The Girlf wants me to write a book. The compulsion to story-tell grips her often and she hides her self away with my laptop, churning out thousands of words at a sitting in search of that first book that will get her published.
She’s a great writer. The snippets I’ve been allowed to read are very, very good but she’s protective of her work. In its embryonic form it is fragile and precious and secret. Only when several thousand words are in place, several thousand that she is happy with, only when the story has condensed from the swirling cloud of ideas and starts to take form am I allowed to look and give an opinion.
An avid follower and inspiration of my blog she wants me to take things a stage further and actually start working on a longer piece, a fiction but I’m apprehensive. It isn’t the workload, I could probably churn out in excess of a thousand words a day, it is the actual story. What would I write about?
Blogging is easy. I’m writing about myself, it’s a cosy warm retreat for the narcissist, an hour and a thousand words of me, me, me is very relaxing. The difficulty would be translating this style, this form into a fiction. There would have to be a semblance of autobiography for it to work but I would have to actually invent characters to fill this world. That’s where I blank, much as I like writing I have no story and no protagonists and even though I’m in no doubt that I could ramble on for eighty thousand words what would be the point. My opus, my Tropic of Cancer wouldn’t even get looked at, the modern publishing world being light years away from the fiction I grew up on.
Still, the egotist in me is rather enamoured with the idea of writing a book. I wrote a lot as a kid, clanking away on an old typewriter, supplementing my lack of experience with a hefty dollop of plagiarism. Back then I wanted to be a horror writer, I wanted to write ghost stories and I’d churn out a few hundred words here and there right up until the day of my first hard-on on which a lot of things fell away.
I’ve tried to get back into it since but it is only this blog that has borne fruit. I suppose the format suits me. Short, completely open ended and public. It’s easier to write knowing at least one other person will read it. It obligates you to write.
The month that the internet was down I started getting withdraw symptoms. I missed the act of writing, the act of editing and the act of posting. I missed the re-editing once I’d posted because I have a tendency to overlook punctuation or grammatical errors.
That month certainly showed me how much I enjoy writing and maybe, quite maybe I should push forward and try and write something longer but the stumbling block is still there, the subject matter.
The Girl is full of stories, she bursts with them. When one takes her it’s akin to being pregnant. It gestates inside her. She’s careful and secretive. No-one can know until it’s safely imbedded within her, no-one can know until it is viable and has started to take shape, until it has a life of its own and begins to grow effortlessly. Only then will she open up and announce the prospective arrival but even at this time there is still the chance of tragedy. The chance the life will ebb and it will die.
I few months ago I finished a first chapter. I liked it, I thoroughly enjoyed writing it, it worked and it was subtle but even though it opened up avenues for the tale to unfold and ideas swirled around me I never wrote the second chapter. Two and half thousand words hang in perpetuity on my hard drive waiting for me to return. My protagonist taps his foot and drums his fingers, the orbiting characters, their foundations established, await me to flesh them out. I’ve been neglectful.
However the story isn’t dead, mainly because there isn’t one yet. All there is is a starting point, some characters and an event that ended chapter one so theoretically I could pick it up at anytime and continue but I haven’t. I should really if only to see where it goes. I should.
The Girlf thinks it’s crap.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
The Girls
I’m sat in the garden to blog today. I thought I’d write whilst topping up my tan. Unfortunately I have to sit in the shade in order to actually see my computer screen. Still, I’m thankful for the fresh air and dreaming of a ridiculously hot summer.
It’s been far too long since we’ve had a proper nasty oppressive one, the kind of heat that kills old people and dogs in cars. All I can do is hope and dream.
The Girlf has recovered from her migraine and gone to work chirpy. I’m amazed how she can go from deaths door and straight back to everyday life after eight hours sleep. Last night I was contemplating picking her up and taking her to casualty, her crying and moaning actually scaring me. Eventually a combination of Nurofen, an icepack and two hours of fussing and stroking was enough to cure her.
She’s having a tough week, bless her. On Friday she hits thirty. She’s taking it badly bemoaning her lost youth and multiplying wrinkles. I keep telling her she’s still a baby but she isn’t having it. A wardrobe malfunction last week has forced her onto another diet. Squeezed into a tight pencil skirt her arse went supernova spraying fabric and pieces of zip out into the cosmos.
Shame faced she showed up at the shop in search of safety pins and a sixty year old woman to rectify the matter. My mum patched her up and we sent her back to the party embarrassed but secure.
The incident has shocked her. I’ve tried to re-assure her telling her the product was clearly wrongly labelled and it must have been a size ten and not in fact a fourteen.
Personally I think there’s nothing wrong with her booty. It is indeed bootilicious but this falls on deaf ears and since it happened she’s been living on fruit.
All this has delighted the Eldest who has seized the opportunity to remind us both how skinny she is. She stands proudly pulling out the waist band of her trousers and trumpets that they’re a ten and they’re loose on her. The Girlf dryly cuts her short and informs her that they’re hers and they’re actually a twelve.
Undaunted she jumps around in her underwear for a few minutes just to rub it in. The Girlf broods and sulks from the comfort and safety of a baggy pair of joggers.
Luckily for me the girls are now back at school which means I get the Sky and the broadband to myself. I can spend my afternoons watching Youtube videos immediately rather than having to wait for them to load up. I think this is how people feel when they have a plaster cast removed from a healed limb. Fan fiction has been relegated to the evening so I can enjoy my surfing all afternoon long without being impeded and inconvenienced by the Eldest writing her Gossip Girl pseudo porn homage’s.
This weather is gorgeous. I celebrated it today by going to Morrisons dressed as a terrorist. Khaki combats, tight black vest, boots with a beard that now automatically faces Mecca of its own accord. Occasionally one has to fuck with suburbia. It’s good for the soul. The neighbours often ask me if I’m lost when I’m waiting for a taxi so it’s good to give a little back once in a while.
A few worried looks off the natives soon puts a spring in my step and it’s into Morrisons to buy a new wok. One thing you can say about Morrisons is that it’s certainly no Tesco. Where’s the wasabi sauce for God’s (Allah’s) sake?
The Indian guy working there is no help. He gives me the ethnic shrug and bottom lip as if to say fucked if I know. It makes me laugh, my grandmother used to do the exact same thing much to the annoyance of the natives. Apparently it’s rude. I knew where he was coming from.
The Girlf berates me because I haven’t bought anything for the Youngest’s dinner. She doesn’t eat what we eat. She is a ‘fussy’ eater so therefore lives on bread and butter, mash potato and fish fingers. She is also addicted to chips. In my experience ‘fussy’ eaters never have a problem with chips or indeed MacDonald’s. It would be safe to say any manner of junk food makes it past their ever so sensitive palettes.
I mutter something about people starving in the world but she knocks me back telling me I’ll be different when we have kids. My kids will eat what ever they’re given as I did, as everyone I grew up with did. We had to; it was either that or starve. She moans that she‘ll have to drive to the shops after work. I have no sympathy; I’m on foot, hands full of shopping bags with a wok tied to my combats.
Clearly the girl doesn’t want to waste anytime getting home to the love of her life. Lazing in bed this morning, still reeling a little from the migraine she moaned at the fact that I’m not richer thus being able to subsidise her laziness when she can’t be fucked to go in of a morning.
I reminded her it wasn’t the size of my wallet she fell in love with.
It’s been far too long since we’ve had a proper nasty oppressive one, the kind of heat that kills old people and dogs in cars. All I can do is hope and dream.
The Girlf has recovered from her migraine and gone to work chirpy. I’m amazed how she can go from deaths door and straight back to everyday life after eight hours sleep. Last night I was contemplating picking her up and taking her to casualty, her crying and moaning actually scaring me. Eventually a combination of Nurofen, an icepack and two hours of fussing and stroking was enough to cure her.
She’s having a tough week, bless her. On Friday she hits thirty. She’s taking it badly bemoaning her lost youth and multiplying wrinkles. I keep telling her she’s still a baby but she isn’t having it. A wardrobe malfunction last week has forced her onto another diet. Squeezed into a tight pencil skirt her arse went supernova spraying fabric and pieces of zip out into the cosmos.
Shame faced she showed up at the shop in search of safety pins and a sixty year old woman to rectify the matter. My mum patched her up and we sent her back to the party embarrassed but secure.
The incident has shocked her. I’ve tried to re-assure her telling her the product was clearly wrongly labelled and it must have been a size ten and not in fact a fourteen.
Personally I think there’s nothing wrong with her booty. It is indeed bootilicious but this falls on deaf ears and since it happened she’s been living on fruit.
All this has delighted the Eldest who has seized the opportunity to remind us both how skinny she is. She stands proudly pulling out the waist band of her trousers and trumpets that they’re a ten and they’re loose on her. The Girlf dryly cuts her short and informs her that they’re hers and they’re actually a twelve.
Undaunted she jumps around in her underwear for a few minutes just to rub it in. The Girlf broods and sulks from the comfort and safety of a baggy pair of joggers.
Luckily for me the girls are now back at school which means I get the Sky and the broadband to myself. I can spend my afternoons watching Youtube videos immediately rather than having to wait for them to load up. I think this is how people feel when they have a plaster cast removed from a healed limb. Fan fiction has been relegated to the evening so I can enjoy my surfing all afternoon long without being impeded and inconvenienced by the Eldest writing her Gossip Girl pseudo porn homage’s.
This weather is gorgeous. I celebrated it today by going to Morrisons dressed as a terrorist. Khaki combats, tight black vest, boots with a beard that now automatically faces Mecca of its own accord. Occasionally one has to fuck with suburbia. It’s good for the soul. The neighbours often ask me if I’m lost when I’m waiting for a taxi so it’s good to give a little back once in a while.
A few worried looks off the natives soon puts a spring in my step and it’s into Morrisons to buy a new wok. One thing you can say about Morrisons is that it’s certainly no Tesco. Where’s the wasabi sauce for God’s (Allah’s) sake?
The Indian guy working there is no help. He gives me the ethnic shrug and bottom lip as if to say fucked if I know. It makes me laugh, my grandmother used to do the exact same thing much to the annoyance of the natives. Apparently it’s rude. I knew where he was coming from.
The Girlf berates me because I haven’t bought anything for the Youngest’s dinner. She doesn’t eat what we eat. She is a ‘fussy’ eater so therefore lives on bread and butter, mash potato and fish fingers. She is also addicted to chips. In my experience ‘fussy’ eaters never have a problem with chips or indeed MacDonald’s. It would be safe to say any manner of junk food makes it past their ever so sensitive palettes.
I mutter something about people starving in the world but she knocks me back telling me I’ll be different when we have kids. My kids will eat what ever they’re given as I did, as everyone I grew up with did. We had to; it was either that or starve. She moans that she‘ll have to drive to the shops after work. I have no sympathy; I’m on foot, hands full of shopping bags with a wok tied to my combats.
Clearly the girl doesn’t want to waste anytime getting home to the love of her life. Lazing in bed this morning, still reeling a little from the migraine she moaned at the fact that I’m not richer thus being able to subsidise her laziness when she can’t be fucked to go in of a morning.
I reminded her it wasn’t the size of my wallet she fell in love with.
Friday, 16 April 2010
Tottenham
Wednesday night signalled the end of an era. For the first time in ten years Tottenham took three points off of Arsenal. Our first league win over the scum this millennium. That’s twenty games without a victory. A Premier League record.
A couple of years ago we beat them 5-1 in the Carling Cup semi final but this ment little to the Goon. They, to this day, stress they were playing their ‘kids’. This was a reserve team that ended the game with FIVE first team players on the pitch.
Kids or not getting annihilated, yes I said annihilated, by your local, hated, rivals must really, really hurt and although they put a brave face on it and fell behind the excuse that it was only their kids and it was only the Carling Cup they had to admit, at least to them selves, that it was their worse defeat in twenty years and more importantly it was US that did it to them.
But your average Arsenal fan erases such damning facts. Even though we had that win over them, which nicely juxtaposed our three nil victory against them in the ’91 FA Cup semi they still had their incredible league success to fall back on.
Mike the Mav tells me repeatedly that his thirteen year old son has never, never seen Arsenal lose to Tottenham, that we hadn’t beaten them in the memory life of a teenager.
That stings, that really stings.
This week though, this glorious week, puts an end to that. That record is over. It is now part of history. They can still mention it and they will, no doubt, but it’s no longer relevant, no longer current. Now, it is only words and now we have effectively ended their title hopes this season.
Before kick off they had an outside chance of snatching the league, in their eyes the head to head between Chelsea and Man U would be decisive in that. Now, with three points dropped to us that fixture becomes redundant. A draw would have put them in the running but now it makes very little difference.
They still dropped three points on Wednesday night. They still dropped three points to us. If they fall two points short of the winners at the end of the season it will be thanks to us that they lost out on the title. I hope that happens. That would be glorious and I will thoroughly enjoy rubbing it in over the summer.
By the same token if we finish forth, and we’re still in the running, by a point by a single, solitary point it will be thanks to them. I will shake every Gooner by the hand and thank them profusely and repeatedly until they tell me to fuck off.
What a great night. What a superb game of football. This was a Tottenham team that had played two hours of fruitless football on Sunday, heavy legs going into the game on Wednesday. Two turgid hours that knocked us out of the FA cup, against bloody Portsmouth of all fucking teams. Then to face the scum three days later, with our record?
My stomach was a knot. You always believe, but still you know what it would mean to lose again. The shit you’d get for it and the nasty dirty feeling you’ve known for a decade that envelopes you. No amount of scrubbing shifts it. That horrible, sickly, sticky feeling you feel all over from just watching your team breathe the same air as them.
You can feel the infection permeate the ground, it’s said the Tottenham board disinfects the away changing room after the derby, and to lose makes it all the worse. You exposed yourself to that evil for nothing. To lose just reinforces the notion that we live in a Godless universe where everything you ever believed is nothing. The bad triumph and the good die slowly in pain.
Then Danny Rose’s goal.
Young Danny Rose, always on the periphery. Young Danny Rose on his league debut. You want to talk about kids do you? You want to talk about injuries do you? Half our team crocked the other half still aching from Sunday then little Danny Rose, thirty yards out, left footed, boom!
What a volley, his first touch of the game. Boom! How do you like that?
Eighty percent possession in the first ten minutes? Fuck you, you know how it works.
A beautiful, beautiful goal. The kind of strike that reminds you why you love this game. A game where a nineteen year old youth player can, in his first start, make himself a legend. Amazing.
Where was the beautiful, continental football that Arsenal fans always wax lyrical about? They stoked the ball around nicely in mid field but Gomes was leaning on his post for most of the first half.
Where were our tired legs? The whole team were going in quick, hard and fair, all Gooner assaults smothered by our defence. Was that Pavlyuchenko I saw tracking back and doing a job when he had to? Pavlyuchenko, a striker, a poacher, filling in in midfield? Working, working hard and putting Berbatov to shame? I think it was.
Then the second goal. Their defence has gone to sleep, Gareth Bale, sprinting up the centre arm raised, picked out by Defoe. A gorgeously weighted pass. It curves in-front of the defender to find Bales’ feet and he, to calmly for a left back, passes the ball under Almunia into the Goal.
White Hart Lane loses its mind. Two nil up against Arsenal, for a minute the Tottenham fans forget all about Sol Campbell. Two nil.
No one is celebrating yet. I’m reminded of the Carling Cup final where it was three one to us and we were under a constant barrage. I’m reminded of last year when we came back from 4-2 at the death to draw.
I’m proved right in the last ten minutes. Gomes, crazy Gomes, world class Gomes, Gomes with little to do for the whole game then one, two then three amazing, instinctive saves. Finger tips, finger tips without thinking, no human being can have that reaction time, it’s not right!
Gomes, Gomes exploding the myth that a free kick placed in that top right hand corner is un-saveable. I believe he just fucking saved it!
Unfortunately this is Tottenham v Arsenal and they were going to score and make the last ten minute unbearable. I knew this would happen. Ten minutes, but the clock started ten years ago. Tick tock, tick tock, I can feel every second. Every minute is five, my hearts racing waiting for the final whistle. Tick tock, tick tock. If we concede now I’ll put my hand through the wall.
And then, and then with us fucking around with a corner, wasting time, it blows. The ground erupts, Arsenal players, hands on their hips, stare at the ground. They know they’ve lost something. Not just the points. Not just the league Something deeper, much deeper than that. Something’s changed.
A different Tottenham celebrate on the pitch and around the stadium. It isn’t the same Tottenham that started the game. We beat you, we can beat you and next season we’ll be stronger, we’ll have key, injured, players back, we’ll be at full strength and we will, we will be coming after you.
A couple of years ago we beat them 5-1 in the Carling Cup semi final but this ment little to the Goon. They, to this day, stress they were playing their ‘kids’. This was a reserve team that ended the game with FIVE first team players on the pitch.
Kids or not getting annihilated, yes I said annihilated, by your local, hated, rivals must really, really hurt and although they put a brave face on it and fell behind the excuse that it was only their kids and it was only the Carling Cup they had to admit, at least to them selves, that it was their worse defeat in twenty years and more importantly it was US that did it to them.
But your average Arsenal fan erases such damning facts. Even though we had that win over them, which nicely juxtaposed our three nil victory against them in the ’91 FA Cup semi they still had their incredible league success to fall back on.
Mike the Mav tells me repeatedly that his thirteen year old son has never, never seen Arsenal lose to Tottenham, that we hadn’t beaten them in the memory life of a teenager.
That stings, that really stings.
This week though, this glorious week, puts an end to that. That record is over. It is now part of history. They can still mention it and they will, no doubt, but it’s no longer relevant, no longer current. Now, it is only words and now we have effectively ended their title hopes this season.
Before kick off they had an outside chance of snatching the league, in their eyes the head to head between Chelsea and Man U would be decisive in that. Now, with three points dropped to us that fixture becomes redundant. A draw would have put them in the running but now it makes very little difference.
They still dropped three points on Wednesday night. They still dropped three points to us. If they fall two points short of the winners at the end of the season it will be thanks to us that they lost out on the title. I hope that happens. That would be glorious and I will thoroughly enjoy rubbing it in over the summer.
By the same token if we finish forth, and we’re still in the running, by a point by a single, solitary point it will be thanks to them. I will shake every Gooner by the hand and thank them profusely and repeatedly until they tell me to fuck off.
What a great night. What a superb game of football. This was a Tottenham team that had played two hours of fruitless football on Sunday, heavy legs going into the game on Wednesday. Two turgid hours that knocked us out of the FA cup, against bloody Portsmouth of all fucking teams. Then to face the scum three days later, with our record?
My stomach was a knot. You always believe, but still you know what it would mean to lose again. The shit you’d get for it and the nasty dirty feeling you’ve known for a decade that envelopes you. No amount of scrubbing shifts it. That horrible, sickly, sticky feeling you feel all over from just watching your team breathe the same air as them.
You can feel the infection permeate the ground, it’s said the Tottenham board disinfects the away changing room after the derby, and to lose makes it all the worse. You exposed yourself to that evil for nothing. To lose just reinforces the notion that we live in a Godless universe where everything you ever believed is nothing. The bad triumph and the good die slowly in pain.
Then Danny Rose’s goal.
Young Danny Rose, always on the periphery. Young Danny Rose on his league debut. You want to talk about kids do you? You want to talk about injuries do you? Half our team crocked the other half still aching from Sunday then little Danny Rose, thirty yards out, left footed, boom!
What a volley, his first touch of the game. Boom! How do you like that?
Eighty percent possession in the first ten minutes? Fuck you, you know how it works.
A beautiful, beautiful goal. The kind of strike that reminds you why you love this game. A game where a nineteen year old youth player can, in his first start, make himself a legend. Amazing.
Where was the beautiful, continental football that Arsenal fans always wax lyrical about? They stoked the ball around nicely in mid field but Gomes was leaning on his post for most of the first half.
Where were our tired legs? The whole team were going in quick, hard and fair, all Gooner assaults smothered by our defence. Was that Pavlyuchenko I saw tracking back and doing a job when he had to? Pavlyuchenko, a striker, a poacher, filling in in midfield? Working, working hard and putting Berbatov to shame? I think it was.
Then the second goal. Their defence has gone to sleep, Gareth Bale, sprinting up the centre arm raised, picked out by Defoe. A gorgeously weighted pass. It curves in-front of the defender to find Bales’ feet and he, to calmly for a left back, passes the ball under Almunia into the Goal.
White Hart Lane loses its mind. Two nil up against Arsenal, for a minute the Tottenham fans forget all about Sol Campbell. Two nil.
No one is celebrating yet. I’m reminded of the Carling Cup final where it was three one to us and we were under a constant barrage. I’m reminded of last year when we came back from 4-2 at the death to draw.
I’m proved right in the last ten minutes. Gomes, crazy Gomes, world class Gomes, Gomes with little to do for the whole game then one, two then three amazing, instinctive saves. Finger tips, finger tips without thinking, no human being can have that reaction time, it’s not right!
Gomes, Gomes exploding the myth that a free kick placed in that top right hand corner is un-saveable. I believe he just fucking saved it!
Unfortunately this is Tottenham v Arsenal and they were going to score and make the last ten minute unbearable. I knew this would happen. Ten minutes, but the clock started ten years ago. Tick tock, tick tock, I can feel every second. Every minute is five, my hearts racing waiting for the final whistle. Tick tock, tick tock. If we concede now I’ll put my hand through the wall.
And then, and then with us fucking around with a corner, wasting time, it blows. The ground erupts, Arsenal players, hands on their hips, stare at the ground. They know they’ve lost something. Not just the points. Not just the league Something deeper, much deeper than that. Something’s changed.
A different Tottenham celebrate on the pitch and around the stadium. It isn’t the same Tottenham that started the game. We beat you, we can beat you and next season we’ll be stronger, we’ll have key, injured, players back, we’ll be at full strength and we will, we will be coming after you.
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Stel XL
Every so often a man has to sit up and take stock. I had such a moment on Sunday morning when I came into contact, for the first time in a month, with a set of scales. Staring up at me was my actual weight.
For weeks the Girlf has been mocking my belly and calling me fatty. To be exact she’s been calling me her fatty and I suppose the added affection dilutes the word a bit but all the same it stings when she says it.
I’m aware I’ve put on some weight. It’s almost impossible not to in this house as there is food everywhere. My massive man appetite is tempted from every cupboard and corner with all the crisps and chocolates and croissants and hams and dips and crusty breads and spreads.
Even so I think I’ve done well keeping my midnight munching to a minimum. With my strange working and sleeping hours I do get hungry at all the wrong times and with so much temptation personally I think I’ve done well not to go totally overboard.
When I was weighing myself regularly I was generally knocking around the eighty kilo mark. That’s twelve and a half stone in English. Certainly that was way above my fighting weight of seventy k when I was kickboxing but then there was an immense amount of cardio going on and my cupboards were bare at the flat. Food had to be planned and flown in.
Clearly eleven stone was a little light for my frame but the combination of retirement and the Ex soon put an end to that.
Now, being in a relationship with a woman that’s heavier than you will encourage you put on the pounds. The Ex wasn’t apposed to cooking a pasta bake at two in the morning and ever so slowly but ever so surely I crept up from eleven stone to a whopping thirteen over the course of a year.
Eventually I was forced to take action and quite quickly got myself down to a svelte twelve by the time we split up. At the time friends did tell me I was starting to turn into a porker but were too embarrassed to mention it. Also they assumed I’d gotten into one of those mutually dependent, enabling relationships and it was centred on food. It was none their business and assumed we were both happy with it.
Now I’ve been away from the scales since the beginning of this year and my assumption was I was still knocking around the twelve and a half to thirteen stone mark that was at the last time I weighed myself. However staring up at me from the scales on Sunday morning was an incredible thirteen and a half stone!
I’m a fucking cruiser weight!
I’ve never weighed thirteen and a half stone in my entire life.
I am actually a fatty.
I’m Stel XL.
Now before I run screaming through the streets of Weston let’s pull up the reigns on that statement. I’m NOT fat. I’m carrying a bit of extra timber on my gut but my moobs have been with me since childhood. I went down to nine stone as a Raver in the nineties and still kept my man tits.
I’ve gotten chubbier since I’ve been with the Girlf but not considerably. What I have been doing is attacking the weights daily since the beginning of the year and strongly suspect the majority of this mass is muscle. I’m turning into a big lad but my concern is to not turn into the wrong type of big lad.
Having your woman call you fatty in a cutesy kind of way is one thing but everyone else thinking it is a completely different matter. Stock has to be taken and I’m going to have to get my arse on the treadmill a couple of times a week and increase my cardio.
Certainly I’ve got to leave the crisps alone and go to bed hungry.
The Girlf is certainly a bad influence. This house is rammed with food and her penchant for cheese, chips and gravy has grown on me. In fact the quantity of CC and G I was bringing into the house was starting to concern the Eldest. She took me aside for a quiet chat and as far she was concerned I could still bring it home for her but I was under no circumstances to give it to her mother. For her own good you understand.
Now if my baby asks me to bring her back chips, cheese and gravy after work, how can I possible refuse her? With hindsight I suppose waking her up and giving her a plate of it in bed was excessive. Getting up for ten minute to put away a portion of chips isn’t the healthiest past time and now it seems me showing my solidarity by caning a load myself hasn’t done me much good.
The time has come to get to grips with myself. I have to work off this chub but still keep the muscle and strength. I think a few weeks of healthy living are needed. I have to start eating breakfast and no more midnight munches.
The moobs are with me for life. There’s nothing I can do about them, although there is always the option of surgery.
For weeks the Girlf has been mocking my belly and calling me fatty. To be exact she’s been calling me her fatty and I suppose the added affection dilutes the word a bit but all the same it stings when she says it.
I’m aware I’ve put on some weight. It’s almost impossible not to in this house as there is food everywhere. My massive man appetite is tempted from every cupboard and corner with all the crisps and chocolates and croissants and hams and dips and crusty breads and spreads.
Even so I think I’ve done well keeping my midnight munching to a minimum. With my strange working and sleeping hours I do get hungry at all the wrong times and with so much temptation personally I think I’ve done well not to go totally overboard.
When I was weighing myself regularly I was generally knocking around the eighty kilo mark. That’s twelve and a half stone in English. Certainly that was way above my fighting weight of seventy k when I was kickboxing but then there was an immense amount of cardio going on and my cupboards were bare at the flat. Food had to be planned and flown in.
Clearly eleven stone was a little light for my frame but the combination of retirement and the Ex soon put an end to that.
Now, being in a relationship with a woman that’s heavier than you will encourage you put on the pounds. The Ex wasn’t apposed to cooking a pasta bake at two in the morning and ever so slowly but ever so surely I crept up from eleven stone to a whopping thirteen over the course of a year.
Eventually I was forced to take action and quite quickly got myself down to a svelte twelve by the time we split up. At the time friends did tell me I was starting to turn into a porker but were too embarrassed to mention it. Also they assumed I’d gotten into one of those mutually dependent, enabling relationships and it was centred on food. It was none their business and assumed we were both happy with it.
Now I’ve been away from the scales since the beginning of this year and my assumption was I was still knocking around the twelve and a half to thirteen stone mark that was at the last time I weighed myself. However staring up at me from the scales on Sunday morning was an incredible thirteen and a half stone!
I’m a fucking cruiser weight!
I’ve never weighed thirteen and a half stone in my entire life.
I am actually a fatty.
I’m Stel XL.
Now before I run screaming through the streets of Weston let’s pull up the reigns on that statement. I’m NOT fat. I’m carrying a bit of extra timber on my gut but my moobs have been with me since childhood. I went down to nine stone as a Raver in the nineties and still kept my man tits.
I’ve gotten chubbier since I’ve been with the Girlf but not considerably. What I have been doing is attacking the weights daily since the beginning of the year and strongly suspect the majority of this mass is muscle. I’m turning into a big lad but my concern is to not turn into the wrong type of big lad.
Having your woman call you fatty in a cutesy kind of way is one thing but everyone else thinking it is a completely different matter. Stock has to be taken and I’m going to have to get my arse on the treadmill a couple of times a week and increase my cardio.
Certainly I’ve got to leave the crisps alone and go to bed hungry.
The Girlf is certainly a bad influence. This house is rammed with food and her penchant for cheese, chips and gravy has grown on me. In fact the quantity of CC and G I was bringing into the house was starting to concern the Eldest. She took me aside for a quiet chat and as far she was concerned I could still bring it home for her but I was under no circumstances to give it to her mother. For her own good you understand.
Now if my baby asks me to bring her back chips, cheese and gravy after work, how can I possible refuse her? With hindsight I suppose waking her up and giving her a plate of it in bed was excessive. Getting up for ten minute to put away a portion of chips isn’t the healthiest past time and now it seems me showing my solidarity by caning a load myself hasn’t done me much good.
The time has come to get to grips with myself. I have to work off this chub but still keep the muscle and strength. I think a few weeks of healthy living are needed. I have to start eating breakfast and no more midnight munches.
The moobs are with me for life. There’s nothing I can do about them, although there is always the option of surgery.
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Back once again...
Finally, finally I am back online. After a month of faffing and phone calls BT has deemed us fit to rejoin the world. In celebration I’m raising a large Ardbeg, a divine ten year old Islay, in celebration and as its peaty complexity intoxicates me I shall conjure a blog and morn all the blogs that have fallen, unwritten, by the wayside over the last month.
With no internet to distract me over the last five weeks I have become quite domesticated. Sky TV can only occupy you for so long of an afternoon. There is only so much History and Discovery channel you can take.
So, much as I’ve enjoyed learning about black holes, the emergence of the Shogun in Japan and the rape of the new world by the Spanish I’ve more often than not found myself elbow deep in the kitchen sink.
Subsequently the Girlf has been reluctant to get us reconnected. Not only is the kitchen sparkling when she gets home but over these last few weeks her daughters have actually started talking to her again.
Before, the Eldest would disappear to her room, Wi-Fi’ed up, to MSN the world. Communications only restored when she hollered down for a delivery of crisps or diet coke. Need for stimulation has forced her back down to the lounge to crash out in front of the telly and grace, by default, her mothers presence.
The Youngest had already tired of the World Wide Web before our exile. A broken lap top had shown her that there was nothing there to maintain her interest but her sisters re-emergence coaxed her down into the family bosom.
Brimming with a mothers pride and love the Girlf therefore has managed to delay our re-connection blaming everything on BT dragging its feet. I, ever the sceptic, am suspicious this denial of my net is more to do with her design rather than us being buffeted and tossed by the winds of fate and begrudgingly she has finally capitulated and gotten us reconnected.
All Blackberry users are at heart very selfish people. So, as she could check her e-mails and Facebook at will the rest of us had to suffer, outcasts from mainstream society, limited to the people we actually met face to face or texted.
At last this half life is over and I pour myself another Ardbeg.
Whisky is an acquired taste. It is the older mans poison. Sooner or later everyone ends up on whisky. All it takes is a couple of decades of abusing your taste buds through smoking, drinking and rich food. It dulls them to the point that you can happily chug a straight malt without complaint.
The young don’t appreciate it. Hard liquor is hard liquor, a means to an end. Nasty, foul some, noxious liquid imbued to achieve the transcendence of drunkenness. An eighteen year can’t tell the difference between a twelve year old Glenfiddich and fucking Teachers. That’s why they drink vodka. It’s inoffensive, mixes well and gets the job done.
To make a spirit that is palatable without the mask of a mixer takes time and love and dedication and time is something the older man understands.
This particular bottle started life ten years ago. Ten years, a decade. The year two thousand, what were you doing? That was before 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, Big Brother had only just started and was a media revolution not the mainstream dross that it is now. This whisky has taken more than a quarter of my life to perfect. That’s something isn’t it?
But what of a fifty year old malt? There are some around. Although your local supermarket normally only goes up to twenty five year olds, you could find yourself in possession of a bottle that started its journey in 1960. Pre Beatles, pre Vietnam, your parents were children or maybe not even born when these spirits were put into casks and kept for prosperity.
It’s humbling...but then again I’m pissed.
So this drunk continues to play with his toy. It’s good to be back and I promise the next blog will be more tempered, and sober and less rambling but after a month of absence the desire to post has been too much to contain and I was loathed to wait until the morning.
Tomorrow I’ll be sleeping off this spontaneous drinking session and mourning the lack of Ardbeg. My head will hurt and I will curse myself but for now I shall enjoy the moment. I am warm and fuzzy and happy and life is good and I have my internet back so I shall leave you and indulge myself with an hour of surfing then collapse, a snoring mess, next to the Girlf. She will moan and bitch about it tomorrow but tomorrow is another day.
Goodnight all and God bless.
With no internet to distract me over the last five weeks I have become quite domesticated. Sky TV can only occupy you for so long of an afternoon. There is only so much History and Discovery channel you can take.
So, much as I’ve enjoyed learning about black holes, the emergence of the Shogun in Japan and the rape of the new world by the Spanish I’ve more often than not found myself elbow deep in the kitchen sink.
Subsequently the Girlf has been reluctant to get us reconnected. Not only is the kitchen sparkling when she gets home but over these last few weeks her daughters have actually started talking to her again.
Before, the Eldest would disappear to her room, Wi-Fi’ed up, to MSN the world. Communications only restored when she hollered down for a delivery of crisps or diet coke. Need for stimulation has forced her back down to the lounge to crash out in front of the telly and grace, by default, her mothers presence.
The Youngest had already tired of the World Wide Web before our exile. A broken lap top had shown her that there was nothing there to maintain her interest but her sisters re-emergence coaxed her down into the family bosom.
Brimming with a mothers pride and love the Girlf therefore has managed to delay our re-connection blaming everything on BT dragging its feet. I, ever the sceptic, am suspicious this denial of my net is more to do with her design rather than us being buffeted and tossed by the winds of fate and begrudgingly she has finally capitulated and gotten us reconnected.
All Blackberry users are at heart very selfish people. So, as she could check her e-mails and Facebook at will the rest of us had to suffer, outcasts from mainstream society, limited to the people we actually met face to face or texted.
At last this half life is over and I pour myself another Ardbeg.
Whisky is an acquired taste. It is the older mans poison. Sooner or later everyone ends up on whisky. All it takes is a couple of decades of abusing your taste buds through smoking, drinking and rich food. It dulls them to the point that you can happily chug a straight malt without complaint.
The young don’t appreciate it. Hard liquor is hard liquor, a means to an end. Nasty, foul some, noxious liquid imbued to achieve the transcendence of drunkenness. An eighteen year can’t tell the difference between a twelve year old Glenfiddich and fucking Teachers. That’s why they drink vodka. It’s inoffensive, mixes well and gets the job done.
To make a spirit that is palatable without the mask of a mixer takes time and love and dedication and time is something the older man understands.
This particular bottle started life ten years ago. Ten years, a decade. The year two thousand, what were you doing? That was before 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, Big Brother had only just started and was a media revolution not the mainstream dross that it is now. This whisky has taken more than a quarter of my life to perfect. That’s something isn’t it?
But what of a fifty year old malt? There are some around. Although your local supermarket normally only goes up to twenty five year olds, you could find yourself in possession of a bottle that started its journey in 1960. Pre Beatles, pre Vietnam, your parents were children or maybe not even born when these spirits were put into casks and kept for prosperity.
It’s humbling...but then again I’m pissed.
So this drunk continues to play with his toy. It’s good to be back and I promise the next blog will be more tempered, and sober and less rambling but after a month of absence the desire to post has been too much to contain and I was loathed to wait until the morning.
Tomorrow I’ll be sleeping off this spontaneous drinking session and mourning the lack of Ardbeg. My head will hurt and I will curse myself but for now I shall enjoy the moment. I am warm and fuzzy and happy and life is good and I have my internet back so I shall leave you and indulge myself with an hour of surfing then collapse, a snoring mess, next to the Girlf. She will moan and bitch about it tomorrow but tomorrow is another day.
Goodnight all and God bless.
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