K.P. Webster's Blog, page 20

Week Four :: Say No More

bulk :: 12st 6

gym visits :: 4

hours of badminton :: 2

miles swum :: 0.5

miles walked :: 14 (or so)

episodes of Breaking Bad watched :: 21

I am sitting on a train on an icy cold but excessively bright Sunday morning, before 9am, and I’m reminded of a very similar morning almost exactly three years ago when I was in Krakow, on the train to Auschwitz. That was a bleak day.

The bleakness of the Holocaust, one of the darkest of moments in the history of humankind, bleeding gradually, self-centredly, into my own hopelessness. That night I made my way back to Krakow, picked up my bags and ate my last bowl of soup. Drifting back to the train station to catch the overnight to Milan, an old homeless guy asked me for tobacco. He wore glasses. I remember thinking, you don’t often see homeless people wearing glasses. Probably because it’s so difficult to hang onto them when you have no bedside table on which to lay them carefully at night. I remember thinking, this man could be me, or rather, in ten or fifteen years, I could be this man.

Today is different.

I’m not going to a deathcamp for a start. Pretty much the polar opposite actually. Which is good.

…

It’s later now. I’m back home. Back in Mansfield Woodhouse.

Because I’m not yet quite prepared to talk about the reason I went to Nottingham this morning, there’s nothing much to report this week. So little in fact to report that it could easily seem like not much is happening in this adorable miraculous little life of mine. But that’s not the case.

First up – quite apart from my mum continuing to get better and starting to slip the odd ‘yo’ and ‘bitch’ into her everyday conversation, and quite apart from me spending more and more time streamlining my gut – I’m also working on the first of four books I intend to self-publish this year. This one will be funny and light and will cost me nothing but time (which I have), so I have nothing to lose, and much to gain.

No point saying any more about that yet though.

So we’ll say no more. We’ll mention briefly that my pig of a pot belly is receding, that my muscle mass is increasing and that soon I’ll be popping down to London.

Then we’ll stop.

…

Filed under: 400 Words

Week Three :: Life Is Moreish

bulk :: 12st 8

gym visits :: 4

hours of badminton :: 2

swims swum :: 1

muscles pulled :: 1

pulled muscles butched out :: 1

episodes of Breaking Bad watched :: 10

blips :: 1

My mum had a bad night last night. She was up four or five times with diarrhoea and then vomiting. This is not as rare an occurrence as it should be and whenever it happens, she sleeps late, understandably, and whenever she sleeps late, I imagine she has died in bed.

I can’t help myself.

This morning that fear was particularly bad, I think because I was eager to punish myself for the thoughts I had yesterday – thoughts I almost scrubbed out, or at least cleaned up, but then didn’t because … well, because they were real.

But she didn’t die. She got up just before noon. Feeling better, but looking frail and tremulous, and still all churned up inside. Her insides are in turmoil. Which is apparently par for the course.

She’s doing the crossword now, afraid to eat for the moment, a hot bag of wheat snaking round her belly.

She has a check-up at the hospital in three weeks’ time.

In the meantime, we soldier on, and rise above. And I am working quite hard on some books. Three books to be exact. And on my health.

Speaking of which, I’m very much enjoying myfitnessplan.com. A friend suggested that my filling it in was a sign of tremendous anal retention on my part, and that may well be true. But it’s working. As in, it’s making me very aware of what I’m putting in my body, and how much work I’m doing to burn it off.

It also tells me when I’ve gone too far and drifted into ‘starvation mode’, which is good to know, because even though famine chic might sometimes feel more attractive than middle-aged blubber-slick, it really isn’t. Plus, apparently, you don’t actually lose any weight in starvation mode. So what’s the point?

Finally, my mum has definitely been bitten by the Breaking Bad bug. She still can’t remember what it’s called – ‘Something Bag?’ has been her closest guess so far – and whenever I remind her of Mr White’s name, she insists on singing, ‘Walter, Walter, lead me to the altar’ – but that aside, she’s actually started suggesting we watch it now, and last night she described it as ‘moreish’.

This pleases me immeasurably.

She’s alive, goddammit!

And so am I.

…

Filed under: Uncategorized

Blip

I went swimming this morning with my sister. When I got back, I was in such a good mood. Then my mum said, ‘Can you try not to leave the place in such a mess, please?’

It took me a second to realise what she meant.

I had neglected to wash the dishes from last night. Nine times out of ten, I do it after the meal. Occasionally, I leave it till the morning. On those occasions, I wait till my mum is up because I don’t want to wake her with sounds of crockery clashing through the wall. Today, because my sister came to pick me up and take me swimming, I forgot. I left a dirty frying pan in the kitchen sink, filled with dead soapy water, and a couple of plates.

‘It was disgusting,’ she added.

Immediately, my mood – which had been pretty ecstatic as it goes – fell through the floor.

‘One time,’ I said, seething. ‘One time I didn’t do it, because I happened to go swimming, and you’re having a go at me.’

She had done the washing up in my absence.

She said something like, ‘Have I made you angry?’

I had sulked past her to the computer in the corner of the living room, where I’m now typing this.  She said the last sentence in a funny voice, I suppose trying to make light of it.

‘Yeah, you’ve upset me actually,’ I said, not in a funny voice.

‘Why don’t you go somewhere and have a little cry?’ she said.

‘Why don’t you go somewhere and fucking die, you ungrateful old cunt?’

I didn’t say that.

But words of that ilk were firing through my head. I stopped them. I did actually feel like crying as it happens. I immediately thought, ‘What am I doing here?’

I thought, I don’t have to be here. I could be on a beach somewhere. I could be halfway up a mountain. I could be anywhere in the world doing just about anything.

We haven’t spoken for about 25 minutes.

I know I have to rise above this. She didn’t really say anything wrong. I did leave the kitchen sink in a bit of a state.

But I am still quite angry that she very very rarely expresses gratitude and yet, at the first possible opportunity, is happy to express criticism.

Still. I don’t like me when I’m angry.

I will rise.

…

Filed under: 400 Words

Paris Match, Marie Claire, Elle, etcetera

I was recently approached by one of the esteemed publications in the title of this humble blog post and asked if I’d like to be interviewed. Naturally, I jumped at the chance.

Now, there is a small chance that if you don’t live in France, you haven’t heard of etcetera magazine.

Not to worry.

But just to give you a tiny idea of the kind of magazine it is, let me tell you, it has a columnist called Reg who writes about French film stars he’d like to diddle. It has another called Mr Tickle who – sadly – isn’t as much fun as he sounds. His column concerns itself with European politics and has all the joie de vivre of a rectal biopsy. It has other columnists too, who, although they may not be trained or experienced journalists, do at least live in France. You can’t take that away from them. It also has advertisements for local services and useful tips, such as how to most effectively clean your oven.

The production values are not great, if I can say that without sounding disparaging. I don’t want to sound disparaging. They are all fine people expressing themselves as best they can and I say good luck to them.

Also, they’ll interview anyone. Look…

Thanks, Gayle!

…

Filed under: BLOG

Week One :: Where the Buffalo Roam

bulk :: 13st 1

gym sessions :: 3

miles walked :: heaps

I really like the gym I’ve joined. It’s not one of those ultra-slick chains filled with ultra-slick London people who eat ‘quinoa’ and work in ‘digital’.

With all due respect to those namby-pamby Southern Jessies, this is a man’s gym. What’s more, it’s a northern man’s gym. There are no showers, no vending machines and no qualms about rage-grunting through the pain barrier.

It reminds me of boxing clubs you see in gritty urban films, where working class boys go to escape the treadmill of poor education, petty crime, drug abuse and long term incarceration. It’s a place where hopelessness and inertia are converted into throbbing temples and giant, sometimes ludicrously large muscles. Indeed, some of the men who come to this gym have muscles so large that they (the men) appear ever so slightly deformed. Indeed, the guy in the above picture, the one who looks like all of his internal organs are about to shoot out of his ears – he’s the gym owner.

Most of them have tattoos too (quite possibly all of them), and a surprisingly large number of them are bald.

The room itself is huge and there are lots and lots of machines. I spend most of my time on the cardio-vascular machines on a kind of makeshift mezzanine, looking down on the rest of the gym and secretly smiling at the vain men. And some of them really are hilariously vain, unable to stop gazing at themselves for more than a few seconds at a time. One guy yesterday, for example, ended up stroking his reflection in the mirror, before finally slipping through the glass and away, lost forever in his own private narcissistic Narnia.

On the walls there are huge posters of deformed men, and next to the deformed men there are slogans such as: ‘THIS IS NO PLACE FOR THE WEAK’ and ‘I AM THE DESTROYER OF STEEL. I AM THE CRUSHER OF SOULS. I AM THE FACE OF DESTINY. I AM THE WHITE BUFFALO.’

Despite that, it’s a very relaxed environment and everyone so far has been very friendly.

I’ve been going every other day. I’ve also been walking loads and cutting back on shitty food. As a consequence, and I’m not quite sure how this works, I have put on weight. Only a pound, but still.

Disappointing.

Therefore it’s time, I feel, to start monitoring things.

…

 

Filed under: 400 Words

Progress, Yo

My mum is getting better.

Every day she’s a little stronger, physically, mentally and verbally. Obviously there is the occasional half-day when she feels particularly weak or fed-up, and sometimes she gets a little blue. But we have a Doc Martin DVD on hand for that.

Once a day she walks up and down the corridor outside the flat, for exercise. It’s about a 12-metre round trip, but she hasn’t done it yet today. She did sweep up some flower petals though, and yesterday she wiped a table. It isn’t much, but she still gets out of breath easily.

‘If I had the strength, I’d run a Hoover over this rug.’

There’s a lot of that.

We laugh.

…

She still does a tad too much vacant staring for my liking, but maybe that’s just part of being in your eighties. Either way, to offset boredom and stimulate a more active engagement with life, I’ve been buying lots of books and DVDs, encouraging her to do more crosswords, and leaving potentially interesting Wikipedia pages open on the eating table over lunch. James Last. Bobby Thompson. That kind of thing. And I’ve been playing Foster and Allen on Spotify.

I’d love to get her into the internet. But I fear that kitten has flown.

Tomorrow though, I’m heading into super-friendly Fopp to buy the Breaking Bad box set. I see no reason an octogenarian Heartbeat fan can’t still enjoy Breaking Bad.

I’m hoping that she’ll empathise with Walter’s downtrodden angst in the early episodes and then get dragged in and hooked for the rough stuff to come. I reckon it’d do her the world of good. Plus I’ll get to watch it again, which is nice. Let’s face it, whether she gets into it or not, I get to watch it again. Even if I have to pack her off to her bedroom for 62 consecutive hours or strap her in her comfy chair and force her to watch with me…

Hopefully though, in a couple of months’ time, she’ll be all, ‘If I had the strength, I’d be the one who knocks.’

…

Mother’s just walked the corridor. She put Lewis on pause when I mentioned it, and walked it twice. She is the one who knocks.

I followed her out and we looked the blossom on the tree in the back garden.

‘I am … awake,’ I said.

But she’d gone by then.

…

 

Filed under: 400 Words

Day One #16,709

bulk :: 13st (bang on)

BMI :: 24.6

gym sessions :: 1

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, become uncomfortably tubby. However, according to the NHS healthy weight calculator, I am still currently within the parameters of good health/size. Just. I am point three of a whole number from being officially classified overweight. Oddly, if I were a person from an ethnic minority, I would already be considered overweight. This according to a recent report from the ludicrously contrived NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence).

‘NICE says the typical healthy BMI score of 18.5-24.9 is meaningless for people of African, Caribbean and Asian descent, and suggests a range of 18.5-23 instead.’

Professor Mike Kelly, big cheese at NICE, clarifies:

‘”Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke are potentially life-threatening conditions, which people of African, Caribbean and Asian descent and other minority ethnicities are significantly more likely to develop than the wider population.”‘

Jesus. That’s not even the slightest bit nice. Not only do they have to deal with an unimaginable amount of horrific abuse, such as that supplied by pitiful fucktards like Francis Muir, but then – on top of that – they also draw a significantly shorter straw in the health lottery. Maybe the stress of dealing with other people’s mental problems is part of the reason.

Actually, according to research evidence cited on patient.co.uk, ‘Why these differences in predilection for illnesses exist across ethnic groups is unknown’, although theories include ‘genetic variation and dietary influences’.

Or of course, sampling bias. I mean, I don’t know. I’m no brain scientist. But that would be my guess.

Anyway, even though I’m white, there is still a small chance I’ll die. Therefore, I intend to guard against it. I want to be fit. I want to be healthy. I also want, at some stage, to find a mate. And although I have no doubt that endearingly amorous terminology like ‘find a mate’ stands me in very good stead indeed, heading off the pregnant old man look at the first proper hurdle probably won’t hurt.

So.

My first month-long gym membership started yesterday. I cycled for 45 minutes and did a little pec-work. And you know what? I already feel better.

Genuinely.

So I have decided, I’m going to try to lose three stone. In three months.

But to be perfectly honest, I’ll probably be happy with one and a half and a little light airbrushing.

Wish me luck.

…

Filed under: 400 Words

Crisis :: Opportunity

Yesterday I moved out of my sister’s place, a quarter of an hour up the road, and full-time into my mum’s. At my sister’s, I had my own room, a decent-sized kitchen to horse around in, and a garage for larks. The garage was a bit of a mess, but I tidied it up and bought a cheap amp for an old electric guitar, and suddenly it was seventeen shades of awesome. Weed helped. My mum’s flat, on the other hand, is well bijou. Some would say poky.

I have my old Mac on the dinner table in the corner of the same living room in which I sleep, on a child’s mattress. In the other corner is the TV. My mum likes the quizzes. I like the quizzes too, I can’t deny it. So I have to be careful. I have to be careful not to use my desire to keep my mum company as an excuse to waste time watching television. It’s a thin line though.

Happily, my mum doesn’t need as much care as I’d anticipated. But in three to six months, she will have another operation which will complete the procedure that was begun a couple of weeks ago. So my plan to go and live in Thailand before Songkran in April has had to be postponed. Readily, I might add. After all, Thailand will still be there when my mum’s all connected up again.

So, you might say, I have a few months’ enforced emotional slavery in a claustrophobic half-space in a grim northern town. You might also add that I am getting both a cold sore, and hideously fat, that I’m living with my mum in my mid-40s and I haven’t had sex in what feels like light years.

But you’d be looking at it all wrong.

Much better to see it as a wonderful opportunity to get on with some stuff, because cooking, cleaning, quizzing and comforting aside, I’m free to do pretty much just whatever the hell I like for the next six months or so. And as it happens, I do have an awful lot to do.

Today, for example, I rubbed some cream into my scabby lip and I joined a gym.

Also, bimbling through a nearby park on the way home from the shops, I saw hosts and hosts of snowdrops.

And you’d be a fool to argue with snowdrops.

…

Filed under: 400 Words

Home

If you’re lucky – and I am lucky – one of the things that happens during periods of great stress or emotional upheaval, is that people who know you gather like bees, or like a shoal of doctors, to help you handle the horror. Usually family. Even if you’re not that close to your family, when people start dying or threatening to die, you tend to get thrown together and often realise you’re actually quite a lot closer than you thought you were.

I don’t think my family was close at all when I was growing up, although you don’t really notice when you’re a kid – or at least you don’t know any different. But when I moved away to college and saw how certain other families related to one another, I noticed. All that affection and all those declarations of love. Stuff I’d assumed only really existed in American sit-coms.

However, we’ve got closer over the years, and although we’ll probably never be as physically or verbally demonstrative as, say, the Cosbys, I think we’re massively more aware of how much we mean to one another, and how similar we are. Losing one of us in November 2012 probably helped. And I don’t mean that in a callous way.

In fact, what I’m saying is, it’s been good. Or rather, thanks to my family, there’s been good stuff, in there, amongst the dreck.

Also, it’s my mum’s 81st birthday tomorrow. Same birthday as George Harrison. George would have been 71. But he never made it. Fingers crossed my mum’s going to. The odds are in her favour. She’s been breathing on her own for a few days now – no nose-tubes, nothing. The various IV tubes are out of her arms too, and all she has to show for them is a collection of bruises so large and black that it looks like she’s been mainlining housebricks. But they too will fade.

Coincidentally, unless they’ve changed their mind since yesterday, she’ll be released from hospital tomorrow too. On her birthday.

No, wait. I just got a phone call – literally just now – and she’s not going to be released tomorrow at all. She’s going to be released today. Any time between now and 6pm apparently, the vagueness of which is actually quite annoying. But there’s no time to be annoyed.

There’s shopping to do.

And I’m grateful.

…

Filed under: 400 Words

Dreams

My nephew picked up a copy of Dreams: Hidden Meanings and Secrets in a charity shop recently. At first I thought it was, quite simply, not a very good book. On closer inspection, however, I discovered that not only is it not a very good book, but it is also ever so slightly insane. Let me tell you about it.

Dreams is less a thoughtful analysis of the subconscious and more an exhaustive list of things about which one might reasonably dream – everything from CATS and DEATH, to ABANDONMENT, GANGRENE and APRICOT BRANDY – and then a brief explanation of what the chief symbol of the dream portends.

For example…

ABORIGINES. A dream of the primitive inhabitants of any country – Indians, Eskimos, African Negroes, etc – points toward your being able to pay your debts.

BANJO. If you dream of a banjo, you will enjoy pleasant amusements. If a negro is playing one, you will meet with slight worries.

ACID. If acid is thrown in your face, you will have unsatisfactory dealings with a foreigner through an interpreter.

BLONDE. To dream of seeing a blonde woman putting on her hat is a sign of an automobile accident. Women who dream of being admired for their blonde hair are likely to have an illness.

JAGUAR. To dream of one of these tiger-like South American animals is a warning to beware of some catty woman’s slanderous tongue.

REVENGE. Any dream of having revenge on an enemy is a bad sign, especially for women and girls.

It’s not very long at all before you realise that the author, E Kroiz (nominally genderless but definitely, 100% definitely a man) is a looney.

This particular edition claims that Dreams was published for the first time in 1987, but the creaky formal register and peculiar ideas about foreigners and women suggest that this could only be true if E Kroiz was over 175 years old. Indeed a tiny search reveals that Dreams has been repackaged many times over the years by many different publishers. The earliest edition I could find would have been flying off the shelves of book shops’ Science sections all over the United States in 1933.

Rarely have I read a book – Jeffrey Archer’s oeuvre to one side – that was more obviously targeted at white, middle-class, God-loving simpletons. Here are some more examples, in no particular order, which tell us a great deal more about the mind of the author and the extent to which times have thankfully changed, than they could ever tell anyone about what their stupid dreams mean…

PRIEST. Whatever the denomination, a priest in a dream is usually a good sign.

ABUSE. Strangely enough, if you dream of abusing someone, there will be an improvement shortly in your financial condition. If someone abuses you, you will have an illness.

LAVATORY. Visiting a lavatory or washroom in a dream foretells a sharp altercation with a tradesman.

ASPHALT. Men at work laying an asphalt pavement are a prediction of travel to the West Indies.

AFRICA. Being in Africa in a dream portends being called for jury duty. If you are in the Sahara Desert, you will be called for civil suits; otherwise, for criminal cases.

CAMELS. You will inherit an important mining property if you bring a camel home.

ADOBE. Houses made of this sun-dried brick are a favorable omen for seamstresses.

BRASSIERE. If a woman dreams of forgetting to wear a brassiere, she will likely have an altercation with someone she knows well. If she dreams that a strap breaks when she is in the company of a man, she will have an invitation to a party.

AFFECTION. Signs of affection in a dream are propitious if they are within the bounds of decency and restraint.

CRUCIFIXION. Hope for the future is promised by a dream of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

CHRIST. Peace of mind through adjusting yourself to your condition in life and to the people with whom you have to live is predicted by a dream of our Lord.

KIDNEY. To dream of your own kidney indicates that you are in danger of investing in worthless stock.

ACETIC ACID. The sour, vinegar-like odor of this acid portends a disagreeable experience with someone of the opposite sex.

BATH. For a pregnant woman to dream of bathing usually means a miscarriage.

MARIHUANA. A dream of smoking this drug foretells a serious illness coupled with disgrace.

BUTTOCKS. To have one’s buttocks kicked is a sign of disaster.

AFFRONT. The prediction of a dream of receiving an affront is that you will be embarrassed by criticism of the clothes you are wearing.

CARDIGAN. There will be explanations to make for your strange conduct in public places if you dream of wearing a cardigan.

So there you are. If you spot this book in a charity shop, snap it up. It’s a source of great amusement. Also, once you’re acquainted with the author’s style, you could achieve some reasonably high jinks trying to second-guess his interpretation of, say, CUDDLING (‘a warning against promiscuous relationships’) or MOCCASINS (on Indian feet they portend disappointment; on your own, a new job; presumably, if you are Indian, you need to prepare yourself for a disappointing new job).

Actually, on second thoughts, don’t bother.

It is a silly book.

…

Filed under: BLOG