The chase...

There was a shocking revelation at Binland yesterday.  I stumbled across the other members of the Binland Diet Club, discussing what we'd lost in weight overall the last week.  A most impressive twenty two pounds.

'Wow!' I said, 'That's amazing.'

Then Mrs S looked at me over the top of her glasses and raised her eyebrows, and I suddenly felt a rush of guilt wash over me.  On Monday, I did the equivalent of the bloke on The Chase who takes the really low figure of £200 'just to get back to the team', fully knowing that the prize fund was £10,000 before he bottled.  

If they hadn't taken my weight gain into consideration, we (and I don't include me in that) would have lost twenty four pounds.  I'm not saying that I felt really guilty, but it almost put me off the five Quality Street left languishing in the bottom of the tin yesterday afternoon...

Anyway, onward and upward.  I have a beach holiday less than five months away, so need to get a wriggle on if I'm going to be happy being seen in anything less than a Demis Roussos cast off. (Think bell tent if you're too young to know who I'm referring to).

Now as you all know, I have asthma, and yesterday I went for my annual asthma review.  This is like having an MOT and involved me puffing down various bits of cardboard.  But my favourite bit is when they check whether you can use your inhaler correctly.  One year, while waiting for my review (the appointments were running around half an hour late, and in my defence, I was bored senseless) I calculated roughly how many inhalers I had got through since I started using them back in 1971.  I managed to work it out at around 2000 without the use of my calculator on my phone (this was in the car, hence the boredom).  

'Would you like to demonstrate how you use your inhalers?' she eventually asked.

Do you know how much willpower I needed not to stand on one leg, waving a sock in the air while squirting the inhaler up my nose, all the time singing 'Long-haired Lover from Liverpool' with my eyes crossed?  

But I am a sensible old bird, and I demonstrated very beautifully how well I can take my medicines.  Having proved how responsible I was, she then decided that I was to be put onto a new inhaler, one which did the same job as the two I currently take morning and night.  

My first thought was the saving in costs, swiftly followed by the excitement at the extra space on my dressing table, and then the question as to what I could do with the eight extra seconds I would get each day popped into my brain.

Mustn't eat cake...

Mustn't eat biscuits...

Mustn't eat chocolate...

Just mustn't eat anything really...