Drink It In

I used to enjoy exercise.

No, really.

Until the arrival of some time-sapping pseudoparasites* I was keen on squash, a regular gym bunny and could often be seen cycling hither and yon, sometimes via thither.

Then, things of a procreative nature occurred*.

Suddenly your gym membership lapses and you don't renew it, your cobwebbed bike gets put in the garage and gradually retreats further behind the mower and miscellaneous boxes of gardening and DIY detritus, and Ol' Thunder the squash racquet gets mounted on red velvet in a glass case and hung above the ornate fireplace in the main hall, alongside the swords of your ancestors, the blood-stained notches on it's handle the only clue to your past conquests.

And you get porky.

Despite your being permanently tired, parenthood comes with the irritating side effect of apparently using up no calories whatsoever.

I am now usually awake for about 18 hours in every twenty-four, so one might presume I'd have time to get super productive. Time not just to clean, feed and entertain tiny humans*, but also to enjoy myself, maybe play a bit of sport, socialise with people so they don't forget who I am, maybe finish my spoon.

But no.

Those long hours of wakefulness are like the most volatile of substances, sublimating into the ether like dry ice in a pop video from 1985. The minutes gurgle rapidly and unstoppably down the temporal plughole of reality whilst the tadpole of life swims against the current of fate in the bath of futility, desperately hoping to avoid the dragonfly larva of destiny.

You have to schedule in a poo and a cup of tea three days ahead.

Regular exercise is not an option at the moment, which leads to the dilemma of how does one lose some of that excess chunk?

The ugly spectre of Dieting rears it's skeletal head and winks a sunken eyelid at me.

Which is a shame because I like food even more than I like exercise.

So, if I must, how to go about it? Do I want to join Weight Watchers? No, because it sounds like a specialist porn site for chubby chasers. Do I want to count calories? No, because that sounds more boring than the history of plywood. Do I want to be organised about it? No, because that would involve being organised about it.

Food would be more easy to avoid if it looked like evil sci-fi characters. One dunk of a Dorito in some guacamole and Shazam! :

Jabba the Dip stares at you accusingly, as if telling you that this was how he started.

In general, I just need to cut down on some stuff. Be a bit more aware of unhealthy things I'm choffing and not choff them quite so much. With this in mind I poured myself a lager, sat down and had a think about what to give up.

Chocolate? I eat a couple of bars a week. Dips like Jabba up there? More of an occasional treat than a bad habit. Puddings? Not that many. Takeaways? Had my first curry in three and a half weeks a few days ago, so not much help there. I took a swig of Kronenburg to help me concentrate.

Ah . . .

Lager is quite calorific. My favourite beer is currently Poacher's Choice, which sends both my taste buds and my liver into little shivery tremors of joy. I presume the liver tremors are joy anyway. This beer is fairly hefty both in terms of booze content and calories.

I suppose I could . . . cut . . . down . . .

Oof! No no no. Let's not go down such avenues of desperation, I thought. Draining my glass, I decided it was time to get some help, and referred the subject on to the wife, who is wise in the way of food. She was in her cushion room, making fans and doilies, possibly.

"No exercises. Too fat. Make better." I explained.

She nodded, always approving of brevity in explanations. She got the gist, realising that I might conceivably benefit from losing weight, but without doing exercise, so what could I possibly give up to facilitate such a transformation.

Don't say beer, I thought at her.

"Well," she said, looking at a small cheese and tomato sandwich I was predating for my lunch. "You do actually eat fairly healthily."

"I do." I agreed, thinking don't say beer, don't say beer.

"So we need to look at something you maybe do have a bit too much of, don't we?"

"S'pose." I concurred magnanimously. Don't say beer. Do NOT say beer. Beer in this context is not what I want to hear.

"You could perhaps cut down on . . ."

Doritos? Mars bars? Lettuce. Oh sweet baby Moses let it be lettuce.

"B . . ."

Burgers? Boursin? Bite sized Shredded Wheat?

." . .Be . . ."

Beans? Benecol? Beastiality? Wait, none of them are fattening.

" . . . Bee . . ."

Beetroot? Bee vomit? That's honey? I could give up honey I suppose. As long as it's not . . .

" . . . Beer?"

Oh cock.

I gave her my most vitriolic of glares, and she asked if I needed some Preparation H, so I flounced off as she retreated back into the cushion room, shaking her head.

The trouble is, she's right.

So, the iron rod of reason smacks down onto the simpleton's forehead of resistance, ensuring the contra-coup injury of realisation results in the persistent vegetative state of acquiescence.

I have to cut down on beer.

There is no sad faced emoticon sad faced enough to depict how sad faced the emoticon I want to put here is but, take my word for it, it's pretty sad faced.

I reluctantly agree and come to the conclusion that, if beer's not there, I probably won't drink it, so I'm not buying any for the house.

The beer cupboard can go back to being called the fridge.

Despite my sacrifices and my general spurning of all things hedonisitc, I am not, as many people have wondered, an ascetic monk. Beer has been with me for a long time. It stands to reason that I'm going to need something to reduce the separation anxiety. With this firmly in mind, I went to the supermarket and examined alternatives.

Happily, they had exactly the thing to take my mind off beer:

Whisky!

As long as I have a decent bottle of single malt in the house, I shall not want for more calorific beverages, so this is practically a new diet plan all on it's own.

I might market it and call it the Proprietary Innovative Sure Slim Ethanolic Diversionary technique for weight loss.

It has a catchy acronym so I should make a killing.



* Children.

Handy beers

There was a brief respite for me and the missus from the unending hassle of joys of parenthood, when the inlaws looked after The Boy for a few hours and we got to go for a walk into town.

A walk! On our own! As adults!

It was a bit strange. We don't often use a push chair so, usually, at some point, I have a child sitting on my shoulders and firking away at my ear canals like a Madagascan Aye-aye after grubs in rotting wood. But this time I was free, free I tells ya, and I felt like Atlas after he'd been told he can take the afternoon off and let Jeebus carry the world for a bit.

We went into shops and things remained roughly as they were before we went in. Doors were not pushed open, cupboards remained closed, tills unmolested and stock not scattered hither and, in some cases thither, across the aisles. No-one in Millets was loudly informed that "Daddy has got a willy-beard", which is the price one pays for using the family changing room at the swimming pool.

It was all rather marvellous.

And to top it off, we went for a pint. In a pub. Together like a real couple, and had beers which were suitably segregated into gender-specific types; a pint of standard driving bitter (3.7 % ABV) for me, and some strange, expensive European strawberry-enhanced beer for the good lady.

It was such an unusual event that I even took a pic:


We were like teenagers again, trying each others beers, making faces at the others lack of taste. I manfully got the round in and then winced because the strawberry beer was two quid for half a pint. This might not seem a lot if you're reading this in the future - actually, that's fairly certain, but I mean the more distant future - but right now, in 2009, it's the price of an expensive drink, so you can take that smug oh-weren't-they-cute-in-the-old-days grin off your technologically advanced fizzog and go back to your space credits, titanium trousers and pong.

It was all very civilised.

The whole situation was as unusual an occurrence as a very forced simile. In fact, it was almost as unusual as seeing a tapir, dressed in a World War Two Luftwaffe outfit, trying to mount a unicorn whilst reading Tennyson in Braille near the urinals.

That's how unusual it was.

After a thoroughly enjoyable libation in the aforementioned hostelry, we meandered back through the town towards our waiting parentmobile, ready to wade back into the strife take back the pleasant mantle of loving providers.

On the way back there was even an odd bit of art work for us to look at. Someone had made some cellophane hands and stuck them to a post in the street, for reasons that were unknown (and, frankly, probably uninteresting) to us, but it was an interesting distraction and you know what I'm like when it comes to interesting distractions *waves excitedly and shouts 'blog pic'!*:

So it was with refreshed minds and lubricated oesophagi that we made our way home, and thus hopeful for a repeat event at some point in the not too distant future.

The whole episode made us greatly appreciate something that, just a few years ago, we would probably been fairly blasé about.

Not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing really. I'm going with . . . good!

Yay!

Booze control

Continuing the ethanol based theme of my recent bloggage, I thought I would risk being labelled as a drunk (which is like being an alcoholic but more fun) by discussing the virtues of various beverages.

Now, as a manly man with all burps and hairy bits and that, I am obviously a fan of beer, which is relatively low in alcohol content and is primarily a thirst-quenching beverage for those of us who are allergic to water. I did once have a beer which contained 12% alcohol (called 'Deathshead' I think) and was seen as a right of passage at a certain beer festival nearby. Absolutely disgusting it was. I'm quite happy with the sub - 5.5% concoctions in general, although it has been bought to my attention that beer has something called 'calories' in it, which scientists suggest might be responsible for some weight gain in beer drinking chaps throughout the world. I have therefore been informed I must limit my beer intake or face the wrath of a female who doesn't want a big fat husband.

Bloody scientists - messing with things they shouldn't oughta.

Happily, I am also partial to whisky, as well as whiskey. Now I'm older I can afford some better quality stuff than the tea-coloured own-brand meths I was forced to consume in my earlier years, quality liquids such as glorious single malts or some nice imported Yank stuff. The problem with this is that it goes down far too easily, and before you know it you're bouncing off the walls as you try and climb the suddenly complicated stairs to bed.

Note how I've only mentioned the rufty-tufty, robustly male-orientated drinks so far? That's to demonstrate that I am, in fact, a rufty-tufty, robust male with a healthy interest in ladies and steak, possibly to be found, moustachioed and sitting in a pub with a full bottle of Gentleman Jack's, smoking a cigar so big that it has to be delivered by lumberjacks.

All of this is true, apart from the cigar bit, what with the smoking ban and everything. And the moustache.

So, it is something of a humbling experience to demonstrate my current favourite drink is this:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a hot chocolate with rum in it.

Oh yes.

A drink that would be accepted with a smile by ladies everywhere, except perhaps Saudi Arabia. You might notice that I was unable to resist sampling it even to take a photo of it unmolested. I was slurping away like a vulture with a rotting zebra kidney before thinking it might make a blog entry so you'll have to make do with this one.

Or might I suggest nipping off and making your own. Of course, if you're underage you might want to get an adult to make it for you.