Writer's Block

Starting Weight : 25 stone, 13 pounds.   Previous Weight : 23 stone. 11.5 pounds. New Weight : 23 stone, 12.6 pounds. This Month's Gain : 1.1 pounds. Total Weight Loss : 2 stone, 0.4 pounds. I don't know how to judge this really. I am obviously unhappy with a gain after a month but am unsure to what extent I can use the lockdown as mitigation. I haven't been binge eating but I have returned to my comfort foods of choice. Macaroni cheese, cauliflower cheese, anything with cheese. The Pepsi Max continues to flow. Succumbing to the confectionery temptations of Easter has also been a factor. What has been a particular concern is the extent to which I've lost motivation to exercise. I think I've done 10,000 steps a day twice in the past fortnight and on both occasions the amount of physical and mental energy required to get through it seemed enormous. There's only so many times you can walk around your local park or graveyard without getting bore...

I hope everyone's doing ok. I'm muddling through at the moment, sleeping atrociously, eating poorly. I'm trying to stay informed, but feel that social media is having a somewhat detrimental effect on my mental wellbeing right now. I can't help but find it thoroughly dispiriting that at the time of an unprecedented global crisis, we find ourselves in the hands of the most mediocre and ill-equipped politicians in recent memory. Particularly when you consider that recent memory includes Theresa May. It's probably time to transition to one of those less lofty topics with which I am more comfortable. My father admitted the other day that he was missing football immensely and that a world without it was unthinkable. Which was somewhat odd, given that he had also watched season two of Sunderland Til I Die in its entirety. He's coping by watching the various nostalgia festivals being broadcast on Sky Sports at the moment, whilst I have retreated to FIFA 20, where Sund...

I hope you're all well and coping with the lockdown. I've been thinking a lot about stand-up comedy and writing and half past one in the morning seems as good a time as any to blurt some thoughts onto the internet. It is nearly two years since I last did stand-up, when I performed my last show 'The Wilderness Years' on five separate occasions in Brighton to a grand total of twenty people. Poor audience figures by any reasonable standard, but that's the way it goes. However, it was somewhat indicative of my failure in what I would describe as 'the hustle'. I used to treat self-promotion as something that was suspicious at best and downright vulgar at worst. There is a notorious new act/variety night in London which I have never done due to the fact that bookings are taken over the phone at a certain hour of the morning and I would rather chew off my own hands than ring an almost certainly irritable stranger. Another retrospective lowlight was travelling to ...

The second series of Sunderland Til I Die arrived on Netflix last week. As a Sunderland fan, watching it was a strange experience, particularly as I was probably more heavily involved in the 2018/19 season than any other season in recent history in terms of attending matches. The first series, documenting Sunderland's calamitous collapse through the second tier of English football, had a stronger connection with the fans. This time round the focus switches predominantly to new owner Stewart Donald and his chief executive Charlie Methven, as they and new manager Jack Ross look to plot a route out of League One. Methven has become the subject of a lot of social media attention since series two was released, an Old Etonian who perhaps inevitably ends up rubbing people up the wrong way. It is probably true to say his brusque and uncompromising style was unlikely to win many friends, but his assessments of the negative culture among the backroom staff at the club appeared accurate. Th...