A few months after finding indifference to booze, I decided I needed to go on a diet and I posted this on MWO: (an update follows below the post)
When we’re alkies and addicts as well as often neglecting our families and careers, we tend to neglect ourselves, both physically and mentally. I’ve allowed my body to deteriorate and my brain to atrophy and since becoming sober I’ve felt a need to reverse the decline. Undoing decades of self-destruction won’t be easy; in fact it probably won’t be possible to completely reverse the very real, slow suicide I’d been committing, particularly over the last 8 to 10 years. However, I have taken steps to do what I can, and part of that is health and fitness: eating well (and less of it) and exercise. It’s early days, but I’m starting to feel the benefits and I’ve noticed differences in my behaviour and attitudes.
On Thursday I was just leaving the house to take the hounds for their morning swim down at the lake, when I realised I hadn’t eaten anything and I grabbed a pear to take with me. Not a particularly strange or noteworthy thing to do, but so very different from my instinct till recently, of reaching for a Snickers or a Mars bar to shove in my pocket.
Walking round the lake it started to chuck it down. When I’d left the house the weather seemed fine so I was wearing shorts and a T shirt. We passed a man with his dog and I nodded a cheery hello and he replied “doesn’t look like it’s going to stop does it?”. I knew a German girl who was always annoyed at the way the British wasted time with smalltalk about the weather and she was absolutely appalled when people said things such as “hello, how are you?” or started an instruction with “would you mind…” or “I wonder if you would be so kind as to…”. She considered this sort of behaviour disingenuous and pretending you cared about someone or whether they minded doing something when you were actually giving an instruction, to be bordering on an outright lie. She was a funny girl, awfully small breasts but not a bad sort nevertheless.
I was surprised by a passage in Bill Bryson’s Notes From A Small Island, where he noted the British always smile and laugh when they meet each other outside. Surprised because I assumed everyone did this. When you meet someone, you quickly exchange pleasantries and one of you says something that amuses the other. It can be the tiniest and hardly even remotely funny thing, but just enough to allow you both to show amusement. So to the man in the rain I replied “I didn’t exactly dress for this weather”, and I pointed at my sodden clothing in a self-deprecating way. This was the quip that should have allowed us both to show amusement and the end of our conversation. However, while he did chuckle, he also replied “no you didn’t did you, you silly tw*t”. I was more than a little shocked by this but didn’t let it show. I smiled and walked on.
The word “tw*t” is of course highly offensive and really not widely used, especially in the company of strangers. It is nearly as offensive as the C word, which is reserved for only the most irate and emotional occasions, except in Caernarfon. Caernarfon is a town in Wales in which I spent some time a few years ago. The locals have the extraordinary habit of greeting each other with the phrase “iawn cont”. Iawn literally means ‘very’ but has many slightly different meanings depending on the circumstances in which it is used and in this case it means ‘right’, as in utmost. “Cont” is the Welsh version of the English word, just replace the O with a U and you’ll understand the greeting as “You’re a complete c*nt?”. This can also, in Caernarfon, be substituted with the greeting “s’mae cwd”, which translates as “hiya scrotum”.
The people of Caernarfon are unique in this regard, particularly in a country like Wales where Welsh speakers tend to hold their language in very high esteem and cherish it’s history as the language of poetry of the bards and druids of old. Many Welsh people will tell you there aren’t even any swear words in Welsh, such is its purity. That’s bollocks, but I digress.
So, for the inhabitants of a Welsh town to so utterly abandon the normal, expected, formal niceties, that people greet each other in such a way is quite shocking. When I say people greet each other this way, I mean men, obviously. I don’t know how the women greet each other, they probably ask about babies, or chat about crocheting or discuss pink and fluffy things, just as they do the world over.
I do hope “tw*t” won’t become a common greeting, surely only the most vulgar of people would use the word so lightly…or post it on a forum.
On Thursday I was just leaving the house to take the hounds for their morning swim down at the lake, when I realised I hadn’t eaten anything and I grabbed a pear to take with me. Not a particularly strange or noteworthy thing to do, but so very different from my instinct till recently, of reaching for a Snickers or a Mars bar to shove in my pocket.
Walking round the lake it started to chuck it down. When I’d left the house the weather seemed fine so I was wearing shorts and a T shirt. We passed a man with his dog and I nodded a cheery hello and he replied “doesn’t look like it’s going to stop does it?”. I knew a German girl who was always annoyed at the way the British wasted time with smalltalk about the weather and she was absolutely appalled when people said things such as “hello, how are you?” or started an instruction with “would you mind…” or “I wonder if you would be so kind as to…”. She considered this sort of behaviour disingenuous and pretending you cared about someone or whether they minded doing something when you were actually giving an instruction, to be bordering on an outright lie. She was a funny girl, awfully small breasts but not a bad sort nevertheless.
I was surprised by a passage in Bill Bryson’s Notes From A Small Island, where he noted the British always smile and laugh when they meet each other outside. Surprised because I assumed everyone did this. When you meet someone, you quickly exchange pleasantries and one of you says something that amuses the other. It can be the tiniest and hardly even remotely funny thing, but just enough to allow you both to show amusement. So to the man in the rain I replied “I didn’t exactly dress for this weather”, and I pointed at my sodden clothing in a self-deprecating way. This was the quip that should have allowed us both to show amusement and the end of our conversation. However, while he did chuckle, he also replied “no you didn’t did you, you silly tw*t”. I was more than a little shocked by this but didn’t let it show. I smiled and walked on.
The word “tw*t” is of course highly offensive and really not widely used, especially in the company of strangers. It is nearly as offensive as the C word, which is reserved for only the most irate and emotional occasions, except in Caernarfon. Caernarfon is a town in Wales in which I spent some time a few years ago. The locals have the extraordinary habit of greeting each other with the phrase “iawn cont”. Iawn literally means ‘very’ but has many slightly different meanings depending on the circumstances in which it is used and in this case it means ‘right’, as in utmost. “Cont” is the Welsh version of the English word, just replace the O with a U and you’ll understand the greeting as “You’re a complete c*nt?”. This can also, in Caernarfon, be substituted with the greeting “s’mae cwd”, which translates as “hiya scrotum”.
The people of Caernarfon are unique in this regard, particularly in a country like Wales where Welsh speakers tend to hold their language in very high esteem and cherish it’s history as the language of poetry of the bards and druids of old. Many Welsh people will tell you there aren’t even any swear words in Welsh, such is its purity. That’s bollocks, but I digress.
So, for the inhabitants of a Welsh town to so utterly abandon the normal, expected, formal niceties, that people greet each other in such a way is quite shocking. When I say people greet each other this way, I mean men, obviously. I don’t know how the women greet each other, they probably ask about babies, or chat about crocheting or discuss pink and fluffy things, just as they do the world over.
I do hope “tw*t” won’t become a common greeting, surely only the most vulgar of people would use the word so lightly…or post it on a forum.
Well the diet continued and 4 months down the line I've lost over 50 pounds with about 20 still to go. The rate of my weight loss has had a significantly detrimental effect on my wallet. It seems as soon as I buy clothes, they become too big for me. Just this morning I've been forced to buy yet more trousers to replace the ones I bought just 3 weeks ago because I've dropped another waist size (down from 46” to a 38”) and no doubt these will become redundant in another 3 weeks. I've had to replace all my shirts because I've dropped from a 5xl (yep that's XXXXXL!!!!!!) to an xl and now that winter's here, I see that my winter clothes are all going to need replacing as well. Seriously, I look ludicrous in those big coats.
How on earth did I become so fat? Simple, I was on a booze and food suicide mission. Thank the gods I found baclofen before I completed it.
Fortunately “tw*t” doesn't appear to have become a common greeting in Bedford … not yet anyway.
a word of caution to any who are considering giving up the drink: be very aware that you may see weight sliding off of you. look what happened to murphy: he went from tubster to strapping in a few short months. and i lost 20 pounds and two sizes in the same amount of time.
ReplyDeletethe weight won't just be from you body, though. it will also be falling away from your spirit. watch out for this, too, as that'll give you a previously-unknown energy level, and you'll find yourself doing things you'd never imagined doing. you might be so active and overjoyed that you'll lose even more weight! you mightn't be able to eat due to the excitement of it all.
but i promise you with the blessings of my favorite ancestor, you will love it!
rudy b