Diet!

That is my main news for the week. Bloody diet.

It’s a two phase thing. The first five days you flush out all the old crap from your body, then start on phase two. The good thing is you can eat as much as you like of the allowed items, so you are never really hungry. The bad bit is you are really restricted on carbs the first week. No spuds, pasta, small amounts of parsnip and carrot, no milk (apparently a surprising amount of carbs in milk, who new?) 50g of brown rice a day, or porridge but no bread. And no sugar, or prepared food. Worst of all no caffeine! Cue the three day splitting headache and milder ones since.

You can have eggs and bacon by the bucketful for breakfast, cooked in butter and still lose weight. But no bread, or beans.

It’s called the Harcombe diet. It diets with the body rather than fighting it. So instead of starving yourself so your body tries to turn every calorie it gets hold off into fat for the famine it thinks it’s in, it just makes your body use your stored fat whilst not storing any.

Anyway, six days, not hungry (eating like a pig most of the time) and I’ve lost seven pounds. Mustn’t grumble. I can eat stuff now. I just can’t mix carbs (root veg, bread, pasta) with fat’s (“if it’s got a face, or comes from something that’s got a face it’s a fat”). Protein is in everything so you can forget about that category. 

So today I made me and Wendy a lush vegetarian curry (Jamie Oliver’s recipe here: http://www.jamieshomecookingskills.com/recipe.php?title=thai-green-vegetable-curry ) for dinner and Wendy made us roast chicken for tea (I had broccoli and mange tout with mine). You’ve got to say, apart from the headaches, it’s an awesome diet.

By the way, I really do recommend that curry. I’ve gone right off them the last couple of years. The Pattaks paste curry you can make is just wrong. And this one has coconut milk in. I hate coconut milk curries, all creamy and sickly. Not a bit of it. It really was a surprise how nice it was. Not mad hot, or sickly, or dry and paste-y, just really tasty and light.

Kudos to the Jamester.

You can tell I’m on a diet, babbling on, extolling the virtues of food.

In other news I’ve been a bit concerned about my soprano sax. I was having real trouble with a few of the notes and I was getting nervous the bastards had sold me a dud. Turns out our wonderful Chinese comrades-in-arms had done a sterling job on a tight budget and it was just the bad workman blaming his tools.

I found this out after I heard an old 80’s power ballad on the radio the other day. I quite liked it in it’s pop/rock way; Hazel O’Connor, ‘Will You’ (http://youtu.be/NJSqcvAQ8l8) what blew me away was the sax in it. I never noticed before. Beautiful. I think it’s an alto. So I went online and downloaded the sheet music for free off the geezer who played it, Wesley Magoogan. (The link for the download is at the bottom of this page : http://www.hazeloconnor.net/wesleymagoogan/wesleymagoogan.html Flo Brant, take note.)

Anyway, armed with some new music and a burning desire to have a go I brought out the big guns. The tenor  sounded too bass-y though so I cracked open the soprano. Joy! After playing the tenor I seemed to be able to find the right embouchure for the soprano and it worked! Didn’t sound an awful lot like the song, but at least I was hitting constant notes. Which is to say the sax works, it’s just me that’s crap. That’s a relief.

Work is the same as ever. Which is good. Routine is what I crave still. Unfortunately I’m working this Monday and Tuesday, so no long jubilee weekend for poor me. Still, if I don’t work I don’t get paid so I’m not too upset.

That rip-off with Luke to which I alluded in my last blog is a bugger. They wanted £130 off him on some nebulous, if not spurious pretence. Something about checking his background. Then another £50 to do a credit check (they are free, and what was the background check, then?)  They didn’t like his credit history so they wanted a guarantor. We said we’d do it. Has to be a mortgage owner. Gail (Wendy’s sister) said she’d do it. Have to get proof that their is equity in the house (it’s not in negative equity). Got that. Still nothing. £180 for messing him, and everyone he knows, about for a few weeks. What a racket. No pad, £180 down the swanny, and stressed out for a couple of weeks. Bastards.

By the way, just watched Evil Dead II. What was I on? I remembered that as being a witty comedy/ horror. Sobriety does strange things to a chap. Like make him sit there gawping at just how bad a film he’s watching. The special effects were out of the ark. The acting is terrible. The plot is dreadful. OK, it was still fun and had a few really cool moments, but bloody hell it was hard viewing. A fond memory dragged into the harsh light of sobriety and beaten mercilessly with the cudgel of a contemporary critique.

And once again the clock tells me it’s time to stop wittering before Wendy brings to bear a non-metaphorical cudgel.

Later,

Buck.