Stomique

After applying liberal quantities of food and drink to my person over the Christmas period, I came out of the festive break with a touch of a tummy. A wee pudding bowl clamped to my midriff like the early stages of pregnancy. A bonsai belly. It didn’t shake when I laughed like a bowlful of anything in particular, but it was still a noticeable addition.

I’ve had a tummy before. I’m informed by my better half that when we first met I had quite a pronounced pot belly. Lean everywhere else, but round in the middle as a result of a physical part-time job but too many pints on the days off.

Anyhow, I’d shaken off the quaky bits and was reasonably happy with myself towards the end of 2009. I wasn’t an olympic diver or anything, but I’d slipped down a jeans size, and was fairly confident buying Medium sized tops without trying them on first. So when it came back at Christmas time, I wasn’t too concerned – I figured I could shake it off again fairly easily.

But this one’s apparently not for shifting. As a result, I’ve stepped up my efforts, and am now trying to lessen my snack intake. Meals are fine, but I’m trying to be more aware of the treats that come in between.

All this has done is to leave my hungry in the evenings, just at about the time that all the cookery shows come on. Thankfully Gordon Ramsay doesn’t feature a lot of crisps or choc-ices – his show leaves you wanted to slap a steak under the grill. This still leaves me feeling hungry, but at least the craving is for something less convenient.

I’m also noticing how many non-edible items in our house seem to have been unnecessarily flavoured. Our washing up liquid certainly smells of apples, although I’ve not been tempted to taste it yet. More appetizing is my other half’s dressing table, which I realised the other day includes a cornucopia of fruity treats. Cranberry shimmer lotion. Blackberry hand cream. Strawberry lip balm. I suspect the cocoa butter body lotion isn’t as nice as it sounds, even if spread on a crumpet (There’s incidentally a shade of eyeshadow here called ‘Burnt toast’). But I could still probably make up a decent proportion of my five-a-day just by grazing on make-up.

On a day off, with all this stuff within arms reach, it’s debatable whether I’d even get out of bed – my only exercise being trying to frisbee new box sets into the DVD player.

Top tip

More out of neccessity than an innate appreciation for the symbolism, we went to the tip yesterday, for a spot of ‘out with the old’. This was long overdue. Now that domestic appliances are all smaller, there thankfully wasn’t a massive pile of stuff, but it was made up of a fair few items which all needed sorting through when we got there.

For thems who’ve never been (and understandably so, It’s not really much of an afternoon out. Huge queues AND the picnic area’s tiny) you drive your car into a slim car park with an entrance at one end, and an exit down t’other. Down one side is a series of vast open topped metal trailers. One is for metal goods, one for small electrical appliances, one for stone and concrete (but NOT plasterboard) and so on.

Televisions have an area of the car park off to the other side. You’re not encouraged to toss them carelessly onto the pile as you are with the items bound for the metal trailers. Spoilsports. Throwing a broken strimmer from a lofty height doesn’t feel anything like as rock ‘n’ roll.

Anyway, I ain’t grumbling about the sorting, I can see the benefit to the recycling process of distinguishing your office chairs from your timber from your televisions. But in having it all laid out seperately in front of you as you add to its volume, rather than a landfill of disparate items, it does make it all look quite appealing.

I’m not treading the old road of saying that I wanted to start retrieving bits and bobs for the living room, sterilising old dog blankets and gaffer taping up the cracks in discarded lava lamps. But all that junk does seem to look a lot more like a resource rather than waste.

The two containers for wood (‘natural’ and ‘man made’) were the best example of this – erratic planks and offcuts of different lengths, strewn criss-crossed in a shallow pile.

There wasn’t even that much of it. But having seen it, I’d bet that the kids of those who worked at the tip must have the greatest tree houses known to man.

That was supposed to be it. A quick jaunt to get rid of some stuff we no longer needed, wanted, or could find use of. What was more telling, was quite how enjoyable I’d found it. Earlier this afternoon – a full 24 hours after the tip trip – while we were both folding sheets or something, I suddenly said to my partner: ‘It was good at the tip yesterday, wasn’t it?’

I really meant it. And rightly so, she laughed at me.