August 29th – Les journaux sont imprimés, Les ouvriers sont déprimés

Cleaned myself: I exercise my right not to incriminate myself.
Monkey see, monkey do: got a bird, innit?
Tics: 0
Believe in God? Fuck off.
YTLH: see above.

There has been an incident. It may yet affect my consumer rights in a proposed retail action, so for the moment it must remain sub judice, suffice to say that I am some sort of fecund bastard.

Speaking of their eminences, the jury is out as to whether the egg-diet would have been successful. Ignoring the denouement for a moment, I tend towards the view that it was heading in the right direction. I just drew a bad egg that’s all, which, as much as it accelerated the outcome, probably exaggerated it a little too, so it’s wrong to come down definitively on one side of the argument.

Net result, as it stands, I face the world twelve pounds lighter. But there were some bad days to endure, and there were times when I regretted stationing myself in the shed, away from standard sewage arrangements. During that ordeal, I would have happily traded a permanent net gain in girth and weight to have been relieved of the agony of the symptoms. Like a milky grey ocean crashing against a sea-wall and meeting its own waves rebounding back, so my nausea set off in waves from top to bottom, then back again to crash into each other in the middle ground, where they sought exit.

There was nothing to do but accept my fate, and I was glad, for the first few days, of my new inflatable double mattress, with built-in pump (Aldi £39.99), until the fourth night when it formed a split alongside one of its packing creases and deflated of its own volition. Attempts at securing a reimbursement have thus far failed, principally because the mattress now retails at £4.99. I’ve already said too much.

And now another thought occurs: I think, during the worst of the fever, that I made another draft Pearl & Dean advert, in which I declared, “my name is Richard White, born on …., and I would like to apologise to everyone who has ever met me.” As I say, I was handicapped by a profound fecundity at the time.

I can’t remember now whether I merely posted it to Twitter, or if I rang up the Times to secure a full page spread for the notice. I did something though, because I see that I have transferred a large cash balance to something that looks like a media company. I think I should be more worried than I am, but for once I’m looking at a reflection which does not repulse me, so I can’t.

Thanks to Neha Deshmukh for the image.