Thursday, September 16, 2010

Just weight a bit, can't you?

A guy goes away for a couple of days, gets back to find umpteen messages from wee Gay Vee bemoaning the lack of charts and updates on the blog!  You could do it, you idle, fat sod!  Or how about showing the technologically-challenged one how to set up a Google account (it’s really not that hard, Doogie, just click on the link in the invitation I sent you, and Bob’s your uncle… well, great uncle; and also your father, grandfather, brother, second cousin, and, should he be so inclined, fourth nephew.  Are you sure you know what you’re doing?) Anyway, I’ll make this a long one, Gé, are you happy now?  Charts tomorrow though, I can’t be arsed doing it once today then again in the morning.

The battery for the bathroom scales is on to charge, which is probably bad news: the food in Barcelona was good, the wine excellent, and the beer refreshing.  The third bottle of post-dinner cava on Monday night was, however, a tactical blunder. To be fair there were three of us still standing, but not for long, and when I woke up at 6am on the sofa in the hotel landing, I remembered two things – nothing from the night before, which was a total blank, but simply (a) form is temporary, class is permanent and (b) I had a presentation to give at 9am, that (in principle anyway) I ought first to write. 

Now pissing about with Powerpoint on an 8” screen is bad enough under the best conditions, but when battling nausea and sweating like a Belgian priest at the altar-boys swimming gala … the only solution, of course, was lashings of chorizo, bacon and scrambled eggs with toast and as much strong coffee as I could pour down my gullet.  Not good.  But I did behave myself at lunch, stayed off the pastries at coffee time, and even eschewed the pleasures of a tapas bar in the evening, staying at the hotel to finish a report, with a light meal of grilled squid, which was absorutery rubbery (doan shou, sir, evlywan wan sum! – as they say in Cantalanese).  I think that’s the first time in 18 years of conferences and meetings that I’ve gone to bed without a drink (or ten).  And bounced down to breakfast - a fruit-only affair for me, thank you very much – bright and early, feeling light.  Proud?  No: smug is a better term. Workshop dieting is clearly a game of two halves.

So you can imagine how I felt when my colleagues turned up with gut-rot from their seafood snacks, sipping water and contemplating the buffet like a novice nun faced with a priapic octogenarian’s syphilitic manhood.  Pounds of part-digested tapas and bile, litres of regurgitated wine, buckets of cold sweat, hours of energetic convulsions at the wheel of the porcelain truck – just think how much weight that could have lost me!  The jammy, jammy bastards.

Back home with little else to report, other than dates for meetings in Edinburgh, Brussels, Ghent and Budapest – but I’ll cross those food and beer laden bridges when I come to them.  Today it’s Eurostar to London, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover that with the name-change from “Leisure Select” to “Standard Premier” has come the dropping of any pretence at providing an edible cooked breakfast – although given the diet challenge I had been looking forward to the ease of politely declining yet another golden opportunity to sample their famous lamb-scouring and polyfilla omelette.  As it was I had to be content with leaving the croissant and butter.

More worried about the way back, with an hour or so to wait in the lounge, and dinner on the train, and accompanying both, a free bar.  Now I know I’m supposed to be off the pop for dieting purposes, but to a canny Scot it does seem a terrible shame not to partake - almost a sin, in fact.

So what’s it to be, waste or waist?  I’ll let you know when I weigh in tomorrow...but not anticipating a good performance from me, so I’m banking on the others slipping up.  Just possible that Gavin’s birthday celebrations may have put a spanner in his works.  And I believe Dugald had curry and beer at the weekend.  So it just might be all to play for – it’s not over while the fat boys drink, as the saying goes.

No comments:

Post a Comment