A whole new world

We were leafletted the other day to inform us that a new branch of Slimming World was starting to meet at the social club just around the corner from us. Now I've never been one for "organised slimming." My Mum went to Weightwatchers years ago and I have to admit it was her most successful dieting experience ever, until she reached the age where her appetite said cheerio and headed off over the hill never to return - now she never stops bragging about how slim she is, despite the fact that it's not due to any herculean effort on her part.

But the thought of a roomful of women (because let's be honest, at least 95% of them would be) clapping each other as their new weights were read out has been enough to keep me away...until now.

Having been on an upward trend weight-wise for the past 15 years or so (you might even say for the past 50 lol), and having watched a similar "improvement" in Nikki since we got together, we came to the mutual conclusion that it might be worth a punt and so, at 7pm on the dot, we made the long walk around the corner (it's about 300 yards) to the parish centre and poked our noses through the door.

A large circle of chairs had been put out in the function room, surrounding a table laden with books and magazines featuring people like Gloria, who had lost 4 stone. She looked very happy about it, which is more than could be said for the people occupying the first ten or so chairs in the circle. We took our seats and then spotted a coffee bar. Unfortunately, the urn ran out of hot water just as I reached the head of the queue, but as I didn't have any other pressing engagements, I waited while the urn was refilled and reboiled. Well, partially boiled, which was fine for Nikki as she was having coffee. My tea tasted like warm water that had passed through an oily rag and I made a mental note to also have coffee in the event we should ever return.

Turned out that the meeting was being run by a new girl. A very popular new girl, since she seemed to know most of the twenty people who were now occupying seats, but she needs to learn something about starting a meeting on time. 7pm it said on the flyer and we didn't really get into our stride until 8. One of her assistants handed out members' packs and invited us to fill in our details (we held fire), after which we got started. The leader read from the info pack, telling us all about green days and "original" days (I'm sure they used to be called red days - maybe that's too political for them now, but if that's the case they should have come up with another name for green days too), healthy extras, syns and all sorts of other stuff that blurred into one as I became more and more desperate to leave.

My estimate of the male-to-female ratio had been bang on (there was one other bloke there, and he was, how shall I put it, not exactly "blokey") and when we got to the part where the regulars started having their weight loss shouted out, and each result was greeted with a resounding round of applause, I turned to Nikki in utter despair. Luckily I could see she'd come to the same conclusion, and at the earliest opportunity we beat a hasty retreat.

Don't get the wrong impression though - we're determined to do it. We just don't want to put ourselves through that every week, and have to pay for the privilege! No, uber-researcher that she is, within a couple of milliseconds Nikki had already found, bid and won all the SW resources we could ever need off eBay (she even found someone who was selling the SW website password each week for £1.50 a pop - she only has to sell it three times to cover her membership fee!) and had downloaded a slew of recipes.

The next few weeks will tell if we have the staying power to "go it alone." Just the thought of possibly having to admit defeat and return to that awful meeting will be enough for me, I'm certain!