Losing Winter Weight .... I wish I was a bear

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I wish I was a bear.

Look I know you'll probably try and shoot me down, because bears aren't indigenous to the Garden Route…. or anywhere in South Africa, I suppose, – but I can cope with that because I'm not exactly 100% indigenous myself. (I didn't quite know how exotic I was until Saturday, when I mentioned, under my breath I thought, that it might be nice if England won their Rugby match like the Springboks had. Apparently that is the equivalent to pledging one's allegiance to the EFF in some circles).

But let's get back to the bear facts (heh heh).

Why do I crave to be a bear? A good question - because I'm really not partial to standing in icy rivers eating raw fish. Nor am I prone to walking on all fours, growling, salivating and sniffing the air for signs of a small victim upon which to pounce and rip into bite-size chunks (there's already one person too many doing that in our household).

But that's not all a bear does. Bears get to do other things, the best of which is, of course, sleeping all through Winter….. and waking up thin.

Can you imagine that? That's why I REALLY want to be a bear. I can't think of anything I would like to do more than climbing into bed around mid-April, after a few months of constant quaffing of meat pies, Bosun's bitter and other highly nutritional, organic foods, staying there fast asleep until September the first (or was it the second this year?) AND WAKING UP THIN!

You see I don't like Winter. Not one little bit. And as I am not a bear, and my family insists that I cannot stay under my duvet until Spring, it seems the only way I can survive the cold is to eat. Continuously.

And that's what I do.

In Winter I'm like a whale, storing blubber for central heating in the Arctic Circle. It is a no-holds-barred, high-fat, high-carb, high-protein, high-calorie, high GI, Hi waiter!, gluttony fest. I cannot control myself.

Of course I know this isn't healthy, and sometimes in those long months I feel so guilty I even think about exercise, but there simply aren't enough daylight hours in a day are there? What with the early morning snack, the pre-breakfast sandwich, breakfast cereal, breakfast bacon'n eggs, breakfast toast top up, ten o'clock tea 'n biscuits (ok, cakes), elevenses, pre-lunch crackers 'n cheese, lunch, more lunch, two o'clock doughnuts, afternoon tea 'n biscuits, meat-pie munchies for the road home, the after-work three-tier dagwood snackwich, dinner, pudding, supper, rusks 'n coffee, popcorn, then some cheese before bedtime, normally between two healthily generous slices of Sasko's finest white.

And as you can imagine, after four or so months of this omnivorous carnage and sincere lack of movement (apparently butter-spreading doesn't burn as many calories as I assumed), Spring burps me out like an obese ball of lard, and my family reads me the riot act about losing weight.

Why? Because they love me and care deeply about my wellbeing.

Actually no. It's because the shower leaks. Badly.

Perhaps I should explain, because I am sure that one or two of you out there might not make the connection. And the connection is where the problem lies really. It all goes back to when I built our house, and the building budget being somewhat tight (apparently I hugely overspent on the figure allowed for 'Bottled Stress Reliever'). So I decided to save money…… by not employing a plumber.

At the time I thought it was a stroke of pure genius:- doing all the plumbing myself, with the kind assistance of both my brother in law and a case of the afore-mentioned Bottled Stress Reliever. Why not? I mean plumbing isn't exactly rocket science is it?

Actually it is.

So…. To cut a long story (and, as it turned out, a vital length of copper piping) short, for the last fourteen years we have had a shower upstairs which leaks. Actually that is not the entire truth – it doesn't ALWAYS leak. Just in the second half of Winter, and then only when I am the one showering.

Of course I tried to reason that this is pure coincidence, but apparently Mrs Ed called a so-called 'expert' in, who signed an affidavit laying the blame totally on my shoulders…. And my waist…. And my stomach….. Something about excess weight on the fibre-glass shower tray pressing down on the pipe leading to the hot tap which puts undue pressure on a connection hidden somewhere in the dry (or not so dry) walling.

This same fellow says we should be able to fix it without a problem, just as soon as we win the European lottery, or the Nigerian prince sends me the money he promised.

Of course this leak would be okay, if the water quietly ran down the wall, gathered itself into a polite pool somewhere behind a cupboard, and was content with causing a small case of rising damp. But it doesn't. It pours through the ceiling boards and, as if auditioning for the part of Victoria Falls, crashes down into the kitchen, wreaking wet havoc with anything in a two metre radius underneath.

Of course this is just hearsay. I have never witnessed the phenomenon myself because, well I am usually showering at the time, but my family certainly give me no reason to believe that they are happy with the resultant mayhem.

“Dad! I was making one of my awesome, award winning sandwiches!” bellows my somewhat annoyed son, The REE (Resident Expert on Everything), when his multi-layer cheese, peanut butter, ham, lettuce, Bovril and bacon sarmie (You have learned well, Grasshopper,) has been reduced to a sogginess of mush proportions.

“Daddy can't you hurry?” Fear Factor, my daughter, shout-whispers through the bathroom door, “I'm trying to make breakfast for me and my friends, and whenever the water hits the toaster it sparks blue flames. It's, like, REALLY embarrassing!”

I suppose even I have been affected by it in an indirect way. The other evening I was eating dinner and I actually complimented Mrs Ed on her cooking. “Mmmmmm, this stew is surprisingly nice!” I said to her, “Is there perhaps something extra you added to your recipe?”
“Shower water?” she responded, nonplussed.

So where does this leave me? Well though it's nice that you should ask, I can't say I am in a happy place at all. In fact I'm probably as miserable as an English Rugby coach. It's all the deceit you see, it's playing on my conscience, but I swear it's not my fault:- Mrs Ed is the one who is insistent that I start jogging - to lose weight of course. And though I always intend to, it's just so hard to get going in the mornings, especially after a late night's rugby watching.

So what I normally do when the alarm clock goes off is take a quick shower to wake myself up….. and that's when the still-half-asleep Mrs Ed shouts “You may as well get back into bed, you can't run in this weather, you'll get soaked.”

I keep meaning to tell her that what she's hearing is the pitter-patter of shower-drops falling on the kitchen floor, and one day I will….. just not tomorrow, or the next day. In fact I'll keep it to myself just for one more week….. or maybe until the World Cup is over…..
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