Woot!!!

Still alive - still outrageously busy as I always am in September and October.

Weight now 14st, 11lbs.

I have lost a whole stone.

Yay! Go me!!!!!

What happened to my immortality? Give it back, you bastards...!

Been away in Scotland for a week, hence the lack of anything said.

Had another blood test before I went, got the results yesterday. Fasting blood sugar was lower than last time, but some other result (you can see how excited I am by this whole thing) was still borderline. Also, my cholesterol was a bit high – not massive, but high all the same. Hardly surprising, I suppose for someone who lives on red meat…

So now I’m on pills. And I’m on pills for the rest of my life… WTF, how the fuck did that happen? I am supposed to be immortal. Other people are supposed to be ill and I am supposed to be indestructible and live for ever.

I never go to the Doctors. I have never had a day off sick in my life. I have missed a day in the office owing to food-poisoning and the resultant desire to be close to certain facilities, but I still worked from home.

I am disgustingly healthy. I don’t do being ill.

Yeah, right. Not no more, sunshine. Live with it.

Actually, no, don’t “live with it”. That is a sort of quitter-ish attitude. I’ve got to live with the (pretty obvious, anyway, when I come to think of it) fact that I am not immortal, but I don’t have to live with the idea that diabetes is something that I can do nothing about.

I can and will change my lifestyle yet further to ensure that it makes the minimum amount of difference to the life that I want to lead.

Some of the “I must change my lifestyle” is altruism, but some of it is also fear. I have a known a number of people in older age who have lost toes, legs and their lives because they didn’t look after their diabetes properly. That really doesn’t appeal to me. I’d rather lose out on a few treats now than my toes in 10 years time. That would really suck.

Learning to ride a horse with only one leg in my fifties would be by no means impossible, but all-in-all, I’d rather pass on the necessity altogether.

Scotland was good. I ate too much, drank too much and smoked a shit-load of cigarettes. All of these things are soon going to be denied to me. Alas and alack. Well, not denied, necessarily, but seriously restricted, so at the moment I am making whoopee before the dietician and the Diabetes Nurse get their hands on me (curse you, September 3rd!!).

This weekend is the last battle re-enactment of the season, to I will probably have my last gaspers there. I already started moderating my drinking seriously at the last one two weeks ago, because I was finding that it played havoc with my energy levels.

It’s quite odd to discover that you can have a good time without getting pissed. Not that I ever get completely hammered – well, not very often at all – but getting pleasantly pissed has been a part of a jovial social occasion for the last 25 years.

Still won’t be able to dance though. The only way that I could ever get round to dancing was by getting pretty wrecked, so it looks like dancing will now be off the menu for ever. That’s going to take come coming to terms with….

Ok, I’ve come to terms with it now. No more dancing, ever. That’s cool. Every cloud has a silver lining.

So, bugger all exercise, bugger all self control and bugger all something else (I just felt that the structure of the sentence required a third “bugger all”) until September 3rd. Then reality and responsibility kicks in.

(Well, ok, you know as well as I do that I’m going to fall by the wayside on occasion as much as the next man, but I shall try to be responsible and sensible, and, in all likelihood, something else ending in –ible, too.)

What joy...

Had a call from the Doctor's surgery. I have "mild diabetes", whatever the heck that means. Woot!

I have ana appointment tomorrow at 10.20, so I will learn more then.

15st 7lbs this lunchtime. However, I have eaten a big boiwl of porrige and several cups of coffee first, whereas normally I weigh myself "empty" first thing in the morning.

More tomorrow.

Blood Test

Had the blood test yesterday.

Was I big and brave about it? Was I heck...?

I was very surprised by how restrained I was on the way there. Normally I start shaking like a leaf when I know I am on my way to a needle, but this time I retained my calm until I was actually in the nurse's cell.

Then the cold sweats started...

I shamefacedly admitted my phobia to the nurse, who suggested that I lie down on the bed thingie rather than try to have it done sitting in the chair. It's easier not to look like that.

So, like the incredibly brave little soldier I am, I lay on the couch, bravely holding out my paw. Until she tied the strap thingie on to make the vein stand up, that is, whereupon my brave little arm disappeared under my yellow, trembling body like a rat down a hole.

This happened two or three times before she had even had a chance to pick up the syringe. Then she started to play dirty...

"Shall I go and get the other nurses to hold you down?" says she.

Ouch, Pride versus Phobia. A battle of the titans.

I could just picture it. A shouted summons across a crowded waiting room "Girls - can you come and help me hold down this patient. He's too scared to have his blood test..." A squadron of nurses troop in, sounds of screams and struggling ensue, then the door opens and the queue of waiting patients, ready to be sympathetic to the sobbing ten-year-old who has been subdued, are flabbergasted to see a hulking forty-two year old six-footer slink shame-facedly out of the torture chamber.

It wasn't much of a contest, actually. Pride won with a knock-down and submission in pretty short order. Lie down, paw out, other arm over eyes, think of England...

But nurses always have a way of getting revenge….

“You are sure that you won’t move, aren’t you? Because if you move at the wrong moment, it could be really serious…”

Oh great, thanks a bundle. That is bound to relax one….

So there I am, lying so rigid that a fakir would have no problem suspending me between two stools at head and foot, arm pressed so hard on my eyes that I am seeing stars and then it happens – the tiniest, most pathetic little spark of pain in the history of medicine.

So, that hardly hurt at all. Don’t know what I was worrying about. It was all fine…

Was it bollocks! It mattered not one jot that the pain was insignificant. I was still lying there stiff as a board whilst she faffed around.

I suppose it took, what, less than 10 seconds from start top finish, and it felt like had it taken three seconds longer then I have gone into physiological melt-down.

I wouldn’t, of course. When it comes down to it, one copes when one has to, and one endures what one has to when one has to – but phobias are weird things. They are incomprehensible to those who are lucky enough not to suffer from any.

My fear of needles is utterly inexplicable. If I get a splinter or a thorn in me, I am quite happy to dig it out with a needle. The pain, which is usually much longer and greater than an injection, bothers me not one jot.

But, injections? Injections which I know aren’t going to hurt that much. They scare the shit out of me.

Go figure…

(At present, I am not even entertaining the worries over what happens if this blood test does reveal diabetes. I can lose sleep over that if and when it happens…)

Refund

Well, well, well.

I have recieved a letter from the company saying that a cheque for £4.99 in respect of ProductX is on its way.

How nice - and how suprising....

Actually, I feel a bit guilty now... I didn't really want a refund. I mean the product was crap, but I wrote the letter because I like being pompous and verbose, not because I actually needed my £4.99 back.

I'm terribly English, don'tchaknow, I hate making a fuss...

Mind you, I saw a version of the ad on telly the other day and it had the words "May need frequent scrubbing" superimposed on the bottom, and I'm sure that they weren't there when I first saw it...

Get what you ask for...

Ok, so last week I complained about my body being boring and alsways losing exactly two pounds, no more, no less.

This week I lost one pound.

Yip - bloody - pee.

(Although, it's better than putting one on, I suppose...)

To the management...

Dear Sirs,

Whilst passing through the Focus hardware store in LocalTown the other day, my eye was caught by one of your advertising screens extolling the semi-miraculous cleansing properties of “Product X”. On the strength of this advertisement and with a feeling of ”Oh, well, it’s only five quid, what the heck, it’s worth a shot…” I added a pot of “Product X” to my trolley and proceeded to the checkout.

On arriving at my home, I took said pot of “Product X” into my kitchen and, with a mounting feeling of excitement, set to work upon eliminating the cooked-on food stains from the top of my batchelor-belaboured cooker.

I have to say that your achievement with this product is truly astounding. I do not think I have ever encountered a product that has so completely, so unreservedly, so perfectly failed to live up to any of the claims made for it. This stuff could not clean a bar of soap in a disinfectant factory.

Not only could it not clean off the cooked-on food stains on my cooker, it could not even lift the fat-splashes that had resulted from my most recent fry-up. Quite frankly, I could not have achieved less successful results had I tried to lick the cooker clean with my tongue.

Not wishing to admit defeat, however, I then moved on to attempt to clean those rather bizarre, sticky marks that randomly appear on the bottom of one’s steam iron from time to time for no readily discernible reason. Indeed, the ease with which the miracle-worker in the “Product X” advertisement had cleansed the bottom of their steam-iron was one of the major factors in influencing me in my impulse purchase. Sadly, however, a prolonged period of vigorous scouring achieved no discernible result, beyond the comprehensive clogging of the little steam holes with fine, white powder.

Undeterred, I moved onto the bottom of my extremely expensive, heavy-bottomed frying pan. A few quick swirls of the sponge by the Hogwarts-trained thespian in the advert, a quick scoosh of water, and the bottom of their pan was restored to pristine virginity. Several minutes of determined scrubbing on my part, however, merely served to demonstrate the sad truth that a scrubber and virginity are seldom re-united in the real world.

I must confess that I did then get a certain amount of enjoyment, although not, I feel, a fiver’s-worth, from running around my house to see what else “Product X” would be entirely unable to clean. Certainly my bathroom presented no barrier to its inexhaustible appetite for failure. Gold I do not possess, but I decided to avoid letting it near my silverware just in case an insatiable capacity for completely dissolving silver turned out to be the final twist-in-the-tale added to the mix by the sadistic genius who compounded this Machiavellian product. I only wish that my car had alloy wheels, in order that I could have obtained a more complete set.

In short, Sirs, whilst I am not usually one to complain; whilst I hold to the principle of “caveat emptor”; and whilst I have sympathy with the idea that anyone expecting to be able to buy a product capable of producing super-natural results for less than five pounds really does deserve to be fleeced, I have to say that this particular product is so wholly, so comprehensively and so utterly useless that I really would be grateful to receive your cheque for £4.99 in respect of a refund for my purchase.

Under such circumstances, you would, naturally, be entitled to request that I should return to you the unused portion of my tub of “Product X” which I would be happy to do, although what conceivable reason you should have to do so, or to what earthly use you could put it if I did, is entirely beyond me.

Alternatively, on the other hand, if you feel my criticisms to be unjustified, you would be most welcome to send a member of your staff around to my address to demonstrate exactly where I was going wrong with the utilisation of the product. I suspect, however, that sending a cheque would be cheaper.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

M.A.D.

I've been here before...

Well, I've been pretty good this last week, and guess what, I lost 2 pounds.

My body is a dull sort of creature. It has no originality. 2 pounds on, 2 pounds off. You might think that it might try a bit harder to entertain us. It would not be difficult, one week lose five pounds, next week gain three, the week after, grow an extra leg... The possibilities are endless.

This upping and downing by two pounds each time is a tad on the dull side. It's also a bit unfair, because everyone else seems to lose a load really quickly when they start trying to lose weight. Why can’t I? It would be a bit more encouraging if nothing else.

My other exciting news is that I had a urine sample tested the other week and it had traces of glucose in it. Yippee. Now I’ve got to go and have a blood test next week to see if I might have diabetes.

I can’t remember if I have mentioned before, but I have a pathological – and totally irrational – fear of needles. The Blood Test is going to be bad enough. If I have to go onto a regime of injecting insulin, then I will probably have a nervous breakdown…

Deep joy. Oh well, the blood test is a week on Wednesday, so I shall pretend that it isn’t happening. Positive thinking, that’s what the sheila with the irritating voice told me on The Secret. Think thoughts of wellness and good-health and wellness and good-health shall be delivered unto you. Sounds good to me.

Hmm...

Well, I've been pretty good for the last week, I've done my cross-training and I've done my new multi-gym sessions -and I've not been going mad on the food.

And the result?

Fuck all.

I still weighed in at 15st 10lbs (that's 220 lbs to you yanks) which stilll equates to fat bastard.

Sigh. It's very demoralising.

But I shall stick at it and see whether things improve....

Back to where we started

Sigh. Weighed in this morning at 15st 10lbs. Bummer. Right back where I stared this blog.

Ho hum. Well, the main point is not to get dispirited and give up altogether. Keeping to the exercise schedule at the moment, so this should go down, rapidly, I hope. Onwards and upwards - well, downwards, as far as weight is concerned, I hope.

Went to visit my friends in Wales this weekend. Decided on the spur of the moment at 7.00pm on Friday night and by a quarter past midnight I was there. Marvellous. A friend said to me the other day "you are lucky just to be able to drive off all over the country and have places to stay" and she is right. I am very lucky. Sometimes I loose sight of that.

On my way down, I bought a copy of "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, and read by the Author. It's a but full of hype and "California Woo-Woo" and she does have a irritating tendency to read in a overly done "drop-my-voice-in-tones-of-awe" manner that, for a stiff-upper-lip English type can be a bit wearing. However, that said, it does seem to make a lot of sense.

They make some pretty outrageous claims about what "The Secret" can achieve for you (pretty much, anything at all). Now if it were me, I would have toned that down a bit. If the secret can achieve anything at all, let that be a nice surprise, or reveal it to more advanced initiates or let them work it out for themselves.

However, I suspect that claiming that from the outset is going to give a lot of people credibility problems, and as the system is pretty much built on self-belief, that’s not necessarily a good start.

However, that said, it still makes an awful lot of sense, and I have already started including it in my life.

Watch this space.

Still around, starting going again

I started exercising on the cross-trainers again last week. Been going well with regular morning sessions.

Took delivery of a new multi-trainer yesterday, and spent a happy couple of hours putting it all together. I did have a TotalGym1000 which I really liked and which I thought was effective, but I found it too much of a faff changing it around to do the different exercises.

Also, one of the main reasons that I don't exercise is that I find it bloody boring. Running, riding, cycling out in the countryside just makes me feel like I'm in prison. Apart from the fact that I don't particularly enjoy the feeling of a work-out (I've never been a relish-the-burn sort) I just find it dull, dull, dull.

I work in the countryside anyway, so going out into it for a run or whatever is not a bonus. Lots of people say that they do lots of thinking whilst they are running. That doesn't work for me. I love to spend time alone in my head. I can plan and plot and think about all sorts of things that need cogitating. Unfortunately, however, I find that my brain does not work well whilst exercising. I am a man - I can't multi-task.

Like the cross trainer, this new toy can be used in front of the telly, which the TotalGym was not very well designed for. This way, my mind can be diverted whilst my body slaves away. I have a digital TV recorder which means that I can record stuff that I fancy at any time (I hardly watch any real-time TV) and watch it whilst I work out.

My game plan for the next couple of months is to use the Cross-Trainer for half an hour every morning (or as many as I can) and to use the Multi-trainer three times a week, for half an hour or so on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. This schedule will fit in with the work regime riding, when it changes in September.

Weight-wise, I haven't weighed myself in a while, but I know that I will be back up at the top end of the 15st range (all my good work last year piddled away... sigh...)

Having done a bit of training, I shall weigh myself Monday morning to see where I am starting from this time.

I think that I shall also take some measurements, as weight doesn't really bother me; it's more shape that counts. I don't want to "get ripped", as they say in fitness-geek-speak, I just want to get a bit more definition and lose some more of that flab - the eponymous Middle Aged Spread.

On other matters, I'm still not smoking. I have had a couple since February and that's it. I had a drag on someone's fag a few days ago, just out of curiosity more than anything else, and I really didn't enjoy it. A real case of "why on earth did I like that?" As I've said before, I think I will always be an occasional puffer, but I’m not sure that I will go back to being a regular, this time. We shall, however, see.

I'm also trying to psyche myself up into doing a "before" photograph for a before-and-after set, but we shall have to see about that one.

Still alive, still hovering

Well, the weight remains around 15' 2 / 15' 3.

Lent has just begun and I have given up alcohol, cigarettes, sweets (candy to you yanks) and caffiene.

Unfortunately (for those of you who would like to think of me suffering), this is a doddle. I have no problems with it whatsoever (I do it most years)

Why do I take these varuious noxious substances up again? Because I enjoy them and because I am stupid.

Ho hum.

Come mid march, my winter silly season ends and I will go back to the cross-trainer and the diet.

The diet is going to yhave to change, though, because I have been finding that some of the things I have been eating have been playing hell with my digestive system. Say no more.

Happy New Year

Welcome to 2007.

I am still alive and still worrying about my weight - although, that said, I have not been weighing myself recently. I am somewhat nervous about what Mr Scales will say to me after the festive season. I hope he will be my friend...

Life is till manic, although not as manic as it was before Christmas. Hopefully in a week or so, I will be able to get back into a much more managed and sensible routine.

Who knows, I might even get back into blogging regularly here.

My favourite blogger has just committed bloggicide (Vale, TWG, you will be missed. If I were ... well, someone completely different to who I am, really ... I would zoom over to Boston and whisk you off your feet. The fact that no one has just proves my long held belief that Americans (with one or two rare exceptions) are basically stoopid), so I should have more time.

(WARNING: having me read your blog is bad for its health. Every blog I get into reading dies. Dooomed, I tell you, you are all doomed!)