Getting it out for the first time this year

13st 11lb; 5.0 units of alcohol yesterday; 1,372 days to oblivion; Black Run.

The day gets off to an altogether satisfactory start, with the Today programme’s coverage of the local election results. As has always been customary in the event of bad news, Gordon Brown has gone to ground, but the egregious Harriet Harman is wheeled out to confirm that the Government is “listening”. Though not listening all that carefully, one must conclude, or she’d be busy putting the contents of her desk into a black bin liner, rather than touring TV and radio studios.

What’s more, it just goes on getting better. The sun is shining so invitingly that, for the first time this year, I make the ten mile round trip to the paper shop on my bike. Later I get the lawnmower out, also for the first time in 2008, and amazingly it roars into life as soon as I tug its starter cable (ooh, missus!), which is the gardening equivalent of a slice of toast landing on the carpet butter side up. Then I dig my convertible out of the far recesses of the old blacksmith’s forge I use as a garage, where it has been stored for the winter. It is filthy, and the nearside wing and front bumper have not benefited from my attempts to park it in a space where the laws of physics decreed that it would not fit. But at least it still goes “vroom”.

The seeds sown for an apparently promising relationship, socialism (oh, all right, Labour) defeated, the sun shining, a wide range of toys played with, and fresh air and exercise taken. In short, every box has been ticked to ensure that I am on absolutely top form. So why do I now start spiralling downwards into depression about whether I actually want or can cope with having another human being in my life? I decide to worry a bit about the lack of recent progress in my diet, the related observation that my alcohol consumption seems to be heading back upwards, and the fact that I haven’t even found time to read a newspaper for most of the last few days (which is actually a bit of a handicap for someone who aspires to be a topical commentator).

Yes, that does it nicely. By the evening I am thoroughly miserable, just like I was supposed to be when I started this blog. God’s not in his heaven and all’s wrong with the world, just as I always suspected. You don’t have to be completely barmy to have thought processes like this, but I can assure you that it is certainly a major help.