Camden Town

See - not to obsess about this, but had oatmeal last thing last night - blood this morning was 4.8. d had NO oatmeal, blood was 13.8. Case closed on the oatmeal diet, not gonna keep on about it any more...

Honest...

Oh, now before we begin in earnest, one of my pack of Karens (Karen Pulley, in this case), once told me, early on in this experiment, that the Disappearing Man blog was a thing that many women would probably identify with, only "you're a bit more honest than I probably would be about some things..."

If you happen to be at all squeamish...this is probably not the entry for you. Look away now if you don't want to know the score, as they used to say on the football results before my weekly Doctor Who injection. This...this is not gonna be pretty.


Today was a bizarre mixture of temptation and mortification. My god-daughters were in town.

No, of course that's not the reason for either the temptation or the mortification. Eww. Stick around and I'll tell you.

So, both my god-daughters, and their mother, came in for a day in London with d and I. d and I had time for breakfast before we met them, so we popped to McDonalds, and I had oatmeal. I know - quelle surprise, right? I also, like a good little Disappearing Man, took my pills...including my morning Xenical. (Xenical, for those who haven't been keeping up, is the drug that grabs hold of fat molecules in anything you eat, and tells them, in no uncertain terms, to get the fuck out).

We went to meet the girls, who, being too cool by half wanted to go to Camden. We went. While we were walking around, my insides were gurgling, but not, I thought, to any particular effect. When the girls decided they were hungry, we went for lunch. There are many food stalls in Camden Market, and Epona (the younger of my god-daughters), particularly wanted to sit at what, I have to admit, was a dead cool serving counter - the seats were all defunct scooters. Now, as it happened, mine had a black leather seat, with some of the leather torn off and the cream-coloured foam padding exposed.

The rumbling in my innards continued, and by the end of the meal I also needed to pee. I got up to find the bathrooms.
"Erm..." said d.
She blinked.
"Are you...erm...leaking, honey?" she asked.
"Not that I know of," I assured her. "Why?"
She pointed to the bike seat. The black leather was glistening in a suspiciously oily way, and the exposed foam padding had a dark orange stain on it.
"Nah," I said, grinning. "That's just Camden, honey. The grottiness is part of the charm."
"I dunno," said my skeptical wife. "That oil looks...kinda fresh. Go take your rubbish to the bin. I'll...erm...spot you."
I did. She did.
"Yep," she confirmed. "It's you."
"Arse," I said.
"Yes dear," she agreed. I hurried off to find the bathroom. She was right. My underwear was soaked with horrid oily orange...ness, that had leaked through my jeans, and stained the bike seat (Sorry, by the way - if you go to Camden, avoid the ass-juice scooter!). How it had done that without me at least knowing about it is rather complicated.

You see, normally, you must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, a fart is just a fart. But sometimes, when taking Xenical, a fart is more like a raspberry that your arse blows - feels like a fart, sounds like a fart, acts more or less like a muck spreader. One of my gurgles had apparently been such a raspberry. I wiped everything down as best I could (including the underwear itself), made myself as presentable as possible and headed back out to meet d. She handed me a bottle of water.

"Ah, just the job," I said. "I need to take my second Xenical..."
Yeah. I know.

That is to say, I know now! In the interests of honest reporting, I should tell you that d did raise her eyebrows at me.

"Seriously?" she said. "After what just happened to you, you're gonna take another of those pills...now?"

Note to self - listen to the wife - she's more often than not the one carrying the family brain.
Oh, incidentally - lunch? Chicken Fajita. That's chicken, sour cream, sauce, guacamole, cheese...

Next stop after Camden was Forbidden Planet, up by Seven Dials. I should say that, following my morning gurgle, I had fashioned what in other circumstances would probably be described as an anal sanitary napkin, but which, being the accomplished wordsmith you all know me to me, I call a Wodge, and basically padded myself up against any, surely unlikely, recurrence of the morning's nightmare.

Did I mention the chicken the sour cream, the sauce, the guacamole, the cheese...?

So - Forbidden Planet. Brianna, the elder of the two god-daughters is a huge Harry Potter and Who fan, and her younger sister, Epona, is apparently a talented artist, keen to get into the comic-drawing business. So the Planet had something to appeal to them both. As for me - chance to wallow in my geekness? Not too shabby for Tony. I'd done my first circuit when I met back up with d.
"Hey, I just thought," she said, waving her swanky newish smartphone at me, "great opportunity to try out the barcode-scanner app - go and scan the bejeesus out of the Harry Potter stuff for B, y'never know, might be cool for Christmas-"
BAM!
My ass belched.
"Ohhh God," I murmured, now attuned to the raspberrying sensation.
"What?" she said.
"Gotta go," I explained. "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go..."
"Go!" she said, catching on.
I accosted - which is a polite way of saying "practically rugby-tackled" a spotty young assistant as he bounded down the stairs, full of life's optimism and vigour.
"Scuse me," I demanded, squelching slightly from leg to leg. "Is there a bathroom in the store?"
"Err...no sir - there's plenty of cafes across the road-"
I was already limping out, crossing the road, cursing the Metropolitan mindset that said "Sure, come, spend your money, but don't dare use our bog-roll".
There must have been something of an air of desperation about me (at least, I hope that's all the air that was about me), because cafe-owner after cafe-owner denied having anything so plebian and downright useful as a "bathroom" on the premises, so I John-Wayned my way further and further away from the Planet, looking for that great British institution, the pub.

Found one a few streets away, called The Crown. I've always been something of a Republican (in the anti-Monarchy sense of the word), so I think it's fair to say I've never been so glad to see The Crown in my life. The gents bathroom was down a narrow winding wooden staircase, of the kind you see in horror movies leading to padded basements from which the protagonist never returns. The staircase ran beneath a low beam, with a sign on it saying "Low Beam - Mind Your Head" - which would have been a great and useful warning, had I seen it before I banged my head on it. Not having had a lot of luck going downstairs lately, I steadied myself.
No Time! screamed my wretched underwear, and I scuttled down the last few steps. The gents bathroom was basically a store cupboard, with one stall and two urinals. It was empty. As I locked the door of the stall behind me, a nagging down played through my mind. If the toilet's out of order, or if there's no paper...
It wasn't. There was. I pulled down my jeans, reached back...
My Wodge was soaked right through and bright, j'accuse, orange. It dropped into the bowl with a splat that said "I shouldn't have to put up with this shit, you know!"
My ass, frankly, exploded again...and again...and again. I did the re-mopping, re-drying.
Then I heard the outside door open. There was someone else waiting to use the stall. It opened again. There was a word or two of, if not conversation, then at least acknowledgment of each other's existence. I stood up, flushed...
And a bright orange, greasy paper jellyfish rose up the bowl at me, seeming to expand with every second, the water like an over-oily bolognaise, filling the bowl to the brim.
Nooooooo! I wept inside my skull. There were blokes out there, waiting to use the toilet, who now a) wouldn't be able to, and b) would know, absolutely, that I was responsible for their predicament. There's a wholly inaccurate truism (does that make it a falsism?) that says there are no atheists in foxholes. As I say, that's completely untrue, but let me tell you, I came close this afternoon to proving that there are no atheists in pub toilets when faced with angry impatient men who need to shit and a giant oily octopus that's flooded the only bowl.

Fortunately, as I was contemplating bashing my head against the toilet wall, feigning amnesia and pretending no knowledge of the nightmare in the bowl behind me, something in the pipes gurgled (the toilet's pipes, I should say, not my own this time), and swallowed the evil orange jellyfish down to sewage Hell. I raised my eyes to the skies, not so much to say Thank You, as to darkly mutter You're Taking The Piss Now, You Know That?
It seemed as good a time to leave as I was going to get, so I unbolted the door.
Both the men were standing at the urinals. They hadn't even wanted to use the toilet.
Seriously, We Need To Talk About Your Sense Of Humour...I thought, in a vaguely upwardly direction. I made my way back to the Planet (no, I didn't even buy a drink in The Crown. Yes, I really am that cheap). Brianna came pelting in after me.
"We're not here any more," she explained. I thought about explaining right back that surely we were, or there wouldn't have been a here for us to not be in, but decided against it.
"Been looking for you," she said. "We're at a cafe across the road."
As it happened, "we" were at the first cafe I'd tried, the one where the surly, burly, hairy man behind the counter had pronounced "no sir, we have no bathroom," with an inflection that made it sound like "get out of here now, scumbag, before I set the dogs on you."
"Who's up for ice-cream?" said d.

You know, I love my wife dearly and with all my heart, but sometimes, jussssst sometimes, I think we need to talk about her sense of humour too. Anyhow, it turned out everybody was up for ice-cream, so we walked back down towards Trafalger Square, to the ice-cream parlour we discovered the night of Much Ado. Everybody had cones. I banged my head softly on the counter, nearly broke a couple of nails, and ordered a de-caff latte...which was just peachy. Fun and frolics ensued with the Lions of Trafalgar Square, and we took the girls and their mother back to Waterloo to catch their train home. Before getting our own tube, d popped to the bathroom at Waterloo. I wandered round a big open sweet stall...sniffing. Interestingly, I could make out the distinct aromas of the coconut mushrooms, the cola bottles, the licourice whips and so on. Then I caught a gang of kids on the other side of the stall eyeing me suspiciously, and it dawned on me that a nearly-40-year-old fat bloke going around sniffing a sweet stall was probably one of the more disturbing images they'd encountered in their callow, innocent lives.
I wandered off, trying to affect an air of Nothing To See Here...

I almost whistled, but thought better of it at the last moment.

We came home, and I threw my horribly mistreated clothes in the washing machine and jumped in the shower. Then I jumped on here to write this.

Now I'm jumping off again and jumping on the bike.
Hey, whaddaya want from me? It is Monday night, after all!

Oh, and by the way: Stool softeners tonight? Nnnnnnot so much!