Well Lunched

Oh Ye Gods who preside over the noontide repast, well have you rewarded your Servant, Matthew!

Happy chance rewarded your correspondant with a business lunch. A business lunch is Midday's premium product, the seasoned diner's blue ribbon event. Consider - I was set to be munching on a Benjy's torpedo. Instead I was to be found working my way through a exorbitantly rich chicken terrine glued together with foie gras, all atop what I presumed to be a tzsatsiki . To follow - a gnocchi and broad bean confection, afloat in brackish green puddle of pea juice. Each dish was a transport. All the while I was oiling myself as fast as feasible, with one of those white wines that are easily confused with water. Under the cover of pudding, which predictably no-one had, opting instead for espressi, I slipped in a grappa. I noted a polite residue of moderacy in my colleagues glasses, but I made sure that I snaffled all of mine back. I was rolling when we left. At breakfast, I had had a Valerie doughnut pumped with confectioner's custard. Few days are as calorific as this.

We were out with representatives of Business B. I was seated next to one of those rare women who is self-evidently marriageable. Her mien broadcast her suitability as a mate. But, as is the custom with women of that cast, she was wearing a ring on her wedding finger. 'You're fit but you know it', you might say (pace the Streets). But K, was refreshingly accessible. As a techie, I had been consigned to the outer darkness of the end of the table. Had K not been quite so inclusive, I would have been forced to make my only interactions with a French media magnet, something of a dullard, called Vincent. As it was K, even when speaking to her right frequently swung her head round to make it clear that I was involved in the goings on.

In sum we had a gay old time of it.

A confusion has arisen following my first post. Contrary to what it may seem I am not on a diet. I take a passing interest in my mass but I am not so morbidly fascinated that I would pull back on my consumption. 2.7 kilos (as of yesterday) isn't much to knock off. Whilst I may moderate myself sufficiently to do it, I may not.

Today's proud boast - 98.2 kilos. After lunch's motherlode I anticipate a further increment tomorrow.

Box of Meat - Charter

We are in a culinary interregnum.

Dr. Atkins has passed on. I understand that he 'slipped' to his death. But I also understand that at the time he slipped, he tipped the scales at 18 stone. That's not little for a 70 year old man, that's a lot. He was a bloater. Likely that his balance was diffy.

I am not going to bother with the details of Atkin's death because details aren't my style.

At the beginning of Autumn, with their customary no-nonsense approach to fulfilling consumer need, Benjys were selling little boxes of 10-15 party sausages. The expectation was that the customer would consume them all at one sitting. Quite how disgusting we might expect that to do be, without trying consuming them ourselves, is impossible to gauge. The sausages have now been withdrawn from service. In fact the whole Atkins shelf that sat above those pots that contained the yogurt that was covered with the thin spread of lurid jam, is now defunkt. The Atkin's adherent who visits Benjys, now has to make do with the mini-buckets of salad. These mini-buckets contain the wateryist tomato and lettuce on the planet, the stuff that has the taste like a sad day in an exposed place.

Atkins lingers. My brother retrieved the Atkin's tome from my bookshelf. I am not being deliberately affecting by using the archaism 'tome'. Atkins wrote a tome. He swaddled the mechanics of the diet, all of which could be summarised in a pamphlet, with scientific underpinning, (which given Atkin's demise, we can now predicts contain some hidden kink), the approved Atkin's Attitude to the Atkins Method, the schedule of meals and finally a collection of the recipes that will deliver you to your fat-free destiny.

My brother is set to mortify his flesh in advance of the wedding. Having travelled with Atkins myself, I remember the emptiness which had been bought on by not eating carbohydrate, this I felt in my maw . In the fits of madness bought on my that inescapable gaping void, I once furiously consumed a whole packet of very chemical chorizo around the back of Berwick Street's Somerfields. Passers-by stepped to avoid the slavering crazy. Then there was the occasion with the Kraft slices. I was more moderate because nausea prevented any really prodigious despatch.

By any ready reckoner from any medical authority, I am obese. I like to think however, that I belong to the small group of fatties who are obese but trim. Little comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

I await the coming Atkins, the regime that will lead me back to the bright, uplit pastures of 'over-weight'. For me that is the modest 95 kilos - my fighting weight. Getting to that weight will lose me the slabby pieces of side on my hips and also it will reveal the abber-dabbers that at present do their work unseen. I might lose something of my tits too. I am less worried about them. I like to flex them then grab them for comfort.

Until that time I will write this blog about lunch.

Three rules -

1) the blog will be about lunch which is to say lunch's consumption and matters arising
2) the blog will be written outside of the hours of lunch (sometimes the minutes of lunch, depending upon business)
3) the blog will continue until Matthew Humberstone weighs 95 kilos at that time of waking and wearing only his boxer shorts. The scales in the kitchen next to fridge are the sole arbiter on all matters of Matthew Humberstone's weight.

Weight today - 97.7 kilos.