Still Not Enough Rice Pudding

With the book launch and various award ceremonies looming, I'd hoped to be able to glam myself up a bit in the spring. I've got a gorgeous gold dress, a cutesy black taffeta cocktail dress - and lots of other nice clothes that I can't get into at the moment. Despite having a good old go with Slimming World after Christmas and shedding the half stone I needed to still not get into the black dress, but maybe nearly the gold one with a good shoe-horn and some control pants (two sizes too small), I've run into a few problems.

With a bit of planning and careful shopping, it's easy enough to be able to organise something healthy to eat, even if you are on a bit of a tight budget. Trouble is, in between sitting long hours at the computer by day, and by night, and zipping off to gigs in between times, if you were to construct a pie chart of the sorts of foods I have been consuming of late, an awful lot of it would actually be pie. And cake. Late night hot chocolate and cheese and onion Ginsters. I've turned into a comedy cliché.

So, I thought it was a positive thing to give up something for Lent. Now, I'm not religious, but the old hair shirt aspect appeals to my sense of innate guilt. So I've gone alcohol free for a bit.

My intention is not to go dry for the whole of Lent, but to at least last until the Friday when I go to Brighton for Horrorcon (and I must remember not to go mad: lower tolerance, sea air - could be a bit dangerous). But so far so good. 11 days so far!

Unfortunately, I have done a bit of over-compensating in the first week with cake, but come on - 5 doughnuts for 17p in Tescos the other day, how could I resist? And a work colleague makes the most delicious brownies in the world. And then there have been birthdays... What did I get sugar rush off though? A bloomin' cheese sandwich.

The weird thing about giving up alcohol though is how much it annoys other people. Possibly that's me being all boasty and smug about it, but really, I'm suspecting a bit of attempted sabotage from certain quarters, accidentally buying me cider, I dunno tsk tsk.

Well, in a way it's nice to be told that I'm obsessing and don't need to worry, but I think I do. I couldn't open the dictionary on my lap just to check if the shirt was hair or hare. The guts got in the way.

Positive things about no alcohol: my sleep patterns are most definitely improving, and I have a lot less head-babble.
Not so positive things: I realise it is probably normal for me to feel generally crap.

Anyway, I need my full faculties to cope with everything I've got to do. I'm running a community creative writing workshop tomorrow, which should be good. And I'm walking there, which should burn off some cake.