All of a sudden it was a bank holiday Monday (yes, foreign friends, I know the name doesn’t make sense) and here I am with a head full of words and nonsense. Time to verbally vomit over your shiny new shoes.

Usually, a reappearance like this is driven by an amazing happenstance in a normally dull week but to be honest (love that phrase), I just felt like it. I spent the last month or so doing a little naval gazing and pondering. Nothing earth shattering has emerged from the meditation and self-indulgence but I still live in hope. I am not sleeping very well at the moment but I have no idea why. Work is busy but no more so than at any time over the last year or so, so I am pretty sure it ain’t that.

Am I on the verge of a mid-life crisis? Those of you who see a lot of me might wonder if I am already having it and lately, I can see what  you mean. I have no great secret personal life hidden from all of you. What you see me doing is pretty much what there is.

Ardent Slimming World junkies such as myself don’t get Bank Holiday’s off, so today I was there bright and early. Very early as it happens. Not as much traffic on the roads at 9am as usual you see. Had I half a ounce of common sense, I would have realised this and hence avoided the need to run round the house like my trousers were on fire 30 seconds after the alarm went off this morning. It was worth the trip though, I lost 3½ pounds which is very cool. Slightly less cool when you discover that I put 3 on last week. If only I could determine what I did this week that I didn’t do last week and vice-versa. Sadly, if it were that simple, I could make a fortune and I would be already wearing the 34 inch waist jeans hanging like a mocking denim bat in my wardrobe. There are now 5 of us from work at my group which adds to the fun. Laughing at other people might be wrong but its a great way to start the week. Before you go and call me (us) cruel, rest assured that sometimes it goes both ways. This week, I was first in line when we “went round the room to see how everyone got on”. The nice consultant lady tells everyone how well we did (they never say how much we put on) and we have to talk about our week. Normally the words come easily and I have taken to using 3 or 4 stock speeches that seem to keep everyone happy. This week, I was caught off-guard and wittered on like an idiot long past the point of polite embarrassment. The usual round of applause that follows each speech re-defined the term “smattering”.

So it wasn’t my weight…

The diabetes is ok. I have one of my 6 monthly M.O.T. checkups any week now. I feel ok. I always know when things are going a bit wonky because I either feel really tired, need to drink or need to pee. None of these really happens at all at the moment. I have virtually no thirst reflex anymore. Drinking fluids of any sort is either a habit (coffee at work) or something I have to remember to do. I know my inner bits need fluid, so I am not letting myself get into stupid bad habits, it’s just not a situation I ever expected to find myself in. During the time before I was diagnosed, I was drinking about 5 litres of water/squash/coke every day and peeing out about the same amount. How I ever got anything done is anyone’s guess.

So not that then…

My friend Hayley is leaving work this week. This sucks big time but for me not her. It is totally the right thing for her to do but it doesn’t make the fact that she won’t be at work anymore any less sucky. For the last 4 or 5 years ago she has been one of only a very few people I can trust with anything and one of only two who took the time to see how I was every day. We nearly always had lunch together, she mostly laughed at my purile yet sophisticated humour and without her I would have never gone to Slimming World. She was and is also blonde, pretty and in her early 20′s which never does my ego any harm. I may be her friend but I am also male and 40. It would be poetic, poignant and full of pathos to end with the phrase “I wish I had told her all that to her face” but I will have to disappoint you all. I think I tell her about once a month. The last time, she told me to stop being an arse. I will probably tell her again on Friday night whilst drunk and leaning on the bar in C103.

C103 is a night club. The first time in 20 years that I have ever been in one.

There will probably be photos. Photos I will apologise for in advance.

Certainly all the clues are there. I got up late, I have a curry on and as from last week, it’s the day before weigh-in.

So. Sunday it is. My last Sunday as a person aged under 40. Personally, I can’t wait for Wednesday. Who can be patient when such an important thing as “your life beginning” is imminent? Well, I can. I think it’s complete tosh. I still feel (and most of the time act) exactly like I was still 14. I still like mostly the same things, I read the same books, like the same music…well the list goes on in just the way I have done on this very subject many times before. I can’t remember exactly at what point I stopped judging myself by looking at those around me. For years I was obsessed with doing what I thought I should be doing or behaving the way I thought I should and then one day it all seemed like nonsense. For a few years now, I have stopped doing things I didn’t want to do and instead of making up an excuse, I say I don’t and say why. I won’t fall back on cliche and end this with “life is short” because I don’t believe it is. I intend mine to be long, obstinate and a generally good laugh. I am only sorry I waited until I was in my late 30s to realise it.

Slimming World

As I told you earlier (and last week), I moved to another Slimming World group last Monday. No longer will Thursday be the day I perch on the scales and wish to some higher being that a few pounds will have fallen off. So, now it is Monday and I sit in another community centre with a room full of women and two friends from work (no longer Hayley & Julie, now Jayne & Alanna). My new consultant seems just as nice as the last one so I appear to be in good hands.

Last week’s first weigh-in was a bit of a disaster. I had put on a few pounds since only the previous Thursday. So shocked was I (and a little indignant) that I bought some new digital scales on the way home. My indignance proved unfounded as the new ones agreed completely with the Slimming World ones. So, a few pounds heavier and £12 pounds poorer. Good start to the day or what? So far this week, I have eaten like Victoria Beckham and written every single damn thing down to wave in the face of the lovely Clare.

We shall see. Well, I will. I will probably chicken out of telling you lot.

L8r

I’d Do Anything No More

So she won. I seem to be in a minority amongst those around me in loving BBC talent shows. 12 million people watch them but you can’t seem to find one can you? Funny that. Anyway, Jodie won and I voted. 5 times. She was undeniably chuffed and deservedly so. Andrew Lloyd Webber seemed genuinely pleased but Cameron McIntosh appeared to be completely graceless about the final decision.

Don’t leave it up to the public if you don’t want the public to choose.

I do wonder, it has to be said, how many of the sofa-parked butts in TV land belong to people who actually go to the theatre. There seems to be this great idea that it’s “our” West End and “our” theatrical tradition”. In truth, the West End is several hundred miles from me and I estimate a return trip including hotel stay to be in the £300-£400 price range. Not likely then. Plymouth does have it’s own Theatre Royal and many a production has made it’s camp way down here. It’s just that I have never been. I am sure I’d love it if I did but I guess I would rather watch TV. Oooooh the irony…

2 Slim 2 Move

The diet continues slowly. Another pound fell off this week but all is not well in my group. You see, my two best buds who come with me and sit amongst the nice ladies of Plympton have decided not to go anymore. I don’t think sis is going again either which leaves me alone with the plump ladies of the W.I. They really are a great bunch, the consultant in particular but what good is an experience like Slimming World if you don’t have any friends at work to yak about it with? Not much as far as I am concerned, which is why I am going to another group with two more best buds. Let’s see how long this lasts then…

Soon 40

Not long now then. Just over a week.

I want presents and I want them soon.

Stone

I have been a bit quiet on the diet news of late. To be honest, it was starting to get me down. I was getting bored of the food and then getting annoyed with myself for cheating and/or not pounding away on the treadmill as much as I should. I think it went something like this as the weeks went on – lost ½ pound, lost ½ pound, stayed the same, put on 1½ pounds and then all of sudden, two weeks ago I stepped on the scales 5 pounds lighter. Somewhere in amongst those weeks is a net loss and I was completely floored by it. Now, in a perfect world that made sense, I would simply photocopy my food/exercise diary for that week and repeat ad nauseum. Within scant few months, I would hit the 12 stone mark and life would be healthy and fabulous. Alas no, because this week I stayed the same. I ate much the same things and did less treadmilling. I think there’s a lesson in there for me.

Still, I mustn’t grumble. That 5lb loss takes me down to 15st 10lbs which is my lightest for a loooong time. The old round face is now distinctly oval and the trousers won’t stay up. I should point out that this is because my belts no longer have enough notches rather than it being a desperate cry for help.

Apart from the increasingly obvious, Slimming World has had an another affect on my life. Thursday (weigh-in day) is now that last day of my week and It’s also the day I go to the bank (all this weight loss costs money). Friday has turned into a sort of non-day and Monday has become “jesus-christ-it’s-almost-weigh-in-day-again”.

Jericho

For the second entry running, I bring news of a US TV nature. Jericho was brill but it is no more. For those of you who remember “The Survivors”, a BBC TV series from the 70′s, it was similar to that. But not really. Post-apocalyptic science fiction is (obviously) not everyone’s cup of tea and it’s a shame that so many people will just see it as that. It managed one full season of 22 episodes and then was cancelled. Fans sent over 40 tonnes of nuts to CBS (“nuts” was a line used by one of the characters at a pivotal moment in the final episode) and the series was given a 7 episode reprieve. Unfortunately, fans’ eagerness for new material was probably the series’ undoing. The first 3 new episodes were “leaked” onto the internet and devoured weeks before the proposed TV premiere. Now, I am particularly suspicious of such “leaking”. The episodes that find their way onto the net in this fashion are usually broadcast quality and you have to wonder whether something else is going on. Subsequent episodes appeared online and the same eager fans (particularly those who live overseas) downloaded them.

The result? Almost everyone who really loved the series saw the new episodes in a manner that barely registered in the ratings and another example of well-written, well-made US TV bit the dust for a second and final time.

As a footnote, if you see the Season One boxset languishing in a bargain basket at Tesco’s for £10-£15 anytime soon, do yourself a favour and see what all my fuss is about. I guarantee you will watch every episode in about 3 days. It was that good. Every single one of the people I recommended it too last year agreed and so did every single person they recommended it to as well.

Just think of the shit that appears on british TV between 7pm and 10pm every night. Jericho was transmitted on the Hallmark channel on SKY and probably got a few hundred thousand viewers if it was lucky. Perhaps I am being too harsh though. After all, if we put trashy US imports like this on BBC1 or ITV, where would we put all those fine hospital/police/forensic/grumpy detective dramas featuring those fine actors making the difficult transition from soaps?

Easter

Everyone have a good Easter? Cool. I had one Thornton’s Diabetic Egg that I stretched over 3 days. Nice but very much the next best thing. Of course, the wise people tell Diabetes sufferers to stay clear of Diabetic chocolate as it’s overpriced and has laxative side-effects. Have a nice apple instead.

Well they can just f**k off and eat their football sized creme eggs in smug silence for all I care. Then they can shove a nice apple up their own bottoms.

By the way, do all you smokers realise that it is bad for you? You do? I don’t understand. Why do you do it then? Are you stupid? irresponsible? inconsiderate? What do you mean you just f**king want one?

So, where was I?

Oh yes. If you haven’t watched any of the Terminator TV series, don’t read on yet…

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles may have the most lumpy and ill-advised title ever to spew forth the creative machine that is the US TV system, but it is (surprise, surprise) damn good. It started a few weeks ago on Virgin 1 and I have been concientiously using SKY+ to record it. Unfortunately, at 10pm on a Thursday I am usually driving home through Plymouth’s dark streets with only Robin Lustig and Radio 4′s The World Tonight team to keep me company.

Regular readers will know that the first Terminator film ranks only second to Jaws in terms of cinematic excellence as far as I am concerned. A simple film, made with a small budget at a time when I was busy failing my O Levels. I watched it first in the 6th form common room after a school dance, completely wasted and only able to concentrate for 5 minutes at a time. Several months later, it arrived in Wolseley house and I watched it all the way through for the first of many, many times.

In an almost Phantom-Menace like moment, the sequel arrived in 1991 and after huge anticipation before and momentary excitement during, it faded away. Apart from the advancement of the mythos and ground-breaking special fx, I didn’t like it much. All of those “thumbs-up-hasta-la-vista-fake-smile-boy-and-his-terminator-I-promise-not-to-kill-anyone” moments didn’t sit well with me at all.

Almost predictably, I quite liked the third one.

So the TV series arrives. It completely ignores the third film (at least I think so, I am still not quite sure) and continues the story of a 16 year old John Connor and his mother still running from Skynet. As tradition dictates, the future John Connor sends a terminator (Summer Glau) back in time to protect his mother and younger self. Skynet has also sent back at least one Arnie-type evil terminator to kill John Connor. By the end of the first episode, the heroes have leapt forward in time from 1999 to 2007. At the beginning of the second, we learn that Skynet has been sending people back in time as far as the 1960s and that John Connor has been sending resistance fighters back for many tasks, not just protecting his younger self.

So far, this sounds pretty predictable and if you were not a fan of the film series, you are probably not converted. To be honest, I can’t see anyone being truly converted by the TV series alone. Apart from the issue with the third film, it is incredibly faithful to canon and will confuse the hell out of anyone who has not seen the films. I see from online episode guides that future installments in this 9 episode first series wil feature Dr. Silverman and Kyle Reese. So far, there have been previous few “friendly-terminator-becoming-human” moments, indeed Summer Glau’s character is written as far closer to Arnie’s character from the first film than anything else. You are left to wonder how this tale can be stretched over 6 or 7 years worth of episodes though.

On the plus side, the actors are all great, the budget seems to be huge and as far as I can tell from the interweb, seems to have been given at least one more series.

Back.

I hurt my back. Again. At almost exactly the same time as last year, I was reminded that I am no longer the lithe and agile I being I have never been. I was just bending down to switch off the PC before work when a shiver of pain shot up my right side from foot to armpit and I was frozen. After a few moments, it calmed down to a dull ache that only manifests itself after long periods of sitting or lying in the same position. Just the right thing for me then…

Its 4 days later now and it is much better. I finally got a few hours sleep last night and felt all the better for it.

On.

In hot dietting news, I had a disastrous few weeks. The graph in the sidebar of this blog died a few weeks ago when I installed Vista (long story) so I am going to sort it out later (update: Done!). Anyway, back to Slimming World. I put on ½ pound then stayed the same, then lost ½ pound then last week put on 1½ pounds. Perhaps not a disaster but damn demotivating. I have been so good this week and after Hayley returned from her holiday in the States and had a slight gain we have both promised to stay under 6 sins a day. This is hard but I have managed it so far. Don’t ever underestimate the value of having someone you see all day doing the Slimming World thing with you.

My sister Jo continues her journey to slimdom. After 8 weeks, she is now ½ pound away from her 2 stone award and has now been Slimmer of the Week for 4 of the last 5 weeks.

The end. There is no more..]]>

Sunny.

Radar pylons, just outside Dover

It’s a lovely sunny afternoon as I type this, so for no other reason, here is a nice photo I found online of a sunny afternoon somewhere else. Some of you reading this will be familiar with the Dover Cliff pylons and are laughing now as they remember the hilarity that ensued when you asked an innocent new Dukie what they were. “Pylon” they replied and so a large group of you did in a sudden, violent but nonetheless entirely heterosexual manner.

The image reminds me of the hell that was CCF Run & March. Pounding pointlessly through the mud and gravel with Karl Beverly firmly, but fairly pushing you on and trying to find that inner strength and stamina you so clearly didn’t have and probably never would. As a 40 year old diabetic with a weight problem, I wonder now if I should have looked harder.

Interview Jitters.

If all goes well, I have an interview for an internal vacancy this week. At least 6 months management of a new team of keyers. The job is slightly different -six days a week, five hours per day and a few more hours here and there but it is something I really want to do. The only intimidating thing is the interview. Where I work, interviews are structured oddly and they are the toughest thing in the world to do well. By the time I blog again, I will know either way.

Another Half.

Again…another half pound at Slimming World. Just me and Jo this week and we didn’t stay until the end, opting instead for lunch up the road. She stayed the same this week and seemed quite glad not to be slimmer of the week for a third time. I am now 15 stone 13½ pounds which is the lowest in about 18 months. It’s going slow but I have still lost every week for 8 weeks.

I am now more or less obsessed with cooking. There is no point in denying it. On Sundays, I cook most of the day and fill up the fridge for the rest of the week. One of the more difficult concepts for someone like me to grasp, is the idea that you must eat to lose weight. Three meals with snacks between. Everyone I speak to who loses 4 or 5 pounds in a week has eaten more than they did during the week when they lost none. I eat beans, pasta, eggs, rice and potatoes – all ‘free’ on Green Days and am rarely hungry. I eat more fruit than ever and seem to find time to eat cereal bars and Ryvita when I get bored. I make a healthy chocolate cake at least once a week which beats the biscuit craving. I can really take or leave meat these days.

We Don’t Need That Bigger Boat Anymore.

On Monday 10th February, Roy Scheider, the star of the best film in the world ever (don’t bother to argue, it just is), passed away. Despite the fact that Jaws has given me a life-long fear of deep water and oversized man-eating sharks, I still watch it about four times a year. I watched it again on Tuesday and although the rubber shark still looks rubbish, it doesn’t detract from the perfection of the film one bit. I read the book long after I first saw the film but barely managed to make it to the end. I gather from a few people online that the book was a great read until the film came along. Once Scheider, Dreyfus, Shaw and Spielberg brought it to life, the written page was forever spoiled. The film didn’t change the book much really. A few plot points were removed (Brody’s wife and Hooper having a relationship) and the ending was changed – out went a drowning shark and in came an exploding shark (“Smile You Son Of A Bitch…”) and that was that.

Roy Scheider’s role in Jaws is that of the audience. He is the everyman, worried and frustrated by Quint, out-classed by Hooper’s intelligence and experience and completely out of his depth on a small boat. We see everything through him and we see him grow over 2 hours.

One of his last professional engagements was to provide the narration for an epic, fan-made documentary about his most famous role. It’s called http://www.sharkisstillworking.com and I for one can’t wait until you can buy it.

Yoofs

I had the good fortune to encounter a few of those drunken youths the media are so fond of the other night. I stopped at a local convenience shop with a friend because we both had the need to pay four times as much as normal for a few household essentials. Most such places now go once step better by having a cash machine on the premises, allowing you to pay £1.85 to take £10 out of your bank account to pay over the odds for own-brand, low quality imitations of quality consumables. Anyhoo, there we was waiting to pay when the automatic doors slid open when what can only be described as a white hooded tosser stumbled in and shouted a mobile number and the poor, hapless chavette behind the till.

“Oh, f**k off Brad”

Pissed, he took no notice and a dribble of expletives and sub-standard grammar spilled from his lips. What made it worse was that he was no older than 13 or 14. He wasn’t just cider-tipsy, he was full blown drunk as were the six or seven other wastes of space hovering just outside the shop.

We paid and slipped back to the car. They paid us little notice, unlike the poor woman still working in the shop and presumably still listening to his nonsense. It’s a sad reminder of the times we live in and the state of youth society. Did we do stuff like that at that age? No. We had Mr Tidmarsh’s German prep to do and by god we did it.

Dull Work Weeks Ahead & Family Slimming World

It’s all change and a period of dullness ahead for me. Hayley is off to Florida for 3 weeks next week and Julie is having her long awaited knee operation on Wednesday. She will be off work for a few weeks and not very mobile and excited for quite a while after that. So, lonely lunches, drives to work and coffee breaks for a while. Also, it will just be me and sis at Slimming World for a while. Jo is doing amazingly well. After a month, she got her 1 Stone award this week and was Slimmer Of The Week for the second week running.

I just lost another half pound this week. Not very impressive I feel but at least it’s still going in the right direction. After 6 weeks, I still haven’t gained or stayed the same. Even at this rate, I will hit target before Summer, so I must’nt grumble.

What a week.

I could bore the crap out of you all by banging on about work but this is sort of a public place and it wouldn’t be appropriate. Things continue in their “up and down” manner and I don’t know when it will all end. For the first time in quite a while, I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. For my sins, I did a load of work at home today, not because I am particularly conciencious but because I have better graphics tools at home. I make it work in Excel and I make it shiny in Photoshop. Nobody notices how clever it is, just how shiny it is…

Just half a pound fell off last week. There doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason for it, 3 pounds one week, half the next. I eat pretty much the same stuff now all the time, so there is not a lot of potential for adjustment when things don’t go as planned. I suppose I could have done without the six pancakes though. It’s five weeks now with a loss every time. God only knows how depressing my blog will be on the week I stay the same.

My sister was slimmer of the week last week , having lost eleven pounds in three weeks. It has taken me five weeks to lose the same amount. One of my friends lost three pounds. She had been ill all week with a tummy bug but as she said when she texted me on Tuesday “I must go to fat club this week, I will have lost loads”. I can’t fault her logic but the idea that you have to eat nothing but a few bits of dry toast and drink tea all week to lose three pounds is not the simple path to dieting bliss I am searching for. My other friend is doing her best but doesn’t get the results she deserves. Perhaps when her leg is better and we can start walking to work again, she will do better.

Sunday has turned into cooking day. I cook loads of stuff and then eat it all week. For years, I used to lunch on curry and rice but the difference these days is that I make it myself and it doesn’t come out of a Tesco packet.

Woohoo.

Balance

Work was so up and down this week that most of the time I was borderline schizophrenic.

We released a major update of our latest product to slavering hordes on Monday and as we should have predicted, not much happened. As is often the case with software, most effort is not apparent to anyone except those who take the time to be interested in code and similar sexiness. Due to a design decision made long before I hopped aboard the project, updates are a long and tediously repetitious thing, but luckily I did this bit last time. This time round, it was left to me to constantly interrupt my industrious colleague with witty banalities. There was nothing I could do about it. It was his turn and that was that. It all went well though and we solved a huge number of problems. By Tuesday night it was obvious that the long awaited (by a huge few) version 7.0a was a success.

On Wednesday, I made a mistake I have made often before and sent an Email to someone important without thinking it through first and the reply really took the wind out of my sails. I tried to console myself with the sort of cheery and contemplative nonsense I dispense towards my colleague when he feels the same way but alas, I was not in the mood to believe myself. Things picked up on Thursday when I lined up two of Neil’s famous training workshops for the coming week. Time once more to slap on a funny wig, glowing red nose and huge shoes. Figuratively anyway.

My imminent students are just fortunate I couldn’t fit a little car with exploding doors into the lift.

Training a group of people who are having time off from something far less fun is always rewarding anyway. My school friends who remember how much we ‘enjoyed’ fire-fighting instructional films because it meant we didn’t have to spend a few hours running through muddy farm fields will appreciate where I am coming from on this.

Friday was spent working on my Powerpoint presentation for the aforementioned training. Spending two hours on one particular slide may seem excessive, but that 30 second part of the session will be a corker, trust me. Honk. Honk.

Half

Slimming World again this week. As you can see by the graph on the bottom right, I only lost ½ pound this week, but it is still heading downwards. I am fairly sure why I didn’t lose much last week so all I have to do is not do that again and all should be well. My sister Jo joined last week and she managed to lost 6 pounds in her first week, all thanks (she says) to my very filling sausage and bean casserole. The whole group were scribbling the recipe down so this Thursday should be fun when the reviews come in.

Tankard.

A long overdue acknowledgement of a kind gesture. This here tankard, now all cleaned up and almost shiny, belonged to David Brooshooft (forever Billy to several thousand chaps spread the world over) and lived at a seldom mentioned public house in Guston frequented by his goodself and many other Duke of York’s masters. Last November, on Old Boys Weekend, sadly in my absence, a meeting of minds and generosity between Stan, Sean, Dave Shott, Pete Sampson, Pete Smythe, Dave Harris, the landlord of the pub and others of whom I am not aware resulted in a decision that led to the tankard ending up in my possession. Despite a heavy cleaning, I am not sure that I will ever be drinking from it but that doesn’t matter. The only time I ever really drink is in November with my old school chums and I would be too scared that I would lose it.

To own something like this is a huge (and slightly surreal) privelage. Bill Brooshooft had a big influence on my early life and I will treasure it as I treasure the friendship of those who were involved in the process that ended with it arriving at my house.

Yazoo.

This is almost too cool to be true. Yazoo – Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet – are to reform and tour in June this year. They split in 1983 after just two albums, possibly because they heard how I played them to death and felt that the walls of Wolseley House at The Duke of York’s had been exposed to more than enough happy synthpop. 25 years later, I still play them to death (at the moment actually), so to some of us they never went away. Oddly, despite the time-shifting, nostalgia-ruining nature of the IPod, I still completely associate their music with our 4th Year common room.

What a birthday year this is going to be…

Sorry, I am a bit late with this. I realise that many of you were clinging to edge of your seats in anticipation of my dieting progress. Worry no more. Wait no more. Last Thursday, I gingerly stepped on the scales and the smiling lady told me I had lost another 2½ pounds making a total of ½ stone since joining on 3rd Jan. She wouldn’t give me my chart back either because I would get it back with an award later on. Excited wasn’t the word. So there it is. Yay me…

As part of the above plan, I have stopped drinking huge quantities of milk and switched to that wonder of wonder, Marvel powdered milk. I am looking at a cup now with the nostalgically familiar bits of smeg floating on the surface. I am indeed home again.