Overweight, and past my use-by date
I am the first, and worry about it. I am possibly also the second, and worry almost as much about that too. If I am lucky, I can reverse the first, but what can I do about the second?
I used to work for a communications company, analysing performance figures and fault incidents, and passing on the data I collected to a colleague who then calculated all the company statistics. My colleague was a Pole who had come to England after the war as a refugee, and had never gone home again. He is partly the reason I am overweight.
In the spirit of Kafka, I shall call him Statistician K. He was much older than I was, and had been an inmate in one of the concentration camps. He had ended up at Dora, by the underground facility where the long-range rockets were built that fell on the Southeast corner of England in the last few months of the war. I had been captivated by the whole program of missile development ever since reading Gravity's Rainbow. K knew things that I couldn't have known at the time, because there were several D-notices still forbidding the release of the full story.
He told me a lot about the secret side of the war and the aftermath. When the Allies liberated that part of Europe, someone realised the usefulness of a bright young teenager who knew the tunnels inside out and remembered many of the significant role-players in the Nordhausen saga. K went to work for something like the SOE, wandering around Europe looking for certain faces.
Most of our conversations took place in the restaurant over lunch, because our work was quite mentally intensive. At the time, I was an athletic ten-stone cycling smoker, a sort of Jarvis Cocker without the glasses, while K was large and round and jolly, with a waistline that nearly matched his height. He had a compulsion to eat as much as he could whenever the chance presented itself, which stemmed from his time in the concentration camps. I was also a hearty eater, but all I could claim was a spell abroad without money when I lived on fish, wild berries, and leaves, until the funds finally arrived at the Post Office and I could carry on my travels.
We would both load up our plates with starter, main course, and a hefty salad. All too often, the plates would be picked clean before our conversations were even half-way through. So, we began going back for more. It wasn't long before we were eating two main courses each lunchtime. I justified it on the grounds that I never ate sweets, smoked like a chimney, and cycled more than ten miles a day. My weight moved up a little to eleven stone as I lost the lanky stringiness. I didn't care, it was worth it for the conversations. K leant me book after book on some of the wartime secrets that had already been published, and would then intrigue me with tales of what hadn't been allowed to go into the book because of the D-notices.
He also kept me fascinated with what he knew about computing. He had, after coming to England, studied by night, and was a founder member of the British Computing Society. I at the time was a self-taught programmer, and K gave me my first introduction to the principles behind numerical methods, algorithms and heuristics.
A young graduate who had recently joined straight from university came to see us both, wanting to access our collected data to solve a problem he had been tasked with, finding out why signals from place A to place B were sometimes routed three times up and down the country instead of by the shortest route. He had decided to use a well-known algorithm to determine the shortest route method for traffic. He had a book with him, open at the pages describing Dijkstra’s method for finding the shortest route that passed through all necessary points no more than once.
"Ah yes," said K, taking the book and turning over a page, "you might find this more relevant to your problem. This is my refutation of his claim that his method is generally applicable to all these types of problems."
The graduate nodded politely, glanced once at the page, and then flipped back to Dijkstra, and resumed his questions. Like many people, he was reluctant to believe anything that contradicted the history he had already learned. Also, I was amazed to see, he completely failed to grasp the fact that a name in a textbook was sitting opposite him, with a beaming smile and kindly eyes, ready and willing to show him how to turn the problem inside out. He had his plan, and he stuck doggedly to it.
Just before I left the company, I gave up smoking, and gained two stone in two months. It was frightening to me, because I still had the speedy reactions of a skinny athlete, but didn't have the muscle control to manage that extra bulk I had acquired. I regularly swung round corners and careered outwards on a tangent under the action of my own momentum, bruising my shoulders against the walls if there was nobody handy to cushion the impact. Someone jokingly asked me if I was trying to look like K's son. With the wisdom of fifteen years, I think now that I did use K as a father figure, for my own father had died many years before and nobody had ever filled the gap he left. K's stories of the past coupled with his desire to see that I knew what they meant did drop nicely into part of the void.
Sadly, I will never hear any more of them. He retired within a year of my leaving the company, and then died of a heart-attack a few weeks later. I have so far not managed to lose the extra two stone I gained in those months. I had to slow down in order to manage the extra weight, and as a result began to pile still more weight on. Last year I typed my height and bulk into a web-page, and was informed that I was borderline-obese. Mortified, I began to eat less and walk more, and after a few weeks got back to my fat fit man's status, or am I now a fit fat man?
I have three burning ambitions left on my list, and the second of them is to get back to my earlier weight. For the past three months I have gone out four times a week and walked for two hours. I have managed to lose several inches from my waist; I am once again a size 38, where I was previously looking at 42 inches and rising. But I have not managed to lose one single ounce; I am still fourteen and a half stone; no matter which scales I choose, no matter if I shave twice and squeeze every last fart and belch from my body, the needle on the dial always returns to the same place. Perhaps I am doing this to myself in memory of K.
Is it time for the awful D-word, or am I too old to change? How do I stop myself falling into the trap the graduate had placed himself in, becoming set in his mental ways before he was even thirty?
I used to work for a communications company, analysing performance figures and fault incidents, and passing on the data I collected to a colleague who then calculated all the company statistics. My colleague was a Pole who had come to England after the war as a refugee, and had never gone home again. He is partly the reason I am overweight.
In the spirit of Kafka, I shall call him Statistician K. He was much older than I was, and had been an inmate in one of the concentration camps. He had ended up at Dora, by the underground facility where the long-range rockets were built that fell on the Southeast corner of England in the last few months of the war. I had been captivated by the whole program of missile development ever since reading Gravity's Rainbow. K knew things that I couldn't have known at the time, because there were several D-notices still forbidding the release of the full story.
He told me a lot about the secret side of the war and the aftermath. When the Allies liberated that part of Europe, someone realised the usefulness of a bright young teenager who knew the tunnels inside out and remembered many of the significant role-players in the Nordhausen saga. K went to work for something like the SOE, wandering around Europe looking for certain faces.
Most of our conversations took place in the restaurant over lunch, because our work was quite mentally intensive. At the time, I was an athletic ten-stone cycling smoker, a sort of Jarvis Cocker without the glasses, while K was large and round and jolly, with a waistline that nearly matched his height. He had a compulsion to eat as much as he could whenever the chance presented itself, which stemmed from his time in the concentration camps. I was also a hearty eater, but all I could claim was a spell abroad without money when I lived on fish, wild berries, and leaves, until the funds finally arrived at the Post Office and I could carry on my travels.
We would both load up our plates with starter, main course, and a hefty salad. All too often, the plates would be picked clean before our conversations were even half-way through. So, we began going back for more. It wasn't long before we were eating two main courses each lunchtime. I justified it on the grounds that I never ate sweets, smoked like a chimney, and cycled more than ten miles a day. My weight moved up a little to eleven stone as I lost the lanky stringiness. I didn't care, it was worth it for the conversations. K leant me book after book on some of the wartime secrets that had already been published, and would then intrigue me with tales of what hadn't been allowed to go into the book because of the D-notices.
He also kept me fascinated with what he knew about computing. He had, after coming to England, studied by night, and was a founder member of the British Computing Society. I at the time was a self-taught programmer, and K gave me my first introduction to the principles behind numerical methods, algorithms and heuristics.
A young graduate who had recently joined straight from university came to see us both, wanting to access our collected data to solve a problem he had been tasked with, finding out why signals from place A to place B were sometimes routed three times up and down the country instead of by the shortest route. He had decided to use a well-known algorithm to determine the shortest route method for traffic. He had a book with him, open at the pages describing Dijkstra’s method for finding the shortest route that passed through all necessary points no more than once.
"Ah yes," said K, taking the book and turning over a page, "you might find this more relevant to your problem. This is my refutation of his claim that his method is generally applicable to all these types of problems."
The graduate nodded politely, glanced once at the page, and then flipped back to Dijkstra, and resumed his questions. Like many people, he was reluctant to believe anything that contradicted the history he had already learned. Also, I was amazed to see, he completely failed to grasp the fact that a name in a textbook was sitting opposite him, with a beaming smile and kindly eyes, ready and willing to show him how to turn the problem inside out. He had his plan, and he stuck doggedly to it.
Just before I left the company, I gave up smoking, and gained two stone in two months. It was frightening to me, because I still had the speedy reactions of a skinny athlete, but didn't have the muscle control to manage that extra bulk I had acquired. I regularly swung round corners and careered outwards on a tangent under the action of my own momentum, bruising my shoulders against the walls if there was nobody handy to cushion the impact. Someone jokingly asked me if I was trying to look like K's son. With the wisdom of fifteen years, I think now that I did use K as a father figure, for my own father had died many years before and nobody had ever filled the gap he left. K's stories of the past coupled with his desire to see that I knew what they meant did drop nicely into part of the void.
Sadly, I will never hear any more of them. He retired within a year of my leaving the company, and then died of a heart-attack a few weeks later. I have so far not managed to lose the extra two stone I gained in those months. I had to slow down in order to manage the extra weight, and as a result began to pile still more weight on. Last year I typed my height and bulk into a web-page, and was informed that I was borderline-obese. Mortified, I began to eat less and walk more, and after a few weeks got back to my fat fit man's status, or am I now a fit fat man?
I have three burning ambitions left on my list, and the second of them is to get back to my earlier weight. For the past three months I have gone out four times a week and walked for two hours. I have managed to lose several inches from my waist; I am once again a size 38, where I was previously looking at 42 inches and rising. But I have not managed to lose one single ounce; I am still fourteen and a half stone; no matter which scales I choose, no matter if I shave twice and squeeze every last fart and belch from my body, the needle on the dial always returns to the same place. Perhaps I am doing this to myself in memory of K.
Is it time for the awful D-word, or am I too old to change? How do I stop myself falling into the trap the graduate had placed himself in, becoming set in his mental ways before he was even thirty?
posted by Sopwith-Camel | 9:28 pm
1 Comments:
The last time I saw you I wouldn't have said you were any heavier than I'd previously rememnbered. But then my eyes might have got fatter together with the rest of me so my world-view would stretch proportionately and I might not be aware of how much we've both changed.
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