One lunch or two?

I love food.

REALLY love food. I love eating out, eating in, eating at my desk, eating in my car…. Anywhere and everywhere.

What I don’t love is diets. They are boring, dull and zzzzzzzzzz…. Sorry I fell asleep even talking about them.

For those that don’t know me (how ambitious I am being, thinking that people outside my friendships group may read this!) I am five foot two inches, big boobed, and have even bigger hips. You could say I am ‘womanly’.

When I started at South West News I was warned about ‘the South West Stone’ that I was bound to put on. Apparently everybody who comes through the doors falls victim to it. ‘Not me. I’m not a statistic,’ I said to myself.

But then Friday rolled round. Lard day in the office. Sausage rolls, pasties, cakes…. I piled my plate. ‘Rude not to,’ I thought. ‘But I won’t do it every week.’ Who was I kidding? Never been one to resist a sausage roll….

So as I sat at the top end of the desk I wondered why my skirt was getting tighter. ‘I ate more than this when I was in Liverpool,’ I moaned forgetting that even though this was true I also worked as a waitress and ran about for 12 hours most days. Now I sat at my desk for nine hours a day – my only exercise being walking to the printer….

As I stood on the scales I gasped. The South West Stone had come up and hit me and I hadn’t even realised.

You would have thought that it would have made me stop eating as much but no. Like I said – I love food.

Not even the fact that all the girls I worked with only ate fruit on lard days and special k the rest of the week put me off eating my lush lunches. ‘Are you having another sausage roll?’ they would shriek. I felt embarrassed for 0.2 seconds – then I got over it.

But in January 2008 I decided enough was enough and joined the gym with my super fit friend Kim. ‘I’ll be your PT,’ she said.

And for a short time I was really good. I went to the gym three times a week, under Kim’s supervision, and started eating watermelon and salads. Uber healthy stuff.

Then the new girl started, Nicola Appleton. I should have known she was a food fiend like me – after all she has food in her name (even if it is healthy food….) As she piled sausage rolls and cake onto her Lard day plate I smiled – I knew I had found my food soul mate. ‘So you like sausage rolls?’ I asked. ‘Err, obviously,’ she said looking at me like I was stupid.

Then she was moved to sit next to me and we blossomed over our love of everything calorific. ‘I’ve brought us these chocolate mousses,’ she said after another trip to the local Sainsbury’s. Our afternoons were spent devouring whatever we could get our hands on.

One night I had pizza and – unusually – didn’t at the lot. ‘I’ll take it in for mine and Nic’s lunch tomorrow I thought,’ boxing it up with some salad.

The next day Nic had also thought ahead and brought chilli with salad. ‘But I want your pizza more,’ she said so we ate it bang on 12. ‘Are you a bit peckish?’ she said around 3pm. Obviously my answer is yes and we debated if having another lunch was wrong. No food is ever too much for us two though so we rushed to the microwave to heat it up. ‘Two lunches in one day? You better not make a habit of that,’ our boss Fiona said. We blushed a little but continued to tuck in.

Then came crunch time – a millionaire’s shortcake mousse which contained 515 calories. I was informed of the intake half way through the calorific treat – and choked. Now I am not one to count calories. Far from it. I find it really boring. But 515 calories for a small dessert is far too much even in my books.

‘I’m going on a diet,’ I said. Yep, that’s right I said it. The ‘D’ word. It lasted for a week. Then I turned into a girl.

Calorie counting, thinking I was fat, eating a salad leaf…. ‘You have become weird and boring,’ Nelmes said. Nic agreed the following day in work – so I had a maccies and the old Rowland was back.

I try and diet because I would like to lose this South West weight but I just find it hard… ‘I am reading a book about how to lose weight,’ my lovely friend Sarah emails down to me. I feel inspired for all of five minutes and then one of the features sends pic’n’mix round and I forget she even said anything.

‘You have a fantastic figure,’ the soldier says if I ever doubt myself. Sometimes I doubt him and wonder if he is a feeder who won’t be happy until I am 32 stone and can’t leave the house and rely only on him.... But then I realise I read too many real-life magazines….

I will shift this excess weight one day especially as my South West News stone has turned into two. And one day I will. My healthy eating regime was going to start today. But then Nic had a Big Mac and I had to copy her and have some fries. She would have felt lonely if I hadn’t….

So diet? No thanks, not today… I have a life to get on with…..

THE END

Funny way to start a blog, eh? Especially a new one.

But it is the end.

The end of the Amy’s anyway – well for the time being.

You see a new chapter starts on September 22nd.

We will close the door on Top Floor Flat, BS8 and pack our cars (which will be parked 3.2 miles away due to the ridiculous car parking situation in Clifton) and say a sad farewell.

Nelmsey will drive off down the path paved with gold. I however will just be heading down the dusty track that is the M32 to Horfield to a lovely new flat which I shall be living in ALL BY MYSELF.

Yep that’s right. Alone. I can do that now you know. I am almost a grown up….

Obviously I am excited about this new chapter but gutted about closing the last one.

It was bloody fun you see.

On Friday 31st August 2007 I bid a tearful goodbye to Mummy Rowland and set off South West bound (not just outside London like I had originally thought.)

Pulling up in Clifton the butterflies flew round in my tummy with excitement at my new home. The excitement rapidly left me when it took me 43 minutes to park. ‘I forgot to tell you that parking is a bit of a nightmare,’ Nelmsey said sheepishly as I screamed down the phone. But hey, let’s not concentrate on the negatives, eh?

After Dominos pizza and champers we dolled ourselves up to introduce the Amy’s to Bristol. It was a South West News leaving do and I was about to meet the features for the first time. ‘Amy. Like Amy Winehouse?’ an already drunk Nicola Skinner said after I introduced myself. ‘Er, yeah,’ I replied realising the reason everyone was so drunk already was because there was a free bar.

But I was being careful. My new bosses were there after all. Nelmsey was certainly taking advantage. ‘Having a good time?’ she asked with glazed eyes. She was a goner.

A few hours later, and after a couple of very expensive cocktails, I decided to call it a night ignoring the chants of ‘come to the club’ from Nelmes. I just wanted to go back to my new flat and go to sleep in my new room under my new duvet falling asleep as soon as my head hit my new pillow case. Lush.

Just a few hours later – but what felt like ten minutes – I was woken from my slumber by raucous laughing (Nelmes) and deep voices (not Nelmes.) She was back from the club and obviously not alone…

‘So where is other Amy,’ a particularly deep voice asked. I groaned as a male figure appeared in my doorway. ‘I’m here on the promise of buy one Amy, get one free,’ he said. What a line.

Suddenly Amy burst through – crumpet in mouth and what seemed like a blue rinse on her hair. ‘Have you been to the hairdressers?’ I asked as she slurred her words and climbed into my bed beside me – falling promptly asleep. ‘Maybe we should go,’ the two men said nervously. I just gave them the Rowland stare as they backed out of the door.

Dragging Amy into her own bed I snuggled back under my new (dusky pink if you are wondering) duvet and tried to get back to sleep. Day one was eventful and over – whatever next?

So as Nelmsey went into work the following morning late and hungover she vowed never to drink again. Especially as she had just discovered her pen had leaked in her bag the night before and was the reason she looked like she had had a blue rinse. And ink stains all over her face… ‘You look like you’ve slept in a gutter,’ her boss said. Yep, no more drinking for Nelmes – until the next night anyway….

If I told all the adventures that the Amy’s had experienced then this blog would be a book, which is certainly an idea, but for now I’ll keep it short.

It has been a great 13 months. Good times, bad times, sad times, angry times. Fun holidays to Ibiza and dodgy drunken nights in the Lizard lounge. Post – session depression from Thekla and broken flip-flops in the The Cori Tap.

We soon became more than just flat mates but actually like a married couple – we eat dinner together each evening and sleep in separate beds, just like most marriages. And there is a lot of love going down.

We argued about why Santa was red and made the could have been fatal mistake of talking about what annoyed us most about each other. ‘You never empty the bin,’ she said. ‘Well you never take it downstairs to put it in the wheelie bin,’ I replied. No grudges here though.

So I am not really looking forward to us parting. I feel like our relationship is coming to an end – I don’t do long distance you see. ‘You’re emotionally detaching yourself already,’ Nelmes says sadly after another tantrum of mine which have come about more and more recently. She is probably right – I don’t ‘do’ emotion well.

But I do know one thing – I bloody love her and am going to miss her like I would miss my Take That CD’s. Invaluable.

But it will be fine. We’ll live the dream again together soon.

YOU ARE.

This blog entry is dedicated to Nelmes and Ms Kim Willis – for making me realise instead of moaning about not making an appearance in her blog just start my own….