In my last blog post I was told I had high blood pressure and advised I should go and see my GP. Firstly, thank you all for your texts, letters, e-mails etc asking about my well-being.

I am of course being sarcastic, you uncaring set of bastards.

But I digress. I went to see my GP — an elongated version of a Middle Eastern Rick Moranis — the following week. He took my blood pressure, shrugged, and said “No problem” with all the concern and compassion of an elongated Middle Eastern Rick Moranis just about to finish a ten hour shift that’s largely consisted of the old, infirm or obese complaining about their minor gripes and petty concerns.

He didn’t even tell me I could do with losing any weight. I liked him.

Rick Moranis

I was, however, a little disappointed. Like anyone, I’d had a look on-line and self-diagnosed myself, deciding I had an under-active thyroid. This was brilliant. My overweightness could, I convinced myself, be directly attributable to a lazy thyroid and not fifteen years of indolence, gluttony and binge drinking.

I could get some pills and slip back to those halcyon teenage days of eating what the hell I wanted and not having to worry about putting weight on and ignoring all those bitter claims that it would all inevitably and painfully catch up with me.

So EMERM’s lack of concern was bad news in one sense, but my “quite normal” blood pressure reading was good news in another, far more realistic, sense.

The thing that shocked me most, however, was a harmless conversation with friends. Blatantly ignoring the first and only rule — Do not mention my blog in front of my girlfriend — the friend, who I won’t name, said:

“I read your blog about your high blood pressure. It’s not surprising, really, is it?”

I was, initially, horrified. Yes, I know I’m a little bit overweight (by the odd five stone or so) but there was no need to draw attention to the point so unequivocally. The friend did, in fairness, redeem themselves somewhat:

“…because you get pretty wound up about things, don’t you? You can tell from reading your blog that you’re a very angry person.”

Now this is and isn’t true. I’m an enigma of sorts, in that I have (or at least think Ihave), in the words of the narrator in Fight Club, “the ability to let that which does not matter truly side.” I consider myself, a lot of the time, quite a chilled-out person. But the more I go through life the more I start to realise that my chilled out-ness should perhaps be more accurately described as “not really giving a shit about anything that doesn’t directly affect or annoy me.”

On the other hand I can feel the rage build inside me over petty things like personalised car registration plates, general highway etiquette (aka ‘shit drivers’), and trolley manners. A soothing voice inside me says “It doesn’t matter… no good comes from getting angry,” but another, louder voice inside screams and swears in self-righteous indignation. Most mornings as I drive to work I do genuinely think that pretty much everyone else in the world is either an idiot or a twat. Or both.

Football also brings the worst out in me. Not long ago I chatted in great depth about my condemnation of all things football, particularly the small-minded people that invariably go to watch, shout abuse and talk bollocks. Then I found myself at a football match and realised I’m just the same, if not worse. Maybe I’m less of an enigma and more of an out-and-out hypocrite.

I’m not quite at the anger management sessions stage yet, but I do worry sometimes that I can get wound up over nothing, and I’m not sure what the solution is. Buy a punchbag? Do more exercise? Drink less coffee?

Actually, I’m not sure I give a shit. I might just let it slide.

My employers very kindly gave us all the opportunity to have a quick, free health check, the highlight of which was watching someone feint after having their finger pricked for a cholesterol test.  I went down for a few minutes away from my desk, and to pick up a goody bag containing a free Company-branded travel mug.

I waited in line for my turn, then sat down for my consultation.

“Height?”

“Six three, six four.”

“Right, six three, then.  Weight?”

“Ooh, about eighteen, maybe eighteen and a half stone.”

“About?”

“Yeah.”

“Right, on the scales.”

“No, really, it’s eighteen and a half.  Probably.”

“On the scales.”

I got on the scales.

“One hundred and twenty kilos.”  Nearly nineteen stone.

“Alright, keep your voice down.”

“Your BMI’s very high.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You could do with losing a bit of weight.”

“Yes, I know.  It’s an ongoing battle.”

“You see, you’re here,” (shows me chart, points at ‘Very Obese’) “and your ideal weight is about fourteen stone.”

“I think those days are long gone.”

“But you could still stand to lose, you know, a bit of weight.”

“A stone or two?”

Lady smiles uncomfortably, “Well, yes, that would be a start.”

In the queue I had regaled my colleagues with the tale of the last time I’d had a health check.  I had my blood pressure taken and (as I recalled) the lady said, “That’s unusual.  Your blood pressure is very low.”  “Is that bad?” I asked.  “Well, no, but we’d normally expect to see low blood pressure in people who are super-fit athletes.”  Awkward pause.  “Would you…  describe yourself as…  super… fit?”  Me, deadpan: “No.”

That was two years ago and, despite being overweight I’d always told myself at least I didn’t have high blood pressure.  So, I sat down to have my blood pressure measured again, and I told the lady the story, attempting to break the awkwardness still lingering after she’d told me I’m five stone overweight.  

“That doesn’t sound right,” she said, dismissively.  “Your pulse is low though.” 

“Oh, maybe it was my pulse then.”

“Yes, that’s more likely.  Your pulse is quite low, but your diastolic blood pressure is high.”

“What?”

“Your diastolic blood pressure.  The bottom number.  It should be between sixty and ninety.  You’re 140 over 102.  I suggest you go and see your GP.  You need to lose some weight.”

“Yes I know.”

“Would you describe yourself as active?”

Unconvincingly, “Well, yes.”

“Do you do exercise that leaves you breathless for half an hour, three times a week.”

“Yes, I play cricket on Saturdays.  And, erm, cricket training once or twice a week.”

“And cricket, that’s, well, it’s not exactly continuous exertion is it?”

“It’s a bit stop-start, but…”

“And is that for the whole year?”

“Well, no, obviously, erm…  I walk to Sainsbury’s for lunch most days…”

Looks at sheet with three categories: Active, Walking, Inactive.  “I’ll put you down as a walker.”

“Thanks.”

“Your cholesterol level is fine; you just need to lose a bit of weight.  But do go and see your GP as soon as you can.”

“Right.  Can I have my free travel mug now?”

So, to surmise, I am twenty-nine and a half, five stone overweight and have high blood pressure.

Ladies, form an orderly queue.

I’m not looking to blame anyone or thing, but I did allow myself to be tempted into buying some Walkers Flavour Cup World Cup flavour crisps.  And by some I mean twenty-four bags.  I am, as you can probably imagine, very partial to a bag of crisps.

Walkers’ Flavour World Cup is neither a particularly clever idea nor an original one, as ASDA did something similar (and, arguably, better) for the 2006 World Cup.  I have a halcyon memory of finding 150g bags of crisps at 10p (ten pence!) each towards the end of the tournament; Argentinian Beef, Brazilian Salsa, English Vindaloo, French Frogs’ Legs and Garlic, German Sausage, and Italian Arrabiata flavours.  The French ones were particularly nice, I recall, but like actual frogs’ legs in garlic, they only really tasted of garlic.

I felt a mix of joy and despair when I found Walkers were doing something very similar for the 2010 World Cup; joy at some new flavours of crisps to try, despair at the fact that Walkers’ ‘creative’ department had basically just copied ASDA’s idea and added a couple more flavours.  And not even very good flavours at that.

Gary Lineker selling his soul

The list of Walkers flavours in full:

American Cheeseburger

Argentinean Flame Grilled Steak

Australian BBQ Kangaroo

Brazilian Salsa

Dutch Edam Cheese

English Roast Beef & Yorkshire Pudding

French Garlic Baguette

German Bratwurst Sausage

Irish Stew

Italian Spaghetti Bolognese

Japanese Teriyaki Chicken

Scottish Haggis

South African Sweet Chutney

Spanish Chicken Paella

Welsh Rarebit

The flavours are available in geographically-linked multipacks; Northern Europe (England, Holland, Germany), Southern Europe (Italy, Spain, France), ‘Americas United’ (USA, Brazil, Argentina), ‘Worldwide Wanderers’ (Australia, South Africa and Japan).  Per the Walkers website, the Scottish, Welsh and Irish flavours are only available in multipacks but are also notably absent from the list of available multipacks.  I suspect those flavours are probably a joke (much like those countries’ national football teams — chortle chortle).

To give some semblance of purpose to my eating a ridiculous amount of crisps I decided to hold my own World Cup to see which flavour was the best.  Taking each multipack as a qualifying group and of course ignoring the Scottish, Welsh and Irish flavours (although I would genuinely love to try the haggis flavour), the winning flavour from each group would compete in the semi-finals and final until one lucky flavour was crowned the best of a pretty ordinary bunch.

So without further ado:

Group 1: Northern Europe

England kick things off with Roast Beef & Yorshire Pudding flavour.  I taste beef and I taste Yorkshire pudding, but it’s unsatisfying.  It needs gravy.  It needs veg on the side.  It needs to be warm, damn it.  Something about the taste of a cold roast beef dinner makes me think of a sad lonely man eating a microwaved TV dinner, and that depresses me.  A roast beef Sunday lunch should be an occasion; a shamelessly gluttonous celebration followed by a sleep on the sofa and a John Wayne movie.  Fair play to Walkers for managing to fairly accurately reflect both beef and Yorkshire pudding flavours, but it just doesn’t work in crisp format.

John Wayne

Underestimate Germany at your peril, they say in football parlances.  Underestimate German Bratwurst flavour crisps all you like though.  The initial kick of Bratwurst is quite authentic and impressive, but by the end of the bag you realise these are just Smoky Bacon flavour.  (Note to Walkers for 2014 World Cup ideas: Smoky Beckham maybe?)

The clear winner in this group is Holland, with their Edam Cheese flavour effort.  Yes, it’s just cheese, but that’s the beauty of it.  The key to a successful crisp flavour is simplicity, and it’s no better typified than in this delightful cheese flavour.  Exschellent schtuff!

Group 2: Southern Europe

The group of death, this one, with France, Spain and Italy battling for a semi-final spot with their own classic national dishes.  The French offering is the disappointing Garlic Baguette flavour, which lacks the garlic kick of ASDA’s similar (and better) 2006 offering.  This is a boringly bland affair, which is doubly disappointing given that the French are only in the World Cup because Thierry Henry cheated.  It’s also worth noting that the baguette is a Belgian invention.  Wow your friends with that nugget of information, and remember to quote me as your source.

A once great man losing the respect of the world

If French Garlic Baguette flavour was boringly bland, then we need new superlatives of dullness (if that even makes sense) to describe Spanish Chicken Paella.  Roast Chicken crisps are shit anyway — FACT — but then combine that with rice flavouring (RICE!  CRISPS!) and the result is spectacularly bad.  Truly dreadful.  Whoever sanctioned this flavour should be sacked.  Spanish Chorizo flavour; now THAT would have been good.

With little competition the Italians romp to glory, winning the group by a country mile with their Spaghetti Bolognese flavour.  It even tastes like Bolognese; not a nice homemade Bolognese or one from a fancy restaurant, more the kind of Bolognese you’d expect in a school or hospital canteen.  But it’s streets ahead of the French and Spanish.  Molto buon!

Group 3: Americas United

Ignoring the ridiculous name, group 3 starts with Argentinean Flame-Grilled Steak, which tastes like every other steak flavoured crisps you’ve ever eaten; dull.  The joy of eating steak is the texture of the tender, juicy meat.  That joy is lost in the medium of the crisp.  It’s like ready salted crisps sprinkled with Bisto granules.

Brazilian Salsa flavour is very accurate in that, much like the current Brazilian football team, it promises pazzaz but delivers very little of anything memorable.  Another flavour that doesn’t really work in crisp format (the similar Spicy Tomato flavour Snaps excepted).  Maybe a Brazilian Salsa flavour actual Salsa dip would have been a better idea.  Could have also had Mexican Guacamole, and some sort of horrible Eastern European beetroot and potato coleslaw-type affair.  I might suggest that to Walkers actually.

Salsa. Sexy.

The best of an underwhelming bunch is the culinary powerhouse that is America, with their national dish: Cheeseburger.  It shouldn’t work and I hate myself for liking it, but the flavours are all bang on, and for that it scores points for authenticity.  It’s the taste of a Big Mac without the messy fingers, screaming kids and nagging deflated feeling that you could have done so much better with your life.  America romp into the semis.  Yeeeeeeee-hah!

Group 4: Worldwide Wanderers

At worst I expected Japanese Teriyaki Chicken to be a carbon copy of the Walkers Sensations’ Thai Sweet Chilli flavour.  As it turns out it’s a bit like that, but multiplied by a blandness factor of several million.  Terrible.  Wasabi (a popular crisp flavour in that part of the world, I’m told) would have been a much better bet, but Walkers would have had to have invented a new flavour, as opposed to taking an existing flavour and tweaking it very very very very very slightly as they seem to have done with all the others.  Walkers?  Wankers more like.

South African Sweet Chutney.  A huge, exasperated sigh at this point.  These are just Worcester Sauce flavour with a pinch of sugar added.  Quite pleasant actually and pretty authentic, but by this stage I’m starting to feel a bit cheated by the lazy fuckpig arseholes at Walkers trotting out the same tired flavours under different names.

Which brings me to Australian BBQ Kangaroo flavour.  Which contains no kangaroo.  So it’s essentially BBQ flavour.  Which already exists.  Christ by this point I don’t care who goes through from this group, but the South African flavour is the nicest, most authentic and the only one I’m likely to want to try again.  Ja!

An Australian BBQ kangaroo

Semi-finals

It’s a walk in the park for Holland, who hammer South Africa in our first semi-final.  The Dutch Edam flavour is so nice I may even go and buy some more.  Yes it’s just Cheese and Onion flavour without the Onion, but that’s a good thing!  And it does taste a bit like Edam in fairness.  Well, it doesn’t actually; it tastes much nicer.

The second semi-final pits an Italian classic dish against the hideous creation that is the American Cheeseburger.  It’s the type of mismatch that would have SKY Sports pundits falling over themselves to spew out clichéd hyperbolic rhetoric.  Spaghetti Bolognese has to win this one.  It just has to.  The Americans had no right to get this far in the competition, and the Italians march to the final with one of the all-time classic dishes in crisp form.  You can always get Bolognese flavour crisps abroad, don’t you?  WHY NOT HERE?

THE FINAL

It would be no bad thing if this turned out to be the actual World Cup final, but this isn’t about football (well, it kind of is).  If it was based purely on the food itself then spaghetti Bolognese would of course be preferable as a meal to a block of rubbery Edam, but this is about crisps.  It’s about how the flavour works in a powered format, dusted onto thin slices of fried potato and put into a foil bag.

And with such caveats in mind, it is my great privilege to announce Dutch Edam Cheese to be the winner of the 2010 Flavour World Cup.  The Italians fought hard and played well, but all things considered the Dutch take the spoils.  Cheese is the better flavour, and it’s less offensive on the fingers after eating.  Mixing the two flavours together gives you a sort of lasagne flavour.  Now THAT’s a good idea.

Lovely rubbery Edam

Apologies if you’re disappointed that the winning flavour is essentially just cheese, but that’s a sad indictment of the other World Cup flavours.  Plain and simple cheese flavour is the equivalent of the long-ball game; nothing fancy, but direct and effective.  Not likely to win over the purists but it’s lifted the silverware at the end of the day. 

I must stop now before I drown in my own clichéd hyperbolic rhetoric, and get on with writing a letter to Walkers about my brilliant ideas for the next World Flavour Cup.

Some years later adidas used this in their ‘Impossible Is Nothing’ advertising campaign, which was, according to their website, meant to encourage people to take their first steps towards achieving what once seemed like impossible goals (and of course, to sell fuckloads of trainers).

There are many similar phrases meant to be similarly inspiring:

• A winner never quits and a quitter never wins
• Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall
• It’s not over until the fat lady sings
• Etc etc and so on

And then there are the more realistic among us:

• If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a damn fool about it (W.C. Fields)

I think it’s important to know when you can’t succeed.  It’s important to know when you’re beaten.  Sometimes there are mountains we can’t overcome; we can’t always rise after every fall.  There are certain laws that simply can’t be broken; those of gravity and physics.  There are mathematical impossibilities.  If a team is ten points from safety at the bottom of the league and there are only nine more points up for grabs, they’re very much relegated.  If a man is twenty-three pounds away from his final weight-loss target with only twenty-three days left in which to lose said weight (I swear the weight to days ratio is entirely coincidental), then he has to admit he’s failed in his mission and he should either give up or revise his target.

So I hereby strike a line through my initial target of 17st by April 9^th.  I’m planning to lose a stone by Friday April 23^rd, the day before the cricket season starts.  This is fourteen pounds in thirty-nine days.  I’m inspired by my aforementioned mate Steve (below, drinking a can of 65p cider after coming last in a game of pitch and putt at the world-renowned Selston Par 3 golf course), who recently updated his facebook status:

“one whole stone lost in one month. just thought i’d say cos i’m pretty damn proud of myself.”

And rightly he should be proud of himself.  And although I won’t be overly proud if I reach my revised target weight, hopefully I won’t be — in the words of W.C. Fields — a damn fool.

So how am I going to do it?  I’m going to do a bit of jogging (using the brilliant RunKeeper app on my iPhone to monitor my progress), I’m going to cut out (OK, cut down) my alcohol consumption (a bit) and I’m going to make a real effort to eat healthier.

First step on the healthy-eating ladder then was to make my own soup; pea and mint, specifically, which, when I had it for lunch, my boss decided looked like a big bowl of mushy peas.  Which he then said would be nicer with a meat pie.  Which I obviously went to Sainsbury’s and bought.  And then spent the rest of the day hating myself. 

I’m a damn fool, no doubt about that.

A word to the wise: for productivity reasons, never Google any phrase containing the word "boobs" if you want to get anything done, ever.

This was last Wednesday and it did, if nothing else, motivate me to persevere with the weight loss/getting fit thing.  I decided I’d prove him wrong.  And I’m slowly getting there.  Friday’s Boots weigh-in came and went, and if you cast your mind back to this blog post you may recall that I promised I’d get the black progress line back below the white target line.  If you can’t remember then to be honest I think you really need to pay more attention.  But I digress.  And for once I’ve made good on a promise, see:

Some stats for all you stats-freaks:

• since Jan 4^th I have lost 7.5lbs
• this is over half a stone
• I am a still-massive 18st 5lbs
• this is 3lbs lighter than the Friday before
• I did have my haircut in this week in fairness
• I am ahead of my target.
• Completely hypothetically-speaking, is it wrong to find the following picture arousing?

• I’m just asking like.

The astute among you may notice two lines in the above chart.  The black line represents my weight.  The white line represents a straight line that — on the full graph, only a snippet of which I’ve included above — runs from my starting weight of 120.2kg to my target weight of 108kg on April 9th.  You may also note that the black line is higher than the white line.  This means I’m behind my target.  And I’ve no-one to blame but myself.  Well, I could arguably blame the girl next to me at work who, whilst cold on Wednesday, made the (bizarre, when you think about it) announcement that the only thing keeping her warm was eating biscuits.  I said, “I’ll go and buy some more biscuits at lunch then,” and returned later with four packets of biscuits.  Jam and Custard Jammy Dodgers (disappointing), Pink Wafers (retro), Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies (indulgent), and the aforementioned Chocolate Hob Nobs (classic).  I then proceeded over the course of the remainder of this working week to eat about half of them.

What's the point putting a copyright watermark in a picture of some fucking pink wafers?

In my last blog I think I might have foolishly said I was going to come up with sort of routine.  I haven’t, unsurprisingly.  But I might do.  I probably won’t though.  Although I should, really.  I have some weights gathering dust on the bedroom floor (although technically they stop my guitar falling over; they’re not just gathering dust), so I should probably put them to use.  I’m going to try a short, gentle jog in the next week or so, and see how the knee holds up, so watch this space for another predictable blog about me shitting up my knee.  Every day this week I’ve been for a short(ish) walk at lunchtime, so fingers crossed the knee is getting a bit stronger.

So, not a lot of progress on the dieting front, but I’ll be good this week, I swear.  By next Friday I’ll make sure the black line is below the white line.  It make shock you to learn that I’ve done a bit more writing on the novel, and I think I’ve closed an annoying and problematic plot-hole.  I just need to get into a routine of writing an hour or so a day, I think.  325 days to go until my thirtieth birthday deadline.

I’ll sign off, for no real reason, with a picture of Gemma Atkinson.  

I could take her or leave her, me.

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NYR#1v2 (going from an obese 120kg to a just ‘overweight’ 108kg)

At my weekly weigh-in today I found I’d lost another 0.8kg.  (You may have noticed I’m referring to my weight in kilos.  This is because it feels less shameful writing 118.5kg than it does 18st 9lb, even though, on the flip side, losing 0.8kg — or 800g — sounds quite pathetic.  Essentially I am a man of twenty-nine years and 6 feet 4 inches who feels embarrassed to be on a diet and be celebrating losing the equivalent weight of a large poo.)

I have an all-singing all-dancing spreadsheet, which actually neither dances nor sings but instead allows me to graph my weight loss against a linear ‘target’ line starting at 120.2kg on 04/01/10 and sloping down to 108kg on 09/04/10.  I am currently a gnat’s cock below (i.e. better than) my target.  When the graph starts to look slightly more impressive (e.g. some space opens up between the two lines, or the weight loss line starts to trend tragically and enivitably northwards) I might even let you have a gander.  Something to look forward to there, eh? 

I’ve decided this week that I need to introduce some kind of routine against which I can measure myself, inspired by but not wanting to imitate this page from FHM.com (well done to any men who manage to scroll past the image of Lucy Pinder to the actual text).  But anyway, I’m going to come up with a routine and try and stick to it.  If I can be arsed.  Then, I’ll, you know, blog about it when I fuck up.

Lucy Pinder: You could play with them all night long and never touch the same bit twice

NYR#2 (finishing my novel)

Nothing to report.  Well, I had an idea today, but I’ve not written anything and I’m not sure if it was a good idea or not.

Spangly new blog bits

A couple (well, OK, just the one) of people (person) have asked if they can subscribe to the blog so they get an e-mail informing them (him) that spacemonkeygaz.com has been updated with a blog and their day is about to get fractionally better (worse).  You may or may not at all want to click on the “subscribe by e-mail here” link in the top right hand corner of the blog, under the “Search the archives” box and above the “the world is your lobster” (a Peter Kay gag from Phoenix Nights, if you were wondering) box, and enter your e-mail address if you want.  Or don’t.  Whatever.

Peter Kay as Max the bouncer in Phoenix Nights

Now, I’m not very good at the technical aspects of blogging.  (You could of course argue that I’m not much good at the actual writing bit of it either.)  I have tried to add a little doobry that allows you to tick a box when making a comment at the bottom of a post, which notifies you if/when someone else comments after you.  This may or may not be of interest, but if anyone fancies leaving a comment then please let me know if it gives you an option to be notified.  I hope that all made sense because I really can’t be arsed to read it again.

Be good.

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But does anyone actually bother?  I get the impression that most people talk about new year’s resolutions, but few ever actually see them through to any kind of outcome.

I’m normally no different, but this year I’d decided I would be.  I’ve got this blog to motivate me.  I can blog about my resolutions — what I’m going to do/not do — and I can publicly shame myself if I fail.  Well one of my new year’s resolutions is fucked already.  And I’m not talking about in a “I decided I was going to give up alcohol but I forgot and had an Irish coffee” type of sense, I’m talking about in a “I decided I was going to start running again to train up for the kilomathon but my knee is still knackered” type of sense.

Yup, I’m going to have to officially pull out of the kilomathon, which is a genuine shame.  I’ve been resting the knee for the six (ish) weeks since I popped it, and I’d decided that in the first week of January I’d try a couple of not-too-strenuous walks to see how it’d hold up. 

January 1^st, whatshername and I went for a short little walk, so short as to not even register on the should-I/shouldn’t-I? register.  Afterwards: felt fine.  Next day: fuck, that doesn’t feel right.  It isn’t really painful, there’s just no strength in it, and I’ve felt a couple of little warning ‘pang’s.  I haven’t even been doing anything arduous when I’ve felt them: bending down to get a beer from the fridge, rolling over in bed, etc.  There’s no way I’ll be able to run 26km in ten weeks time.

So, resolution #1: failed.  I will, however, try to lose some weight (again).  But, without the ability to do even moderate exercise, I’m going to have to eat very healthily (which, I may have mentioned, I fucking hate).  Today I weighed myself and I’m a massive 18st 12lb (pretty much back where I started when I first blogged about losing weight).  So, resolution #1(version 2): To get down to a still-but-slightly-less-massive 17 stone by, let’s say, Friday 9^th April (nearly 14 weeks).

Resolution #2: finish writing my novel before my 30^th birthday.  Today is January 4^th — that gives me 343 days.  I don’t want to be the bloke who tried to write a novel (two novels and a sitcom, but who’s counting?) and didn’t fail: rather worse, he just didn’t finish it.  So, my thirtieth birthday seems like a momentous enough occasion.  For clarity, I don’t plan for it to be published by then, or to have been accepted by an agent, I just want to have finished writing it.  It doesn’t have to be the finished article — (i.e. a completely polished ‘final draft’ — it just has to be a story that ends.

So, have you got any new year’s resolutions?  And remember, keep them SMART.

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2pm local time yesterday I sat sweating in the relative cool of the hotel reception, the thermometer on the wall proudly boasting 34 degrees C in said relatively cool area (it must have been another 5 degrees warmer outside.  It was – and at the risk of dumbfounding you with meteorological jargon - stinking fucking hot).  Shortly before midnight last night our flight captain cheerfully announced that the temperature at our destination was minus 1.  At this point I regretted my choice of returning-home outfit: shorts and flip flops.

Fast forward selecta to 7am this morning.  I’m scraping ice and frozen snow from my car windscreen.  The driver’s side of the windscreen cleared, I move around the front of the car to clear the other half, only to slip on a patch of ice, and literally legs up in the air, land full on my cold, flabby bottom.

Fortunately the additional padding from a fortnight of ridiculously cheap beer and ridiculously cheap and ridiculously good food softened the blow somewhat.

Actual conversation with whatsername:

Her: I think we’ve both put weight on this holiday.  We need to go on a diet when we get back.

Me: I thought I’d lost a bit of weight.

Her: Boobs are bigger.

Me: Well that’s good news.

Her: No, your boobs are bigger.

Me: Oh.

So it’s back to dieting again.  The knee feels a lot better now, so after Christmas I will attempt a couple of short, slow jogs to test it out.  Then I have until March 14th to prepare myself for the kilomathon, hopefully losing a bit of timber in the process.

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Seeking to relive their ‘glory days,’ four former Accountancy students go back to the university town in which they so frequently disgraced and embarrassed themselves on many, many nights out.

Sainsbury’s cash point, one member of the group needs cash.  He reaches into his pocket and produces a bank card, quite literally folded in half, to much hilarity.  Witty banter flies around, mainly centring on the fact that his folded card won’t work in the machine and he’ll have to beg his friends for beer tokens.  Trying to hide his embarrassment he straightens his card and slides it hopefully into the machine.  To the disappointment of the other former Accountancy students present, his transaction looks to be going to plan.  He enters his pin, and lo and behold, the machine accepts his card!  He punches the air in celebration, throws an expletive or two at his no-longer-mocking friends, and wheels off down the street, arms aloft.  One of the group, noting that the card is still in the machine and the transaction is at the ‘choose amount you would like to withdraw’ stage, opts to do that hilarious thing we’ve all done at some point.  He reaches over and withdraws the maximum amount he can from the machine — £200.

The straightening of the card

Now, at university this would have been hilarious (for all except for the owner of the bank account who would have to carry two hundred of the queen’s pounds around all night and somehow not spend it).  Once at university a friend was withdrawing some cash when I reached over his shoulder and hit the £100 button.  Needless to say the following morning his wallet was empty after he frittered the lot away in Loughborough’s most glamorous of student haunts.

Back to 2008, the hilarity of the situation was quashed somewhat when the owner of the bank account returned to the cash point after a few seconds of running around celebrating like he’d scored a goal for his beloved Scunthorpe United to find his friends giggling like schoolgirls. 

“How much did you withdraw?” he asked. 

“Two hundred quid,” we guffawed. 

“Two hundred quid?” he scoffed.  “I shit two hundred quid these days.”  That was the end of our fun.

Forward to now, yesterday in fact.  You may recall I specifically asked for reasons NOT to run the kilomathon.  What I actually received were comments telling me I could do it, and I should do it.  I was banking on my girlfriend talking me out of it, but all she said was, “I think that’s a really good idea.”

The one comment that nailed it though was a facebook message from the gentleman referred to above: “I will pay to the charity of your choice the amount of money that “I shit these days” if you complete this kilomarathon successfully.”

So tonight, believe it or not, I am going on a three mile run with my girlfriend.  I’ve mapped it out already on this great website.  That’s right, next March I’m going to do this bloody stupid great kilomathon.  Sweet Jesus.

On a less-energetic note, I’ve had The Killers back catalogue on repeat on my iPod the last few weeks, and present my top five Killers tracks, only one of which could possibly be up for debate.  In no order: 

• Mr Brightside
• All These Things That I’ve Done
• Bling (Confession Of A King)
• Why Do I Keep Counting?
• Under The Gun

Anyway, having done nothing other than an hour of five-a-side football in the way of exercise and in a desperate attempt to lose weight I got my girlfriend to shave all my hair off last night.  And it worked—I’m down to 18st 5lbs.  I’m not sure how much hair weighs to be honest, but hopefully after a couple of runs I’ll have better news next week.

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