Dear Hugh 1
Thursday May 5th 2005
Dear Hugh,
Well the good news is that today I am 13st. 10lbs. I realise that this entirely frightful statement is like claiming the good news to be that I only have cancer of the throat, but you have no idea what I’ve been going through.
For starters, did anyone ever warn you than a bottle of vino contains something like 2,000 calories? Exactly, nobody told me either. Consequently I’ve been merrily drinking my calorific RDA before I even get started on the crisp-breads and salad and all of the other taste-free muck that I’m forced to eat in order to try lessen the ballooning of the stomach that is identifying me as Britain’s first seven-months pregnant man.
Because of this suppressed fact that Shiraz is actually grape-flavoured golden syrup, my weight has gone not only through the roof but also quite probably through one of those myriad holes in the O-layer. It’s all very well for My Ex to go around singing how he’s half the man he used to be; lucky him – I’m thrice the man these days.
According to The Grand-child Bride, this is what happens to men of your age. Did you know that? You were a man of your age before me; did anyone say “Oh, by the way, when you get to almost 50 be prepared for your tummy to touch your toes”? Exactly, nobody says a bloody word; they just sit there and silently watch you inflate like a Zeppelin and when you wake up one morning complaining that you’re Johnny Piggin’ Vegas they say “I could have told you that would happen”.
Anyway, late middle-age and an ignorance of the liquid lard that is apparently alcohol has super-sized me to the extent that the only clothes that fit me are those dreadful claret and beige zipped cardigans that nobody wants to be seen looking at on the XXXXL rail in Oxfam. My face looks like one of those aquarium fish that puffs up when it gets frightened and I haven’t looked down and seen my willy for a good nine months now. I only know it’s still there because it wakes me up every three hours at night demanding a pee.
What is happening to my body? And, more to the point, whose fault is it, what is the name and address of their lawyer and where can I buy a gun?
But, as I said, it’s been worse. Although today I am an elephant-svelte 13st 10, up until last week I’d been over the 14 mark. That was a bloody horror and, I tell you, for a while there I had a good mind to spend a month doing the old Bogota body-plan that used to be so popular on rock tours I have known. Trouble is and as you know, the Gackins Diet only works if you keep on it all the time and I don’t have the money for that anymore.
So it was Diet Coke instead – and there was another problem; it may be sugar-free but all that carbonation….Jesus! You may as well have just deep-throated the air-hose at the local garage. Talk about blow-up, you could have tied a length of string to my leg and sold me to those candy floss-faced children who hang about sulking for another ride besides the dodgems at the travelling fair.
And so, after much thought, wheezing and reddening of the face, I’ve gone and done what no occasional member of Her Majesty’s Press is ever meant to do. Please don’t think badly of me for this as I had no choice. I’ve given up drinking.
Now before you get the duff end of the stick, don’t get me wrong. I’m not scuttling off to any of those church hall meetings where nobody appears to have a surname and where they say (chirpily) “Hello, have you got a drink problem? Well done! Have a biscuit”. I’m not doing this in order to spend the rest of my life sanctimoniously glum; it’s just a temporary measure until people on the 125 to Paddington cease to think I’m en route to a fancy dress party as the Michelin Man.
The weird thing is, though, it bloody works. Obviously Mum’s the word on that as I don’t want any mates to know that I’m putting it about that we should scotch the Scotch, but I’ve lost four pounds. As I say, keep this to yourself because, to be honest, I’m a little fearful that if Blair’s mob hears that I’ve discovered this new slimming trick they might send round a hit squad.
Call me paranoid, but I think the Government wants to keep it well hushed up that wine will make a Womble of you. This must be the case because otherwise they’d detail the calorific chaos caused by a bottle of Beauj in a warning on its label, a bit like they do with those “smoking makes your wonker weak” alarms on packets of fags.
I know the Blair Fair says it wants the nation to get fit, but I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think they want a stupefied nation, that’s why they keep declaring public holidays every time that the Queen buys a new hat, any excuse to cause a booze-up.
Why? Because a stupefied nation is a subdued nation, an unquestioning nation, a hang-about-who-said-we-should-go-to-war-nation. That’s why they are hell-bent on extending pub opening hours to the point when it’s almost compulsory to drink at eight in the morning; they know that boozing is bad for us – particularly for us Fat At Fiftys (FAFs) – but they don’t want to let on about it because if we all clean up our acts in the process of drying out we’ll get our wits back and people will start asking “who exactly voted for this tosser?”
Besides avoiding the squirming embarrassment of answering questions from a nation that is not permanently too pissed to think clearly, there’s good economic policy in all this hushing up and it’s exactly the same fiscal reasoning that lay behind their move to declassify cannabis to the toxic status of a Love Heart. Not only does the more boozed and spliffed up they can make us mean that the less we are capable of examining the trail of who said what when about top-up fees, this also has the bonus of fattening up the strain on our tickers so that more FAFs like you and I pop off before our time and thereby save the State a fortune on paying out those pensions from the account that they say they’ve forgotten the PIN number for.
This makes sense.
GB