This "Three-year-old dies from obesity" story has got a lot of coverage. It's making me quite cross. There are some very rare genetic disorders that can make people constantly hungry, eating till they kill themselves. They are discussed in "Fat Wars", I don't have my copy to hand so can't give the medical names for the conditions. I'm wondering if the 3 year old girl who died had one of these conditions.

I'm not saying most children/people who are overweight/obese have a medical condition - I know we are how we are cos we eat too much and don't exercise enough. But in this extreme case, I do wonder if the poor little girl did have some such illness. I object to her death being wheeled out as a freak show.

I am not the only person who has had trouble with the sexist bike snob bike shop. Woman from bike maint class had similar experience. She went in and asked for a new inner tube, correctly describing exactly what she needed, Bike Shop Bloke says "have you got your bike with you, I'll just go and check that's the right one". That's two of us never shopping there again. Lots more than two, when you count up all the people we've told about them. Hah.

More bike-maintenance news (whooo the excitement): Saturday evening I replaced my front brake cables (inner and outer) and helped R do his too. But I could not get my front brakes adjusted properly afterwards. Tinkered for hours, enlisted help of bike-knowledgable neighbours, consulted both the Bike Book and Sheldon Brown. Couldn't get it to happen. Went cap-in-hand to nice Bike Shop on Sunday morning, and it turns out my wheel needs re-dishing ie it has gone a funny shape but if I pay nice man in bike shop 8 quid plus vat he will fix it for me hurrah for nice-man-in-bike-shop.

Eating not too bad this weekend, and no crips yet today wow.

hmm well as you can see I have been playing with the pretty new blogger templates, I'll probably swop around for a couple of days, then get bored and settle on one, then I'll put my links etc back up. Also I have turned on blogger comments, which means i have lost the old ones but at least hopefully blogger comments are better behaved.

Despite being a professional 'northerner', I have muchly enjoyed Peter Ackroyd's London, and might do one of the walks next time I'm down there.

Nipples of a different sort "axed from EU film". What kind of person is offended by, or thinks it is 'rude', to show nipples being used for what they were intended? Whereas showing them in the papers every day is fine. And they wonder why more women don't breastfeed. big sigh.

Hey "Not So Skinny", I tried to leave you a comment but your comments don't seem to be working (and there's no email contact for you either). I wanted to say, I know how you feel and I know where you're at. And if you do find a plan of action, could you show me where to find one too?

I have given up all pretence of being on a diet and stuffed my face with crap. No surprise then that I have put on 2lb since I last weighed myself. I need to get a grip of myself. If I just stopped shovelling so much crap in my mouth, I'd lose weight (very slowly but I'd lose it). I'm doing the exercise (well some of it, still belly dancing and bike riding but haven't been swimming for ages). I need to have a long talk to myself. Hmmm. That's the trouble, I'd rather hide behind a family sized bag of crisps than talk to myself.

In other news: I'm feeling pretty happy with my purchases from Asda last night ie a new toolbox and a set of allen keys (I payed extra for decent Stanley ones but they still less than two quid the set). Also I am now able to say 'lube' without sniggering. Looking forward to lubing my nipples this weekend I must say. See, still not sniggering. Heh.

It's a long time since I listened to Linton Kwesi Johnson, so long that I'd forgotten how blisteringly brilliant he is. Dub poet, social historian, political voice. If you don't have any LKJ cds in your collection, get Independant Intavenshan right now.

My trip to the bike shop:

Me: I'd like to buy some brake cables with barrel nipples please
Bike Shop Youth: You mean the big fat round ones?
Me: Yes, like I said, barrel nipples
BSY: For a mountain bike you mean?
Me: A hybrid, but yes flat handle bars, so I need barrel nipples, that's what they're called isn't it?{thinks: like I said 3 times now ffs}

BSY quite clearly knows 'Fat Gurls in normal clothes' can't possibly know that they are talking about when it comes to bike parts and only 'Fit blerks in lycra' can be trusted to know their nipples. It's not like I was making it perfectly clear what I wanted using the correct technical terms, was it?

BSY eventually produced the required cables. We move to round 2.

Me: And I'd like some outer cable, too, please
BSY: How much?
Me: errr umm for 2 front brakes and 1 back {thinks: curses curses I should've measured them now he's got me}
BSY: Do you know if your cable outer goes all the way along or are there gaps in it?
Me: {thinks: course I bloody know!}
Me: There are cable stops, yes {thinks: ner ner ner ner ner, I know my bike terms hah!}
BSY produces some cable outer, notices it's the wrong kind, puts it back and gets right kind, /me suppresses snigger.
Me: is it teflon lined?
BSY: dunno umm I'll ask someone
Me: {tries not to look too smug>

there are 3 bike shops hereabouts, I went to the one I happened to be riding past today, which is not the one we usually use. I won't be in a hurry to go back there, either. And it will be right at the bottom of the list when I do get some money to spend on a proper bike, too. Bunch of feckin sexist bike snobs.

Bike maintenance class last night. We were learning how to replace brake cables, and my bike was one of the ones selected to practice on. I feel like I am the only person in the class who hasn't got a 'proper' bike. I know my bike is a cheap piece of crap, it was a bit of an impulse buy and yes it was v cheap and no it doesn't fit me properly and yes its cheapness (combined with my vast weight but everyone was too polite to actually say that) means that bits of it have gone out of true but hey it gets me about and I haven't got the several hundred ££ required to get me a proper one right now. So it'll have to do.

Mind you R has applied for some jobs recently whhooo so fingers crossed, touch wood etc, cos if he gets one I can get a new bike whoo. Oh yesh and we can also buy food and pay bills and such without worrying about the card machines making those funny Homer Simpson noises.

Off to town now to pay bills boo and then buy brake cables (need to do my front ones and all of R's) yay. I can show off in the bike shop ie not look flummoxed/offended when asked what kind of nipples I have (barrel, since you're asking) and converse knowledgeably about teflon lined outers. Which will earn me the right to half an hours looking at shiny things and some glossy catalogues to take home hurrah.

random things I would do if I had a hundred million pounds:

- employ Gordon Ramsay to be my personal chef (paying him huge piles of ££ to overcome his hostility to vegetarianism) and cook me delicious meals that are so lovely I don't even notice I'm on a d**t. Nigel Slater will do the cooking on Gordon's day off

- bring Mr Hopeton Overton Brown over to set up my sound system and work with me to make even more ££ producing a dub-based slendatone type thingummy (oh and Jude, the Scientist he say "Dub is the part of reggae where the engineer manipulates what the musician put on tape to achieve different textures")

- buy lots of bikes,including a Thorn tandem

As I am listening to Time Boom X De Devil right now, I would also like to once again state the bleeding obvious and remark that Lee Scratch Perry is completely barmy. Genius but barmy. Genius and barmy.

Turns out my sound card hates me. Or hates windoze**. Whatever, anyway turns out it was sound card/sound card drivers that was taking over my computer and making it run all slug like. Only took me most of the weekend to find that out.

Well OK most of the weekend I didn't spend fitting new brake blocks to every bike in the house, repotting my seedlings, listening to dub with the bass set to teeth rattling levels (well if my neighbours insist on playing music at levels that I can hear when I'm outside my own flat, I don't see why I can't listen to my own music when outside my own flat) and generally sitting round in the sun. But hurrah it is fixed. Well sort of fixed, in that my puter works but the sound is not so good and sounds muddy ... I may have to take a screwdriver to it yet.

And double hurrah for O learning to ride a bike without stablizers. He's only 4 and a half. Huge glow of parental pride. He learned to do it on Wed, and has been pedalling furiously ever since. When I was at the bike shop getting new brake blocks (fairly pointlessly in the case of O's bike - why use brakes when you can use your brand new 30 quid a pair shoes?) I got him a dolly/teddy seat and a new water bottle. Awwww.


** cor look at me i say windoze instead of windows I told you is 7l77t h4x0r d00d

oh ffs bad new blogger layout bad bad bad
wrote a post and thought i'd published it and it's gone. feck.

Summary of lost post:
- not weighed self
- eaten lotsa crap
- reformatting hard drive any minute now

Didn't weight self this morning - overslept and forgot in the rush to get up and get going. Plus it wouldn't've been pretty anyways - far too much eating of junk this week. I have to decide whether I want to get serious about d**ting again ...

My puter is still playing silly buggers so I've decided to reformat it's hard drive. "That'll learn it", as my in-house tech support (for which read: person I bug on msn when my puter acts funny) remarked. Too right will learn it a lesson. Don't mess with me or I'll reformat your ass. Ha.

So anyways may be gone sometime while reinstalling everything. TTFN.

Didn't weight self this morning - overslept and forgot in the rush to get up and get going. Plus it wouldn't've been pretty anyways - far too much eating of junk this week. I have to decide whether I want to get serious about d**ting again ...

My puter is still playing silly buggers so I've decided to reformat it's hard drive. "That'll learn it", as my in-house tech support (for which read: person I bug on msn when my puter acts funny) remarked. Too right will learn it a lesson. Don't mess with me or I'll reformat your ass. Ha.

So anyways may be gone sometime while reinstalling everything. TTFN.

Weighed self today and am down another 1 lb, which is better than nowt I s'pose. Still doing better with exercising than with eating right. Went to belly dancing last night and did our first bit of 'veil work' ie waving scarves about while dancing. The room was packed and my scarf has a beaded fringe so I was a bit worried about having someone's eye out.

My puter is running like a slug and I can't work out why so another weekend of attempted techiness beckons. If I can fit it in between taking the wheels off of every bike I can find (we did wheel removing at bike maintenance class and I want to practice) and going for a bike ride which may or may not involve hills. Cycling up hills bad bad bad but gotta be done somtime I s'pose.

long time no blog cos I broked my hard drive (don't ask) but now I am back and feeling all smug cos I installed a new hard drive all by myself hurrah I'm such a l337 h4xor.

Diet-wise, things could be better. I have been calorie counting some days and binging a bit on others. I put back on half a stone but have lost a couple of pounds of that - mainly due to exercise I think. Have been doing some bike riding and started going to bike maintenance classes (advance warning: bike geekery may be forthcoming - I've been spending worrying amounts of time coveting shiny things from bike catalogues - so far the budget has stretched to a track pump but not a Dawes Galaxy).