The Stone Killer

Day one of new health regime a partial success. Woke early, did some rather good writing, washed up, went for a lengthy walk, bought healthy foods and cooked them. Consumed no wine. Admin, sadly, remains untouched. But it will still be there tomorrow.

I've made a commitment for two months to exercise, eat good food and drink far, far less, with the notion that I should lose a stone in that time. I've written it down now so I will look like a prick if I don't do it. So good.

Tree's Company*

Sorry about yesterday. Wild variance in tone on this blog isn't there?

Kelly would have loved today because her favourite thing in the world was the sound of the wind moving through trees and it is blowing a gale down Massey Avenue which is where I've chosen to walk today. I'm reminded of the Parkland walk we used to take as often as possible back in Finsbury Park. Like most of these places it's an abandoned train-line running up to Alexandra Palace and used chiefly by joggers and people on bikes, with dog-walkers and romantic strolling couples coming in a poor third and fourth respectively. But there was a specific spot, just north of where we lived, where a cross-winds used to catch in the tops of the trees and the traffic noises subsided and we could stand there holding each other listening to the wind in the trees and living solely in that moment.

Massey Avenue is a decorous place, the Hampstead of Belfast, large Victorian mansions nestle, cheek by jowl, with aggressively new mansions. It's where palm trees and two-car garages go to die. But it's the trees I'm mainly interested in, especially as the tip-touching canopy of green is keeping most of the rain off. I'm pounding these green streets as part of my plan to lose weight over the next two months (a fort-month). It's part of my general plan to become better. To do something with my life. I really have nothing so I have nothing to lose. To paraphrase either me or Bobby McGee.




*sorry

I am no longer ready for this jelly.

I'm starting a diet. I will also be finishing it. And, in two months time, I expect to be a stone lighter. Watch this ever decreasing space.

Dorian Grey

The painter Tim Weir has been taking my picture as studies for a future portrait. It's done in half-light against the white wall of his living room. His flat mate sits in the corner playing some species of war game, the controls resting on his belly, terrified screams and helicopter rotor blades accompanying the action while he stares impassively at the screen.

I try and look natural. An impossible task at the best of times, I am an unnatural creature, but I'm aware that a 1982 catalogue pose is not what Tim's after, so I'm giving it a go. Tim combines the feeling of later Rembrandts with the chiaroscuro and lighting techniques of Caravaggio and the antebellum ruthlessness of a Bacon or Freud. My Nick Rhodes cheek-bone pimping isn't going to cut much ice with him.

So I attempt to look natural. And I'm not looking bad today - my freckles are out, my glasses are off and I won't be smiling. I look into the mirror before I go out - good eyes, nice skin, the hair, a punkified quiff in what I'm assured is a very fashionable platinum-grey colour. It looks raffish; out of the right side of the bed, for once. I begin to think of that self portrait of Durer that has been fascinating and exciting women for five hundred years. Move over Albrecht there's a new guy in town. And he doesn't look like the singer from Nickleback!

I relax into it as Tim snaps away, staring down the baleful eye of the camera's lens. The posing muscles kick back into gear and I strike a series of poses, all Egon Schiele angles and Francis Bacon screams. That gets me through the initial embarrassment and I start to pose seriously, imagining where the light is falling across my face, what kinds of shadows will be collecting, what will be picked out; how's the philtrum looking? I stare sullenly, aggressively, haughtily, I look away from the camera, down to the ground or up in the air like a medieval pieta.

Eventually Tim thinks he has enough and we stop. He asks me if I want to see the photos and I hesitate. In my mind I'm really expressing; my eyes are soul-mirrors communicating my sadness, limpid lasers boring a hole into the world's canvas and filling it with the wretched misery that holds my heart.

I don't get that. It's a gurning contest with the horse-collar missing. It's an Edweard Muybridge flick-book of a Bedlam unfortunate. It's a man in an electric chair. It's Morrissey live on stage, hit in the head with a pint pot of piss. Durer need not concern himself.


Should be a fantastic painting though.


P.S. I've tried to post a link to Tim's website four or five times but Blogshite, as usual, isn't having it. If you would like to see some of Tim's work, and I would recommend you would, stick the following: http://www.timweirart.com/gallery/ into your browser and have a good poke round.

The Weight of the World (hanging over my belt buckle)

Have just come back from the doctors. I needed to change from East Dulwich to a Haringay medical centre to garner the sweet, sweet psychological reinforcement I'm due...in about a month. They managed to spread this over two visits. On the first I filled in various forms giving my various details and answering various questions on my ethnicity and medical history (very concerned over whether I might have glaucoma for some reason). Then I had to come back a week later for a go on the "The Pod". Today was Pod day!

Once I filled in the same forms as last week, they had lost them, I was introduced to "The Pod": a computer with a sleeve attachment for taking your blood pressure and a scale for weighing you. I went through the questions (again glaucoma heavy, to the point that I've become quite paranoid, trying to catch glimpses of my eyeballs in car hub-caps and on the chrome parts of fridges for the corneal petrification that is the hallmark of glaucoma. Or something. I've not been that bothered to actually look it up on NHS Direct).

It was all fine until I got to the scales and the Body Mass Index. I'm five nine and a (very important) half but I rounded it down to 5'9". Fatal mistake. I was expecting to be over-weight; I've piled on the pounds over the last couple of years due to a number of things: learning to cook delicious foods, trying to write novels in The Noble pub; yet another broken leg. But this leap-frogged over the main-body of "overweight" and landed just the right side, JUST the right side, of "obese".

Now I reckon I've lost about half a stone since Christmas which I'm certain would have landed me comfortably (and you can imagine that it IS quite comfy) in obese-land. So this is me; sober, healthy, eating well and walking five miles everyday and I'm still just shy of being Mr Creosote! And I've never been in Greggs in my life!

I still have a month to go before counselling and when that day comes I want to be metally ill and FABULOUS! No sweets till BEDLAM!