The diet and not drinking are going unfeasibly well. I've lost 11 pounds since Christmas, which even accounting for the seasonal chocolate increment is pretty good going. Even better I haven't even really felt like I'm on a diet. I've still been eating big dinners (curries and pizzas out included), but making sure I exercise and don't snack too much in between. Without the twin evils of alcohol and chocolate weight loss is a breeze for me.
Whilst last year I was gasping for alcohol by mid-January, so far I am not missing at all and as I've driven to most of my gigs I've had a good excuse to avoid a post-performance winding down pick me up. I saw a comic at one of the gigs recently comment that we need an excuse not to drink in this country. And he's right. "I'm driving" or "I'm an alcoholic" seem to be valid reasons for not drinking. "I'm not drinking for a bit," makes you look like a weirdo.
But I'm going to keep it up for a while, at least til the end of the month. By then I might even have crossed the 14 stone threshold that in my poorly thought out diet plan was going to be my mark for a return to drinking wine (beer coming back into play at 13 and a half stone). I can start having chocolate again when I am 10 stone, so I am praying for some kind of serious wasting disease to afflict me, or possibly hoping I might lose a limb or two in an accident. It would all be worth it for a Cadbury's mini-egg (and don't even get me on to how annoying it is that Easter is already being pushed in the shops. We haven't even had St Valentine's Day yet. How greedy are the evil chocolate manufacturers? They get to sell loads of chocolate then and yet they're also trying to hawk Easter to us. Poor old Jesus. He used to just have to remember his painful crucifixtion for a week a year, but now he's got a couple of months to consider what it was like being nailed to a piece of wood and dying for OUR sins. If he died for OUR sins, then how come we get to eat all the chocolate? Surely it's Jesus who should be getting all the chocolate after that kind of sacrifice and after having done NO sins. I think maybe he would have got more chocolate if he hadn't got all cocky and come back from the dead. People were annoyed with him. "Oi! I thought you said you were dying for our sins and yet here you are all chipper and alive after no more than 36 hours. What kind of a sacrifice is that? It's no good dying for our sins for a bit. You have to properly die if you want our respect and some chocolate. No, get off those mini-eggs Jesus, they're mine. I don't care if you cured my leprosy. By only half dying you've really taken the shine off things." Thirty-six hours dead isn't dying for our sins, it's having a quite long nap for our sins. And then having the audacity to stay alive forever after that and never die properly. When it came to dying for our sins, Jesus really knew how to take the piss.
How would we have felt if just after that week when we'd all cried and beaten ourselves up over the tragic death of Lady Di, if she'd walked into her own funeral, just as Elton John was playing "Candle in the Wind" and told us she was feeling a bit better. Oh,we might have pretended to be pleased for a while, but inside we'd be furious. She'd made us feel all sad and guilty and so to not even stay properly dead would be a real kick in the face for us. And Elton John would have had his eyebrow waggling moment in the spotlight completely upstaged. He isn't renowned for keeping his temper. I think he would have called Lady Di a "fucking bitch" right there on live TV to everyone in the world. It would have been embarrassing.
But unlike Jesus, Lady Di had the politeness and patience to stay properly dead once she had sacrificed herself for us. And yet to many people Jesus is more impressive a figure than Lady Di.
There is no justice in the world.
