Lighter
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man going on and on about how much weight he’s lost, is the most boring man on earth. I have become that man and I am ashamed. Since finding myself pumped with drugs in hospital after my innards clenched, resulting a pain so severe that I chipped a tooth, I have been losing weight. It was New Year’s day in the time of Spug, I was relaxing in the A & E of the Halifax Royal Hospital. The Doctor stood at my bedside…well, not THE Doctor, a Doctor. I like to spell it with a capital letter.
A Doctor stood at my bedside, he was swaying slightly after working for 48 hours.
“Martin, it looks like you have low stomach acid. Have you been taking any tablets?”
“I usually take a Ranitidine tablet at night to help me sleep or I get terrible heartburn.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“About a year.”
The Doctor furrowed his brow, looked his notes and quietly said “how long have you been obese?”
My mind reeled. Obese! Who was he calling obese? OK I’d gained a bit of weight since I became ill in 2011 but I’m reasonably tall so I can carry it off. I’m certainly not obese. Obese people are enormous. I’ve seen them in those films of people walking down a busy street, under the caption ‘BRITAIN’S OBESITY EPIDEMIC’. They are Billy Bunter, Cyril Smith or that bloke in Sheffield with the gaffer tape on his head. They wash themselves with a rag on a stick and are hoisted into bed with a crane. They’re certainly not me because I’m not obese. In fact I don’t know what it means.
“Obese?”
“Yes, you are currently eighteen stone (they weighed me during admission) and five feet eleven inches tall (I assume the ‘currently’ was referring to my weight) which makes you obese.”
“Fuck.”
An hour later I was in a taxi, full of pain killers and anti-spasmodics (me, not the taxi) with the Doctor’s voice echoing in my fat ears. I paid the driver and got out of the taxi a few yards from my house and walked down the hill. Shit! Why had I not noticed it before? It was as plain as the fat nose on my fat face, I was waddling. I tried to correct it but after a few steps I reverted to the side to side movement of the rotund. Something would have to be done.
I flung open the front door and rushed into my kitchen where I hurled bread, butter, cakes, biscuits and chocolate into the bin whilst pissing into the faces of some starving children in Africa. Then I dragged my wobbly cadaver to the supermarket and bought some bathroom scales and a shit load of couscous.
Since then I’ve lost two stone and the waddle has gone.
If you like sketch shows then the February Brainjam Podcast is ready to be downloaded from brainjam.co.uk, Soundcloud, Stitcher Radio and the largely redundant iTunes.
