I am an overweight, slightly balding man approaching 30 years old. It is rare that i celebrate any of these facts; indeed in the last fortnight of blogs I have mentioned combatting two of the three. It is very rare that I consider any of these to be an advantage; until now.

You will undoubtedly have seen that a young woman named Sian has gone missing from outside a nightclub in Swindon.

I have an obsession with breaking news it seems; the Raoul Moat saga was breathtakingly interesting and I have been the same for years; the first big event I remember watching unfolding was obviously the World Trade Centre but in my third year of university I remember vividly the toppling of the statue of saddam Hussein.

I thought I’d been cured at Christmas; the missing woman in Bristol was something I paid attention too but not necessarily as much as previously. Maybe that was because of Christmas getting in the way.

It scares me. To think one of the reasons I didn’t move to Slough was because of the high crime rate there v Swindon at least and now someone goes missing. It’s been a long time but there’s a hope that she isn’t in the wood the public have been so diligently searching and that she’s been old fashioned kidnapped and is alive but shaken.

It impresses me so much how the Swindon public have pulled together and how much social media has played a massive part in the campaign to raise awareness.

———————-

Yesterday I had a day off; there weren’t many developments except they asked he public to stay away from the forest. They ended the day ominously; they were sure they would find Sian in the next 24 hours. A bold statement.

But one that turned out to be almost certainly correct. After jumping from wood searching to a completely differen line of enquiry they put a call out for a green estate taxi that was seen between the areas of Suju and the wood where her phone lost signal. They found the car, and the owner, within two hours thanks to a public tip off-in the Asda I had been shopping at 24 hours previously. Not trying to claim I was at any risk, for all the reasons at the start of the blog; just emphasising quite how close to home it feels; probably because it IS.

He confessed to kidnapping Sian and also to her murder and to the murder of another person; he also directed the police to their bodies. Can there be any doubt this man is guilty? If someone says “I did it” and points the police to what looks like his garage and garden for not only the person they are looking for but also a further body……I’m all for innocent until proven guilty but surely in this case we kind of know. Anyway.

Horrible, horrible news. I’m glad everyone I know is safe considering how close the risk is/was but my heart goes out to Sian’s family and the family of he as yet unnamed other. What worries me more is this other person had gone missing and nobody seemed to know.

I’m sure we will learn more as time unfolds. They are yet to confirm that one of the bodies is sians but they say they expect it to be the case.

The media aren’t allowed to report the mans name or the address but it’s Ashbury Avenue in Swindon……too close. Far too close.

A blog was planned entitled “The one with the dismissed idea” which was put forward by one of my staff at work. The theory for Lent is as follows; that Sunday is a day of rest and, thusly, whatever one has given up for lent is allowed to be done on Sundays.

Now, I’m not religious, but I had to bring up a point. I am pretty sure that Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights (several things in the bible happened for 40 days and 40 nights….odd) and that he was actually in the wilderness at the time. I argued that Jesus couldn’t nip to Tesco on Sundays as his break from the wilderness on a Sunday after which they backed down and agreed. I win again.

But the idea got me thinking. How wise, I thought. To fast/diet for six days of a week and then allow a small extravagance on the Sunday is actually genius. It got me through the last three days of last week’s fruit and veg because I had a reward; something to look forward to. The end result was that on Sunday I ate a (shock, horror) 400 cal Quorn Meatballs meal (a little too much sauce on the sauce v Balls ratio but very nice) and a Weight Watchers Macaroni cheese from the little shop around the corner. Both filling; both not too bad for me, despite not being fruit or veg. And, better still, I feel full a lot more quickly. Recently, when becoming full, if I continue to eat I end up with horrific stomach cramps as explained in the previous blog, so now if I only eat until I’m full then I’m going to lose weight by default. In theory. I think I will continue the reward scheme of Sundays, unless I see it getting out of control. I may even stretch to a small fish and chips this Sunday as a reward for 2 weeks of fruit and veg horror. The idea of fruit and veg was to lose weight and remind me how nice fruit and veg are; and whilst the first few days achieve the latter the fact that I am then trapped into eating only that makes me hate fruit and veg, which is the exact opposite of the desired outcome. Boo. Still, in theor, the weightloss bit should work.

On that subject, I am quite disappointed with my actual weightloss. I haven’t had a weigh since Tuesday this week but I had lost a paultry 4lb, which I consider to not be good enough. I’d have liked to have lost half a stone over the two weeks as a minimum, especially for how hungry I have been and this nonsense fruit and veg I have been eating. However, I have been having a relatively large amount of potatoes, which, whilst falling into the remit and not being bad for me, still aren’t exactly fruit and veg. Where’s the green stuff? In my defence I always had it with peas. One of my favourite meals was Mash, Leeks, Peas and gravy. Very veg based, nice mix of stuff but with some gravy to give it a bit of extra moistness. When I bring meat back in a chicken breast in there would make a lovely meal.

The Mother has offered to buy me three months supply of Alli tablets. Alli is a weight loss assisting tablet that gives you a 50% boost on your weight loss. So, you lose 2lb normally, it makes it 3lb. It does this by preventing the body from absorbing 25% of the fat that is eaten so less turns to actual calories, essentially reducing the calories you eat by about 25%. The key there is as part of a calorie controlled diet which is largely what I’m aiming for. Of course, there are side effects – tastefully phrased as “anal leakage” – but reading actual users reviews they say it varies massively on what it is you actually eat. For example, you eat a healthy diet of white meat & veg & bran, then your body will work properly. However, you eat a Macdonalds meal, which hasa much larger fat content, then the Alli will be converting more of the fat into poo, so there will be more poo. And, as it isn’t a solid thing, the fat, it will be liquidy poo. Which could result, potentially in leakage.

The positives push through though; an extra 50% on weight loss, and, equally as importantly, the fact that if I eat shitty fatty foods I stand a high possibility of shitting myself. Now if that was some sort of psychological conditioning then I don’t know what is. I think, however, that I will take the Mother up on her offer. However, they aren’t cheap.

Something else that isn’t cheap is hair. As you may know, I have become the proud owner of a bald patch on the crown of my head. I’m not really embarrassed or ashamed; I don’t wear a hat our toupee etc but it is, naturally…..I was going to say “at the back of my mind” now before realising that’s kind of where it is…..but you know what I mean. So, when I saw this new hair foam stuff that they were actually selling in real shops, like Boots, and not just on the internet, I thought I’d have a look. Turns out that it costs £80 for a month’s mousse, and that you have to continue to apply every month forever. Sod that for a grand a year; I’ll just deal with it like I have been since it reared it’s ugl……wait……since it arrived in 2005.

I am looking forward to Sunday. A day off – work has been very busy and it’s still going to get worse before it gets better (doesn’t stop me enjoying it!) and then I need to start factoring some exercise into the equation to really help that weight loss and bring the number down down down down down down. I will do badmington every Tuesday with work people and then another night I will do a minimum of 2 hours in the gym, rising to 3 and then four hours as I get fitter. I can start swimming again on days off and all sorts of stuff. Maybe I’ll even get into a local 5 a side team or something.

I was late home from work; I forget why, but I have a hell of a lot on my plate at the moment and everywhere I look a new piece of (sometimes very large and/or important) work pops up out of nowhere. I delegate as much as I can but I do need to do this more; this has been my weakness for some time but if I am going to succeed in my current job– which I will – then I will need to do more of this. But it’s going to get worse before it gets better, I just need to stick in there. Devoid of any energy to cook for myself properly when I got home – even though I had asked the girlfriend to prepare her frankly awesome jacket potatoes (I don’t know what she does, but they are the nicest jackets I have ever, ever had) so I resorted to what I had last night but in a slightly larger portion – mash and peas. The mash has a dash of milk in it but probably only 15ml or so, so it can’t be that bad. I have been avoiding milk – the only milk I have had is a dash in both the mashed potatoes I have had this week, actually.

I am tempted to weigh myself tomorrow. I haven’t weighed myself yet for fear of how bad I have become sat here in my fat shirt and fat trousers and fat jacket. But I always found that losing weight really spurs me on and to have nothing to measure against makes that difficult – really difficult. So I think tomorrow I will have a quick weigh to see where I come in at and I’ll look at it relatively regularly, not necessarily weekly or on any timescale, but perhaps when I need a pick me up. Likewise, this blog isn’t necessarily daily, and it’s not much like ye olde diet blog that came into existence back in ye olde 2007 – I felt when I was trying to write these last time that I was putting extra stress and pressure on myself to write them which ruins the whole point really. This is meant to be a soundboard for my thoughts and feelings and if I feel pressured (only by myself I admit) into writing it then I feel like a songwriter without a muse, waxing lyrical without any point to the piece. Much like the last 100 or so words, but never mind.

I have made a decision though. This fruit and veg shit can’t last forever. It’s been three days and I’m already not happy with it. So, I have put a two week limit on it as anything after that is madness. It did make me think, though, that I started my diet coincidentally just before Lent – 2 days before, in fact – so what I will do is carry on being a vegetarian until Lent is over, whereby I will go back to eating healthily. I’ll be a vegetarian that eats no bread or cheese though.

Work tomorrow night this time; haven’t done a night shift on this diet before and a lot of the time that is where I’d fall apart; food from work or worse on the way home from a 24 hour drive through or pasty-wielding service station.

Oh, this morning, by the way, I looked out of the living room window to take stock of the tempaerature and whether to wear a jumper and a jacket and saw something weird staring at me from the opposite side of the block’s bin compound. Smiley it was, and staring right at me. And yellow. I was briefly very freaked out and on my way to the car, naturally I needed to investigate. And even more naturally, I had to take a photo.

I don’t even know what this is or where iot could have come from. It’s like a scarecrow, but crossed with a sunflower, wearing a checkshirt with a purple bow tie. And a massive grin. Or maybe it has a mane and isn’t a flower at all? Either way it looks like it sits in the ground in a field or allotment to scare away creatures from crops. But what is it’s function in the bin compound and where has it come from? We couldn’t be much further from any allotments or fields really. Odd.

Oh, and the cat is mental. There I was, happily lying on the sofa, and where should she chose to come and sit? On my face. Sigh.

Cucumber with a little light thousand island; jacket potato; some mushrooms and some grapes throughout the day before realising that I needed to go into town to get some keys cut for work.
Parked up at the shopping centre in Swindon only to find as soon as I got out of the car that my stomach was tying itself up in massive knots. Before long the pain was unbearable and I had to try and let off some pressure so went to the shopping centre toilets. Tried to, urm, relieve the pressure (you get the idea) to no avail when bam, my body decided that throwing up lots was the best way of dealing with the problem.

So fortunately I was still in the toilet. I was sweating like a bitch and still in a bhge amount of pain.

15-20min later, Tidied myself up, was feeling a bit better, when there was a knock in the cubicle door. I opened it to find three hefty security guards. Wow. A slight over reaction, I thought.

They clearly knew I’d been sick. One of my fellow gents must have been concerned for my safety, which is kind of nice if a bit weird. However their heavy handed approach was not helping.

“you’ve had a lot to drink today haven’t you?” I told them no, I think I had just eaten too much in the last 24 hours and my body was struggling. I now know I have weak stomach acid from the beetroot incident.

This was Followed by
“must be drugs then, we’re going to search your pockets, have you got anything on you you shouldn’t have?” to which i obviously said no and, surprisingly, they found nothing. However whilst rolling up my sleeves they saw my cat scratch covered wrist.

“did you do this to yourself?”

Sigh. No I didn’t. What did they think I was Jeremy Kyle fodder? Can’t a man feel unwell these days without it being attributed to some sort of disorder?

I was co-operative but still they told me I “couldn’t do that in here” (be sick!) so they escorted me out of the shopping centre and that I wouldn’t be allowed back in until the next day.

Finally collected the girlfriend and proceeded to eat a small amount of mash and some peas for dinner in a small bowl. Nice.

Effectiveky breaking the diet, i did treat myself to two small pancakes with a tiny amount ofsugar and lemon-its pancake day and the girlfriend is obsessed. The rest of my day was taken up with swearing at the referee in the barca v arsenal match. Sigh.

Initially I was reluctant to do it this drastically, or blog about it, but I do realise it’s gotten totally out of hand. I don’t even dare stand on the scales. I’m that afraid. But yesterday, on my way to work, something clicked. A different click to the clicks ive had since the one in 2007. But look; I have my little family, the girlfriend, me and the cat; a job I am truly happy in and enjoy pretty much every day I’m there; a flat which we own; a car which is efficient and serviced and doesn’t tend to break down often, if at all; a free gym membership. The only thin stopping me from eating properly now and getting fit is my own laziness, for which there is no longer an excuse.

So, ad hoc, the fruit and veg diet begins. Lots of money spent on fruit and veg and sauces on the way home and a decision that I will be allowed hot
Drinks but no milk or sugar in them. Black coffee at work, black tea at home. Not nice, but nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be.

Got home and chopped some beans, baby sweetcorn, onions, leeks, peppers and some potatoes and added the fajita powder sauce we use. I ate some beetroot whilst i was cooking. Made the girlfriend some spicy veg wraps and had some of the veg and sauce filling on it’s own.

I have eaten beetroot many times before. Many, many times before. And not once has it turned my poo and wee bright red before. Imagine my fear. Pooing bright red and weeing the same. I was worried but thanks to google all was well.

I was very full – bed was the best bet, give my body a chance to process the good stuff it isn’t used to and get up late tomorrow for my day off.

Day one over. Let’s see how long I can last. I don’t know when I’ll start weighing myself yet though.

I decided that, on random occasions, I would text the phone. And call the phone. However, I didn’t do this much; before I knew it, people were texting me. I was texting back, for a bit of fun, just teasing them in a nice way. Telling them they looked very smart today, for example, and pretending to be the phone itself. This led to some fun conversations with people who I will never meet and who I will never know. But they will go away from Tesco going ha, there was someone texting back on the end of that dummy phone and tell people about it in the pub and to their mates and things. It’s cost nothing to me and if it has amused some people then even better.

Obviously as Tesco got busier (not as busy as they’d been planning for, though) I was receiving more and more texts and having more and more fun. I even texted it on Xmas day in case any of the staff were there. You never know.

Some of my favourite texts included the strangest things.

“Gentry”. Just one word. Gentry.
“Bog Off”
“In tracks, loooooosers”
“Go Away” which I thought was odd when they could just not have texted me at all
“Hey baby xxx” – very forward!
“Soooo sooo chilly today, don’t you think xxx” – I think the same person.
“Wank” – the wit was almost too much for me to take for this one.
“Wagggggg (insert 10 x line breaks) Ur an arse”
“If you are the phone, what colour jumper am I wearing?”
“I’m board”. Board? Like a piece of wood? I need one of those for my bed.
“Happy Xmas” was very nice on Christmas eve.

But since then, nothing; had Tesco’s visitor numbers dropped off so dramatically that nobody was looking at iPhones? Was it that everyone else had offers on iPhones except Tesco? I didn’t know, but I found it hard to believe. But with a busy few weeks at work and of course moving flats upstairs to number 19 (guide coming soon) it totally slipped my mind until this week.

I needed to buy a mobile phone for work to go into one of our games machines and I walked past the iPhone. In my pocket, I used my phone to make it ring to check it was working still, and I heard it ring from the other side of the shop so I knew it was the same phone and that it was working; so what was the problem?

Innocently (well, innocent lookingly, if that’s a word, which it isn’t) I sauntered up to the iPhone 4 and began to feign interest in it’s workings and styles. I went through to the text function and there were two conversations in the inbox. One with my Christmas text on it, and one with a message from Tesco Mobile saying “You have insufficient text credit to send this message”. Ah. From that, I concluded that somebody had tried to text back but had not been able to because the credit had run out. Out of curiosity I thought I’d look at what the last text to be sent was.

“Ha ha I know who you are Mat R”

Gulp.

This person did know me. I have had the same number for 11 years now and I did used to live in Swindon but I didn’t know that many people. The only 2 people who knew I was doing this was the Girlfriend and Skylynx. Skylynx I believe has an alibi and the Girlfriend claims it wasn’t her and I believe her; her texts have a different style to how this was written, and we were together pretty much all of boxing day when the phone said this text was written. And it’s spelt right, one T, so it’s not just chance. The surname initial confirms this too. But why only the initial? Why not the full surname? I will never know.

Why not admit your identity? I suppose I didn’t so a taste of my own medicine there. But….but…..I don’t like being on this side of it! I’m a little bit scared now, though.

For any of you who feel like sending love/abuse/jokes to a stranger in Tesco Swindon, the number is 07598 337290. Do with it as you will!

I was feeling better for most of the day; not great, but better, so I tried the chicken casserole again. Two hours later I cramped; but it was copeable; dealable with. And it passed very quickly; a full meal followed at home later. Whatever that bastard of an illness was, it is mostly gone. I am getting back on track to eating healthily and will be there by the end of the week

x

Saturday morning. The girlfriend gets up to go to her parents’ at 11 (which means 9) like normal to ensure she’s in to collect her new phone and I am up and feel fine.

Within an hour, my stomach has cramped completely. It is like some massive fist has grabbed it and squeezed, and twisted, and pulled, and pushed. It killed. I was shouting and screaming in pain, begging my body to get rid of whatever had caused it to do that. I tried lying down, that didnt have an effect. I thought I’d have a hot shower as that tends to relax muscles. As I did that I felt like I was going to throw up, so I jumped (carefully) out of the shower, still bent over double with the pain. I tried to be sick – it was clearly what my body wanted and whatever I had eaten – the only meal I had yesterday was some gammon and veg – should be saying goodbye. But it refused.

Long story short, it did eventually come out. I couldnt eat, I couldnt drink, I then began throwing up whatever I did. It then began to not just be throwing up, if you know what I mean; which wasn’t nice either. About an hour after the first time I threw up I stopped feeling like being sick and headed to bed. I needed to rest, my body was utterly exhausted from all of the effort it takes to be sick.

A few hours later I awoke, late for work. I was feeling better. Not good, but better. it was Saturday night and I do like to be at work Saturday nights. And I got better and better as the night went on. I was absolutely starving so I had some chicken and veg in an attempt to refuel, along with a coffee for caffiene based energy. Both went down fine, and I felt more energised and got things done.

About 10.30pm it happened again. The cramp. The big giant hand pulling, tugging, push and squeezing returned, and I had so much to do before I finished around 1am. It wasnt quite as bad as before; but I was still in a lot of pain and staggered around and did my close as per normal but as quickly as possible. I tried drinking some water but I felt like I wanted to be sick but work isn’t the arena for that; so I just cracked on against my wishes feeling truly awful. When I eventually got out into the freezing cold ice that was the outside in Slough that night past my theoretical finishing time and started driving. Around Reading Services I felt I had to stop, and much sickness followed again in the classy surroundings of a deathly cold motorway service station toilet. I felt proper rough and it was horrible.

Sunday. Again, I felt better, but if I tried to eat or drink anything the stomach cramping started again. I didn’t eat anything for the day, and only managed half a pint of squash and half a pint of water throughout the whole day. I am ill. x

Lets look at a few. The Scottish FA had a bit of an issue this weekend because the referees all went on strike. At this moment in time I think they are planning on flying foreign referees in to  cope with the demand and keep the games on (though if the forecast is to be believed I expect half of them will be called off because of snow). And why are they on strike? Because managers and players criticise them. Well, boo-frickin-hoo. I expect some of my staff criticise me. I know some of my previous managers have (and mostly rightly so) but it is how you take it on board and deal with it that is the issue. The Scottish Referees have made no friends doing this, least of all the lower league’s games who were all called off as a matter of course. It seems foolish, really, to alienate the very people on which you rely to make a living.

And this week, Quelle surprise, the French are once again on strike. They seem to strike a lot? I mean, they strike so often that we over here in Blighty have to have a system for lorries (operation stack) to deal with what happens when they strike at the ports. What I don’t understand on this occasion is that obviously, a strike isn’t having the effect they want, if they strike once every couple of months about it. They need to use their foolish French intitiative and come up with something new, a different way of getting peoples attention. The boy who cried Loup, if you will. Nobody cares, the French, get over it.

Similarly, the tube strikes. I have blogged about these before too – and, to a lesser extent, the post office. They all seem to want to keep things exactly as they are in the face of a changing economy, especially royal mail in this instance where times have moved on and not as much cash comes in through letter posting since the vastly superior emails came into common use. In fact, if solicitors start using email like the rest of us (the Mother has recently informed me that they have, which is scary) then there will be precious little that isn’t mail ordered in the system.

Add to that the fire fighters. I noted with interest like I said that their ill-advised, potential-death-ridden plan was called off at the last minute. Almost like they were never actually going to do it anyway. Now those of you who read this blog relatively often will remember this

Well, predictably, since putting it online I have received several not-so friendly comments. One of which I deleted as, guttingly, I couldn’t think of a witty enough response to it. I kind of wish I hadn’t deleted it and thought about it more, but I was raging at the time. So, here are the comments. Theyre in a strange order, though.

As for food; it’s not been bad; the worst I had was some nachos that someone else didn’t want at work, and the odd nice coffee but apart from that it’s OK. Not great, but OK. I would have liked to have gone to the gym more this week but with the return of minitwang, coupled with the fact that this week I am super tired. The problem with my week off for Dublin, as awesome as it was, was that I didn’t really get any rest. Add on top of that the Lightning Seeds mini-stalk straight after I was back to work and lo and behold I am still exhausted and Christmas is coming up.Sigh. I am a foolish.