I've just realised - I'm a FAT accountant

LORRY HITS PALACE SCANDAL - see end of blog for the exclusive story

Fairly disastrous meeting with my GP today. Apparently the reason I have chronic indigestion isn't anything external and dramatic like an ulcer, or even my blatant disregard of my gluten intolerance (how was I supposed to know that pizza had gluten, anyway?).

Oh no. Much, much worse.

According to HIM, I am overweight. Yes, this discomfort may in fact be MY OWN FAULT.

I am pretty sure that I was not overweight after doing the Blenheim Triathlon. In fact, without wishing to blow my own trumpet, I think I was in pretty good shape. I almost had a six-pack (I have one now, but without the plastic thingy that holds it all together). My tummy didn't flop over my trousers when I sat in the car. (Ooh, we'll come back to my car later.) I even ate healthy salads from Hampers pretty much every day, in a virtuous "my body is my temple" kind of way. And, of course, running and cycling everyday covers a whole lot of dietary sins.

Like before, I emerged from my early June triathlon determined to maintain this healthy state. Five seconds later, I decided to modify it slightly. After all, I had been good and trained every night for several months. Really, I deserved a treat, and what harm could a few evenings in front of the TV eating some cake do? Besides, training every night was very mean to my wife.

Roll on four months. Oh dear, I have adopted some very bad habits. I came slightly unstuck four weeks ago. I had been dropping my daughter off at school then heading to Starbuck's in Summertown and having a quick breakfast of coffee and a gluten-free chocolate brownie. You see, in my mind, "gluten free" equals "healthy". I had neatly screened out that fact that this gluten-free chocolate brownie was not actually sugar-free. Or chocolate free.

Anyway, by chance my wife and I had headed into Summertown at the weekend. She fancied a latte and a break so in we went. The girl at the counter smiled.

"Black decaf Americano to drink in, is it?" she said. Cue poisonous look from She Who Must Be Obeyed as realisation slowly dawned on her that this may not be my first visit...

That is, of course, the heart of all the problems. I have equated "gluten-free" with "healthy" for the last four months. e.g. Cadbury's Dairy Milk is in fact gluten free. Therefore, it is healthy.

Therefore, whenever I eat I now get chronic indigestion (except, annoyingly, when I eat either salad or, yes, you guessed it, Starbuck's gluten-free chocolate brownie). This biological ignorance is mainly due to my very poor science education - I didn't go much beyond the amoeba and do not have a clue what a protein is. Yes, Mr Potter, are you reading this? Are you proud?

Anyway, I haven't been back to Starbuck's recently.

I have had no sympathy whatsoever from the accounts team downstairs or the rest of the Estate Office. At least the team in Hampers have taken to waving salad boxes at me as I go in to dissuade me from choosing worse options.

Our property director has suggested regular runs around the lake which is more useful. Not as nice as chocolate, though. And, to be fair, he did egg me on to buy two meals from the chip shop yesterday, so he is probably feeling EXTREMELY GUILTY now he realises the pain I endured on his behalf.

My recovery, once I have let go of my GP's throat, will clearly have to be exercise-led since I lack will-power. Which means more Blenheim staff laughing at me as I run around the lake. I'm told I run like a girl, anyway.

Drifting on - mention of lake made me think of the Dam repairs up at the cascades - but our wonderful Dam repair people have managed to plant 35,986 bulbs around the top of the Dam. They are so cost-conscious that someone actually counted. Marvellous work but I am puzzled at how they did it. I only mention it because it seemed like a good idea two weeks ago to buy a bag of 200 mixed bulbs from Homebase. I have a fancy bulb-planter (a bit like a spade but it cuts a circular divot and pulls it out so that you can drop a bulb in the bottom then drop the divot on the top). The ground outside my house was so hard that I could not get a single bulb in. I accept that one reason I chose accountancy was my extreme physical incompetence in other areas but that was not the only reason for my failure. The ground was ludicrously hard. So I clearly need to find out how they did it before taking on the job again. Maybe the rain over the last few days has softened things a bit.

Anyway, I am stopping this blog now because my excellent never-goes-wrong car - a nine-year-old Honda Accord with a strangely-bent aerial - has reached 99991 miles. I am determined to be watching the dashboard as it flicks over to 100,000. Obviously watching the magic moment would be a bit dangerous on the A34 so I am going off now to drive around the Estate very slowly. It would be extra magic to photograph the moment although that would probably be impossible.

However hard you try, you could never catch that kind of moment. Although, one poor delivery driver driving through our main Hensington Gate in a large lorry might beg to differ. We got a report that a lorry (unknown) had managed to come through the gate so close to the big stone pillar that he had caught the "sticky-out" stone that caps the top. That's probably not the right name for it but I bet that is what the 18th century builders called it. Anyway, he was asked if it was him "wot did it". Believing he was on safe ground denying liability (and probably feeling a bit of a fool for aiming so badly), he proclaimed his innocence.

I mean, who would be so lucky as to take a photo at that exact moment? What would the odds of that be?

If I was any good at this, I would say the answer is at the foot of the page. But as I can't seem to put the photo at the bottom, the answer strangely enough is at the top of the page.

Yes the white thing to the right is a large piece of gate column obeying the laws of gravity.

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