Down, but not yet out

OK! OK! I'm still here, honest. It's shame keeping me from blogging. I've been hanging on by the skin of my teeth waiting for recess. And not so much fighting the fat as lying down and letting it kick the cr*p out of me.

It seems that my recess has started early, thanks to a particularly nasty dose of sinusitis. At the moment I can't eat for sneezing, but this morning I had to give up on my toast because of the pain in swallowing. I have things to do tomorrow and this weekend so I am fighting it off with Berocca, honey and two packets of Tim Tams.

I have plans for the next nine weeks but my screen is now convered in sneeze so I shall sign off and retire (after brushing Tim Tam crumbs out of my bed).

Call my buff

This is getting ridiculous...where is everyone? This is going to be my last entry until someone else does one! It's been nearly two weeks since anyone else posted and I've had enough. In any case, apparently blogging comes under the ever-expanding list of things we're not allowed to do on our PCs at work, so I might be doing it less anyway.

So, on to more fatty topics. On Channel 4 this week I watched the first episode of a new show, "How to Look Good Naked". An incredibly annoying presenter (described by the Guardian as "a manic stylist called Gok") - my god how I wanted to tell him to stick his awful glasses where the sun don't shine - aside, it was inspired and inspiring viewing. This week's subject, Sandra, hadn't let her husband see her naked for three years. By the end of the show she was happy to allow her naked body be projected on to the side of a building in the middle of London. A well-fitted bra, a fresh new hairstyle and make-up, and some flattering, curvy new clothes stood in for exercise and calorie-counting. Most refreshing. I can't wait for next week's programme, but Gok has got to go!

Dumpster

In the absence of any proper blog entries (and my fellow bloggers, it would appear) a top tip from the Viz website:

WEIGHTWATCHERS. After reaching your ideal weight, maintain it by weighing yourself before and after a dump. The weight difference is the amount of food you can eat before having another dump.

And another:

SUPERMARKETS. Help promote healthy living by putting your cakes, ice creams, pies etc. in aisles that are too narrow for fatties to fit through.

Virtual weight loss

I've discovered a website that, for a mere £19.99, allows you to upload a recent photo and shaves the pounds off so that you can see yourself at your ideal weight. It's called, self-explanatorily, "Seeyourselfslimmer". Who's going to give it a try first?

Sub-bourbon dreams

Following my paean to the bourbon biscuit, one of Fatfighter2’s colleagues found this awe-inspiring picture of a giant bourbon biscuit (see actual size bourbon biscuit on the left for comparison), a project created by Tom Vigar and featured on http://www.pimpthatsnack.com/ (check out the site for the most mind-boggling confections you’ve ever seen, and vote to bring this grand biscuit gesture back to the number 1 spot where it belongs). (Picture reproduced by kind permission of the artist.)

It’s a miracle!

Biscuit base

I've just had a cup of tea at my desk and one of those most nostalgic of biscuits, a chocolate bourbon cream (not, as it happens, from Tesco, but could I find an image of a single biscuit in Google image search? Could I hell). I was immediately transported back in time (isn't it funny how only tastes and smells and, sometimes, music can do this? Calling all Fatfighters: I suggest a Fatfighter topic based on your most evocative food: what is it, and where does it take you?) to a party, when I was about six. I had eaten too many custard creams, which at the time were my favourite, and was sick. After that I could never touch them again (my loathing for peppermint choc chip ice cream and gin stems from similar experiences, although for the sake of propriety I must say I didn't get the opportunity to go off gin till I was in my 20s) and chocolate bourbons were the only biscuit for me, although I had a lingering fondness for those sickly sweet pink wafer biscuits.

My mum always seemed to stock the biscuit tin with the most unappealing biscuits. Frugality, and the consequent desire to preserve the biscuits by making them unappealing to young children, is the only possible explanation for why there were only ever the likes of fly cemeteries (AKA Garibaldi biscuits - this Wikipedia entry is worth a read, because it introduces the word "dysphemic", which I am rather taken with - is this a Scottish trait, do you think? - although to my surprise I had to add in the phrase "fly cemeteries"), Rich Teas (the "Lord of all biscuits"? You must be joking!) and dry flapjacks in that biscuit tin, and we usually had to wait for parties or visits to other people's houses to get a bourbon biscuit.

Until today I don't think I had eaten a bourbon biscuit for at least 10 years, possibly more, and look what it's made me remember!

The dog ate my diet

Where is everyone? I've been deserted by my Fatfighter friends.

I told Fatfighter 4 that I'd 'fess up about eating cake at work, so here I am, true to my word. Since being ill, I've abandoned all pretence of being on a diet and have been more or less eating whatever I've felt like. The turning point came on Sunday, at a birthday party to celebrate the Peas' fourth birthday. The Peas' dad had just been dumped by someone much younger and - arguably; actually, irrefutably - prettier than him and decided to take off that morning and drive to the south coast, returning the next day after the party was over. I consoled myself with birthday cake. No, no, I wasn't missing him, but it had been meant to be my weekend "off", and I was tired from the tummy bug.

Cake has led on to other things, for example a curry on Monday night, with lovely fluffy naan bread to mop it up; wine, wine and more wine; a sausage and egg bagel from that place beginning with M; and the aforementioned cake. It has been the most incredible, sunny, warm couple of weeks in Scotland - in other words, summer - and by rights I should be eating salads and drinking copious quantities of water. Mañana...

Dire rear and other infernal affairs

Have been off work for past couple of days with pains and gurglings and other, more unmentionable gastric symptoms. Not nice. You know the sketch in Little Britain, in which two Church of England "worthies" visit their local church fete and sample some biscuits made by Mrs Patel (and variations on that theme)? That was how it all started. Quite comical on reflection.

But hey, I'm less than 12 stone now, so something good has come out of it.

I am joking of course. Not about the weight but about the implication that having a stomach bug is a good way of losing weight. It is a way of losing weight though.

True confessions

Sunday's damage: half a bottle of red wine, followed indecently quickly by half a tub of Haagen Dazs cookies-and-cream ice cream. It was all going so well! But red wine softens up your self-control something terrible and suddenly anything is possible, and you live in a world in which everything is wonderful and no one gets fat.

It doesn't help that I live right above a supermarket which seems to be open all hours. It's not a very good supermarket, mind, but it's got a large freezer cabinet full of different types of Haagen Dazs ice cream (including Chinese versions, which don't appear to be fakes, in Aduki Bean and Green Tea flavours).

If the supermarket sold Wotsits, I'd truly be damned.