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Captain Correli’s Mandolin

I watched last night. Firstly and importantly, I enjoyed it. It did everything I want from a book adaptation – it made me want to read the book.
It’s obvious from the viewing that there has been a lot cut from the book to make the film, but that said, from a story point of view, I never felt I was missing anything that I could not piece together by reading between the lines. So by that measure the film holds its own as a story, if not necessarily the same story as the book.

What I did take from the film is – just how shit was. His attempt at being and Italian was really so poor. There were moments when I thought he was going to turn into . I have never been a cage fan, although I admit there are films where he seems perfect in, but I thought he was particularly badly cast here. I guess he’s just one of those actors that grate on me, a bit like . However, by the end of the film he starts to become acceptable as the film enters the final action stage.

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Wikipedia Captain Correli’s Mandolin, Nicolas Cage, Borat, Jim Carey

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Weight – Week 4

I’m four weeks into my lose weight regime. My gym work has been good i’ve been lookin for the bowflex selecttech 552 for too long to avoid it, and my eating has been mostly good. Actually my eating is not too dissimilar from normal, however I have managed to cut out the hunger cravings that normally lead me to chocolate and crisps and rubbish. And my quantity control is better. So I kind of feel balanced.

One major milestone for me is drinking water. As a rule I don’t drink much water – as I don’t like it. To drink water it has to either be ice cold sparkling water on a hot day, or flavoured sparkling water. So at home I drink cordial with sparkling water. But I generally only drink one large glass with my evening meal; that and a couple of coffees over the day is all I drink.
I don’t go in for the mantra of how much water you must drink, I think everyone is different. I’ve gone 38 years without problem and I can count the number of water infections I’ve had in that time on 1 finger…
That said, I decided that I needed to force myself to drink more during the day as I no longer drink coffee while on my current contract. So I now take a litre bottle of made up flavoured sparkling water to work every day. The thing I’ve noticed is that I grab the drink quite frequently during the morning and I wonder if previously that would have been an urge to eat, which often meant I would get to lunch having already eaten my lunch!

Anyway, 4 weeks ago I was 94kg ( 207lb/14″ 11) approximate of 27.3 ( overweight ). I use approximate here because the BMI calculation is a croc really, because it doesn’t take into account physical size rather than height. A tall muscular person is going to show as overweight based on their BMI, despite the fact that they are relatively fat free.

First week I lost 1.5kg ( 3.3lb ), then 0.1kg ( 0.2lb ), then 0.4kg ( 0.8lb). I was a little dissapointed after week 3 that the trail off had occured as I wanted to lose about 2lb a week. However I knew that over those 2 weeks I had gone to the pictures and had a meal with friends. Which although by my standards I had done very well (2 bottle beers and 2 glasses of wine, and a more than wanted but less than previous, quantity of food), they were nevertheless still potential blips. I took solace in the fact that my stomach ( not waist ) measurement and gone from 41 inch to 39.5 inch. So every movement down was good no matter how small.

Weigh in this morning – 91kg ( 200.5lb ) down 1kg ( 2.2lb ) on last week.
So in four weeks I have lost 3kg ( 6.6lb ). I am below target but very much happy with that, it’s not just that the weight is going down, but I already feel better for it; I no longer have the hunger which means I am less likely to fall off the wagon!

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Wikipedia Bottlegreen, BMI

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The Death of Billy Black

Many years ago my dad told me a story about one of his friends Billy (
William Black ). He told me about him taking part in a race where he had
to run up a very steep road/hill/lane while carrying a sheep over his
shoulders.

Not long after that conversation I got to thinking about a story “The
Legend of Billy Black”. It never really formed into anything it was just
this concept about this kid who was remarkable at everything he did,
generous to a fault, and extremely well liked by everyone who ever met
him. The story would follow him as he grew up.

I did an amount of searching on Google to see if I could find any high
profile people with the name, especially anything written or filmed. I
didn’t want to create a character that was already prominent. Nothing came up. Yes there were plenty of Billy Black’s but nothing that I felt
concerned about.

As part of my Dreamgate novel I decided to weave Billy into the story in
order to have some form of cross over. I like the idea of connecting my
short stories and other works with Dreamgate. I even toyed with the idea
of giving Blacks identity to one of the mysterious main characters ‘The
Traveller’.

Anyway, I started listing to the Audiobook of ’s . I listen while at the gym, it’s so much easier to get through a workout when you are distracted by something else; I clock watch less…

To my horror, very early on, a character called Billy Black appears…
re-doing my google search, the results are filled with Billy Black from
the book and film of Twilight… and in that moment I saw the death of MY
character.

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Wikipedia Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

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Chickens…

Having chickens is great… they are amusing strange little creatures; I
could sit in the garden for hours and watch them as they gorge themselves
on the smallest of insects and chase each other around when the other has
found a worm or some such. They can also run the entire length of the
garden is nano-seconds when you open the back door. Oh, and the obvious, they give you eggs every day.

Having chickens is a pain in the arse… if you like your garden. As they
search the undergrowth they trample on smaller plants and peck at flowers
and leaves, many of which they don’t like but they seem to forget, so try
them every time they pass. The also scrat at the soil and unearth root
balls or distribute top soil around, often onto the grass etc.

I bought a lot of bigger plants at the weekend to fill two small beds. My
reasoning is that more mature plants can stand up to the chickens walking
around them and actually the chickens notice them and tend not to just
walk straight over them.

So far most of the plants have been relatively untouched and the plan
seems to be working, apart from two lupins… I’d say they have been
decimated, but that means reduce by one tenth… these have been stripped
bare in little under a few hours.

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Weight

I’m overweight. I’ve been overweight for about as long as I can remember now. I’m not obese, I’m just a little chunky around the waist, a little too much on the belly, and a smidgeon of a extra chin.

It bothers me. Not in a great big way. I don’t get depressed about it. I would just prefer to be a little less. I’m on the border where a little sustained excess makes me feel bad and a little sustained good eating and exercise makes me feel really good.

Over the years I’ve tried to get my weight down without much success. Over the last 18 months I have kept my weight consistent despite know that my eating/drinking habits have been poor. On the whole I have a good diet – I just tend to pick out on crap every now ( usually when work boredom kicks in ) and my portion control is real bad!

So I’m pretty sure that a better eating regime, less pigging out and bingeing, and more consistent exercise should easily allow me to achieve the required weight loss.

So the aim is to drop 2 stone over the next 6 months. That’s nearly 13kilos or 28lb or 13 bags of sugar!

At the start of this last week, I was 94kilo, 207lbs, 14 st 11 lbs. One week in I have dropped just over 3lbs… watch this space… or not…

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