Manifest Density
People are starting to suspect I'm fat. It's true - I’ve been a stealth lard-arse for some time, an undercover tubby. I've walked among you, as one of you. You would never know. But beneath my pristine surface there was an exo-skeleton of whale-bone, a tightly bound corset with more hooks and eyes than a buccaneer spider, swaddling my porridge-in-a-condom body. I’m not a pervert: I did all this: the confinement, the rope-burn, the Matt Talbot self-mortification, out of a sense of civic responsibility. In these straitened times food is expensive and I would rather it stayed in your stomach than have it make an unwelcome reappearance as soon as I put my head around the door. It wasn't vanity, it was selfless philanthropy. It makes me laugh when I see lolly-pop ladies getting M.B.E.s for dicking around waving a stick in a hi-viz tabard for, y’know, doing their jobs that they’re paid for*, while I, trussed up like a cenobite for the benefit of mankind, go unrewarded, unacknowledged.
But no more: my whale-bone stays are as unfashionable as an elephant’s foot umbrella-stand or a dodo’s cock coat-hook. I’ve had enough of cow-towing to the consensus: these udders are coming out from under-wraps. I’m going to lose weight.
I’ve not been really fat before and I’ve lived a lazy and dissipated life, drinking like my bladder was on fire and eating as if I were in the last panel of an Asterix book. I even learned to cook to foster my habit, a tremendous feat of will-power for someone as bone-idle as I am. Then suddenly there were no bones visible at all. My jaw-line softened and caved in like a sand-castle fighting the tide and my waist-band became a super-group. A man who gets a round of applause from his own tits as he descends the stairs is a man who needs to make certain changes or accept cuddly uncle status for the rest of his life, a life which, thankfully, will be seriously compromised by his Greggs loyalty card.
I’m doing the usual things, the obvious things. I’ve stopped drinking two bottles of wine a night and replaced them with no bottles. I’ve given up red meat, fat, sugar, bread, milk, cheese and happiness. On hearing about this reckless self-denial my mother asked “My god! What else is there?” A good question: it tends to be fruit, vegetables, turkey and herbal tea. On the first couple of days I assumed I would be craving delicious booze but no it was fat and French bread that gave me the pangs. I assumed abandoning my vices would instantly give me a feeling of serenity and well-being or the D.T.s. But no, what I got was skin like styling putty and the first cold-sore I’d had in twenty years. These are dubious benefits at best.
Of course diet is only half the story: the other half is positive thinking. No, obviously not: that would be ridiculous. The very fucking idea. The other half is exercise. As you can tell I know nothing about dieting and I’m just guessing that not drinking the weight of your own head every night and eating less obviously filthy food, less often, is a good idea. It may not be, a lot of modern dieting is counterintuitive, but I’m going with my gut and hopefully my gut will be going. But exercise, exercise is problematic. I can’t afford to join a gym, I have an increasingly low attention span and I refuse to surrender my dignity, so wearing bosom cupping t-shirts, trackie-bottoms and *cough* trainers is out. So like I say it’s problematic.
Instead I go for walks. Big long walks. The plan is that the reverberations from each foot-step, as well as powdering my arthritic knees, will eventually smooth out the marbled fat of my body as though shaking down a duvet inside a duvet-cover. Nice and smooth and linen-cupboard fresh, that’s the way I want it.
Sometimes the walks can be too long. After one session with my therapist at Ards hospital (it’s a country practice) I decided it would be a good idea to walk back to Belfast. My therapist looked concerned, peering over the glasses that she doesn’t wear. “Are you sure that’s wise?” It wasn’t wise, in fact. It was a miserable rainy day and as I set off from Ards shopping centre I discovered that there were no footpaths by the side of the motorway. Nevertheless I pressed on, trudging over the uneven tussocks, slippery underfoot, as he cars sped past. After about a mile a central reservation appeared and I crossed the road to reach it, believing it to be safer than the narrow verge. I have never been called a wanker so many times in my life, certainly not in such quick succession. As I powered along in the pissing rain, half blind from the tyre-spray on my glasses, every single van with more than one man in it rolled down the window and shouted “GHARGLE GLARGLAR-GARVA…WANKER!!!”
I know walking is an anomalous and suspect activity in Northern Ireland but this must have happened six or seven times! They didn’t know I was an idiot, I could have broken down and been walking to a petrol station like a normal person. Next time I try it I’ll bring props: a petrol can or a steering wheel wrapped around my head, a sprinkling of broken glass like crystal dandruff.
By the time I got to Dundonald there were pavements again and it felt like the home stretch, despite the six miles still ahead of me. The rain got harder and I got blinder but I had made up my mind to walk it and my resolve was stiffened, if everything else seemed to be dissolving away. It took nearly two and a half hours and if I lost any weight at all it was from my eroded inner thighs: wet denim makes for unforgiving work-out gear.
I remain a work in progress. I hope you’ll be hearing less of me.
*I have no idea if Lollypop ladies get paid or not.
But no more: my whale-bone stays are as unfashionable as an elephant’s foot umbrella-stand or a dodo’s cock coat-hook. I’ve had enough of cow-towing to the consensus: these udders are coming out from under-wraps. I’m going to lose weight.
I’ve not been really fat before and I’ve lived a lazy and dissipated life, drinking like my bladder was on fire and eating as if I were in the last panel of an Asterix book. I even learned to cook to foster my habit, a tremendous feat of will-power for someone as bone-idle as I am. Then suddenly there were no bones visible at all. My jaw-line softened and caved in like a sand-castle fighting the tide and my waist-band became a super-group. A man who gets a round of applause from his own tits as he descends the stairs is a man who needs to make certain changes or accept cuddly uncle status for the rest of his life, a life which, thankfully, will be seriously compromised by his Greggs loyalty card.
I’m doing the usual things, the obvious things. I’ve stopped drinking two bottles of wine a night and replaced them with no bottles. I’ve given up red meat, fat, sugar, bread, milk, cheese and happiness. On hearing about this reckless self-denial my mother asked “My god! What else is there?” A good question: it tends to be fruit, vegetables, turkey and herbal tea. On the first couple of days I assumed I would be craving delicious booze but no it was fat and French bread that gave me the pangs. I assumed abandoning my vices would instantly give me a feeling of serenity and well-being or the D.T.s. But no, what I got was skin like styling putty and the first cold-sore I’d had in twenty years. These are dubious benefits at best.
Of course diet is only half the story: the other half is positive thinking. No, obviously not: that would be ridiculous. The very fucking idea. The other half is exercise. As you can tell I know nothing about dieting and I’m just guessing that not drinking the weight of your own head every night and eating less obviously filthy food, less often, is a good idea. It may not be, a lot of modern dieting is counterintuitive, but I’m going with my gut and hopefully my gut will be going. But exercise, exercise is problematic. I can’t afford to join a gym, I have an increasingly low attention span and I refuse to surrender my dignity, so wearing bosom cupping t-shirts, trackie-bottoms and *cough* trainers is out. So like I say it’s problematic.
Instead I go for walks. Big long walks. The plan is that the reverberations from each foot-step, as well as powdering my arthritic knees, will eventually smooth out the marbled fat of my body as though shaking down a duvet inside a duvet-cover. Nice and smooth and linen-cupboard fresh, that’s the way I want it.
Sometimes the walks can be too long. After one session with my therapist at Ards hospital (it’s a country practice) I decided it would be a good idea to walk back to Belfast. My therapist looked concerned, peering over the glasses that she doesn’t wear. “Are you sure that’s wise?” It wasn’t wise, in fact. It was a miserable rainy day and as I set off from Ards shopping centre I discovered that there were no footpaths by the side of the motorway. Nevertheless I pressed on, trudging over the uneven tussocks, slippery underfoot, as he cars sped past. After about a mile a central reservation appeared and I crossed the road to reach it, believing it to be safer than the narrow verge. I have never been called a wanker so many times in my life, certainly not in such quick succession. As I powered along in the pissing rain, half blind from the tyre-spray on my glasses, every single van with more than one man in it rolled down the window and shouted “GHARGLE GLARGLAR-GARVA…WANKER!!!”
I know walking is an anomalous and suspect activity in Northern Ireland but this must have happened six or seven times! They didn’t know I was an idiot, I could have broken down and been walking to a petrol station like a normal person. Next time I try it I’ll bring props: a petrol can or a steering wheel wrapped around my head, a sprinkling of broken glass like crystal dandruff.
By the time I got to Dundonald there were pavements again and it felt like the home stretch, despite the six miles still ahead of me. The rain got harder and I got blinder but I had made up my mind to walk it and my resolve was stiffened, if everything else seemed to be dissolving away. It took nearly two and a half hours and if I lost any weight at all it was from my eroded inner thighs: wet denim makes for unforgiving work-out gear.
I remain a work in progress. I hope you’ll be hearing less of me.
*I have no idea if Lollypop ladies get paid or not.
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