Blood was fairly high this morning - 6.9 - which presumably is a result of the frozen yoghurt last night. That said, it feels like I'm getting back into the spin of this thing (as it were - spin is actually tomorrow morning at ugh o'clock). As in spin, if you stop pedalling, it's often a complete bastard to get the thing started up again, and it hurts like a sonofabitch. Once you're back into the rhythm though, it hurts in a purely functional, hit-me-with-sticks kind of way, and you keep on moving because the alternative - stopping - just has more pain in store for you.
Tonight, went to my first grown-up, proper adult, we're-fairly-sure-you-won't-die-if-we-work-you-hard aquacise class, rather than a GP Referral aquacise class. New instructress, new moves, new classmates (including my mother!), new pal who nearly drowned herself laughing at my unco-ordinated exploits.
Ate fairly well and sensibly all day, and went to Nando's after the swim. Likewise there, ate fairly sensibly, except at the end, when I tried their...and I quote..."fat-free, guilt-free' frozen yoghurt for dessert. We'll see, tomorrow morning in terms of blood sugar, and Tuesday in terms of weigh-ins, whether this is anywhere near true.
Been thinking about equations all day.
Notosmuch a+b=c. More like the inverse function that governs weight movement. How, for some insane reason, in some bodies, weight Disappears at the rate of a depressed slug walking up Broadway, but, with very little encouragement, with run its ass the other way like Usaine Bolt on crack. And then of course there are those biological lottery winners for whom it works the other way round - who can eat and eat and eat whatever they like, and find their weight rocketing off irrespective. There's got to be some way to trip that switch, and get the equations working in our favour.
Of course, that's really the magical function of the metabolism, I'm guessing. It's a transform into which you feed the variables of your intake and outgoing, your exercise and your energy-from-food, and emerge going either one way or the other, really fast. It does rather irritate me to be one of those who has to work three or four long, hard months to lose a stone, and can then put it back on in about four weeks of relative normality (rather than a binge-fest of pure excess). But that, it seems, is my lot. I'm never going to be able to just be my normal self...
This was borne in on me yesterday, when my pal Wendy mentioned that this is not a diet I'm on here, it's a lifestyle change, and it's forever...
Fairly sure she meant that to be a positive, encouraging statement, but to me, it clanged like a prison door. The Disappearing Man, let it be clearly understood, is not who I want to be Forever. He's a neurotic, demented, over-exercised, raging nightmare, balanced on a razor's edge between compulsive consumption and ascetic abstinence. I'm not sure how to stabilise him, or normalise him, into someone that can live a 'normal' life. It's like...well, pop culture fans, it's like being Dr Bruce Banner. It's like walking through the world on a tight leash, because you know, if you don't, the Incredible Bulk will emerge and...if not exactly smash, then at least devour everything in sight. I'm fairly sure the Bulk has more fun, but, if I let mine out to play, not only would I turn into something that would rip all the seams in its clothes in a really big hurry, but my heart would probably explode shortly afterwards, taking the Bulk and the Banner-me with it.
But how else does one live, if not on a Banner-tight leash? Do I do the zigzag for the rest of time - lose and lose and lose and lose and lose and then gocrazyforashorttimeandgorocketingbackup....and sigh, and lose, and lose and lose...?
Is that the only alternative to this being a Banner-leash for life? Or is there some scope for psychological head-banging here? People are always talking ot me about their 'issues with food'. I know to some extent what mine are, but that doesn't actually enable me to change the patterns of my relationship with the stuff we shove in our mouths. I have a feeling I'd treat any psychological effort as a kind of challenge, something to be gotten around, rather than something to be engaged in, so where does that leave us? Is that like being a self-harmer who gives all the right answers and then cuts themselves anyway?
Meh...too late to be dealing with such heavyweight (see what I did there?) questions. As far as I know, things are going well. On to Friday...
Thursday, 7 June 2012
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
The Whisper
"Well, that's irritating..."
I agreed on principle. I had no idea what was irritating, but when my mate Tig says it's irritating, you can pretty much bet it's irritating.
Tig's one of those people who sort of inspires you just by being alive, and being Tig. She's largely responsible for d and I getting together in the first place (as the Supreme Ruler of the writing group where we met), and the person that each of us independently talked to, looking for advice on the other, back in the days when we didn't know each other. Tig is, I think, what would happen if all the Grins in the world got together in the body of a 5 ft-barely woman and decided to hold a life-long Grin Convention there.
She's one of the better writers I've known in real life, and she's Disappearing too. In fact, she's been Disappearing really rather better than most of the Disappearers I know. I waited for the second text to arrive.
"I can identify with your bounce," she said. Ah. Yeah...that'd be irritating.
"Went back up a bit myself these last few weeks," she added. I could see the irritation-potential there. It was growing.
"But I had the whisper of sense last night. Back to it!" she texted. The Grin was visible. For someone so irritated, Tig's Grin was pretty loud and lucid.
"Aha!" I said. It was bizarre - when I wrote about the still, small voice of reason and control, I figured either a) it was a crock, or b) at the very most, I was stark raving bonkers and it made no sense to anyone outside my head. So, on behalf of all stark raving bonkers people with voices in their heads - Aha! - the still, small voice in your head exists!
Today, been pretty good. Walked this morning, gymmed this evening. Ate quite well, though had the last of my frozen yoghurt this evening. Tomorrow, there's dentistry in our future...Dentistry and aquacising. More than that...who knows? All I know right now is that the voice of reason is still there and - Aha! - it's real. Tig says so, and Tig's word is law!
Law, I tell ya!
(Blood was 5.4 this morning, by the way. Tig doesn't say that, but it's still law...!)
I agreed on principle. I had no idea what was irritating, but when my mate Tig says it's irritating, you can pretty much bet it's irritating.
Tig's one of those people who sort of inspires you just by being alive, and being Tig. She's largely responsible for d and I getting together in the first place (as the Supreme Ruler of the writing group where we met), and the person that each of us independently talked to, looking for advice on the other, back in the days when we didn't know each other. Tig is, I think, what would happen if all the Grins in the world got together in the body of a 5 ft-barely woman and decided to hold a life-long Grin Convention there.
She's one of the better writers I've known in real life, and she's Disappearing too. In fact, she's been Disappearing really rather better than most of the Disappearers I know. I waited for the second text to arrive.
"I can identify with your bounce," she said. Ah. Yeah...that'd be irritating.
"Went back up a bit myself these last few weeks," she added. I could see the irritation-potential there. It was growing.
"But I had the whisper of sense last night. Back to it!" she texted. The Grin was visible. For someone so irritated, Tig's Grin was pretty loud and lucid.
"Aha!" I said. It was bizarre - when I wrote about the still, small voice of reason and control, I figured either a) it was a crock, or b) at the very most, I was stark raving bonkers and it made no sense to anyone outside my head. So, on behalf of all stark raving bonkers people with voices in their heads - Aha! - the still, small voice in your head exists!
Today, been pretty good. Walked this morning, gymmed this evening. Ate quite well, though had the last of my frozen yoghurt this evening. Tomorrow, there's dentistry in our future...Dentistry and aquacising. More than that...who knows? All I know right now is that the voice of reason is still there and - Aha! - it's real. Tig says so, and Tig's word is law!
Law, I tell ya!
(Blood was 5.4 this morning, by the way. Tig doesn't say that, but it's still law...!)
Tuesday, 5 June 2012
The Still, Small Voice
That's called Overdoing It.
Weigh-in today recorded me at 16 stone 3 pounds. So not only is it time to kick this back into gear, it's gonna be a couple of weeks before it gets back DOWN to the point at which it would have been time to kick this back into gear. This also means, incidentally, I've put on a whole half-stone in the space of a week, which is...erm...interesting.
Fortunately, the thing I've been waiting for, and talking about, and failing to force myself to do for weeks now...happened. Last night, out of nowhere, it just happened.
The click happened.
I've talked at verious points on this journey about how self-denial can get you to understand why people invent religions, spiritual experiences and the like. Not only is it entirely possible, when not having something that you really really want, to resent others who have it, but to imagine you're better than people who have what you don't have and can't allow yourself. From that sort of madness, you can extrapolate sin, and evil, and stoning the sinner, based initially in nothing more edifying than pure I-want-what-you-have-but-it'd-be-"wrong" jealousy.
And you can also extrapolate spirits from this kind of madness too. When I first began to do this thing, it started with me reaching a saturation point, and taking a breath, and then getting what felt like an outside voice in my ear. A still, small voice that simply said "You don't need this stuff. In fact, you need to not do this stuff. You need to not do this stuff now..."
After which, for all the bitching and whining and teeth-grinding and sweating and swearing of the first year of this thing, there was a still, quiet certainty working away in the background, telling me that I was on a journey that could only end in success.
That went to pot in March, and it's been broken ever since. Then, last night, I got into bed. I lay there for about five or six minutes, and then, I got the voice. "Time now," it said. "You don't need this stuff...again."
And to be honest, I believe it. Of course, it's not an external voice. It's a click in my brain, when my metabolism feels the need to change my direction and behaviour. And that's happened now.
Not that I don't still want sweet things - I wanted them the first time round, you remember? - but the voice is back, so here's where we go from here.
Went gymming this morning, and am thinking about fitting in some biking before this Jubilee weekend finishes. Tomorrow morning, we walk. Tomorrow lunchtime, we walk. Tomorrow evening, gymming and swimming...and so on...No fizz (barring occasional fruit fizzes, but certainly no Coke). No fried foods (because they're far too much like fun). I still have some frozen yoghurt left, but I wouldn't have started eating that stuff if I thought it was bad for you. But essentially, we're back to a world of perspex boxes, with a very occasional treat or two.
Feels good, irrespective of the result of the day. Feels like progress, irrespective of the more-than-a-stone I've put back on in recent weeks. Oh - and the blood was positive today - down from the 6s and 7s to a solid 4.8. So on we go, with a still, small voice at the heart of a swirling, screeching maelstrom of bitching and calorific longing.
That sounds fun, right?
Weigh-in today recorded me at 16 stone 3 pounds. So not only is it time to kick this back into gear, it's gonna be a couple of weeks before it gets back DOWN to the point at which it would have been time to kick this back into gear. This also means, incidentally, I've put on a whole half-stone in the space of a week, which is...erm...interesting.
Fortunately, the thing I've been waiting for, and talking about, and failing to force myself to do for weeks now...happened. Last night, out of nowhere, it just happened.
The click happened.
I've talked at verious points on this journey about how self-denial can get you to understand why people invent religions, spiritual experiences and the like. Not only is it entirely possible, when not having something that you really really want, to resent others who have it, but to imagine you're better than people who have what you don't have and can't allow yourself. From that sort of madness, you can extrapolate sin, and evil, and stoning the sinner, based initially in nothing more edifying than pure I-want-what-you-have-but-it'd-be-"wrong" jealousy.
And you can also extrapolate spirits from this kind of madness too. When I first began to do this thing, it started with me reaching a saturation point, and taking a breath, and then getting what felt like an outside voice in my ear. A still, small voice that simply said "You don't need this stuff. In fact, you need to not do this stuff. You need to not do this stuff now..."
After which, for all the bitching and whining and teeth-grinding and sweating and swearing of the first year of this thing, there was a still, quiet certainty working away in the background, telling me that I was on a journey that could only end in success.
That went to pot in March, and it's been broken ever since. Then, last night, I got into bed. I lay there for about five or six minutes, and then, I got the voice. "Time now," it said. "You don't need this stuff...again."
And to be honest, I believe it. Of course, it's not an external voice. It's a click in my brain, when my metabolism feels the need to change my direction and behaviour. And that's happened now.
Not that I don't still want sweet things - I wanted them the first time round, you remember? - but the voice is back, so here's where we go from here.
Went gymming this morning, and am thinking about fitting in some biking before this Jubilee weekend finishes. Tomorrow morning, we walk. Tomorrow lunchtime, we walk. Tomorrow evening, gymming and swimming...and so on...No fizz (barring occasional fruit fizzes, but certainly no Coke). No fried foods (because they're far too much like fun). I still have some frozen yoghurt left, but I wouldn't have started eating that stuff if I thought it was bad for you. But essentially, we're back to a world of perspex boxes, with a very occasional treat or two.
Feels good, irrespective of the result of the day. Feels like progress, irrespective of the more-than-a-stone I've put back on in recent weeks. Oh - and the blood was positive today - down from the 6s and 7s to a solid 4.8. So on we go, with a still, small voice at the heart of a swirling, screeching maelstrom of bitching and calorific longing.
That sounds fun, right?
Monday, 4 June 2012
False Sense
So let's see. Took a year to lose 5.5 stone. Took 8 weeks to go absolutely nowhere. In all likelihood, it will by tomorrow have taken 4 weeks to put a stone back on. Is that enough to lull my body into a false sense of fat-fuckery, so that when I kick its ass with more exercise, more discipline, less food, a higher metabolism and all the stuff that worked before, I can break through the neuro-psychological barrier that says my body doesn't want to be smaller than 15 stone?
No of course I'm not claiming this was all some sort of cunning plan. What this was was the breaking of my discipline and a thoroughly enjoyable glimpse of what fees to me like normality. But in all likelihood tomorrow I'll be 16 stone again. I haven't biked with discipline for weeks on end. Sure, I've added the spin class into my mix, but I've broken the walking habit, stopped going to the gym, and stopped going to aquacise, so all in all, my exercise level is at a year-and-a-half low. And, as we all know, I'm now eating desserts more often than at any point in the last two years - so it's fair to say that all the elements of my Disappearing regime have been blown six ways from Monday. Clearly, that has to change.
This week, I'm spinning tomorrow morning. Wednesday morning, I'm reinstating the morning walk, the lunchtime walk, and the evening gym/swim combo. Thursday, morning walk and evening aquacise. Friday, morning spin and...something else. See what the body makes of that...
Meanwhile, I'm prepared for the news tomorrow - and I'm not gonna bitch about it, because I've enjoyed the stuff that's put me back up a bit. But, as I've said for the last couple of weeks, 16 is where it ends. Halfway is where it ends. There may, at various points along the way, be other months like this - months of Rumspringa, months off the discipline. But now, we have to kick it back into shape and push down at least another few stones before we consider easing off again. Let's say no sleep till 12.5!
No of course I'm not claiming this was all some sort of cunning plan. What this was was the breaking of my discipline and a thoroughly enjoyable glimpse of what fees to me like normality. But in all likelihood tomorrow I'll be 16 stone again. I haven't biked with discipline for weeks on end. Sure, I've added the spin class into my mix, but I've broken the walking habit, stopped going to the gym, and stopped going to aquacise, so all in all, my exercise level is at a year-and-a-half low. And, as we all know, I'm now eating desserts more often than at any point in the last two years - so it's fair to say that all the elements of my Disappearing regime have been blown six ways from Monday. Clearly, that has to change.
This week, I'm spinning tomorrow morning. Wednesday morning, I'm reinstating the morning walk, the lunchtime walk, and the evening gym/swim combo. Thursday, morning walk and evening aquacise. Friday, morning spin and...something else. See what the body makes of that...
Meanwhile, I'm prepared for the news tomorrow - and I'm not gonna bitch about it, because I've enjoyed the stuff that's put me back up a bit. But, as I've said for the last couple of weeks, 16 is where it ends. Halfway is where it ends. There may, at various points along the way, be other months like this - months of Rumspringa, months off the discipline. But now, we have to kick it back into shape and push down at least another few stones before we consider easing off again. Let's say no sleep till 12.5!
Sunday, 3 June 2012
Mirror, Mirror...
Went to bed last night at 3AM. Woke up about 6 to go and pee. Rolled out of bed and instinctively dragged in my stomach and puffed out my chest...because I was passing the full-length mirror on the outside of our wardrobe.
I stopped with one foot in the air.
"What the Hell was that?!" I demanded inside my head.
Yes, I was pulling in my stomach...for a mirror.
"Moron..." I muttered.
Couldn't go back to sleep after that - did exactly what I promised I wouldn't do - stayed awake fretting about the Indian meal we had last night. Even got back into bed, pulled in the stomach again and did a comparison of how bulgy it looked in the mirror...
I know what you're asking...Yes, a comparison: this is not the first time that I've lain there, examining the bulge and the curve where they shouldn't be, so yes, somewhere in the dark side of my brain I have an indexed database of curve patterns, plateaus, bulges and flab-rolls of my stomach through time. And yes, of course, it's a sickness. It's one of many sicknesses that make up the state of a man who needs to be the Disappearing Man, and isn't sure he is any more.
When I fiinally gave up trying not to think and got up, my blood was, as could have been predicted after a night of late-night cream and fruit sauces and coconut breads, the highest it's been in over a year - 7.8. The main highlight of the day was dinner with the folks. We walked into my folks' house and it was like walking into 1956. Or into a British National Party rally - there was bunting over the cooker, and flags in the fruitbowl. There was a union flag on the tablecloth. On the paper cups and plates. On the glasses. On the serviettes. And on the CD compilation of strident brass and choral music and Vera Lynn that (as my contribution to the feast) I'd provided.
We ate good food, we laughed, we ignored the terrifying power of superstition and coughing and we raised glasses of wine or juice to the Queen. The non-Royalist sense is the only one in which I could be described as a Republican, but on one day in several decades, I can raise a glass to the not-that-bad job Elizabeth has done. So we did. What we also did was eat dessert. And yes, I enjoyed every mouthful of it. And yes, tonight, dammit, I'm taking a sleeping pill because a) I don't have to go to London tomorrow, and b) I don't want to be ambushed by the man in the mirror at stupid o'clock in the morning. And yes, I broke a nail today, scrabbling and failing to quite grasp the swimming pool bank labelled 'Discipline'.
The day is ending with eggy bread and Desperate Housewives, and with me feeling like I want to freeze existence in this moment, for all sorts of reasons. If we could only stay here, in this moment, with people and food and fun and laughter and only this and only now and no more mirrors and databases and endless vanity and math...
Sigh...that'd be pretty sweet.
But it won't, of course. It can't.
But we'll deal with that when the clock dares tick. And that's not tonight.
I stopped with one foot in the air.
"What the Hell was that?!" I demanded inside my head.
Yes, I was pulling in my stomach...for a mirror.
"Moron..." I muttered.
Couldn't go back to sleep after that - did exactly what I promised I wouldn't do - stayed awake fretting about the Indian meal we had last night. Even got back into bed, pulled in the stomach again and did a comparison of how bulgy it looked in the mirror...
I know what you're asking...Yes, a comparison: this is not the first time that I've lain there, examining the bulge and the curve where they shouldn't be, so yes, somewhere in the dark side of my brain I have an indexed database of curve patterns, plateaus, bulges and flab-rolls of my stomach through time. And yes, of course, it's a sickness. It's one of many sicknesses that make up the state of a man who needs to be the Disappearing Man, and isn't sure he is any more.
When I fiinally gave up trying not to think and got up, my blood was, as could have been predicted after a night of late-night cream and fruit sauces and coconut breads, the highest it's been in over a year - 7.8. The main highlight of the day was dinner with the folks. We walked into my folks' house and it was like walking into 1956. Or into a British National Party rally - there was bunting over the cooker, and flags in the fruitbowl. There was a union flag on the tablecloth. On the paper cups and plates. On the glasses. On the serviettes. And on the CD compilation of strident brass and choral music and Vera Lynn that (as my contribution to the feast) I'd provided.
We ate good food, we laughed, we ignored the terrifying power of superstition and coughing and we raised glasses of wine or juice to the Queen. The non-Royalist sense is the only one in which I could be described as a Republican, but on one day in several decades, I can raise a glass to the not-that-bad job Elizabeth has done. So we did. What we also did was eat dessert. And yes, I enjoyed every mouthful of it. And yes, tonight, dammit, I'm taking a sleeping pill because a) I don't have to go to London tomorrow, and b) I don't want to be ambushed by the man in the mirror at stupid o'clock in the morning. And yes, I broke a nail today, scrabbling and failing to quite grasp the swimming pool bank labelled 'Discipline'.
The day is ending with eggy bread and Desperate Housewives, and with me feeling like I want to freeze existence in this moment, for all sorts of reasons. If we could only stay here, in this moment, with people and food and fun and laughter and only this and only now and no more mirrors and databases and endless vanity and math...
Sigh...that'd be pretty sweet.
But it won't, of course. It can't.
But we'll deal with that when the clock dares tick. And that's not tonight.
Eyes Wide Shut
Blood was 6.2 this morning - pretty much par for the course at the moment.
I'm sitting here at a quarter to midnight, not exactly watching Eyes Wide Shut, the last filmic endeavour of Stanley Kubrick. And while I don't respect....well pretty much anything that I've ever seen of Kubrick's (he seems to me to have been given a voice expressly to piss people off and waste the time of their lives...), Eyes Wide Shut is a pretty good description of my attitude towards Disappearing today - no exercise to speak of, good hearty meals, including an Indian festival of calories quite late in the night.
I'm refusing to think about this though - Eyes wide shut while doing, quite possibly, a Thelma and Louise over the cliff of consequence.
I figure it'll be what it'll be. I'm going to do some solid exercise this weekend, and then this second weekend - the joys of Jubilee, people! - and what will be come Tuesday will be. I'm absolutely not going to keep myself up at night worrying about everything I've eaten, what I've done and what I haven't done.
While talking to my pal Mae this afternoon, she introduced me to another new diet plan - the Tesco Diet. As far as I know at this stage, it's a diet that involves buying up land, launching megastores full of jacked-up produce, and putting small, independent retailers out of business. I'm sure it probably works, cos it sounds exhausting, but I have to ask myself - do I have that sort of time on my hands?
Talking to Mae's friend Mo, who I met today for the first time, I said something which makes some sense to me. (This happens so rarely it's worth recording, you understand?)
I feel sort of like I'm in the swimming pool, close to the bank, except the bank is high, and however hard I try and get purchase on it, it's always jusssst slightly out of reach. Ahat I need to do is reach up and grasp the bank (which, were this a dream, would have the word "Discipline" written across it in mosaic tiles), and pull myself back up onto dry land. The alternative is to shut my eyes (wide, as it were), and sink beneath the water, and then drown...
Sigh...
Tuesday will be what Tuesday will be. The point, I think is that it'll be that...when it'll be that. That's not now - still got a whole weekend left before the Nazi Scales get to pronounce judgment this week. A couple of days to try and grab the bank and pull up. Let's see what happens, shall we?
I'm sitting here at a quarter to midnight, not exactly watching Eyes Wide Shut, the last filmic endeavour of Stanley Kubrick. And while I don't respect....well pretty much anything that I've ever seen of Kubrick's (he seems to me to have been given a voice expressly to piss people off and waste the time of their lives...), Eyes Wide Shut is a pretty good description of my attitude towards Disappearing today - no exercise to speak of, good hearty meals, including an Indian festival of calories quite late in the night.
I'm refusing to think about this though - Eyes wide shut while doing, quite possibly, a Thelma and Louise over the cliff of consequence.
I figure it'll be what it'll be. I'm going to do some solid exercise this weekend, and then this second weekend - the joys of Jubilee, people! - and what will be come Tuesday will be. I'm absolutely not going to keep myself up at night worrying about everything I've eaten, what I've done and what I haven't done.
While talking to my pal Mae this afternoon, she introduced me to another new diet plan - the Tesco Diet. As far as I know at this stage, it's a diet that involves buying up land, launching megastores full of jacked-up produce, and putting small, independent retailers out of business. I'm sure it probably works, cos it sounds exhausting, but I have to ask myself - do I have that sort of time on my hands?
Talking to Mae's friend Mo, who I met today for the first time, I said something which makes some sense to me. (This happens so rarely it's worth recording, you understand?)
I feel sort of like I'm in the swimming pool, close to the bank, except the bank is high, and however hard I try and get purchase on it, it's always jusssst slightly out of reach. Ahat I need to do is reach up and grasp the bank (which, were this a dream, would have the word "Discipline" written across it in mosaic tiles), and pull myself back up onto dry land. The alternative is to shut my eyes (wide, as it were), and sink beneath the water, and then drown...
Sigh...
Tuesday will be what Tuesday will be. The point, I think is that it'll be that...when it'll be that. That's not now - still got a whole weekend left before the Nazi Scales get to pronounce judgment this week. A couple of days to try and grab the bank and pull up. Let's see what happens, shall we?
Friday, 1 June 2012
The Blood Donor
Blood was 6.1 this morning.
Dragged my ass to spin despite reeeeeallly not wanting to spin this morning. Did some work, and then went to do a thing I've never done before. The...erm...the clue is in the title, really. For the Brits, you know and I know there are tons of gags to be made about becoming a blood donor, cos you'll have seen Tony Hancock already do them better than I ever could.
Interestingly, they don't take "nearly an armful" from you any more - they don't take a pint. Just three-quarters of a pint...apparently, the increasing thinness of veins among donors has meant they're happy enough to take just three-quarters of a pint from each donor.
For the non-Brits....just go with it. There was a comedian in the 1950s who was our version of Lucy. His most famous half-hour of sitcom was called The Blood Donor, and saw him radically misunderstand the business of blood donation. When asked to donate a pint, his reaction was ""A pint, have you gone raving mad? That's very nearly an armful!"
All on the same page now?
Right, let's move on from Hancock. I had my donation-cherry popped in the back of a van, there being a need these days for portable blood banks. Got to say, I loved the whole thing - the feeling of doing three-quarters of a pint of good was pretty keen, the banter was fun...but get this: not only was I allowed to have an entirely guilt-free chocolate biscuit at the end - "We've lowered your blood sugar quite a bit, so go on!" they said! But I was also banned - categorically banned! - from doing any exercise for the rest of the day.
Sadly, I can't donate blood every day. Back to the slog tomorrow. But on the other hand, we here in the UK have TWO weekends, back to back. Apparently, some rich old bint is celebrating....something or other. Buggered if I could care less what...
Dragged my ass to spin despite reeeeeallly not wanting to spin this morning. Did some work, and then went to do a thing I've never done before. The...erm...the clue is in the title, really. For the Brits, you know and I know there are tons of gags to be made about becoming a blood donor, cos you'll have seen Tony Hancock already do them better than I ever could.
Interestingly, they don't take "nearly an armful" from you any more - they don't take a pint. Just three-quarters of a pint...apparently, the increasing thinness of veins among donors has meant they're happy enough to take just three-quarters of a pint from each donor.
For the non-Brits....just go with it. There was a comedian in the 1950s who was our version of Lucy. His most famous half-hour of sitcom was called The Blood Donor, and saw him radically misunderstand the business of blood donation. When asked to donate a pint, his reaction was ""A pint, have you gone raving mad? That's very nearly an armful!"
All on the same page now?
Right, let's move on from Hancock. I had my donation-cherry popped in the back of a van, there being a need these days for portable blood banks. Got to say, I loved the whole thing - the feeling of doing three-quarters of a pint of good was pretty keen, the banter was fun...but get this: not only was I allowed to have an entirely guilt-free chocolate biscuit at the end - "We've lowered your blood sugar quite a bit, so go on!" they said! But I was also banned - categorically banned! - from doing any exercise for the rest of the day.
Sadly, I can't donate blood every day. Back to the slog tomorrow. But on the other hand, we here in the UK have TWO weekends, back to back. Apparently, some rich old bint is celebrating....something or other. Buggered if I could care less what...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)