I Must Admit, I Am Tempted...

Really, if it weren't for the fact that a combination of cycling and Wii Fit is making the pounds simply fly off these days, then I'd be well up for this diet. Not only does it guarantee that you lose ten pounds in a single week, but also it seems to like, totally change your sex...



...and I could really do with a woman's body in my bed.

Or am I wrong? Look at the hands!

Feedback Friday :: Countdown

bulk :: 15st 1
days without alcohol :: 0
Wii Fit sessions :: 4
substantial bike rides (90mins+) :: 4
nagging stomach pain alert level :: elevated

I’ve probably got about eight weeks left up here. In Grimstone. And although I’m having a thoroughly pleasant time and am Getting Stuff Done, I am very much looking forward to getting back to London. I miss people. I’m realising that without leaving the house on a regular basis to spend time in the company of other human beings, I regress. I tend to go a bit vile. Last week I found a full beard on my face, and in the last few days I’ve sprouted a cluster of small red blotches on the crown of my Johnson. It’s grisly stuff, I know, but apart from being hunched over my two monitors like a low-rent Terry Pratchett, I’ve little else to report.

The problem of course, is hygiene. Or, more precisely, a lack thereof. Thankfully, cycling has come to the rescue, for when I return from an hour or so of grafting and gliding, I am invariably radiant with perspiration and sporting a magnificently oily calf.

I miss London, however, because I want to be forced to shower by the prospect of social congress, rather than the appearance of cheese-blisters.

You know, sometimes I look at my bike and I want to kiss it.

Speaking of dubious tenderness, the answer to last Mittwoch’s Bookscan competition was…



You’re kicking yourself now, I know. Stop it. It’s not allowed.

Now, as for this week’s Bookscan, I have a doozy. I also have approximately 200 CDs to give away. I’ve uploaded them all onto my machine and I’m about to sell them to the ghouls at Music Magpie, but if you can guess the answer to this here competition, you can maybe have some instead if you like. There's bound to be something you’d like there. My Fair Lady maybe? It’s very good. Some of it.

So without wishing to 'drown the miller' with preamble, name the book, claim the prize…







This weekend I am going to go cycling and I am going to tidy and read. I'm also going to attempt to adjust to life without joints. I have run out of ‘the herb’. In reality, the tough part will be no more tobacco, for which it's fair to say I’ve most probably redeveloped something of an addiction. And with the bastard tobacco back I go to square one.

Hello, pleased to meet you. I want to get fit, stop smoking, move to London and meet a doe-eyed, shark-toothed, pen-hearted woman who loves me for who I am.

Who's with me?

Ah. I see I'm alone. So be it.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Feedback Friday :: Zest

bulk :: 15st 0
walnuts :: 0.5kg
chocolate bars :: 0.5kg

On Wednesday afternoon I went to the gym. It was a beautiful day. On the way home from the gym – on a whim – I popped into a health food store and purchased one jar of Malt Extract, one jar of 240 Cod Liver Oil Capsules, a large tub of 90% Soya Protein Powder, a packet of Dried Apricots, a packet of Chopped Dates and a sack of Walnut Halves.

Then, moments later, on an entirely separate, slightly chubbier whim, I popped into a non-health food store. In Lidl I purchased one large jar of Rollmop Herrings, one packet of Tuscan Style Norwegian Salmon With Tarragon and Horseradish Sauce, one packet of Smoked and Peppered Mackerel Fillets, one Iceberg Lettuce, one bunch of Asparagus, one packet of Cherry Tomatoes, one packet of Gorgonzola (Piccante), one large wedge of Parmesan, six Medium Eggs (Free Range Organic) and a packet of Wholemeal Rye Crispbread. Oh, and a jar of Mayonnaise (Light).

I have one of the healthiest larders in London. Mayonnaise and cheese permitting. I’ve also been going to the gym fairly regularly. What I need to start doing now is a bit of swimming. And so I shall. The Spring is invigorating. I hear foxes squeaking as I type. I feel zesty.

As for everything else, I have nothing to report. I have been working, which is a fairly dull topic of conversation at the best of times. I’ve been doing rewrites, and they’re pretty much done.

So that’s good.

Oh, and the other day I bought a scanner, which for some reason I keep referring to as a fax. One day soon I will connect it up and scan something.

In the meantime, have a smashing weekend. I’m doing bugger all. What are you up to?

Feedback Monday :: Sick

bulk :: bulky
booze :: none
tobacco :: none
healthy food :: none
exercise :: none
teeth fixed :: none
spirits :: low
days to deadline :: 25
panic threat level :: substantial
unpleasant change threat level :: substantial

I’ve just returned from a failed attempt to trek South to get my broken tooth fixed. It took me over an hour to get to London Bridge, where I had to catch a train the rest of the way. But of course, there were no trains. Because of the snow. So I came home. Miserable. I’m sick of this winter. February sucks.

Yesterday was meant to be the beginning of another fresh start for me. I was going to join another gym and sort myself out. Get back on track. Back on the horse. All that. But for two reasons, it didn’t happen.

The first reason is that I am sick. It started last week and is currently at its zenith. It’s mostly throat-based, which means that I have a hacking, wheezing, slicing, rasping, burning, vicious bastard of a cough and am producing repugnant green phlegm at a rate of approximately four litres an hour. (I exaggerate.) The other reason is that with less than a month to finish this book, the panic is beginning to set in and I realise that I need to work every hour that the good Lord sends if I’m going to be able to do it. In fact, if I’m honest, I don’t think I’m going to be able to finish it at all.

In fact, I’m definitely not.

Nah, just kidding. I really only wrote that last bit because it gives me a tiny bit of pleasure to freak out the publisher lady. She gets jittery. Don’t worry, publisher lady, I’ll definitely finish it. But it will be shit.

Kidding! It will be magnificent.

So. Instead of the gym, what I’ve decided to do is get back to basics and make like Max Cady in his prison cell.



I’m talking press-ups and sit-ups on the kitchen floor. Max Cady had a pilates balls, didn’t he? Well, me too, and I’m not afraid to use it.

This weather though. It's really unpleasant. I wish London was just a little more robust when it comes to dealing with snow. Where are the grit trucks of yesteryear? Where is the Blitz spirit?

This morning I saw a cat stuck on a shed roof a couple of gardens away. It was stuck in about five or six inches of snow and too scared to walk along the fence it would usually walk along to get down because the fence it would usually walk along to get down had disappeared under five or six inches of snow. I don’t know what happened because I had to head South to get my tooth fixed. I hope it's OK and indoors somewhere. Cats shouldn't be out in the snow.

Rotten day.

I hope you’re having a better one.

Seconds Out :: Year Two

Someone said to me the other day, ‘How on earth are you going to follow 2008?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, 2009?’ I replied, hilariously.

‘No, but blog-wise,’ they insisted, wilfully unamused, ‘what are you going to do? You’ve found a woman, you’ve got a book deal, you lost most of the weight you were trying to lose. You stopped smoking. Mostly. It’s like, what’s left to do? What’s left to blog about? And the answer has to be – as far as I can see: nothing. What’s the point? There’s no point.’

I pooh-poohed the pointlessness. After all, most of what I blogged in 2008 was just ordinary stuff that happened to me: relationships I was having, things I was getting up to, stories from the past. And despite the fact that I won’t be speed dating or whoring myself online in ’09 – fingers crossed – I’ll still be getting up to stuff. I’ll still be having ridiculous conversations with idiots. I’ll still be doing and saying idiotic things myself. So I don’t think things round here will change so radically. Not really.

But still, something worrisome lingered like a foul smell. Maybe it was all that pooh-poohing, maybe it was the fact that in 2008, there’s no denying that this blog did have a hook. An angle. Something that made it a bit special, and gave me a raison d’etre. In 2009 however – unless I come up with something a bit special – it’ll just be another run-of-the-mill blog, and I’ll just be another navel-gazing cyber-diarist, regurgitating an unspectacular existence like a shouty old man in a train station with stuff in his beard.

So, what I’ll have to do – obviously – is come up with something a bit special.

Hmmm. That may take some time.

In the meantime, here are my general intentions, in the traditional, timely manner.

New Year’s Resolutions :: 2009

1. First and foremost I resolve to write the best book I can possibly write. It has to be good enough so that anyone looking forward to reading it is not disappointed. It also has to be good enough to afford me the possibility of writing another one. In fact, ideally, it’ll spawn a career which takes in novels and screenplays and this time in 2010, I’ll be poolside in Malibu, sipping margaritas with Charlie Kaufman and Audrey Tautou. It’ll be purely platonic between Audrey and me however, despite her best efforts and leechlike attentions.

2. Secondly, I resolve to ensure that this blog remains readable. The last thing I want to do is become one of those bloggers who get lucky and then turn their back on their blog. I’d rather jack it in altogether than let it fester and ossify, and I have no intention of doing that.

3. Thirdly, I resolve to purchase or otherwise procure for myself a kitten. I recently saw some pictures of Bengal kittens and I resolved to have one of those.



But then I thought, no. They’re too pretty. I would get one, fall in love with the little thing and then some evil swine would take it away, torture and skin it. You know what human beings are like. And I would never recover. So I resolve instead to get an ordinary moggy. This makes more sense. I’m more of a moggy man really.

4. Fourthly, I resolve to grow my own vegetables and make the healthiest soup known to man. The garden is a bald mess at the moment so the transformation I intend to visit upon it will probably make for some exciting blog posts too. No, really.

5. Fifthly, I resolve to love well and with ecstasy aforethought. (This should maybe have been further up the list.) (Oops.)

6. Sixthly, I resolve to learn a foreign language. Maybe French. Maybe Mandarin Chinese. (Probably French.)

7. Finally, I resolve to carry on in my attempts to become healthy. This means eating well, attending a new gym regularly and generally doing as much as possible to compensate for my increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Ideally I’d like to get down to around twelve or twelve and a half stone by the end of this year.

Then I’d be happy.

But as it is, I’m pretty happy anyway, and I can’t wait to get going on all of the above just as soon as I’m back from Bonnie Scotland.

So all that remains to be said is a gargantuan thank you for reading this year, all of you, even the evil stalker. It’s been a fantastic year and it genuinely would have been nothing without all of the feedback I've received from all of you. And I hope you all have a fantastic 2009.

See you next week.

x

Feel free to leave your own resolutions in the comments. I’d love to hear them.

Feedback Friday :: A Fresh Start

bulk :: 16st 2
cigarettes :: 0
joints :: quite a few
alcohol :: quite a bit
runs :: 0
swims :: 0
physical exercise of any description :: none
fresh starts :: 1

I guess I did see it happening, but… I suppose I just ignored it. That little pause in that last sentence there was where I spent five minutes thinking how I could jazz up what I was trying to say a bit. But there’s no jazzing it up. I just ignored it.

I had the best excuse though, which is that I was having a damnably good time. I’ve had some wonderful larks and frolics during the last couple of months.

But yes, those days are done, and things – other things – have been left to go rather awry.

Which is to say:

• I’ve stopped running.
• I’ve stopped swimming.
• I’ve stopped eating well.
• I’ve stopped eating less.
• My weight is ouncing back up the wrong way.
• I’ve broken promises to myself about marathon training and gym membership.
• There are pizza boxes on the kitchen floor and some of my possessions are still in boxes from moving house weeks ago.
• In the last five days alone I have literally grown trotters and a snout. And a cute little curly tale.

So.

What to do about it. Well, I figure a fresh start is called for. Or even, A Fresh Start.

First thing, I can cut out the junk food again. That’s a piece of cake. (Mmmmmm, cake.)

As far as running and joining the gym however, my concern is my back, which I stretched to buggery a couple of weeks ago and which has been hanging over me like the truss of Damocles ever since. It’s a small of the back affair and it concerns me greatly. So…

Second thing, go see a chiropractor or an osteopath or whatever, just do something about it and don’t be sitting around on your sorry fat ass all day and using it as an excuse.

Third thing, swim. Swimming is good for you, good for event the most fragile backs. Do it.

Etc.

So I’m pulling out my finger as of today. OK, bit late now. Tomorrow then. Tomorrow. The sun will come out. And next week’s feedback will reflect my newfound zeal for self-improvement. You see if it doesn’t.

The Wind Beneath My Bingo Wings

I had another warm and fuzzy internet moment this week when a reader of this blog – let’s call him Frank – got in contact, observing that my fitness regime seems to be falling by the wayside and offering to help me out. ‘I’d be happy to take you out running,’ he wrote. Obviously, I was a little hesitant. When a strange man writes to you out of the blue offering to get breathless and sweaty with you, you do well to be a little circumspect. So first of all, on Tuesday evening, we met for a drink.

Tall like a tower block and bald like a blade, turns out Frank is actually a rather splendid chap. A splendid chap who happens to have the body of a Greek god. Now I’m not what you'd call a gay man, but I do know a top-notch piece of masculine ass when I see it, and Frank just happens to have a bod to die for. Happily, he didn’t get that bod by chance – that would just be annoying. No, Frank works hard to keep himself in shape, playing football and squash, and going to the gym three times a week without fail.

But there’s more to Frank than just his height, pecs and glabrousness. Here, let me break it down for you.

10 Frank Facts

1. Frank drives a mint condition Lancia Fulvia.

2. Frank wears very expensive suit, but no tie.

3. Frank looks a little like Neil Strauss of The Game fame, but unlike Neil Strauss, he is not a complete tool.

4. Frank gets up at every morning at 6am, meditates for 20 minutes and then prepares breakfast for himself, his wife Emily (beautiful) and his little girl, Abbey (precocious), before driving to work, where before he does anything, he spends an hour pumping his body into a state of masculine perfection in the office gym.

5. Frank has run 12 marathons, including the London marathon last month, which he finished in exactly three and a half hours.

6. When he was 15, Frank became a Satanist and frightened his friends by speaking in tongues and etching an inverted crucifix into his forehead. He is now half-Buddhist, half-Zoroastrian.

7. Frank rarely watches films or reads books because ‘Life’s too short. I could be wind-surfing!’ (Actually, I’m tempted to take back Frank Fact #3.)

8. Frank has six hearts.

9. Frank was born in Bermuda.

10. Frank has a minuscule penis.


OK, this last fact is not literally a fact. It’s actually more idle conjecture, inspired by ugly, ugly envy. (Oh, the heart thing isn’t true either.)

....

So we met again yesterday in Brockwell Park, and we went running together. Now I usually run for just 12 minutes before collapsing. I have a little circuit around the park worked out and I’ve been running that same route for three months now and nothing has changed. It hasn’t got any easier and I haven’t got any quicker. Frank said, ‘It never gets any easier. But you have to push yourself. It’ll still hurt – it’ll hurt more in fact, but the more you do, the further you’ll get, the quicker you’ll recover and the fitter you’ll get.’ We were already running at this point. I had started wheezing, which is customary around the three-minute mark. ‘Today you push yourself,’ he said. And he sped up.

I was in quite a bit of pain by the time we finished, and it took me a little while to recover. I’d definitely run a lot faster than I do on my own. I felt well pushed.

Frank said,’ OK, let’s go.’

I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’, genuinely curious to know what he could possibly mean.

‘One more time around,’ he said. ‘That was just the warm-up. Now you need to start burning some calories.’

I laughed in his face. ‘Ha ha ha.’ Like that.

‘Come on,’ he said, unimpressed, and off he went. I suppose it was a lot to do with pride, which is apparently not a good thing, but I couldn’t just give up. I had to give it a go. So there I was, running again.

Probably around halfway through the second lap, the rain came, hard and cold. It mingled with my sweat and stung my eyes. As I half-ran, half-stumbled along, I found myself grabbing at my sides in an attempt to hold off the stitches which were coming now in gangs, like a girdle of pain. I stopped, bent double, gasping, ‘Stitch. Stitch.’

Frank stopped and said, ‘Catch your breath. Then we’ll carry on.’ He said, ‘Breathe into the stitch. Deep breaths. As deep as you can, and guide that breath to where the stitch is.’

Then I was running again. A minute later, desperate to slump to the wet earth and die, I began to wonder how anyone could possibly run non-stop for three hours. ‘They push themselves,’ said Frank. Whoa, that was odd. Had I said that or just thought it? I looked up at him as we ran. He was looking straight ahead. Did that actually just happen? I thought. Or did I merely imagine it? ‘You merely imagined it,’ said Frank. ‘Keep going. Sprint the last stretch.’

I did as I was told, to the best of my ability.

Lying on my back in the mud, I felt a strange sense of achievement. If I survive this, I thought, I’ll probably end up feeling better for it.

I survived it. And today I can barely walk. My calves are bleating like Christians.

But it feels good. It’s a healthy pain.

....

So as may be obvious by now, Frank is my new hero. He is also my adopted Life Coach. I’ve never had a Life Coach before, as the whole idea is anathema to me, but what the hell. Frank is perfect Life Coach material because he says things like, ‘You can do anything you want to do, be anything you want to be’, and he really seems to mean it.

He means it because he's one of those self-made swine. He was a bank manager in his 20s, but then he got bored, so he changed direction. ‘When I first started out in banks, it was different. Banks were banks in those days and customers were terrified of them. Then it all went soft and people realised they had rights and dignity.’ He spat the last word out like a fishbone that had been trying to choke him.

Frank is either deliberately outrageously amusing, or he really is a ginormous arse. At the moment my money's on the former. But we'll see.

‘Today, technology is the new religion. Still fresh enough, and powerful enough to be feared by the ignorant. So I learned technology. Now I’m a member of the digerati.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m a digital strategist,’ he said, ‘and I’m one of the best.’

He explained what he actually did. It sounded like marketing to me. And we all know what Bill Hicks said about marketing. ‘No, Stan,’ said Frank. ‘It isn’t marketing. I’m a digital guru.’ He said it like he meant it too, which I really admired, and he even pronounced ‘guru’ so that it chimed not with ‘voodoo’, but with ‘Baloo’. The man has balls of reinforced concrete.

So I asked him, ‘Why did you get in touch with me, Frank?’ And he told me, ‘Because you’re putting yourself out there, you’re trying to make a difference to your life, and I like that. Plus I like what you write. And I think I can help you. And that’s that. Isn’t that what life’s all about?’

I just stared into his steely blue eyes and nodded, like a big breathless simpering gay freak.

(I'm not gay.)

....

Now I find myself seriously considering joining a gym. I’ve always hated the idea, and instinctively loathe the kind of people that go there, considering them horrible, vain, vacuous vermin. Ab rats. I’ve always thought that they have their priorities in life all wrong. But look at Frank. He might not watch as many films as I do, or read as many books, he might work longer hours on the whole and spend 10 hours a week stuck in traffic, but just look at his biceps.

I want biceps like that.

I’m going to look into it.

(Ugh. Tip: never do an image search for 'weightlifter'. Unless of course the sight of giant hernias is what you're into.)

Now I must lie down and eat chocolate. Adios.