Binge...

Ate:

2 packets Sunbites (260cals)

Wrap (440 cals)

Chocolates (300)

Oatcakes (300)

4 slices toast w. peanut butter (thinly spread: 300)

Chocolate Muffin (300)

 1900 cals.*

And I couldn't purge.  I am fat, fat, fat.  

It appears that John Prescott and I share an illness: Bulimia.  The difference between us is that he is entitled to treatment and I am not.  I suffered from anorexia as a teenager and have been bulimic ever since.  I relapsed into anorexia in 1998.  I read an article in the Cambridge Evening News in which a Dr Jane Shapleske, who is part of Addenbrookes Eating disorders team, expressed sympathy with Mr. Prescott and rightly so but does she really expect us to believe that if  'Joe Bloggs' came in off the street and presented himself to her that she would have recommended treatment?  I know she wouldn't because I did exactly** that and she refused to accept me on her program.  We know why you express sympathy for Mr Prescott, Dr. Shapleske, it's because he is powerful, high profile and you are not obliged to treat him.  Words are cheap, aren't they, Dr. Shapleske? Maybe now we know that men too suffer from this condition the 'powers-that-be' will be more willing to invest real money into the treatment of this illness but, frankly, I'm not holding my breath.

I deviate from the norm but not quite dramatically enough to hold any interest for Dr Shapleske.

*That and 26 valium and I am still paralysed by anxiety.  Sorry, make that 46.  I am not in the habit of looking gift horses in mouthes.  I am invincible.  Invincible.

**Actually, I was referred to her by my GP.

I keep taking pics of myself. Not because I'm vain but because, at the moment,  I am not my usual fat, moocow self and I don't know how long it will last.  I don't know when my body will start rebelling again.  

And I know it shouldn't matter.  I know that we should be more than just our bodies.  But it does.  And I don't know why.  I don't know why I am capitulating to body fascism but I am and I wish that I could detach myself from it.  But it's all around me.  It permeates every part of society and, by succumbing to it, I am helping to perpetuate it.

It's the end of the world as we know it

It's the end of the world as we know it

And I feel fine.

I Now Have...

A new Macbook complete with photobooth. That is where the tiresome pics of yours truly are coming from. The novelty will wear off soon. Now it is shiny, glossy and quite beautiful. Commodity fetishism reigns in these parts. The revolution can wait.

Mother was shocked that I bought a new computer. What would you like me to spend my money on mother: drugs, alcohol, junk food? The money I spent on my shiny new macbook is money I have because I never purchase those things. She fails to grasp the importance of a computer to my everyday life, to my health, to my general well-being. Sometimes when I am too afraid leave the house the computer it is my lifeline, my sole connection to the world. It is the same when I wake up in the middle of the night, terrified beyond reason, bathed in perspiration. The computer is the only thing that can stifle the babbling voices in my head. The only thing, sometimes, that can stop me from simply giving up. How can she fail to understand that?

This Week...

I have been mostly shopping. And yes, I am aware that I shouldn't be indulging in such frivolous pastimes.  I should be wringing my hands and weeping helplessly over atrocities occurring on the other side of the planet. On second thoughts:

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference

And:

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, of a Child in London

Dylan Thomas

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

Some 'photies':
(My Liverpudlian therapist is getting me to take photographs of myself from various angles for obvious reasons.)





And another thing:

Loss

If you have never lost anything then it means that you have never had anything. The only way to avoid loss is to avoid having anything. And what kind of life is that?

Nobby's Dog

...Freddi is dead. His son took her to the vet's on Friday morning. In a nutshell her lungs had simply stopped working. She was in great pain. Nobby's son telephoned him from the vet's and he consented to have her put to sleep. When I spoke to Nobby in the afternoon he could hardly get the words out. 'How is Freddi?' I asked.

'Freddi...put..to...sleep.'

I don't think those around him understand what this had done to him. He is ninety one. He has lived through a war. He fought in Italy in a Special Services Reconnaissance Commando Unit. He has seen men blown to bits, trapped in tanks, burning to death and yet none of that affected him as much as the demise of 'a little white dog'. It's like Freddi was an anchor, tethering him to the earth and now she has gone there is no reason for him to stay. He is broken. There is a wall between us. I don't know what to say to make it all better. Why are we given things only for them to be snatched away?

When someone asked me if I had had a 'flutter on the grand national' I directed them to this link.

High on Coke

Freddi (Nobby's dog) is ill.  Her breathing is shallow and she is subdued.  She will be taking a trip to the dog doctor tomorrow.  I managed to sooth her by stroking her gently as she lay at my feet.  I have come to love her almost as though she is my own.  Listening to Nelly Fertado's Why do All Good Things Come to an End? : flames to dust/Lovers to Friends/Why do all good things come to an end?  I ask why things come to an end, maybe it would be more productive to ask when and why things begin.

Diet coke really isn't a good substitute for food, but then I expect most sensible people knew that already.

Tristesse