearly, it's a thing that needs beating. I just haven't been motivated to beat it yet.

That, added to a certain loosening of the self-restraint belt, meant that last week, when I got on the Nazi Scales, I'd gone up from 17st 7 and some to 17st 10.5 - roughly three pounds up.

Went ahead and had another, almost equally wild week, and this Tuesday, tipped the scales at 17st 9.25. So...up on two weeks ago, down on last week.

Clearly though, I need to get my shit together. So...yeah. This is my 'getting my shit together' face. Grrr...

I guess the one good thing to claw from these results is that I'm one good week away from getting back to the last, best, result I had.

Which would be fine if I'd had a good week. Haven't really - had Chinese New Year, and a banquet which was glorious beyond measure, topped off by a Fererro Rocher Sundae, which was a mistake on absolutely every level.

And so it goes. Haven't weighed since Tuesday - mostly on the basis of fear, if we're honest - but got a nice boost today. As Storm Erik, the most Viking of weather fronts, prepares to roll in and blow us all from pillar to post, it was time to dig out the winter coats when we left the flat this morning. It would be overstating things a lot to say I was dreading putting mine on, because last winter it was tight to the point of a sausage ready for sizzling, but certainly when there appeared to be a comfortable gap between where my belly ended and where the coat began this morning, I left the flat feeling a rather more cost glow than I did laast year. This, I guess, is the importance of perspective. Yeah, sure, I had a week where I put a few pounds back on, and a week where I lost a bare smidge of that again - and it's actually anyone's guess how things will go next Tuesday - but I'm still lighter than I've been in quite some time. Sometimes the longer timescale can give you a reminder than not everything lives or dies from one weigh-in to another.

Still and all, the 'getting my shit together' face is needed. Onward! Downward! Cheeearrrrrrge!

The Probably Shirt and The Unhumble Pound

'Waah!' I sqealed.

'What? What's wrong?' called d from the living room, precipitating a bit of an Ealing comedy in our little flat about what had made me squeal, whether I was alright, and how thrilled I was that she'd found one of my Hellboy T-shirts in a box (Yes, that's right, dammit, I'm old enough to own T-shirts from when the first Hellboy movie was released. People tell me they're now rebooting it. I'm choosing to take that as a mark of being classic and vintage, rather than simply old). But no!

I mean, yes, it's awesome that the Hellboy shirts have come to light from some box or other - and even more awesome that my 'There's Probably No God, Now Stop Worrying And Enjoy Your Life' T-shirt has survived and found its way back into the light...

Have I told you about the Probably Shirt before?
Long story short-ish: a few years ago, before messages on buses blotted their copybook forever (*Shakes fist at sky, yells 'BREEEEEEEEEEEXXXXXXXITTTTTTTT!!!!'*), there was a campaign on a bus, with the simple motto 'There's Probably No God, Now Stop Worrying And Enjoy Your Life.' It was started by comedy writer Ariane Sherine (with whom I now get to occasionally interact, as I'm one of her legion of Facebook friends, though if I'm absolutely honest, I'd rather forgotten till just now that the campaign is prrrrobably why I first sent her a Friend Request back in the day), had support from the British Humanist Association, of which when last I checked I was still a member, and it gave me quite some fun, one way and another.

Loved the campaign, supported the campaign, bought the aforementioned T-shirt.

Wore the shirt regularly - got me accosted on High Street Kensington station once by a bloke who less-than-calmly informed me that 'Dawkins is shit and he's gonna burn in Hell,' to which my early-morning, pre-coffee response was 'You may be right, but why are you telling me? D'you think I'm gonna ring him up and say 'Oh, Professor? Some bloke in Kensington says you're shit?'
As I say - pre-coffee response, I wasn't at my wittiest.

Where the shirt reallllly came into its own was when, in spite of anything that might be considered to be 'common sense,' I wore it on a flight over to New York State, via Chicago. On American Airlines.
No-one batted an eye at Heathrow, and we boarded without issue. As usual on a transatlantic flight, I fell asleep, only to be woken by a flight attendant.

'Wha-? Eh? Are we nearly there yet?'
'Sir, I noticed your shirt there.'
I blinked the sleep out of my eyes. d, I think, pretended extra hard she was unconscious.
'Wha-? Oh. Oh yes?' I asked.
'Sir, I happen to know there actually is a god.'
'O...K. That's....nice for you?' I said, hoping the rising inflection would take the sting out of my disbelief for her. She pursed her lips - apparently the sting was still intact - and then moved on.

Well, that was odd, wasn't it, boys and girls? I thought, humphing over onto my other hip and trying to get some more shut-eye.

Some time passed. Possibly, some drool escaped down my chin, because fuck human dignity when you have to sleep in public. Then someone gently shook my shoulder.

'The pheasant's in the collander! The collander!' I assured half the plane. When my eyes worked again, they showed me that my friend the attendant was back.
'Hello, sir. Would you like to join me in the back?'
'Err...what?'
'I've got a buddhist gentleman, a muslim, a hindu and myself as a Christian having a discussion back there about why there definitely is a god, if you'd like to come join us.'
'Errr...yyyyeah,' I said. I could feel d Being Asleep with all her might. 'I think I'll skip it, if it's all the same to you,' I decided. 'Could I maybe get a Diet Coke instead?'

At security in Chicago O'Hare, some guys with guns told me I 'got balls, wearing that thing in this country.' They didn't seem to regard having those particular balls as a bad thing as such, they just wanted me to know, in case I'd been worried, that balls were in my possession, and apparently on display, as proven by  the wearing of the shirt on American soil.

And then, having cleared customs, and being just about ready to transfer to a flight to Buffalo, a lovely Miss Marple-style old lady excused herself, saying she'd noticed the shirt.
'Yes?' I asked, trying to maintain the illusion of Being A Nice Human Being.
'Yes. I just wanted you to know, I'm a Christian, but I respect your right to wear that shirt absolutely,' she told me. I wanted to hug her, but I figured I might crush her if I did - she really was frail and tiny. But I thanked her for taking the time to reach out in sisterhood to someone who had a different position to her. I doffed my hat (Always have a hat, it makes doffing it much more straightforward, and if you try and doff your hair it just looks weird). Made me really rather wish I'd been as good as she was and joined that inter-faith meeting at the back of the plane. Ah well...

It was later on that trip, while at dinner with the folks of some friends that, recalling these events, I was asked perhaps the oddest question in my life so far, by one of the sisters of the family.

'So...' she said, intent and earnest. '...do you...y'know...have Christians over there in England?'

I couldn't for the life of me work out if she was serious for a moment.
Yes, she was.

Anyhow, when we got home, d politely asked me to retire the shirt from my regular wardrobe, and because it's a T-shirt and she's my wife, I did. To be honest, I think she was just sick of it being 'A Thing.' But now, on opening boxes in the new place (yes, still - we really have a lot of stuff!), the Probably Shirt has come to light again, and, much to my surprise, gone into the wash.

'How come?' I asked.
'I'm much less worried about you wearing it round here than in London,' she explained. 'I mean, it'll still get on lots of people's nerves, but at least they're less likely to be armed. And if they want to push you under a train here...it's harder work than it would have been on the Tube.'

She's not wrong. We live in Railway-Children-On-Sea now - you have to jump up and down and wave at the driver to get a train to stop. And of course if anyone wanted to push me under a train these days, they'd kinda have to give me a lift to the station first.

Annnnnyway - thrilled though I am to get the Hellboy and the Probably Shirt back in rotation, that wasn't why I'd squealed.

I'd squealed because it's weigh-in day, and I'd expected to go up, following a week of editing deadlines, grim weather, even grimmer determination and Eating All The Pies. But no - down a single, unhumble pound, to 19 stone 1 pound.

I've now been crawling downward by the most ridiculous amounts - a quarter-pound here, a half-pound there - since I started Disappearing again, and have yet to even get the water-loss bump that usually comes in the first two weeks. And while it seems I'm destined never to see an 18 in the Stones column again, this unexpected pound does mean the first half-stone has been shed, of the many that need to be dissolved. Hence the squeal that led to much T-shirt discussion.

Here's to walking more in my kickass Probably Shirt, eating less and cracking through the crust of 19 stone next week. Maybe.

Oh, PS - just did a Google search for an image of the Probably Shirt. It's now on Redbubble with designer pre-fading, listed as a 'Classic T-Shirt.'

See - told you! Classic. Not old...

Something For The Weekend

Fuck you, cold weather!

Not because you stop me from exercising - clearly, you don't, this is...what, day eleven of this grand and glorious enterprise, during which, for the most part, I've hauled my gigunda-ass out the door and gone walking. No, fuck you, cold weather for the clothing.
It's cold, and while I might look like Brian Blessed's flabbier cousin, I'm a Grade A wuss-ass with diabetic feet, meaning I get cold sometimes even when people are disrobing and fanning themselves. In this kind of weather, fucking forget about it, I'm the shivering hair dumpling in the corner under a pile of blankets, shaking its doughy little fist at the Ice Giants and telling them exactly where to go as I guzzle my extra hot, wet skinny decaff sugar-free caramel misto. Venti, baby, because I need it!

But here's the thing. If it were just a battle between me and the wintry elements, I'd have this shit down. It hasn't gone unnoticed by people who actually know me that I have the body of a polar bear - covered in blubber with a thick coat of hair over top (everywhere except my head, thank you gods of never-getting-laid-again-ever!). So in some respects, despite the wuss-assery, the winter is my playground. I mean, I'm not about to break out my claws and display my astonishing ice-skating prowess, because - get the catch that is me - I have weak ankles, and have broken many bones south of the equator, down Mexico way. What's more, I've always had the balance of a penguin on a butter-strewn barrel, and have subsequently sustained what my specialist described as 'a severe insult to the organ of balance,' so ice skating, not my thing, but the winter, generally, more my playground than the summer, which serves mostly to render me down into bacon and lard.

But it's never just a battle between me and the elements. It's a battle between me, the elements and other people's reactions to the elements. I dress for winter when I go out - which today, when forcing a little over 8,000 steps into my day, had me walk down to town to collect my meds. And then, I had the bright idea of going for a heair and beard cut.

This was long overdue - I did Christmas and New Year mostly looking like an out-of-work, down-on-his-luck alco-Santa, and have inexpertly hacked at the facial fur a couple of times with scissors, just so that I had a fighting shot of getting my Christmas dinner in the right hole.

But of course, it's cold.
That means a) I'm dressed like Nanook of the North, or like Ralphy from A Christmas Story when sent out to play. I can barely move my arms, I'm so wrapped and covered. And b) people in shops have got their heating on high, to ensure they themselves don't have to dress like Scott of the Antarctic going about their daily business.

This is a bad combination for a fat fuck going for a haircut. By the time the lady behind the counter told me to take a seat, cos someone would be with me imminently, my forehead was throbbing and pink and drenched in rivulets of sweat, made more emphatic by my knowing they were there and knowing the lady was about to touch my head and get slicked with my fat-fuck head-sweat and ohhhh gooooood.

And so she was. I used to make up some excuse or other - believe it or not, I actually tried to con a Turkish barber, relatively recently, that I'd been caught in a sudden rainstorm. He laughed, playing along, then took a quick look out of his window (entirely unbedecked with raindrops), and went back to shaving my head with a rather more gruff tugging motion.

Now I don't say anything. She know it's head-sweat, I know it's head-sweat, she's just trying to surreptitiously trim my overgrown nose-hairs without letting on she knows they're not part of my moustache, and were she to trot out the old barbers' trope and ask me if I needed 'something for the weekend' - a euphemism I almost hope will be lost on the Americans in my readership, I'd probably opt for a shotgun, to put an early end to this particular 'fat fuck in cold weather' nightmare of utter grimness.

Om the one hand, I don't think she charged me anywhere near enough, at £9.50. On the other hand, neither did she get the moustache-trim right, so I suppose all's fair in money-making and ickness.

Still, far from acknowledging my own part in this mental melodrama, and realising if I weren't quite so fat, it wouldn't be quite such an issue, I'm going to turn the anger outward and say, as I did when I began, fuck you, cold weather! Fuck you, Jack Frost. Fuck you, in fact, winter, for the dastardly games of hot and cold you play.

Sigh. Right - 8,000 steps later, time to get on with the day. I'm still having a little trouble with post-Christmas day-recognition - which is what happens when you go back to work on the third of January, then take the fiftth and half of the sixth off, and then it happens to be the weekend. But as far as I can tell, today's Saturday. Three days to the next weigh-in. There will be an 18 in my near future, dammit.

The Failure Flirtation and the Tight-Pants 'Fuck You'

Day one then.

For the so-many'th time, here we are on day one.

Happened in any case to be a weigh-in day.

19st 7.25.

In one way, this is a good and symbolic number. It's exactly one stone (fourteen pounds, American friends) lighter than I was when I originally started the Disappearing Man experiment, five years ago.

In many more important ways of course, this is a hideous, what-the-hell number. It's five stone (70 lbs) heavier than I was four years ago today. So - yay!

Today was pretty damn testing all the way along the line, really. Set an alarm for 6.50, so as to get a walk in early, before the day-job kicked in with it's Monday morning meeting on a Tuesday (Cos that's how we roll. I don't know). Woke up naturally at 6.45 and tuned off the alarm, so it wouldn't wake d up. Then instantly fell back to sleep and woke up at about 8.15 - too late to get the walk I had in mind done in time for the meeting.

Curses, I thought. I'll have to walk after work.

Now, some joyful details for you. As mentioned in yesterday's reiteration of the rules, the weigh-in is to be 'post-bathroom.' Because yes, desperation will take any damn form it can, and right now a successful bathroom visit can equate to a whole week's Disappearing, dammit.

Except some of you remember the sweetcorn experiment. If I'd waited for a post-bathroom figure tonight, I wouldn't have eaten till afer 9.30 tonight. So the 19st 7.25 figure comes to you pre-bathroom.

Didn't have breakfast till about 4pm today, thanks to the constant waiting for the successfully post-bathroom figure. Grabbed a thoroughly nastly and barely warmed hame and cheese baguette and a large decaff skinny latte from Costa, without sweetener. Then tried to begin my walk.

Felt horrible. Had slipped on - which is to say struggled into - a pair of freshly washed jeans, which appeared intent on strangulating anything soft enough to get at. My top was comfy half a stone ago. Now, notsomuch, and rather unattractively shows a bit of belly which I don't want to show. I walked a little way in the still-blazing heat and my back was having none of it. So I thought 'Screw this,' and scurried back home to do some more work. Came back out at 8pm, with a cool evening breeze and prepared in sweatpants, damnit! Happily walked 3.6 miles before picking d up from work. Could have gone further, but was judging the time.

So, managed to salvage some kind of exercise victory from a day determined to punch me in the face at almost every turn. And so, we begin. Again.

The Payday Factor

I honestly don’t know what’s happened this week – from 18st 13 on Wednesday to significantly heavier than when I began this round of Disappearing, to who knows what will happen tomorrow – haven’t weighed in a couple of days, partly out of fear, partly out of confusion, but mostly because I’ve been too busy. Went walking today for the first time in a long while though – not far, admittedly, but found myself yesterday walking up a tiny hill to catch a train and puffing and wheezing like the train’s great great great grandfather. This is clearly not a good state of affairs, so this morning, there was walking. 

This morning, there was also, agreeably, payday, and so after a mercifully short Monday meeting for the day job, decamped to Cardiff for lunch and Starbuckery. So breakfast was pasta and bruschetta (always good to double down on carbs the day before a weigh-in, I’ve found), but the rest of the day has been largely liquid. Will that have any impact on the weigh-in? Frankly, have no idea – Nazi Scales are clearly kicking back against the idea of weighing my ass indefinitely. The weird thing is, I don’t know whether it’s the Scales being assholes, or my eyes and clothes, but I don’t feel as heavy as the Scales are weighing me, which is a possibly valid subjective judgment, and I know I haven’t done anything particularly stupid to earn the weight the Scales are showing. 

There are ways of thinking about that – possibly, I’m just on an optimistic upswing and seeing things better than they actually are. But frankly, it’d be a waste of time and energy to feel bad about feeling good, so let’s just say fuck it for now, feel as good as we can, read the Scales in the morning and go forward as well as we can. Maybe this is just the Payday Factor, glazing everything with a sheen of positivity and everything’s-cool. We’ll see how I feel by the end of tomorrow, when the Bill-Paying Poverty Factor kicks in.

Ever Increasing Circles

Yes, yes, I know, I'm like a drunk-ass boyfriend - you only hear from me when I need something from you, then I'm off, doing my thing, 'being busy,' leaving you to raise the young 'uns.

I'm back. Y'know you love me, darlin'...

Reason I'm back is a) I have about three minutes in which to BE back, and b) I'm way out of control again. Since finishing Draft 3 of my novel, I've been on a bit of a celebratory bender, with the result that I find myself more than half a stone higher than I was before I finished it, with the work to do all over again. Fun fun fun. Proper weigh-in tomorrow, but it's likely to be shocking.

So this morning, I started back to my walking schtick. Only six times round the local Thomastown Park, but the thing about Thomastown is it's like one of those omni-trainers - it's basically like a sort of sculpted garden version of a crop circle - circles on circles, some flat and small, some large and up and down hill. Six time round means three easy, three hard, just about two miles in total, 300 calories burned. Big whoop, I know, but it's a start when I haven't been doing anything much for weeks. Now if I can manage to get through the day without eating everything and dessert on top, that'd be a bonus. Usual stuff - clothes aren't fitting right, finding it harder to do simple things, have to knuckle down yadda yadda yadda. So have made a start. A tiny, barely perceptible start. Gonna try and keep this up for the whole of this first week, 7am starts, walking increasing numbers of circles - adding one easy and one hard per day, which should mean fourteen circles by Friday. If six equate to 2 miles, then fourteen should be 4-5 miles. Should be a good re-introduction for the muscles and lungs, and get me back up to speed for proper six milers next week.

Must not eat everything, must not eat everything, must not eat every goddamn double-frosted thing int he wooooooorld!

Return of the Master Suit - Tuesday, 18th August

Disappointing – and yet entirely understandable – weigh-in results today – 18st 2 pounds. Am entirely out of practice at the walking now, and my biking this week has been quixotic at best. As I said though – new week, new intent, and on we go. Weather permitting, tomorrow I walk.

Yesterday was a sobering time – as I mentioned, attended the funeral of a good friends of my childhood. Turns out she was 71 when she died a week or so ago. Somewhere along the line, I’ve entirely failed to register that I’m 43, rapidly heading to 44. This doesn’t seem entirely possible, somehow, but it’s a weird calling-card from Death and a note of one’s own mortality. Not that that’s a spur particularly – am in what seems to be a philosophical funk right now, more befitting a teenager determined to paint their bedroom black, slam doors and declare they never asked to be born. Pathetic, of course. One of those situations where the only thing that stops the world from fundamentally changing for the better is the courage to act. Notsomuch one’s own mortality then, more one’s own cowardice. 

I clothed it yesterday in an unexpected pleasure. I haven’t had occasion to wear a suit for a year or more, and while a funeral is never an especially happy occasion, it gave me a reason to try and pull on the Master Suit. The Master Suit, for those just tuning in, is a suit I bought while disappearing the first time – my first off-the-peg suit in the best part of a decade, because I’d previously always had to go to places like High & Mighty – or Big Fat Bastards as we colloquially call it in my family – to get such things. The Master Suit was a hallmark, a landmark moment of original achievement. I had no illusions it would fit me again just yet, thinking it hadn’t been bought till I was in the lower half of the 17s. But while it wasn’t perhaps the most perfect fit – I couldn’t button the jacket just yet – the trousers did at least do up on me without pain and tears, and the jacket fit me without looking too absurd. Still a mark of triumph? Not as much as it was originally, obviously, but yes, a small mark of triumph, to be assured of still fitting into the landmarks of ‘normality’ as defined by the British retailer. A good spur to return to the fray with a determination that’s been hard to locate while under this shroud of philosophical funk and disappointing self-knowledge. So let’s see, shall we, whether the flash of scarlet lining and the sliding on of a suit of clothes can inspire me to carve out time in my days to do what needs to be done. While the funk remains, the Master Suit represents a slice of hope through the greyness. I intend to follow it, and see if it can lead me back to brighter times and courage.

The Dotty Dress and the Short-Sleeved Shirts

Apologies, been insanely busy for a few days.

Still am, actually, but figured I'd take a moment to blog - if nothing else, my freind Sian tells me she reads them on her lunch hour at work, and people tell me tomorrow's Monday, so it sort of feels like a commission.

A very odd week, and no mistake. Am continuing to drive myself nuts with morning and evening unofficial weigh-ins. Have noticed swings of up to five pounds between an evening and the following morning, so who the hell knows what's going on any more? All I can do is keep on keeping on and trust that something good will happen.

It's really helpful, in trusting something good will happen, to have a couple of examples like those that have popped up today.

We've been doing a bit of a spring clean recently - my Tardis wardrobe is dismantled and bagged, ready to go to any Whovian who a) wants it, b) can collect it, and c) in the absence of instructions, can figure out how to put it together. As part of this process, we've been deciding which clothes to keep, and which to ditch.

Partly, I think, as a way of getting 'trying on clothes to see if we can throw them out' into my insano-schedule, d has been suggesting to me for a couple of days that, as it's been nice and Summery, I should wear some short sleeved shirts from the wardrobe. And I have, almost without thinking about it. And they've worked, and fitted, and looked, people tell me, pretty good. The point of which is that if I'd tried to do them up when I re-started this, they'd have looked absolutely hideous and I wouldn't have voted to keep them.

Keeping them now, that's for sure.

Again, have been more than inspired in this by d. As part of the spring clean, d tried on her wedding dress. Ten and a half years ago, she looked amazing in it, though (and I'm faiiiirly sure she's OK with me telling you this), she wore a 'sausage' underneath it to make it work as well as it did - a sausage, I'm also fairly sure I don't need to explain, being a kind of control garment.

When she tried it on this week - sans sausage - the wedding dress...well, to use her phrase, it hung off her like a sack. Big handfuls of golden material were pinchable either side before it fit anywhere near her. That's my Disappearing Woman.

It was a revelation underlined today, when, as we went out for lunch, she put on a black and white polka dot dress she'd already given away more than ten years ago, to a friend. Annie, the friend, has sadly since passed away, and the dress came back to d as a memento. d was sure she'd never wear it again - it was too small for her a decade ago when she gave it away.

Fits her beautifully now. Was hardly able to take my eyes off her all day.

Annnnd so we go to exercise biking, to sweat, manfully - and then probably to at least a reasonably cool shower, but the point is this: Disappearing, ultimately, works. Clothes begin to fit again. I have three Winter coats that I have yet to try on, but they'll be within my wardrobe-range by the time Winter actually gets here, so that, in the immortal lines of Epona, one of my goddaughters, I can once again 'look like a Watcher' - big Buffy fan, her mother having done her job well.

As I recall, the coats start to fit me somewhere in the high 17 stones. So - here's hoping for sooner rather than later.