Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Fat.

Sylph-like is an adjective rarely applied (other than with heavy irony, or while I have been temporarily located in Florida, USA) to your Grumbler. Even so, it's become apparent that my manly physique has, in recent times, begun to exhibit characteristics more traditionally associated with the better fed strata of our society.

You may appreciate that I greet this realisation with the same dismay previously reserved for the discovery that one of the cats has seen fit to gift me with half a dead mouse in my left-foot carpet slipper. (One of our dogs has eaten the right-foot slipper - either as a form of dietary protest, or some utterly misdirected expression of adoration. Personally, I have never found the consumption of garments belonging to an objet d'amour to be a reliable declaration of infatuation. My advice, once you've ripped your chosen article of clothing off the wearer using nothing but your teeth, stop while you're ahead.)

The rib-cage of a field mouse, incidentally, is a very good fit on the second toe of my left foot. A useful fact that I shall file away should I ever take up the business of producing costume jewelery for the S&M/Goth/Foot-fetishist community.

My burgeoning rotundity is as welcome as a trouser cough in an Extra-Vehicular-Activity suit, and has crept up on me in much the same contemptibly surreptitious fashion that I imagine a a low-earth-orbit fart would employ.

It's quite evidently been a gradual process, and subject to a good deal of self-delusion. I've been more than comfortable assuming that our new tumble dryer bears sole responsibility for the fact that my heavyweight cotton T-shirts now stretch so thin across my abdomen that they take on a disturbing transparency more commonly associated with expensive fashion garments targeted at the well-to-do metrosexual.

I've been able to rationalise the tightness of my belt as 'leather shrinkage' - a direct result of the fact that I was recently rained upon, a common occurrence in these geographical parts. As for the bathroom scales, don't they all over-read when the battery gets low?

I've even been capable of believing that when someone shouts "Oi Fatty!" in my general direction when there is no-one else to be seen is attributable to my failing eyesight. (Odd, isn't it - more comfortable with incipient myopia than obesity?).

I suppose that the final straw came the other day whilst I was crossing the road. (I wouldn't usually do that, but I suffer from a rare condition known as Alcoholic Constipation. Basically, I have extreme difficulty in passing a pub.) An elderly lady driving a Mitsubastard Dungbeetle or somesuch equally execrable far-eastern economy-microcar shot out of a previously un-noticed side road and bore down upon me at speeds that must have been approaching twelve miles an hour.

I don't mind admitting that for quite a long while I thought I was a goner - proof if it were needed that a low speed traffic incident is a lot more frightening than a fast one. But then she stopped, looked right, and proceeded to drive round me, 180 degrees, and back the way she came. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that the silly moo thought I was a mini-roundabout.

Oooh, the ignominy of it.

Its not that I have anything against street-furniture of this type. Some of my best friends are traffic islands. But lets face it, this isn't the time of year for that kind of career change. Its cold enough to freeze one's bollards off out there.

There's nothing for it, I'm going to have to go on a diet. Otherwise the next time you see me the town council will have stuck a Christmas tree on my head, and I'll be surrounded by boy-scouts singing "Away in a Manger", and I've always hated that one.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It says it all:

http://www.macclads.co.uk/hectic_house/lyrics/lyrics_alpha/fatb.html

Anonymous said...

Try that again:

http://www.macclads.co.uk/hectic_house/lyrics

/lyrics_alpha/fatb.html

Anonymous said...

I may be elderly but I don't "moo" and my eyesight is still good enough to let me drive.
I left home the other day with just enough in the tank to make it to my local petrol station. Admittedly, I turned the wrong way, realised and had to go around you to get back on course.
I note that you didn't come to help me when I ran out of petrol 100 yards down the road.

Anonymous said...

I know you're fat.... but you've got skills!

Anonymous said...

Epi-Logue

Having just returned from a 2 week family holiday to Disney Florida I would like to state on record that - relatively speaking - The Grumbler is NOT fat ... in fact he is quite slim.

(And if a waitress to was to come to my local English restaurant table with Florida-size portions I'd be out of there like a shot etc etc etc).

I now vow to never again call the Grunbler fat - unless he turns up to work on one of those "blubber mobiles" so prevalent in Florida - for those people who have got so large they have decided to give up walking.