Going down

Tuesday, December 22nd., Chiltern Court, London.

Splendid health at the moment. I have now cut my breakfast down to four or five kinds of fruit (raisins, orange, apple, lemon and prunes) plus two cups of tea and two pieces of rye-bread. And little or no meat for lunch. This regime has been in force for two months now and I feel better for it. Today I had myself weighed and am under twelve stones for the first time in a long time. This is progress indeed! I had made a sort of unofficial vow to be under twelve stones by Christmas. But I don't intend to stop; I still feel too heavy. It was partly feeling heavy, as if anything physical was an effort, that got ne started, but mainly the realisation that I was seen as a fat man. I have been caricatured several times, but most recently the portrayal has been of a rotund, rather pompous and silly figure. Time to do something about it!

Today I had a lengthy conversation with an old friend, a childhood friend, and reminded him of something we did together fifty years ago. It involved consumption of alcohol. Fifty years! Impossible to believe it, but no getting away from the facts. We reminisced about school days and tried to remember the words of the school song, in latin of course. It was one of those provincial schools which unsuccessfully apes the great public schools. He feels warmer about it than I do. I didn't dislike it, but I wouldn't want to repeat my time there.