I am wearing a pair of new green cashmere socks.
They are splendid, not least because, to my joy, they do not have that wickedly irritating seam which crosses the toes lumpily, and spoils lots of otherwise perfectly agreeable socks. They are soft and pretty and seamless and warm, and I do not care about having spent all of our money in the House of Bruar, because my life is better. This is the point of having money, although obviously I haven’t, any more.
However such a situation can soon be remedied, and I am sitting on the taxi rank, with comfortable feet and a bag of chocolate buttons. These two things are combining to make life really quite pleasant, except that I am not supposed to be eating the chocolate buttons.
The reason I am not supposed to be eating the chocolate buttons is that Mark got up this morning and decided that his trousers were too tight. I thought that the solution to this was to look on the mighty Internet for a New Trouser Shop, but Mark thinks that he would prefer just to get thinner, which I suppose at least has the advantage of being cheap.
I have never much liked low-budget solutions, and worse, I knew that my own trousers have shrunk a little around the waistline as well. Nevertheless it seemed important to Mark, and so, rather reluctantly, I agreed that perhaps we ought to eat a bit less.
I can think of no better way of creating a non-stop craving for chocolate buttons.
I have had this craving practically from the moment that Mark left for work this morning.
At first I tried to soothe it away by feeding it fruit and carrots. These did not work. Then I knew that more serious measures were called for, and ate some bread and butter, even though butter is nothing other than a fat-creation mechanism. When this did not work I ate an entire flask full of rice and vegetables and dead cow, cooked in red wine.
Even that did not work, although by then I was as full as Boris Johnson’s petrol tank on the day before the fuel crisis started.
In the end I gave up and I have been eating chocolate buttons steadily ever since.
I could have saved myself about half a stone’s worth of other boring junk if only I had just eaten the chocolate buttons in the first place.
I do not think that I am going to last very long at this weight-loss malarkey. Perhaps I could catch bat flu again, which worked brilliantly and I did not need to do a scrap of exercise.
Also I am pleased to tell you that I have indeed put my university homework in the right place on the website, because other people have read it and commented on it.
You are supposed to read everybody’s homework and say what you think about it. Mark laughed and laughed when I told him about this, and said that in no circumstances should I even consider it, unless I wanted this course to go the way of every other endeavour I have ever commenced with great enthusiasm and conviction.
Regular readers will know about some of these misadventures, almost all of which have concluded with my being ejected, quite hastily, back to the taxi rank.
We will not mention Slade Prison here.
I had forgotten about this, and realised at once that he was right.
It was very encouraging to read what other people have said about my efforts, however, and I was somewhat discomfited to feel myself becoming a little more conceited even than usual. It has suddenly become very important to be really, really good at it, and I have had to have some quiet words with myself.
It is a learning process, not a competition to the death. It does not matter at all whether my entry is the best or not. It is about everybody learning to become the best self they possibly can be.
I couldn’t agree more.
Also I am absolutely determined that I am not going to lose.
