When you walk with the animals, talk with the animals...

I feel smug. I should too, all Christmas presents bought and wrapped a week ago. They're pretty good as well and only one was bought over the Internet so at least I've given myself the gift of human interaction this year. Ahhh, bless.
I feel slightly vindicated. I have a season ticket to Crystal Palace Football Club. I have missed six home games this year including the last four before last night's fog fest. I can't say I missed much. For reference, two of the four I was on my "Gadding and Gallivanting Around Places I Used To Live Tour, 2006" and for the next two I was quite ill having not really been up to the gadding and gallivanting etc. But that's fine because last night I very nearly didn't go and having gone and suffered through a foggy one-nil win to find that my weakened circulation had virtually stopped I was able to claim some bizarre sort of moral superiority. I was right not to go to the other games because, face it, we're not that good so I didn't miss much. But having gone, I suffered badly. It's a funny old game.
I feel odd. One week ago I was having the best night of my life. And I know circumstances mean that we haven't been in touch since I was kind of hoping that circumstances could be overcome. It turns out they can’t. And I guess they never will.
I feel better. Well better than I did midweek when out with another potential person of additional interest. But she didn't really. The good news is that now that I'm dead* I feel a lot happier about letting people down rather than chugging along for fear of upsetting anyone. The fact that I haven't done it yet is neither here nor there although it probably is somewhere but I don't think I can get here from there right now.
I feel vindicated. So this is Christmas, what have you done? Well, John let me see, I think I've changed most of the negative elements of my personality, lost 6.69 stone, 42.50 kilos or 93.69 lbs depending upon your weapon of choice and hauled this old ship around so convincingly that I fully expect 2007 to be as brilliant as 2005 was bad (2006 doesn't really count due to it's nature as a repositioning year). So if I hear Mr Lennon on the radio asking the question and then informing me that war is over merely because I so desire it then I will be able to declare that I am nearly ready to consider the salvation of the world due to my new found ability to save myself.

* Refers to previous illness and fact that in Oct 2005 I was so ill I now regard the morning I woke up in hospital as the day I died. There is some scientific evidence to back this point up so it's not simple self-pity. In fact it's the opposite because now, whenever I'm stuck in a moment that has the potential to re-establish my previous ways (dull, dull, dull) then I ask myself this, "Now that you're dead what are you going to do with your life?"

Key Phrases For All Spies in London in December

This is London calling.
The fog has lifted.
Repeat.
The fog has lifted.
The ferries are running.
Repeat.
The ferries are running.

The magic formula

Lunchtime meeting with a friend in a pub near Victoria Station
+ My tendency to get to pub early
+ My wanting to have a drink to help oil the brains over the complications of Saturday night and Sunday morning
Multiplied by my friends ability to turn up thirty minutes late
= drunk by two o'clock and posting bollocks on blog when back home by half three.

Nice pun, shame about the face

Beta blogger? I geddit. Sounds a bit like... Arf arf arf. Yeah, ok. But apart from that what is the point? Speaking as someone who is on beta blockers, I don't know how it is meant to be anything other than a trite play on words. The similarities end with the name.
As cheap and as shoddy as a tabloid newspaper. And we love it for exactly the same reason. Still at least the "profile views" seem to count each time the profile is viewed (unlike before) however it doesn't appear to count unique views. Not that I care. If I have a really boring day I might be able to view my profile a couple of thousand times. Man, I'll never get tired of seeing that counter go up one at a time.

Ok, huddle up

Let's recap.
Words only have the meaning you give to them. Meanings change. One man meat is another man's murder. I know this and I know that the sentimental drivel that passes for 95% of pop music is simply a series of vaguely connected words hastily arranged into a form that scans and suits the not-so randomly written notes. I'm quite happy to admit that I probably like a reasonable percentage of the 95% of pop music that qualifies as sentimental drivel but I know that no one is speaking to me about my life, no one is speaking for me.
So why is it that I'm getting all misty when listening to "There is a light that never goes out" and "Let it be". It's not that they're deep and meaningful. I mean, "Let it be". Let it be what you blithering idiot. Let it be an unfinished sentence? And the thought of the world's least sexual man giving out romantic pearls of wisdom (I'm talking Morrisey here, not McCartney. Although now I come to think of it...) sends shivers.
I'm intelligent. I know these songs (sorry about this) say nothing to me about me life. It's just that at this sentimental time of the year I'm allowing myself to think that these songs are saying something to me about my life. Only I'm not quite sure what they're saying other than (sorry again) I want the one I can't have and it's driving me mad. Are the songs helping me to cope with this? No, but it wont stop me projecting.
But if words only have the meaning you give to them then I'm giving these words too important a meaning and I really should stop.

Let us not beat around the bush here

CAUTION: This posting may actually contain beating around bush and a distinctly high level of waffling and not getting to the point.

You get two people together who want to be together. But circumstances stand in the way. Life gets in the way and not in a "two houses divided" manner, not in an "already in another relationship" kind of way. In a "circumstances make things really complicated" kind of way because of where you live, what you do and where you're going. When you think you know that this is someone you really want to be with and you have a great time with them but you know you'll only ever get to see them once a month, twice a month at most, that work will always get in the way for all manner of reasons that you cannot possibly begin to imagine.
I may have said this before but life is shit. It's shit because it's linear. I guess I need more time. I'd like to have some time back please. I'd like to be in one of those crappy movies where minds or bodies switch. I'd like to have my current shape/weight/frame/state of mind in my mid twenties body. Maybe early. If anyone knows of a god/Hollywood studio who can do that for me, I'd like to be told. But then the circumstances would never have occurred and I think I like my life to be complicated after all.
You think you're confused, try it from where I'm sitting. All kinds of walls have been pulled down that should not have been pulled down and I am officially the most confused person in town.
Right, where were we?

Riding the Woolwich Express

I have a Freeview box. The gym to which I have recently been attending on a regular and dedicated basis has all of the Sky Sports channels. It is, therefore, no surprise that at 7am this morning I was in the gym preparing to saddle up on an exercise bike in front of Sky Sports One to watch the cricket. Seemed to be more productive than lying in bed listening to the radio, trying to work out if England were doing better when I was lying on my left or my right side.
Sadly, the gym opens at 8am tomorrow by which stage the match will either be over (and the Ashes with it) or Australia will have batted us out of the game so convincingly that watching will be unbearable.
On the upside, I managed an hour on the bike and twenty six kilometres. I don't know if that's good or bad but it seemed pretty decent to me.

Stare not at your navel lest the fluff stares back

Last effort at self-analysis before moving on:

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

Old Friedrich's got a bad reputation, gained from those who misused his work. But it seems to me that this quote says more about how I used to be.
Screw navel gazing.
Just get on with it.

It's not just weight you loose

it's money too. Think about it, with a whopping eight inches of the waist there's little I wear now that I was wearing three months ago, let alone twelve. And tonight I realised that I needed something "smart casual" in order to go out tomorrow night. Now the weight is stablising, it's time to spend, spend, spend. It'll be worth it, right? I'll find out tomorrow night.

Look, the picture in the profile is slightly out of date.

And very far away. And rather indistinct.
Anyway, here's me wearing my 1994 Rag Week T-shirt!!! It didn't fit me in 1994. It's fits now. That says a lot. As does the fact that I've still got it when it hasn't fitted for 12 years and it was all I did during Rag in the first place.



On the other hand, I may have updated the picture in the profile by the time you read this. In which case just pretend you haven't read this.

Hello. Are you still here?

Well it has been a long time, hasn't. I expect you thought I got lost. Well before I get totally back into the swing of things I'll lay down some highlights of the last six months.
God, Crystal Palace are awful at the moment.
My nephew is doing much better than Crystal Palace.
As indeed am I.
6 and one quarter stones lost since 1st February 2006. 6 and a quarter. Go measure that out in bags of sugar.
Not working but I reckon I'm nearly bag to full health. I'm certainly nearly back to full mental health, most of the time. Well, that's enough of this frivolity for the moment. More will inevitably follow. And it probably wont take six months.
Honest.

Your feet are the gateway to the soul

And my gates are in an awful state.
Turns out I'm not quite fit enough yet. And I think it's a bit more than twelve miles. At least I hope so because including diversions in Deptford (not well sign posted) it took four hours twenty to walk to London Bridge. At that point my body had just about given up.
The beta-blockers are really doing their job, the average heart rate was 97 with the highest being 107. Without the drugs it would extremely high (still doesn't make this kind of walk a good idea though). Walking back from the station to the flat (around 25 very long minutes indeed) the average heart rate was 109 and the highest being 127. Weird.
Anyway, I may bore myself with some other details about the walk later. For now, I'm going to soak my feet. Again.

Windows are dangerous things

Well, kind of.
As part of my recovery I've been building up the walking. I suppose it's an attempt to force the weight off. So far it's involved going east, to Crossness a couple of times (and routes along the way) and Beckton today (which technically involved going west to start with and of course if you go east then you have to come west to get home and anyway technically Crossness and Beckton are variants of north-east from here).
Tomorrow I think I'll check out the fitness levels. Tomorrow morning, early, very early, I'm going to head for one of the sights visable from my living room window. Tomorrow I'll walk to the London Eye. Should only be about twelve miles. At current speeds it should only take me between three and four hours.
Living next to the river (albeit a cheaper part of it) has made me slightly obsessed by it, by travelling on or alongside it. I've just been looking at a website of a man who has attempted to create a Dave Gorman style challenge to walk the length of the path, setting down rules for the journey but the last two stages remain incomplete (and the website hasn't been updated for two years). Perhaps he got bored. Perhaps I will too.

This is now.

And England (soon to officially change our nation's name to Engerland) have finally struggled past mighty Trinidad and Tobago. We huffed and we puffed and we finally blew in the house of paper. Only took about eighty five minutes for the love of god (small g deliberate).
And in contrast to ten years ago, the flats all around are alive with the sound of cheering. Loud and sustained too. Even now I can hear a distant stero blaring out 'Vindaloo' (those of you not from our fair isle might wish to research Fat Les on Google/Wikipedia/iTunes and the like).
In fact virtually every goal in the competition has been cheered so far although it is somewhat heart warming (in a one-dimensional male kind of way) that England is extremely well supported in what is a culturally diverse area.
Now if only we had a team that reflected this level of support...

That was then...

Ten years ago I was living in Glasgow. For those of you who don't remember, ten years ago the European Championships were being held in England (ah the irony). When it got to the semi-final my street, Langside Road, roared in collective excitement when Southgate missed the all important penalty in the all important penatly shoot out and Germany progressed to the final. Scotland loved it. I resolved to leave.
That said, I was fairly loud in celebration of Shearer's early goal. It was probably revenge. Even my tub of Sommerfield's strawberry ice-cream and all the Marlboro light's in the world (plus one or two other things, cough, cough, fear not I don't do that sort of thing anymore) weren't going to pick me up.

Right, now the picture thing really is back up and running

This is my nephew, Ben. Tomorrow he will be two months old, no one expected him to live for an hour. He is my little miracle (well, actually my brother and his wife's but you get the idea).

My role in his life is minimal so far. Due to my illness and his we have not been able to meet up. I'm not able to go to Armagh from London just yet and strangely, Ben hasn't learnt to drive yet. Still, the one contribution I have made is to supply him with enough Crystal Palace kits to see him through his first year.
Look kid, if you end up hating football, I will understand. If you end up loving football but hating Crystal Palace, well lets just say that we've all been there.

There is something self-fulfilling about dressing up children in football kits but as the song sung by a gay icon and adapted by some many burly football fans, que sera sera. He will make his own mind and my brother and I can only try to influence his choice for the best. But for those of us amazed and thrilled that he's alive at all, what will be, will be and two months on we should all be happy about that.

Although it only took 30 minutes

to go from
to this
Mind you, even on that first one, central London is obscured by the rain clouds drawing in. It's almost back to normal although the Eye is still obscured. Just.

Another quiet day by the river

Yeah, if I bought that I'd be cross too

"Is it worth it?" once asked Elvis Costello. "Der dum de dum di di dum, it's just a rumour that's been spread around town, somebody said that people get killed in the results of their shipbuilding."
"Why?" I hear you ask. "I have no idea," I reply.
But once thing worries me about the strange rise of World Cupitis. And it's the George Cross, the England flag. I don't mind people buying it and displaying it. What I genuinely don't understand is why people who claim to be so patriotic need to have the Geroge Cross that has England written across it in large letters. We know. We understand. We live in the country. We know what the flag is. Buy the one that actually is the flag. And don't get the ones that have a sponsor (ie the Sun or the News of the World) or the name of the shop writ large upon it (JJB being the main culprit here).
This has pointlessly troubled me since, that rare creature, the Olympic medal winning English athlete, instead of reaching for the union flag, goes for the Geroge Cross from a spectator who bought it in the sports supermarket advertised in the bottom right hand corner of the self-same flag. National pride? I think not.

Good flag (well, within reason)
Bad flag
Very naughty flag

It's a good job I'm ill

The great quest is but a few minutes away from starting. I have bought a desk, a cheap desk, a self-assembly desk but a desk that the store said can only be delivered. It will turn up today. I was given a time. Well, in truth it could be any time between 8 and 6.
So, today I shall sit and wait. And wait. And wait. And time my trips to the toilet very carefully.
Wish me luck.