The Maternal Resurrection

Beautiful breakfast with d and Ma and some of Wendy's family. Home from Kilworth House via a quaint Tudor village called Ledbury, where we stopped for the kind of lunch you can only do when you're in a whirlwind of hedonism, promising to reform in the morning. Butternut squash soup, and a cream tea. Yep, cream. Yep, tea. Yep, get over it.

Got home, chilled out for a ridiculously short amount of time, and then got dressed for a choir performance. Ma turned up in her car to drive me up to the chapel in one of the higher bits of the town.
"How you doin'?" I asked.
"I'm dead," she said. I sniffed.
"Looking good on it," I decided.
Turned out she'd had a letter from the Department of Work and Pensions - which she'd had to contact following the death of my Dad. "Thank you," it said, "for the information regarding the death of..."
Then it printed my mother's name.

My mother's name.
She smiled. Sweetly.
"I'm going to talk to them Monday," she promised, with the kind of annunciation that makes kings and presidents shudder.
"Zombie apocalypse," I muttered to myself.
"Hmm?"
"You're going to insist on a resurrection, I'm assuming?"
She looked at me, smiling horribly.
"Y'know, I just might..." she said.

"So," she asked. "Back to perspex boxes tomorrow then?"
"Back to perspex boxes in the morning," I confirmed.
"Me too," she agreed, encapsulating a sense of resurrection and new beginnings that's left over from the wedding.

So here's to tomorrow.

29th November - The Wedding Hedonism

So there you have it. My mate Wendy walked down an aisle, actually hand in hand with her beloved, Maria, today, and everybody clapped and almost-cried, and burst their hearts with gladness for them both.

Of course, it is true that everybody also nearly pissed themselves, somewhat cruelly but equally unavoidably, at the registrar, who had a most unfortunate lithp when it came to pronouncing words like “Regithrar”…and “Leithterthire”, and perhaps most unavoidably hilarious of all, “Thivil Partnerthipth”. Bless her, she meant well, and was perfectly within the law, but really, I think if you’re going to have a heavy lithp, you might be just as well to stick to marriageth…

But generally, the day went beautifully well – starting with breakfatht…oh stoppit!...breakfast, which was highly professional and, once again, taken in the Orangery, this time by daylight and white and bright and like eating in a beautiful long conservatory.

What is it about hotel breakfasts that turns perfectly rational human beings into the Emperor Caligula on a bender? I ordered the Full English, and that – bar the black pudding, of which I’m not notably a fan – was what arrived: sausage, bacon, egg, tomato, fried bread, so far, so tasty. Then a couple of holderfuls of toast arrived, and I figured “fuck it, I’m on holiday,” so I got stuck into that too. Enough to satisfy the hungriest bloke who ate, all in all, about eight hours before, right?

Yeah, but there was other stuff there. So I gamely tucked into plain yogurt with fruit compote, and fruit juice – which incidentally is by no means the innocent choice people think it is, and more than calorifically deserves the kudos given to it in the 70s as a course of its own. Then I did a hit and run of the cereal bar, scooping spoonful after spoonful of various different breakfasts into the same bowl. Because ti was there, and technically, it was included in the price of the room. Did I want it? Probably not. Did I need it? Certainly not. But yes, I ate it because it was there.

What? It’s a perfectly valid reason when applied to walking up mountains, but not when chowing them down?

Anyhow – the ceremony went off perfectly, lithp notwithstanding, and we thankfully didn’t eat again until about 5ish. Three full courses – soup, steak/chicken and chocolate tart in my case. Then coffee and petit fours. Because they were there, shut up. Then they brought round wedding cakes – generous cup cakes made, I strongly suspect, of chocolate brownie, then iced. I didn’t eat that. I couldn’t. We brought it upstairs and have packed it away…for tomorrow. Fuck you, technically I’m still on my holidays tomorrow – there’s another breakfast in about 9 hours, to which I’m perversely looking forward. I did however have another nightful of cider, and even though technically I didn’t need it, I just ate a chocolate tart from Costa while writing this blog entry.

This, incidentally, is how you end up being 20 stone and 5 feet 6. I would have not the slightest hesitation in guessing that at this moment as I sit here, I weigh more than 18 stone again. And yes, this is the kind of eating and living that got me to my crisis point in the first place – this is what it looks like when you’re almost intentionally self-harming through food.

Except this, I am actively, painfully aware, is on longer a way of life. It’s an aberration, a time of pure hedonistic celebration and involvement with the joy of my friends. It’s the same impulse that has seen me, tonight, get up and boogie. To quote Mitch Benn, “I have plenty of natural rhythm, but it’s all above the waist”, but still, the night was made for dancing, so on and off, here and there, the Disappearing Man…danced.

Once tomorrow has come and gone, and the sun has set on this wonderful holiday, and Wendy and Maria have buggered off to Lapland – gotta love that for a December honeymoon, no? – I will be coming down to the Earth on which I must now live with a bump. I know this, and accept it, and am to some extent looking forward to the rigors of pain and exercise and hard bloody work all over again.

Oh, two nice things as side—notes. I gave a speech as part of the after-dinner celebrations. Went down very well. Made people laugh, made people cry (even a couple of hard nuts, I gather), made people go “Oh wow” a bit, and made a parade of people whose names I couldn’t tell you if you tortured me come up and shake my hand or hug me and tell me I was fab.

Which could be a dangerous association, were my mind connectively inclined – wild calorific hedonism=people telling me I’m fab. But such thoughts must of course be cast out…largely in an abject fear they may be valid.

And I was given a gift, for doing my bit as a witness to the ceremony. A kickass new pen, from Wendy and Maria. There’s a crazy bit of connectivity there too – I always love getting new pens, they inspire me to write new stories. I can’t wait to see what stories this new one has in it.

But whatever they are, I’ll find them out in a world of discipline and exercise, not this world of chocolate-tasting madness. Nehh. I have spoken…

Mmm…breakfast in nine hours…

The Kilworth Infatuation

That's it. We're not coming back.

Like...ever.

Arrived at Kilworth House in Leicestershire at lunchtime, annnnd I'm simply not leaving. It's glorious in a way that goes beyond comfort, and beyond ostentation. It's beautiful in a highly practical manner...and then it has some extra beautiful dumped on top just for swank.

I'm writing this in the Kipling Suite (stoking one's literary pretensions, anyone?), with a four poster bed in the other room, and more space than the whole downstairs of our maisonette. Had a great time with Wendy and Maria and friends, then went down to the magnificent Orangery (a real one, apparently, originally developed for the Lord Sheriff of Leicestershire) for dinner. Had dessert - a knickerbocker glory of some style, yep, shoot me, I'm on my holidays - and three cans of cider. So, Disappearingly, a write-off, but this is what I mean by "once the speed-bump of the wedding's over, I'll get back to normal..."

Tomorrow, one of my best friends gets married to the woman of her dreams. Or, if you want to be prosaic about the whole thing...I'm going away now to digest a huge dinner...ready for more eating in just about seven hours' time.

Hard life, right enough...Hard recovery coming at the end of it all of course, but for now, arrivederci Disappearing World...

I'm so not leaving...you'll get my keycard when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands, ya hear me...!

The Visionary Dichotomy

The nature of today depends entirely on the direction in which I look. In one direction, we're off to Kilworth House tomorrow for three days of wedding joy with Wendy and her wife-to-be, Maria. Sooo looking forward to that, they're a fab couple.

Then, looking up to Ma's place, there's greyness and rain and the perpetual March of the Asshats - insurance companies, mainly. Plus her freezer, which is relatively new (as in this year), died in the night, meaning another miniature flood and a bunch of spoiled food. She's still waiting for the freezer company to come back to her.

Greyness and grimness continues if I turn to look at another pal, who's really going through some stuff at the moment.

Then looking back at my own life, I'm probably out of control at this precise moment, but am determined to regain focus when we return from the wedding.

Wherever we look of course, there are always stories - dramas, comedies, tragedies and more usually lives, which are at least a little of all three and more. It's just rare in one day to see different directional facets in just turning one's head a couple of degrees. BUT - tomorrow, nothing else matters for three days but Wendy and Maria. The flatline beep you hear is the Disappearing Man...Disappearing. Please leave your name and trauma after the beep, and I'll return your call come Friday.

The Disciplinary Boomerang

Life is a very odd way of learning lessons. Still, given that there's no concrete evidence that death can teach us anything - leastways not our own - I suppose we're stuck with the lessons we can pick from the flotsam of our days on this planet, even when those lessons are not terribly flattering.

I am done with things not fitting - I find it boring, and I find myself not the person I want to be, or indeed the person I feel I am. It's borderline insane of course that weight - that body fat, essentially - should have this kind of impact on one's self-image, but there it is; call me a fallible old sentimentalist if you will. As soon as Wendy's wedding is done this week,though, I want to start getting back into the clothes I bought (or - and here's another of those stabs of self-knowledge - in some cases were bought for me) when I was a few stones lighter and thinner and generally more Disappeared than I am right now. I am done with this bullshit.

Another irritating home truth is that this may well become an easier thing to achieve once this week is done. Why?
Because I go back to work then, essentially.
But surely, having November off was supposed to free me up to do more exercise?
Yes, but clearly, I need an aide de discipline. Clearly, left to my own devices, I can find innumerable better things to do. Clearly, in fact, I need a routine into which to fit my exercise, almost to get away with exercise, as though it is something almost of which to be ashamed. And no, in case you're wondering, I don't really like what this says about my psychology. But if there is one thing demanded of us by the necessity to learn our life lessons, it is that not liking a thing does not make it untrue. So: there is a kind of angry steel feeling in the back of my throat that accepts these things about myself, and will begin to put them to work for me, in the pursuit of further Disappearance. Soon, I will be back at work, with far, far too much to do. Somehow, the perversity of my psychology relishes this fact, and the challenge of fitting exercise into the schedule as well, and somehow making it work for me. Work equals routine. Routine equals discipline. Discipline - perversely, as I seem to keep saying - equals a need to kick against it and still make my desires work for me, ergo it equals a greater determination to fit the exercise I need to do into my days.

All of which adds up to fitting into shirts that fit a 15 stone man and not a 17 and a half stone man, and buttoning up my Disappearing Coat for the winter.

So let's get started, shall we?

Thankfulness II - The Revenge

Oh...my...stomach...

Today we had proper Thanksgiving dinner - or the nearest thing the UK can achieve within a budget. Started eating at about 4pm. Just about 7 we were collapsing onto couches, groaning. Then I had to roll myself off the couch again and go sing. Think I went from a top tenor to a bottom bass tonight!

Did I mention that thing about days when I was gonna celebrate as a proper celebrant, and then have days of proper Disappearing? Yyyyeah, this would be one of the first kind of days.

One of my pals, who's doing their own Disappearing at the minute and who's close to where I am at the minute, texted me yesterday to say "Bum...have gone up a couple of pounds...Did I say? Bum..."

I have a feeling I may well be catching up with them this week, or even overshooting them. On the upside, this Wednesday we leave for three days of wedding fun for my pal Wendy, which means there will be no weigh-in this week. This is gonna be a case of Ninja Disappearing...need to creep my fat ass by this week, and turn up next week having kicked said ass into gear and burned, baby - burned!

For now...sssshhh...trying not to steal another slice of pumpkin pie before bed...

The Thankfulness Expansion

A belated happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

I'm very keen on Thanksgiving, truth be told. Seems to me to be a celebration deeply rooted in dead birdflesh and the candying or roasting of every conceivable carbohydrate known to man. So hey - where's the bad?

I'm also quite keen on what might be considered the other point of Thanksgiving -  y'know, the taking of a day to look around and think "Wow...dude, this Being Alive gig pretty much kicks ass!"

That it does this is of course a somewhat boyscout assertion, under constant threat of revision by, when all is said and done, the asshattery of other people. Other people should not, I feel, on the whole, be allowed. Other people frequently go staggeringly far out of their way, apparently with the sole determination in life to be asshats and increase the general - or indeed, sometimes the specific - level of misery in the lives of everyone else they encounter, and most particularly, me.

Sometimes, I will happily grant you, this makes it something of a challenge to look around and see the reasons in your life to be thankful, cheerful and generally upbeat. Or even, if we're honest, not to smash an asshat in the face with a baseball bat.

Life itself, too, sometimes seems to go out of its way to be a kind of cosmological Asshat (it earns the capitalisation due to its majestic and natural bigness). The propensity of people to just die and leave us alone, the surge of wind or water that wipes out lives and memories, the famine, the war, the specific shittinesses of life, tend to make it harder to be upbeat and boyscout about the whole "Being Alive" schtick.

But then, we're not talking about a permanent effort. Just a day. A single day to quote the Rainmakers in my favourite song of theirs - "In spite of everything, it's pretty good to be alive."

I think Thanksgiving would pretty much rock were it not to be so limited a notion. Worldwide Thanksgiving Day would be kinda cool. Couldn't be mandatory of course - the freedom of thankless Scroogey bastards to remain thankless Scroogey bastards should always be maintained. But maybe we should be allowed on that one day to annoy the piss out of them with random and spontaneous acts of kindness. Flashmob kindness in fact - hell, we can organise riots that way, why not kindnesses?

Twitter campaign, anyone?