The Impossible Thing Book : Chapter One. A Light Fantasy on a Dark Promenade

I’ve started first-drafting my The Impossible Thing book. I know the title has these words in it but am not sure what else.

The Impossible Thing : Finding Out What It’s Like To Not Be Fat.

Maybe.

It’s going to be part weight loss memoir, part self-help book. It will include the following:

• Memoir chapters, from the past and from my weight loss journey

(I’m assuming I will get to the end of it someday. Perhaps within eighteen months. But for the time being I will get on with writing this …)

• ‘Pep Talks’, which the reader can dip into when needed (Can I Do This?, Just Start, Keeping Going, What to Do If You’re Not Getting Anywhere, Reaching Target, Now for Maintenance)
• ‘Tips’ chapters in different categories. (Doing the Maths, Shopping, Exercise, Psychological Aspects, Celebrating Success, etc …)
• ‘Tools at Your Disposal’ chapters (Your Camera, Social Media, Your Determination, Your Anger, Your Imagination)
• Dated tweets dispersed throughout in text boxes
• Blog post sections
• Photographs – before, during and after. Maybe even these ...
   
   
  
  

 2014 With Mum & Uncle Bob at Talkin Tarn, Cumbria

 

 

 

2018 In Zumba Studio at VVV, The Shoreline, Hest Bank

 

 

This is all just rough ideas at the moment. I will work out the order of these chapters and how they’re dispersed later.

 

And this is my first draft of what might be …

 

Chapter One

A Light Fantasy on a Dark Promenade

It’s pitch dark outside. 6.25am. Sunday morning. November ‘15. Anyone with any sense is still under the duvet, intent on staying there for a few hours yet. But not me. I’m up, I’ve had a single Weetabix with skimmed milk. My real breakfast of egg and beans on toast comes later.

After my swim.

I step outside. It’s raining but not much. I have waterproof jacket and trousers on, my rucksack with towel, etc. My costume under my clothes. I’m going. Whether I like it or not. The pool opens at seven on a Sunday. It will be quiet. I’ve done this twice now. Maybe it will become a habit.

But first I have to walk just short of a mile and half to get there. I get to the end of the road and head out onto the windy promenade.

I walk, setting up as fast a pace as I can manage. I’m 21 stone but I can walk fine. I’ve lost ten pounds. I’ve started.

It takes me half an hour to do this walk. I’ve forgotten my Walkman but it’s too late to go back. I want to be first in the pool. I will entertain myself with my brain. With my imagination.

Despite the darkness on the wide promenade, the deep blue of the bay, distant twinkling lights of Grange-Over-Sands, around me is the bright light of a fantasy. I’m very carefully imagining being in a shop. I don’t know where it is or which shop but I’m trying on size twenty jeans.

This is a big size to most women, a size they will never be, but for me, at that time, it was the dream. My jeans were a size twenty-six and they were tight. I’d wear them to go out in but, on my return home, I would have to change into something less constricting.

In the fantasy, the jeans slip on easily and I do them up. A size twenty! I buy a shirt to go with them. Its turquoise, the pictures in my head tell me. The colour of the sea when the sky is at its bluest and they beam at each other in delight of their sunny day. Meanwhile, the prom around me is in darkness still. I barely realise I’m walking. Walking and breathing and getting closer to the pool.

At my height of five feet ten, I really should be more like a size sixteen but, at this stage, the size twenty jeans fantasy is the best I can do. Because it’s impossible, surely.

But it helps me as I walk the dark promenade, beyond the entrance to Happy Mount Park, past the Venus and Cupid statue at Scalestones point and past the Welcome to Morecambe sign.

            The fantasy’s still there as I leave the prom and approach the short section of private road to the health club. It is seriously dark & there are potholes, which turn into puddles after heavy rain. I walk carefully. It’s not far but I know I must never fall over. Falling over for a fat person equals embarrassment but now it’s not just that. I cannot do anything that will jeopardise what I’ve now started. What I’m actually doing.

I have to use the torch on my phone to light my way until I enter the car park. There are three cars there. I deduce two will be staff and one some man who wants the gym. I may be first in the pool. Unless that man who sometimes swims early is there. It’ll be fine. It has become important to me to get the far lane. Once you have that it’s yours for an hour. I need an hour to do my lengths.

The door is open but reception is empty. The first member of staff appears, recognises me and waves me through. The computers aren’t on yet so I can’t get my card swiped but, after a few weeks they have begun to notice me creeping in for a swim. I’ve been offered a programme in the gym but I’m not keen. Yet. I just swim.

             I go into the changing rooms, quickly strip off and throw everything in a locker. This is becoming my Sunday morning ritual and I do the same two afternoons a week, after work. I know I have to move more to lose weight. I’m starting something I’m sure I won’t be able to do. I’m already thinking of it as impossible.

            But I’m still doing it. Over the past few weeks I’ve begun to form habits to do with my eating. I’m eating less. I have a rule about crisps. The swimming is tiring – I sometimes feel drained afterwards - but I’m paying monthly by direct debit. I have to do it. I have committed myself and have already increased my lengths from 50 to 60. I tell myself and others I love swimming. I think I do. Once I’ve made the effort to get there.

            I am alone in the pool. I sink into the delicious warm water, grab that far and best lane and begin to swim. The water is gorgeous, it’s all mine. I’m slow but I keep going. I will carry on and on. I know what I have to do now. Slowly. My way.

           Afterwards I do a pool report for Twitter. 60 #greatlengths.

           In a couple of weeks I will be fifty. Maybe I will have lost a stone by then. But size 20 jeans? Surely, they are just a fantasy.