Diary

The last week has been surprisingly uneventful. Most of my evenings have been taken up with going to the gym, rewriting a script and watching TV - Five USA is finally repeating season 2 of Breaking Bad, hooray - along with a trip to the parents' homestead at the weekend. I rented Sherlock Holmes for us to watch on Saturday night. Dad was a little nonplussed by Robert Downey Jr., but they both seemed to enjoy it. The week before, however...

Being stopped by the police is one of those rare occurrences that may have happened to someone you know. It happened to me as I was cycling through the City on Thursday night. Yes, cycling. Apparently, laddo decided that my lights weren't bright enough, but he'd let me off the £30 fine if I didn't go out with them after I'd reached my destination. A later discussion birthed the knowledge that he was talking through his helmet, that brightness would be entirely subjective, and that he'd probably tried arresting Mervyn King for not having a tax disc, hence being put on traffic duty in a cabin on Fenchurch Street in rush hour.

The fun part was when I was on my way home, and my brakes felt a little spongy. Once I got in, I got out my tools to tighten them up when - TWANG - the cable snapped. I found a little old man who fixed it in a couple of hours on Saturday, but also imagined what might have happened had they gone while I was descending the steep hill past London Bridge station, which has a pedestrian crossing at the bottom. Carnage.

Having got the bike fixed on Saturday, I embarked on a round London trip, heading from my corner of SE16 across Lambeth and Kensington to Notting Hill, then down Oxford Street and along the embankment for home. I had resolved to make a healthy dinner of my own Prawn Green Curry when I got home, but decided, upon entering the supermarket after 8pm, that I simply couldn't be arsed. I had Chicken Kiev, and am still paying for it.

The reason for the Notting Hill trip was to cash in some old book I had stacking up, mostly of book groups past, and see what the second-hand bookshop there would give me. The answer was, "not much", but my eye was drawn by two things. Firstly, a cut-out of a Cyberman in the window. Secondly, a display case containing some rare Doctor Who novels missing from my collection, with the promise of more in the back.

It's quite hard to describe the feeling of looking through seemingly endless shelves of desirable sci-fi novels. You could call it a mixture of child-like awe and wonderment, with some excitement mixed in. Although I had almost all of them anyway, the urge to grab an armful and take them to the till was hard to resist. Instead, I sauntered up to the cashier bloke and politely asked for the copies of Lungbarrow and Cold Fusion behind him. Those of you in the know, or willing to check on eBay, will realise the improbability of being able to buy both in the same transaction. Suffice to say the price was substantial, but far from unaffordable. I didn't really need those extra teeth anyway.

Friday night was the night of excitement, as far as I was concerned, since this meant the long-awaited release of The Ward. I settled down into my seat at the Empire Leicester Square, having bought a £13 ticket and stocked up on snacks from the tube station, even though I supposed to be losing weight. It was especially nice of the lady at the box office to seat me almost directly in front on someone else, even though the cinema was nearly deserted. As for the film itself, I need only copy my comments from Facebook:

"The film, incidentally, is pretty good. A return to form after the dire Masters of Horror episodes, and with a screenplay that is a lot more sophisticated than it appears. It's still some distance from the glory days of Halloween and The Fog, but it stands comfortably along his later second-string efforts such as In the Mouth of Madness and Prince of Darkness. Recommended."

I also dozed off part of the way through, possibly a symptom of treating sleep as a luxury to be rationed, and often not putting out the light until 3am. An awful habit, I know. There was another trip to the pictures on Saturday while my bike was being fixed. This time: Black Swan. Again, cross-posting:

"It states the obvious at great length ("Did you know that ballerinas have a tough time and are worried about getting old?" Yes, I did, thanks) and mercilessly rips off The Red Shoes and Polanski's Repulsion, adding nothing original. That it has received more BAFTA nominations that The Social Network and Four Lions put together is an embarrassment."

I seem to be in a minority of the sane for calling it "bloody awful". People will be saying Dario Argento is a decent director next.

There's also been a new article for a friend's Doctor Who-based fanzine, which I shall plug when I get confident that people reading this haven't seen me do so elsewhere. I don't want to spoil it, but it mentions dragons, the Foreign Legion and heroin. Combined with a ludicrous workload in the office, where my potential productivity has been catastrophically overestimated, that is largely it.

Except for one thing. My weight.

I've been trying to lose weight for around a year, having rejoined a gym, gone for a run most days, hired a personal trainer and changed my eating habits. But it's very hard. My willpower is pathetic, virtually nil. Last night, the night before I start a new food diary, I had the following for dinner:

Two cheese and onion rolls (like sausage rolls).
Sausage and egg sandwich.
Four rolls with extra light cheese spread.
Two pieces of breaded cod.
A tin of sweetcorn.
Mullerrice.
Two large bottles of beer.

I really shouldn't have been surprised when I tipped the scales at 84.2 kilos this morning, a full kilo off Monday and some margin from my target of 75. Superhuman effort in resistance and a hard 20 minute run has managed to cut it back to 83.2 kilos as of after dinner this evening, but if I'm going to get this weight thing licked, I'm going to need help.

Which is where you come in. All I ask is for a bit of encouragement. A kind word when the number goes down. A mean one - but not too mean, I bruise easily - when it goes up. No cash, no sponsorship, just a few keystrokes when you can spare the time.

Thanks in advance, so you'll feel guilty if you next see me wearing a smock like Dom DeLuise.

My plan is to get the weight off by my 30th birthday - late next month - and reward myself with a HTC Desire, my first posh phone. If you see me still using my ancient slip-top one, remember to ask me what the scales said that morning.

"No coach parties, please."

Anyway, that's enough misery. Let's finish with a song.