Ths Inexplicable Trip

Hello again.

Been three weeks since I wrote. On the one hand, that's because there's been little to say - three weeks of more or less stability - 17st 6 and change.

On the other, have been busy trying to swim against a current of Stuff to Do, or at least get my head above the water of work. Haven't quite got there, but certainly getting there.

Haven't, if truth be known - and why not know it? That would seem to be the point, after all - been all that good. d's been making fruity summer tarts and the like for sale in the local deli, and I've denied myself little. Which is perhaps why the summons from the nurse to come and see her before I go and get my next medication has struck such abject inevitability into my heart - it's not fear, per se, but it is the understanding of a grindingly miserable, patronising, 'Stop acting like a child or I'll have to punish you' lecture from the nurse that my life will shortly have to contain, coupled with the knowledge that she has historically listened to not a word I've said and has been rather too keen in my view to try out the newest Thing on me. I'm entirely happy to leave my body to medical science of course, I just could wish they'd wait till I'm actually dead before treating me like a guinea pig for their latest toys.

Anyhow - that's just a ramble about the imminence of patronising deafness. Does nothing to explain the inexplicable good fortune of recent days. While still denying myself nothing, I discovered I'd shed some pounds late last week. I even - because I've been jerked around like that by the Nazi Scales before - took a picture on what the scales said on Monday, in case I'd need to prove to you that I'm not just making this up. As it happens though, I don't need it.

Weighed in yesterday at 17st 3.5. Down some 2.5 to 3 pounds. Happy with that, certainly - and of course, from the moment I realised it was possible, have re-started my walking, now having done a whopping two days of schlepping.


So - somewhere along the line, I appear to have tripped, fallen over, and fallen down a couple of pounds. They're mysterious pounds, certainly - hell, for all I know, in the fairly heavy heat of this week, I've just evaporated or expirated a couple of pints of water, and when the weather breaks I'll go back up. Except of course whatever the reason, it's kicked me into a kind of gear again - walking, not eating things that are outright stupid for me, portion control and all that good happy stuff.

So this is just a quick note from the front to say hoorah, let's crack on. Three and a half to the borderline.

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 Trampoline Factor

First week of the new year, and there has been, at least, a little movement.

Today's weigh-in has me at 17st 10.75.

In other words, for anyone following this nonsense, it's two weeks ago. Again. Or indeed three weeks ago for that matter, as there was a week of no movement. The upside of course is that the half a pound I put on last week in the distinctly muted madness of a Christmas and New year celebration has evaporated. The downside, for those of my own, rather more melancholic nature, is that 0.5 pounds is a pretty poor repayment of effort for a week which has at least seen me begin walking again.

Hey ho, let us dance the happy dance of weightloss, but let us dance it with a trademark Alan Rickman sneer, just for balance.

It feels almost like being on a trampoline, with weekly snapshots taken at whichever point on a repeated bounce-wave I happen to be at on a Tuesday morning - 17st 10.75, 17st 10.75, 17st 11.5, 17st 10.75. Of course on that imagery, what I aim to do by a week today is to plunge through the black rubber of the trampoline and touch the ground underneath - the ground which in this case reads 17st 8.75. In itself, that feels like a nothing result, but the key is that if I achieve it, the week following, I'll be under another milestone - 17st 7, or the halfway point of the 17 stone spectrum. It feels hard to escape the logic of course that says next week, the trampoline will twang me back up, because for the fourth week in a row I haven't been able to get beneath the 'barrier.' Must do though, because of course, it's actually not logical at all, it's an invention which runs the risk of getting way out of hand. Let's act like we believe in zen calm and all that, and acknowledge that barriers are only barriers if we believe they're barriers.

Be the weightloss, be the weightloss, be the weightloss.

Ach, bugger zen calm and chanting - more walking, less food seems to be the order of the week. Woohoo.

Oh, and rather annoyingly, the blood sugar results are spiking again this week - this morning, 11.0. Yesterday 9.5. Day before, 11.8 (though there's a a rational reason for that - d's birthday on the 5th meant there was steak, and a rich madeira sauce, and arancini starter, and even a slice of appallingly gorgeous chocolate cake...), so 11.8 the following morning was relatively reasonable. 5th January was 10.4 - an annoying smidgen outside the lines. 4th - 9.7, a smidgen the other way. 3rd - 11.6. 2nd - 9.3. 1st, after a New Year's Eve Indian banquet - 10.9.

Apart from the logical results after big feasts, I could invent reasons randomly for the elevated results this week - possibly more fruit juice in my system than water? But let's take a little stock, shall we? I've just - believe it or not, and despite seeming to realise it last week, I've JUST realised taht the day after the Indian banquet was when I last weighed in, and that might just possibly explain a thing or two about last week's result. And I've similarly just realised that this week has included d's birthday feast, including cake, which may well have slammed the brakes on any greater loss this week. It was worth it, to be fair, so that's where you find me - having stomped the bounce and preparing to go all stern-eyed and walky to achieve a loss from this low point next week. Game on. Cake off. Downwarrrrrrrd!

The Apparent Inconsequence of Inaction

'Don't take this as a mark of what you can get away with!'

'Yeah, yeah, I know. I won't, honest...' I lied. Well, it wasn't an intentional lie, just more of an understanding of the way in which my brain could be said to 'work.' Which is frankly, along absurd lines of hypocrisy and self-justification, with a touch of tedious public self-flagellation (which of course is where you come in).

This week, after having flopped over the first real  border line in the downward push, two things happened.

Firstly, a picture from a pal of mine of me as I was six years ago this week was re-shared on Facebook. Six years ago was when I was at my lightest in recent memory. I have kinda skinny stick-arms in the pic, but the rest of me looks as good as I remember looking in a long while. Oddly enough, the pic was taken round these parts, on a birthday celebration break for another pal of mine.

Apropos of nothing much, d also found a pic from EIGHT years ago of me on my beach, and bugger me but I was a miserable cur that day - probably faiiirly close to my heaviest in living memory.

So those were some interesting kicks in the head.

But the other thing that really happened this week was that I slipped matter-of-factly off the wagon. I didn't mean to do that either, the edge of self-control just kept lapping around my ankles. It wasn't even that leaping off into an oblivion of indulgence looked particularly pleasurable. I have a feeling it was just that thing self-harmers talk about - agency. Choice is choice, even if it's a bad choice, even - in fact, especially - if you know it's a bad choice, and you make it in spite of everything because it's yours.

Which is a long-ass double-dark way of explaining why I had ice cream this week. And doughnuts. And chips, and relatively little walking.

The thing is, for a guy who spills more words out of his fingers into cyberspace than would seem entirely feasible, I am pigging dreadful at talking about things.

Absolutely pigging dreadful. 'Only child' thing, possibly, but by the time I have to talk about things, I've already had the conversation a gazillion times on the inside of my head, and I tend to choose a fairly peppy way of bringing it into the world, because I've lived with it, picked it clean, put it back together a thousand ways, while whoever it is I talk to  comes to the subject new, and usually kind of 'Ohhhhkay, what the hell is this and where is it coming from?'

This, incidentally, is why, more often than not, d can look sideways at me and say 'Oh god...you're Thinking again, aren't you? I can hear it from here.'

She's dead right, of course. Most of the time, the subject dies, kicked to death by my Thinking, and never comes to light. This is also why, for instance, d long ago agreed to let me sleep with my iPod attached. My undistracted brain, given eight hours of silence to contend with, is a potential bedlam of Thinking, every angle of every line, every thought, every action, intonation, meaning...it's crowded as hell in there and it drives the 'conscious' me to utter sleepless distraction.

So...what? I hear you ask.

Well, so nothing, really, just the way of things in my head. And...well, there is a Thing. Hell, as ever with me, there are at least a handful of Things, but there's a particular Thing this week, in that I'm trying to drag something out of my brain for a writing submission, which has to be based in truth, and tell the story of some kind of healing from emotional trauma.

I'm not...good...with trauma. I'm never sure I have any right to talk about it, because let's face it, almost everyone has had more trauma in their life than me. Plenty of people have undergone trauma specifically to ensure that I don't have to. I've also undoubtedly been the cause of trauma to others, and probably still am.

But there was a Thing, back in ye olden days, that well and truly fucked me up for at least a couple of decades, and which to be honest is probably still fucking me up to some much lesser degree even now, despite a degree of healing. And I'm not sure exactly how much of the 'trauma,' such as it is, was inflicted from outside, and how much was a result of my Thinking. Probably by far the largest part was Thinking-based - but of course I still haven't worked out how to silence the Thinking, only to drown it out. And I've been trying to write about the Thing this week. Which, and here I'm guessing, might have had something to do with the drive to agency, and the slippage into ice cream, and doughnuts, and chips, and relatively little walking.

There have also been relatively few medications, as I've been holding on to finally get sorted and set up with a doctor and a pharmacist.

There was ice cream even yesterday, before I forced myself to have a somewhat longer walk than has become usual. Yesterday also marked the final slotting into place of a doctor, a prescription and a pharmacist, so all is happy and bouncy and groovy on that score, finally.

But with one thing and another, I had zero expectation of progress this week - I expected to be up at least four or five pounds, in fact, as a result of the Thinking-based slide into food-based idiocy.

18 stone 13.25.

That's the verdict of the Nazi Scales this morning. Down another half-pound in this endless crawl to progress. In spite of the Thing and the Thinking and the food and the lack of walking and the sparse medication...down a half-pound.

I officially now have no freakin' idea what's going on. Hmm...something else to Think about...

The Benefits of Delusion

Wellllll, that sucks.

That sucks big time. The weigh-in this morning was a positive scandal. 19st 8, thank you very freakin' much. Up more than five pounds, in the week when I started walking again. Wwwwwwhat the ever-living hell?

Now, as most of you know, I'm one of those tedious atheists that keep banging on about it, and one of those annoying arch-rationalists that have, when all is said and done, no time or patience for all the fluffy pseudo-scientific feelgood fuckery with which humankind insists on filling up its brains, and for which it claims some kind of validity irrespective of hard evidence.

That said, I neither feel like I weigh 19st 8, nor feel like I look like I do.

'So what the hell are you worried about?' croaked d, who's suffering from the Boomerang Flu at the moment. 'Go by what you feel for now, not what the scales say. Hate those fucking scales,' she added, before erupting into a giant snotty cough and looking up at me with eyes that said 'If you make me say one more word with this throat right now, I'm going to wait till I'm well and then I'm going to prod you relentlessly with a spork.'

I guess the thing is that I'm worried because I'm an advocate of facts, and the facts are right there on the scales. I can witter on about heavy rice meals last night, and slow transits and all kinds of nonsense till I'm blue in the face if I have to, but weigh-ins depend on facts, and those are them. 19st 8 is what I currently weigh, as of this morning.

That said, her approach has a good deal of psychological merit to it in terms of going the hell forward, because I'm here to tell you, having walked over twenty miles this week just for the freakin' sake of it, having gone up five pounds would be what fluffier people than me would call 'soul destroying.' Certainly, if you let it, it can freeze you into inactivity and a 'fuck it, then' mentality of burning your good intentions to the ground.

But if you don't let it - if you make use of the benefits of delusion to say 'I don't feel that heavy, and it's not like my clothes are straining,' then you can get up in the morning and still damn well do something. I worked yesterday when I should probably have been walking, and there's every chance, as I write this at 5.28 in the afternoon, that I'll do the same again today, though if not walking, I should at least be able to find the time to bike tonight.

So this is me - Factual McHeavyFuck - making use of the benefits of delusion to say 'more must be done' in the next seven days.

Still sucks big time though.

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.

12th February - The Hazelnut Gift Temptation

"Here you go, Tony," said Naz, popping a promotional gift on my table.
At least, I assume it was a promotional gift. Harry later asked me if I'd had one, so I assume they were being given out as a Valentine's Day celebration at Starbucks - two Ferrero Rocher in a sleeve, the idea being there was "one for you, and one for them," them being your Valentine.

Now, given my freedom, I'll snarf a bucketload of these gorgeous little senseless beasts - hazelnut, chocolate, wafer shell, more chocolate, embedded with nutty bits and wankily individually wrapped in gold foil, leading in the UK to an infamous ad campaign where an ambassador sent a big trayful of the little buggers as a way of "spoiling" his guests at a reception.

As I say, me and Ferrero, we have an understanding. d and Ferrero - notsomuch. She has a Thing about hazelnuts in the same way Donald Trump has a thing about Muslims or thinking - an almost fundamental aversion. Hazelnuts in chocolate, she regards as almost as much of a gastronomic war crime as chocolate and orange, a kind of "Why would you do that to innocent ingredients?" loathing.

That meant I had a chocolate dilemma.
I know, I know, sounds like I'm being a drama queen, but think about it. They're specifically Valentine's chocolates. It's not like I can pass them on to someone else without getting a sideways glance and quite possibly getting maced in the face. I can hardly give them back, because who in their right minds spurns free chocolate unless they're saying to the giver "Fuck you and your chocolate gift." And the only thing sadder in the universe than returned chocolate is thrown away chocolate, its postential of sweet joy squandered without ever having the chance to shine, to bring a smile to any face, which all the hours of labour involved in its needlessly poncey creation have anticipated.

The Ferrero Rocher sat there for hours, occasionally catching my eye and giving the chocolate equivalent of a hopeful, fragile smile and big eyes. I ordered coffee after coffee, and their imaginary eyes went down again, saddened that I was ignoring them.
Eventually, I had to leave. There were things I had to do, places I had to be. The Ferrero Rocher caught my eye again, and there seemed to be no hope left in their big, wide imaginary eyes, only the glimpses of a saddened moistness.

"Oh, come here then," I said, and it was like all their Christamses had come at once. I unwrapped both Rocher and snaffled them there and then before leaving the coffee shop. I like to think it's how they would have wanted to go.

So - v bad, as Bridget Jones would say, but I literally had no other option in the world. One's heartlessness extends only so far, you know.

9th February - The Mushroom Failure and The Dessert Success

As predicted, the weigh-in was a setback. To be absolutely honest, it was more of a setback than I'd expected - I weighed in at 18st 13 lb. Three whole pounds of backslide. Though that said, that was before I went to Starbucks for the day, and round about mid-morning, the coffee did what coffee is famous for, and much of me exploded - and naturally, all I could think was "Damn, if only I'd waited to weigh till after that..."

But that's not what happened, so the official figure stands. To say there's room for improvement would be assinine and anodyne at the exact same moment, but that's what weeks are for - to make the improvements we want to see in our lives, whether they be personal, political, creative or Disappearing. You have another week, get to it and carpe the fuck out of that diem.

This evening was reasonably good - yes, technically we went ot an Italian for dinner again (I have no idea what it is about Tuesdays in Cardiff with d, but Italian seems to be our go-to at the moment), but I eschewed the joy of pasta for a chicken saltimbocca (chicken breast, run over by something heavy, wrapped in thin ham, and paired with a white wine sauce and (as it happened), some less than spectacular saute potatoes. Had a starter too, because they were insanely cheap - breaded garlic mushrooms. They were ordered and eaten before the whole "nothing fried" thing even crossed my mind. Don't know what to tell you - I appear to have a weakness for fungi.

That said, we did stroll our eyeballs around the dessert menu. And I was going to be good.
"Oh look - they have a sundae," said d.
"Ohhhh fuck," I murmured.
For those who don't know me well enough to know this, I have notsomuch a weakness for sundaes as a major freaking personality disorder where they're concerned. Sundaes are the can-can dancers of the dessert world, all frills and hidden delights, kicking up their creamy skirts and daring you to dive on in.

This one in particular promised richness, darkness, bittersweetness in its chocolate salted caramel heart.
I sighed.
"Nnnnope," I almost mourned.
"Good answer," said d, and off we went to the movies to watch Shakespeare on stage. The Winter's Tale. I'd forgotten everything about it, despite having read it many years ago. Then we watched it. Now I understand why I'd forgotten everything about it. It went on for about three lifetimes, and by the time Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh were taking their curtain calls, we had roughly fifteen minutes to get to the last train home. There's power walking, and then there's "I'm gonna be stranded, freezing my ass off on the streets of Cardiff" walking. We did that second kind of walking, and made it to the train with five minutes to spare, but very little left in the way of lung capacity or will to live.
So this is me, embarking on another week of Disappearing after a disappointing but understandable result. The Disappointing Man, perhaps? Ach, maybe, but philosophy is a great consolation on days like this. Sometimes, you just have to say "Shit happens - after you've weighed in," and get the hell back on with what works.

The Dietetic Determination

Tomorrow is of course weigh-in day within my tiny Disappearing universe. As per usual, despite obsessive weighing, I have no particular idea what the morning will bring - it seems to rather depend on how much evaporates out of me overnight. Perversely, again given my obsessive weighing, I don't particulary care what the result says. I'm probably not any worse this week than I was last, and ultimately that'll do for me. If there's progress, so much the groovier.

Tomorrow is also the funeral of a friend-in-law of mine. It's almost inconceivable to me that I don't know the guy who died, as almost everyone I know seems to know him, but I don't. Tragic story though - young lad (which is to say, younger than me), reasonably new dad, stone dead of an asthma attack. I've told my pal Sian, who's coming for the funeral, that if she happens to survive me, I'd quite like 'Carpe the fuck out of this diem' on any tombstone I happen to have. (Shrugs - I wanted to be fed to the komodo dragons at London Zoo, but people tell me that's 'weird,' mutter mutter whinge whinge...)

I also have the spectacular irrelevance of a dietetic appointment tomorrow afternoon. This was made for me when I was 19st 3lbs. All the likelihood would seem to be that I'll be at least a stone lighter than that when I see the dieticians tomorrow.

Forgive me, I rather laugh when I get referred to dieticians - it seems to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the issue of obesity. Let me just point something out to any dieticians who happen to stumble across this entry - your entire careers are based on a fundamentally flawed premise. Thanks for calling.

It's the same flawed logic as the big fuck-off skull-and-crossbones warnings on cigarette packets. To quote comedian Denis Leary, 'it's like they think smokers around the world are gonna grab the box and go "Holy SHIT! These things are bad for you! Shit I thought they were good for you, I thought they had Vitamin C in 'em and stuff!"'

It's not that we don't know all the mathematics of the situation - at least as much as you let us, with your new studies every time we turn around (New study finds eating cheese makes you thin! New study says eat chocolate for a slimmer waistline! New study says oops, sorry, we fucked up on that whole chocolate thing!). We do, we know. Things that taste nice put weight on us, things that taste like gymsocks or water don't. Hell, there's probably a study waiting to be published that proves that 'taste' itself was an evolutionary step to drive us towards the foods that would put some meat on our bones, cos fuck is it chilly around these parts.

We know. We get it. What we really need - and it feels weird to say this - is a psychiatric appointment. We need help to reprogramme whatever fucked-up messages we took from whoever or whatever in our lives that meant not only did taste=weight gain, but taste=do not stop. That's what we need. But instead, tomorrow, I'm going to be patronised by some fucker on behalf of the UK Carrot Board or somesuch, and much as I'll happily rant to you about it, I'll sit there, and I'll nod and go "Aha," and "Really? Cool..." just to get my oversized ass back out through the door.
Bottom line, when people younger than me are dropping dead of goddamned asthma, it's enough of an excuse to make you think 'Carpe Cakem.' But no, that's not going to happen either, I'm just saying.

And on that cheery note, I'm saying no more - time to have a sliver of evening with d before walking at 7.30 tomorrow.

The Dessert Whore Day

A Non-Disappering Joyfest at Five Guys.

Another day, another dollar, another few hours spent working in my favourite Starbucks in all the world. Another day, incidentally, of meeting up with an old friend after work.

Today being her day off, d came with me, got her hair straightened, and soaked up some rays in the Welsh capital city. We met for lunch at a place that's new in Cardiff, but which has long been a staple in the States: Five Guys.

It's new, it's loud, and its food ordering system is reminiscent of the Starbucks way of doing things, but oh damn! This was not the place to go for a Disappearing Lunch.

Had a hotdog and a burger. Yes, two things. Ooooh, bad Tony! Gorgeous, fresh, tasty, the whole thing was a joy, frankly. I'd walked my usual five times round the local lake before setting off this morning, and all told have walked 5.4 miles today, burning 742 calories according to my phone's pedometer (anyone else notice how odd that word looks, written down? Looks like a machine that measures your propensity to be ickily attracted to kids). That's probably about three bites of hot dog, I should think. The point about having discovered Five Guys today though is that it really shows up the different mindsets of Disappearing and not-Disappearing people, even if those people are technically the same person. Now, I went in a perfectly ordinary Disappearer, and resisted the blandishment of french fries when d forgot I wouldn't be able to go near them. I'm reliably informed they were perfect.

Anyone got a cushion I can kick?

But what's worse from my point of view is the shakes. Oh gods, the shakes.
Now, it's important to understand that you don't get to be the size I am without putting some serious, probably quite messed-up, effort into it. It's actually almost as hard in its own way to put on my sort of weight as it is to start taking it off. Now - my name's Tony, and I'm a dessert whore. I have no discretion whatsoever when it comes to desserts. I want them half a mile high and covered in sparklers, with every slutty, calorie-rich invention you can imagine crammed into them somehow. If I'm going to have a dessert, I want it mechanised, I want it singing happy birthday and I want it gooooood.

Oddly enough, my dessert whore history came up in conversation later in the evening when we met up with our friend Karen, and d mentioned to her the kind of things I used to do.

Brief Dessert Whore Diversion
When you think of a bowl of cereal, what do you think of?

If you think of something like this...you're really not in the same league and I don't quite know how to talk to you. First of all, in my youth, I used to use a mixing bowl, rather than any of your paltry cereal bowls.

Then, you lay down a layer of halved Rich Tea or Digestive biscuits (Graham Crackers, Americans), to provide a kind of moist biscuit base.
Then you layer some Weetabix (I may lose some of the Americans on the way through this, just try and appreciate the quantities involved here), for a dissolving, thickened soupy consistency when the dish is complete.
Then a layer of dense but structurally sound cereal (for preference in my case, Shreddies).
Then you add a layer of broken chocolate biscuits - dark chocolate for preference, and I tended to favour Digestives for this layer too, though some of the fancier chocolate-coated biscuits - KitKats etc - would give a surprising bite of texture in this layer, as they'd be more resitent to sogginess when milked.
Then you start to build your flake layers - start with Bran Flakes, for that dark robustness and the laughable illusion that you're adding something healthy. Then add either standard Corn Flakes, or for preference, either Frosties or Honey Nut Cornflakes, for additional sugary joy.
Then, to almost complete the dish, add a puffed rice layer, slide a couple more dark chocolate Digestives on either side as textural out-takes for snacking, slice one banana and layer it carefully over the Rice Krispy layer, to help glue those demented little buggers down. Pour your full fat milk in at the side, allowing it to pool at the bottom, like correctly watering a plant, and ooze UP through the layers, rather than down. Then top with single or double pouring cream, to further adhere the Rice Krispies.

Voila - Tony's Breakfast Trifle.

All in all, it's a wonder I didn't die before I hit 20. I used the same sort of layering ingenuity whenever I felt like some ice cream at home. As I say, getting to be as fat as I am is not only a dark art form, it's a vocation.

Anyway, that was just a quick Dessert Whore Deviation. Oddly, the menu at Five Guys doesn't even have desserts, so why am I wittering on about them?

Because they have shakes, that's why. Shakes are simply liquid forms of dessert in my book, especially when, as at Five Guys, they're made with an ice cream base, and you're allowed to add in annnnnnny damn thing you like, for free - including the whipped cream that makes them properly desserty, and the bacon that makes them properly American.

d had a shake this afternoon, and went on to explain its deliciousness to me by through medium of mime. You remember that scene from When Harry Met Sally? Imagine that, but with the word 'Shakegasm' involved.

Seriously - cushion, anyone?

But again, when offered a sip of it, I had to refuse. Offering a sip of something like that to a dessert whore like me is like offering a drunk a shot of Johnny Walker Blue 'just so you can appreciate it.'
Believe me when I say we appreciate it. We appreciate it reeeeeeel good.

That's what I mean though about the different mindset of a Disappearer and a non-Disappearer. If we'd only gone to Five Guys a few weeks earlier...well, it would have been embarrasing, for a start - they only opened at the end of March, but assuming it had been there, and we'd gone two weeks ago, there would have been nothing that could have stopped me from piling in to those heavenly fries or diving face first into at least a couple of dessert whore shakes.

Today, I went, I ate, it was glorious, and after that, I was just watching the rest of Cardiff do the things I couldn't do. Now, I've always said, and always meant, that this is just the way with Disappearing - like recovering drunks at dinner parties, you don't get to bring everyone else's buzz down just because you personally can't indulge. That would be the behaviour of an anti-social idiot, and you don't have to be one of those just because you're going through some shit. But the point is, for all the Disappearing is necessary in my case, never be under any illusions that Disappearing makes you a better person, because in fact rather the opposite is true. I would have been happier, d would have been happier, and the staff at Five Guys would have been happier if I had gone in there today as a non-Disappearer, an embracer of life and calories and all the good things they had to offer. But no - on some fundamental level, Disappearing makes you the Calvinist at an orgy, a droopy, drippy, miserable figure while everyone else gets their foody buzz on. You can appreciate it all you like, but you can't partake, and to some degree that makes you the vortex of a downer. I'd almost forgotten how much to despise there was about my character when I'm Disappearing - not, as I say, that I was tutting at people or scowling at every fry they popped into their mouths - I ate what I wanted and thoroughly enjoyed it and the two of us had a wonderful day. It's just a sense of self, a comparison between the Ghost of Christmas Present and Ebenezer Scrooge, one laughing and jovial, the other, insular and cold.

Of course, there will be another day - that's what you have to keep focusing on in this Disappearing game. There will be a day when you're not actively Disappearing, and when the Ghost of Christmas Present will be you again, when you'll have worked hard, and achieved your goals, and be living a significantly less harmful life, when you'll be able to go in and enjoy everything, with the kind of joie de vivre that's more native to your spirit. In case that's not been clear, that's what I'm saying - I want to be able to throw open the doors and yell 'Hot dogs for everyone! Shakes all round and make mine a double!' That's the essential me. The Disappearing me is absolutely a lot less fun.

But we go on. There will be another day.
Another day.
Another day.