First Weigh-In, Cube, String, Ring & Dandy Highwaymen
Slimming World
To quote some of the younger people I work with…”OMG OMG!!”.
You see, as I think I said last time, I was a bit knocked-back by my first visit to Slimming World last Thursday. I have now confirmed that my bathroom scales are about 7 pounds under. They say I am lighter than before. If you add that error to the fact that I weighed more than I thought anyway, it turns out the last Thursday, I weighed in at 16 Stone, 11 and a half pounds. Grim to say the least. In the last year and a bit since diabetes diagnosis I have gone from 17 Stone 3 Pounds down to about 15 Stone 12 Pounds and apparantely, back up again recently.
But enough of this misery. After my first week of sticking to the Slimming World wisdom, I had lost 4 and a half pounds. More than anyone else in my group. I got a round of applause (as does everyone who loses poundage) and it was kind of cool. It was also a huge relief as the Slimming World food optimising principles involved me eating more food than I ever thought you could on a diet. As I followed the guide over the last 7 days, a little voice was always in the back of my mind…”this can’t possibly be right..”
I am happy to report that it obviously is and I have enjoyed doing a lot of cooking, HATED DOING A LOT OF WASHING UP and come out of Tesco with a lot of things I had never bought before. I really hope this is not the initial spurt some of my new friends in the club promised that happens to men when they first join the club.
After the weigh-in, the session itself was ok but I could have done without the discussions regarding the colour and amount of water passed following the consumption of certain types of fruit salad and I now know a lot more about slimming pants than I ever needed or wanted to.
On A Roll
A weird thing happened today. J let me have the little Rubik Cube she got in a Christmas Cracker about 2 weeks ago and I have been constantly twiddling the damn thing since. Then, at about 8.12pm today, I completed it. I wish I knew how. Bits of pieces came flooding back from that heddy summer of 1982 when school was alive with the constant clicking of cubes, but mostly it was a combination of concentration and fluke.
Scott, my hard working colleague had noticed me doing the Rubik thing in every spare moment (in breaks only - promise) and brought three puzzles of his own in. One of them was a complicated string, wood and metal ring thing that he had never been able to do. Two minutes after finishing the Rubik Cube, I picked up this puzzle and after a bit of fiddling, held aloft one lone metal ring. he was duly impressed and I was indeed on a roll.
Melody In The Metal Cocoon
One thing that public transport will never offer the veteran motorist is the ability and freedom to sing along to your in-car music loudly and slightly tunelessly. Nose picking on the 42B is risky and frowned upon also, but I digress…
As was the case with the Rubik Cube, long forgotten memories come flooding back with impressive clarity sometimes. The IPod was blaring out my 80s Music in completely random order when along came that timeless classic “Stand & Deliver” by one Adam Ant. Three minutes later I had accurately and semi-tunefully sung along with it. Every damn “diddly qua qua”. How does that work? I don’t exactly play it every day. I have probably only played 3 or 4 times in the last 20 years. The next song, “All Of My Heart” by ABC, was easier as it is certainly in my all time personal Top 40 and is the sort of song that I listen to once or twice a month. Like “Vienna” by Ultravox, it belongs to that exclusive collection of great songs than never got to No.1 in the 80s of course, but I digress once more. “Careless Whisper” by Georgio Michealosk completed the trip-home-trilogy and you can guess the end of this story.
I find particular resonance in it these days. As I enter my 40th year, I probably will never dance again and no amount of guilty rhythms will change that.
As Sophie and her friends say quite often these days, “Random”. 
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