The Great Diet of 2012 Week 2, plus A Long Train Journey

First things first - the diet. This week I am down another 1.4kg, so woop woop. Feeling quite happy about this one - keep it up at that rate and I will soon be seeing the difference. Im also pleased because that is purely a exercise loss. I have not eaten right at all (between the sisterly fuddle, the goodbye dinners and the lunches with girlfriends I can think of a single day I "diet" ate) but I have exercised every day. Now I just need to find a balance between last week and this, and I will be onto a winner.

This week is not going to be a good diet week. This week I am in St Andrews. In fact this post is coming to you from a rather swish room in the Greyfriars hotel on North Street. Its going to be an expensive week, and its going to be a week of grabbing food on the go, snacking in coffee shops and eating in restaurants. I think for this week if I can make it home without putting the 2.5kg back on it will be a success.

To get to St Andrews involves a 6 hour train ride, and I was lucky enough to get a straight train, all the way from Derby to Leuchars. I was also lucky enough to get a decent seat, mostly to myself. About 4 hours in a young girl got on, at Durham and we got chatting. After that length of time I was glad for someone to talk to actually.

She turned out to be lovely. She is in her final term at Aberdeen Uni, studying (thought a weird set of events which made for a great story) Anthropology and History. She enjoys it very much. After I told her I was on my way to hand in my Masters, the first thing she said was "Do you think you will do a PhD?". And because I felt like a conversation I told her the truth. And this led us on to talking about University, and how the are run and what it means to be at university and all manner of related things.

It was incredible really. In that way strangers can be honest, and you can be really honest with strangers, I began to think about what I had done, and where I am in my life. See, as you may have noticed, I'v been feeling pretty down about the way things have turned out. Iv been blaming myself, and feeling like I have totally cocked things up. But some how, magically, this total strange on the train helped me to see things differently. Helped me to start to stop blaming myself. So I go to bed tonight feeling, not exactly happy, but more contented than I have done in a long time. I have no idea who that girl was, I don't even know her name.

Anyway, bring on tomorrow, and the supervisor to change all that.

Going North

So I failed to loose any weight, moving on....


This weekend we drove up north to visit my Granny, which as lovely. Fascinating woman. Hardly talks about the past but when she does she comes out with the most amazing stories. Told us this time about the time Granddad came home from work one day and told her he had quit his job totally out the blue. That was pretty much all we got, just a little titbit of an amazing history.

My Granny lives in New Deer, which is north of Aberdeen. I always feel its not very far away, because you just go through Dundee, passed Aberdeen and you are there. But in actual fact its over 100 miles! Thats further than Nottingham to York! Think of all the places you pass between Nottingham and York. And yet all the way from Dundee to Aberdeen you pass absolutely nothing. Nothing. I still find it fascinating just how much farm land there is in Scotland.