Like a Motorway

I've been back at work for four days, and it’s been OK. Not going to bitch about it here anyway!

But this felt like the first “normal” week for literally months. So much has been going on (see blogs passim ad nauseam) and then when you have holiday coming up that tends to effect what you do. At present I have no more hols booked, so in theory have got the best part of four months until Christmas. Hard to put stuff off until then.

Amusing (and expensive, but also very pleasing) news this week. On Thursday I had the first sort of important meeting I've had in ages – for about six weeks. So, went to put a suit on. Not a tie – I mean, nobody died, but a suit. And none of them fit. And none of my belts fit either. I went and got measured on Friday. My 44L jacket size now needs to be a 40L. Trousers down from 36 to 32, and shirts from 16.5 to 15.5. The last time I wore a 15.5 collar shirt was when I first went to college in 1987. It was tight then...

I will admit (but don’t tell the others, they will tease me) that when the lady in M&S did these measurements, it made me feel really good. But then, when she said “and given your shape you should go for the slim fit shirts rather than the regular” she did actually bring me to tears.

So I have bought a suit, and a few other things, and will need to build up a new wardrobe as and when money permits. If anyone wants clothes in the sizes above – let me know!

Work has got in the way of me exercising this week, and I've really missed it. At least Thursday and Friday I could go to the gym after work, but I was out the other nights. At this rate I’m going to have to go first thing in the morning. There are worse things to be addicted to. Like any good addict, I managed two hits today - a decnet walk and a trip to the gym.

(Whilst typing this I am listening to Saint Etienne, and the majestic ‘Hobart Paving’ has just come on. If you don’t know it, YouTube it – a brilliant song, even if Sarah C is sometimes on the flat side.)

I went to see Avenue Q on Tuesday at Wimbledon. I’d seen it before, in the West End, but this production is just as strong. The woman playing Kate and Lucy is super-talented – actually, all of them are, but I thought her vocals were excellent. And any musical with a song called ‘Schadenfreude’ is worth checking out.

Dinner with some good friends on Wednesday and Friday made for a good week all in all. I do feel so balanced right now (I’m not sure that’s the right word – I am looking for something that says I feel on a really even keel and completely able to deal with anything the world throws at me, whether it be work crap or anything else). Doing lots, enjoying things, and feel that my confidence is higher than it has been for a while. In part this is weight/appearance-related but it’s also deeper than that. Maybe not – I might be a gibbering wreck by next weekend.

What else to say? Voxcetera start rehearsals again on Tuesday – with only a month before our concert on 4^th October. It’s a free one in North London at noon on a Saturday. Find us on the web or Facebook and come along if you like. There will be Gershwin, but no Kate Bush.

Guess Who's Back?

... back again.

You’ll have noted the three week gap, which has pretty much coincided with me being on holiday. I took the decision that, given my working life involves a lot of time looking at a computer screen, my holiday shouldn't. So I haven’t. Just checked the email each day, largely to control the inflow of stuff.

So, what to tell you?

I've had a wonderful break. I’ve caught up with a few friends, and also visited my parents. I've caught up with the kids – always it seems in ones and twos, but they are so busy doing their own stuff. And in my brief offspring-related detour, I was delighted by middle son’s frankly stellar GCSE results – he has learned a great lesson that hard work brings results. I learned that lesson at age 40.

Health? Well. I set myself what with my work head on I would call a stretch goal – if everything went well then one day I might get there. And I am now only 2.5Kg* off it. That means I have since Easter now lost 30 pounds^. Over the holiday, with the exception of two days at my parents, I have walked at least four miles every day (except today because of the rain) and gone to the gym every day except one. And I have eaten healthily. I am absolutely ecstatic with my achievement – my stretch goal looks possible for September.

Which meant I had to buy some new clothes. Not my favourite experience, but feels good to have reduced the size that much. Of course (up pops the negative part of Brain) it’s the keeping it off that is difficult. To which I say frankly “bollocks”, let’s see in six months’ time.

Music? I am loving my Ukulele playing with Balham Ukulele Society. It’s fun, and low pressure, but still something to work at. More seriously, I sang at the Proms on Monday 18^th – the Rachmaninov Choral Symphony – “The Bells”. Wow. What a choir, what an orchestra, what a conductor, what a reception. It was on Radio 3 and is still on IPlayer. The music may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it was such an experience. Hard work. Really hard work, but certainly worth it.

So, that’s the catch-up download. Not a mention of Kate Bush (23 days and counting and the tickets have arrived) or Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who (though I want a coat like that). And no mention of the stuff I have read over the break – I’ll give you all that lot over the coming weeks.

It’s great to have been away, but it’s just as lovely to come back.

* I’ve decided to go metric

^ It didn’t last – I can only think in imperial measures

Don't do it

It’s been a slightly strange weekend. Gorgeous weather and a wedding on Friday meant a great start. And I think the choir did pretty well – one slightly hairy moment in ‘Oh Happy Day’, but the choral self-righting mechanism (known technically as ‘watching the conductor’ kicked in pretty quickly and all was well again. Lovely to be part of such a special occasion and I wish the happy couple well.

I did a lot of walking too. It’s ticked up to five or six miles a day in one go (that’s excluding the little trips to the shops which mount up too.) I've been finding in the last year or so that it is much harder to sleep in for the morning. I remember as I guess a teenager my parents always being up early and them saying that they just couldn't lie-in any more. And, unless I've been on a really late one the night before (which isn't then a lie-in, it’s just a time-shifted normal sleep) I tend to be awake by 7 even without an alarm. So on a non-work day I get up, have some breakfast and go out walking for an hour or so before it gets busy. There is definitely an endorphin release that comes from exercise, and this is magnified by being back home at maybe 9 / 9:30 and thinking I've done that already when a year ago I’d still be just getting up.

And I seem to have come off a plateau at the gym as well, in that I'm managing to use an exercise bike for longer and at more intensity than I had even a week ago. And I haven’t died of heart failure once. To illustrate what I mean, two weeks ago if I did 30 minutes on a bike which (according to the bike) burned about 330 calories, I was done in, and coasting for the last five minutes. I'm now doing 35 or 40 minute and pushing close to 500 calories, and maintaining the effort for the full time. And I had my first go on a cross trainer on Saturday. I don’t like it much because I have to think too much (bike just involves music on and subconscious brain takes over – not so the x-trainer (yet)).

I think this is quite easy to explain – since the end of May I've lost nearly twenty pounds in weight. I remember on various TV shows watching people who had lost weight being presented with the equivalent weight (usually in packets of lard or bags of sugar) and being told “this is what you were carrying around with you”. So that’s 9 bags of sugar or 36 packets of lard that I'm not dragging around on the bike.I may go and carry something like that around Sainsburys for ten minutes later, just to remind myself...

Other good stuff – I'm really starting to get into learning the Rachmaninov for the Prom two weeks today. It’s so fast that I still have some way to go, but I do now for the first time thing it is doable. And I'm also loving the ukulele – it got a thousand times easier when I figured I should cut my nails on my left hand. I can be really slow some times!

The weird (arguably not so good) bits? Well, this was the first weekend when I was largely left to my own devices since I moved house. And I still feel that I really need to be “doing something” all the time – that a moment spent doing nothing is a moment wasted (and I have wasted enough of my life I feel). With no planned events (rehearsals, dinners, catch-ups etc.) this got me a little edgy by Sunday night, because I’d done most of the things I needed to do, and still had some time left. This worries me because, as of Thursday I am on holiday, so if I am like that after two days, how will it be after two weeks? I hope (and suspect) this is just a short-term adjustment thing. I need to learn to relax, and to accept that an hour spent doing very little is by no means a bad thing.

I'm likely to be very busy the next three days* tying off loose ends at work, but after that I’d like to think I will be blogging quite a bit over the next fortnight – and perhaps on slightly more meaningful stuff – particularly if I don’t manage to figure out where my own personal off switch is!

* To prove that, whilst I wrote this at 7 o'clock this morning, this is the first time I've had the chance at work to take the fully 30 seconds required to upload it!