14st 4lb; 3.0 units of alcohol yesterday; 1,221 days left to fill somehow; Northumberland.
After four hours’ sleep I woke up in a blind panic about money, which kept me occupied for the remainder of the night. The tape machine in my head kept re-running the conversation I had with my stockbroker in June, when I rang up and suggested selling all my remaining shares. “Ooh, no,” he said, “you don’t want to do that. Not now they have fallen so much. Leave it till the autumn. Conditions will be different then.”
Well, he was certainly right about that. I just wish that he had been slightly clearer about what he meant. It turns out to have been like consulting an oracle, or encountering one of those genies that are forever springing out of battered old bottles in battered old jokes. Like the long one about the bloke who ends up leaning gloomily on a bar with an ostrich and the world’s meanest cat, because he wished for the company of a bird with long legs and a tight pussy.
It is particularly frustrating that my stockbroker left the firm shortly afterwards, so I cannot even have the pleasure of ringing him up and offering him a piece of what passes for my mind on his brilliance as an adviser.
Of course, I could ring up now and sell my shares at their depressed value today, which is almost certainly going to be a better result than selling them at their even more depressed value in a week or a month’s or a year’s time. But then this would have the adverse effect of providing a temporary respite from the need to find some form of profitable employment, allowing me a little longer to waste sitting on my ample backside writing free gibberish for a select audience of blog readers, sitting in the best seats in opera houses and dining in top restaurants.
Which actually sounds all right, put like that, though during my nocturnal debate with myself I somehow concluded that it would be a Bad Thing.
Still, it could be worse. I may be 6lb heavier than I was when I had my life-transforming meeting with the Less Tall Cheshire Brunette in April, and a full 25lb heavier than I intended to be at this point in my life, but the answer from the oracle of the bathroom scales this morning struck me as not too bad, all things considered. And particularly considering the fact that I consumed a full 1,365 calories of confectionery alone yesterday, as I endeavoured to keep up my blood sugar during the long drive from Chester. I feel a bit like a goose heading for the foie gras factory, with the entirely understandable difference that there aren’t any animal rights activists who give a flying f*** about my fate.
The amazingly unlikely true story of how a grumpy old man and lifelong bachelor won the love of a beautiful young woman and started a family – and all by writing a curmudgeonly blog about his lonely journey to the grave.
Now who would have predicted that?
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