The Brave

In an effort to placate the gods of Blog, I've just scarfed my lunch (big mistake) in order to take time to write another post. Two in two days. Best be careful though. This sort of behaviour is habit forming, I've been told. Lunch was, to say the least, entertaining. Anyone who's following me on Twitter (that's you, Jones, you and some lovely people who want to help me make money from home) will know that it went badly. Never, ever mistake the amount of mustard you are preparing to put on your Ryvita with ham and salad. Did you know that mustard, when chewed and swallowed, can waft up the back of the nose and cause a sensation of your nasal hair being on fire? No, I didn't know that until today either. I always thought that the mustard gas used in the First World War was named for it's colour. I never realised it was made from actual Dijon mustard.

I was having such a healthy lunch because I'm on a diet. I'm trying to lose the multiple Heathrow injections I've received since arriving here in lovely grimy London town. I'm not entirely certain why, because I actually exercise more here, and eat about the same, but it requires more effort to budge a single gram off my weight here than it ever did at home. So I've sold my soul to the evil empire and signed up for Tesco Diets. And so far it's working. Of course, today should see me lose a little more weight, given that I now have no nasal passages left, but as a general rule, yes, I have lost weight in the four weeks I've been doing this. In fact, I'm about 15% of my way to my 'target weight' (which is considerably lower than the point at which I expect to fall off the wagon and start launching myself at chocolate). I'm rather proud of myself. I'm only about 5kg above what I was when I arrived, all two and a half years (and many times through Heathrow) ago.

So why am I writing about a bloody diet that is clearly causing me pain? Because I can see problems looming on the horizon is why. Many of my friends are on diets. They're often supportive, and we arrange to go out to places where the salads are appetising, the food is cheap, and we can enjoy ourselves without counting either calories or pennies. But I'm about to enter a realm of deep fried mars bars, fast food, and offal for breakfast. That's right. I'm off to the culinary delights of Scotland. And nobody knows how I will escape weight gain, except by malnutrition - because there is surely no goodness in the sort of food you can buy in the places I will be heading. No more healthy salads, freshly steamed fish. It will be survival of the fittest, based on past experience of the budget holiday in Scotland. Except in this context, fittest means able to consume the most fried food without any of it coming back up before you chug some alcohol to deaden your senses.

Perhaps I'm being harsh. But either way, this is the surest test of my dieting resolve yet faced. And I think I'm going to wilt before the onslaught like a 2 week old lettuce leaf.