Here is my staple food while I am on my diet; my soya bean curry. I make a full pan of it on Friday which lasts me until I go back to work on Tuesday. Two bowl a day and I really look forward to them; its the only time I am no longer hungry since I started this stupid diet. It all started when I went in to meet my old boss Alain Santaire regarding going back to work for them. Several people told me that I was very fat. Well, they didn't actually say it in those words, what they actually said was that I was looking very well, which amounts to the same thing. I was 19 stone when I met him, the heaviest that I have ever been so I thought it was time to do something about it. I was reasonably careful from that day on and had lost 2 pounds by the time I started there. I have an official weigh in on a Friday morning and record my weight in my work desk diary. I didn’t loose much to start with, just one or two pounds a week. Mind you, I didn't put any weight on when we took Mum on the cruise to Norway so that was a bonus, but every other week I have lost something. I noticed that several people at work were on a diet, some of them seemed quite strange.
I decided that this was a good diet for me because it is perfect for diabetes as you are only allowed low GI carbohydrates. This rules out potatoes, white rice, bread, pasta even sweet corn which I love. Its a diet for life rather than just to loose weight. Phase one is hard in the weight loss period but you never go hungry. Phase two is much easier allowing treats after you are down to your weight, but you remain in this phase forever. I didn’t want to start it until I had finished the book but continued by being careful and loosing a couple of pounds a week. Another guy, Chris who is 20 stone and about 5 foot tall has started the Fast died by Michael Mosley, the TV presenter. Chris Ford from Wednesday nights is also on it. It seems to have taken off more than anyone could have imagined; especially Michael Mosley.
Soya Beans
Soya beans are a superfood. They are the only vegetable to be classed as a complete food. They contain all the 10 amino acids that are essential to us for protein manufacture because we cannot synthesize them ourselves. They contain both fatty acids that are also essential to us and they are high in polyunsaturated fats like fish oil. They contain a good amount of fibre and all the vitamins and minerals that we need. Soya beans are legumes and so contain symbiotic bacteria called rhizobia within their root systems which fix nitrogen from the air so they don't need nitrate fertilisers They contain, probably the highest proportion of protein of all vegetables and therefore seem to satisfy and fill us up when we eat them. The bean-sprouts that you find in chinese supermarkets are normally mung bean sprouts but the larger yellow ones are soya bean sprouts. They are only 15 on the GI scale and so only release sugar into our blood stream very slowly and are not therefore classified as a carbohydrate on my diet.
When I say Im going to do both diets, Im not going to eat what they both allow, but rather mainly do the Michel Montignac one full time but also fast on two days a week as well. What they call a fast is not what I would call a fast because you can still eat 600 calories a day. While I am at work I have a small bowl of all bran for breakfast and my salads for lunch. The Montignac diet allows fruit but you can only eat it on an empty stomach. This means that I eat my fruit salad at my desk at about 11.30am and then have my proper salad in the canteen at 12 midday. I then don't eat until the next breakfast so it does mean that I get a real fast at the same time as low calories. Anyway, while I have been going on my walks, I have discovered a short cut to work. I can now walk to work in 15 minutes rather than 20. All those years, that I worked there before and hadn't realized this amazes me. I walked the long way 4 times a day. One of my favourite walks is around Tongwell lake.
Before I started my diet, I decided to go for it big time for a couple of weeks to give me a head start. I didn't drink for about two weeks and hardly ate anything either but I did loose 6 ponds the first week and five the second. I have now started to drink again but I will continue to starve for at least one more week so I can get into the 16 stones. On the Michel Montignac diet, You cannot mix proteins and carbohydrates, you can eat only proteins and fats no carbohydrates. They consider carbohydrates with less than a GI of 15 to be ok to eat with proteins. When you have a carbohydrate meal the carbs still have to be below 50 on the GI scale. Soys beans are a superfood and contain only a GI of 15 so they are not classed as carbohydrates at all. However my curry has no fat in at all, so I am only eating protein and roughage. Our bodies cannot change either into fat or glycogen so its impossible to put weight on. The protein that you don't turn into muscle you get rid of by farting all the time. This gets rid of the carbon by turning it into methane.
I am really enjoying it at work and look forward to going back each Tuesday. Mind you, by Thursday I’m usually looking forward to another break. My main job has been to strip down, clean up, model and rebuild a machine at work called a “GV Cat”. This machine simulates the transport of cans for wear. When cans are stacked on top of each other on pallets and transported by road, rail or ship they vibrate around and rub together which can cause the paint to be scratched. If this vibration is too severe and the lacquer protecting the paint not thick enough, the can can be worn through and leak. The GV Cat has been made out of someones garage in the USA. It was designed at least 40 years ago and both our machines are at least 20 years old and have now died. We have been canabalising the first one to mend the second which worked for a while. The guy that made them has died and there are no other alternatives.
The machine was designed to cope with the cans of its day and now we have a much larger selection of sizes and shapes that all need testing. We make some very large 1 liter cans and some very small 150ml cans. We also make slim cans which traditionally have been designed for the energy drink market, mainly Red Bull. We also make bottle cans now which I spent man months, if not years designing when I was there before. These need to be tested. This machine will not allow us to test these cans even when it does work. My task is therefore to model it on the computer and redesign it and modify the machine to allow us to test our other products. This is perfect for me because it uses all my disciplines and I can work alone which I enjoy being a grumpy old git. It has electrical power (all be it made for the USA), four custom printed circuit boards containing at least one custom chip, three custom castings, hydraulics, control and every other type of engineering. If it was designed these days, it would be very much simpler and would use either a PLC or a small controller.
Bottle cans are made from a sheet of flat aluminium and punched into a can shape. This is mainly done in three stages. The first one is to cut and punch the sheet to make a small, broad cup shape. These cups then go into the body maker which extrudes and forms the basic can shape having the top trim trimmed off. The can then goes into the necking machine which has one tool on the inside and another on the outside of the can. This pushes down on the top and forms the neck ready to have the end (top with ring pull) put on. The necking process cannot be done in one go and normally has about 10 or twelve stages to slowly change the shape of the can and produce the neck. When we make a bottle can, the work on the neck is very much greater and it takes 39 stages of necking to produce a bottle can.
In the picture below you can see a can from each of the 39 stages of necking where at each stage the neck is worked just a little bit more than the one before. As a bottle can neck is so narrow, the can has to be coated, painted and lacquered proir to necking otherwise they could not get the spray equipment inside the can. The necking tooling has to have a polished finish so as not to damage the finish. Most bottle cans are closed by a screw top so they can be resealed easily. This is one operation to make the screw thread at the very end.
Here is a picture looking from the finished end of the line of bottle cans. Once these cans catch on, you will see them everywhere. Everyone likes drinking out of bottles these days, its trendy so customers like it. The bars like it too because they don't have to wash and provide glasses. The provider likes it too because it advertises their product. Trouble is, glass bottles are anti-social; you can whack it around someones head and do them real harm. They don't allow them to be served outside in case the glass is broken. Bottle cans are the perfect solution while keeping all the good parts but loosing the bad. they will welcome the change on airplanes to serve wine in as cans are lighter and take up less room if you squash them and also they cant break.
On Friday and Saturday (25th and 26th October) we had a Red Bull car at work. It is the 2008 car that David Coulthard used to drive before he retired. It was a charity event for “Wings for Life”, so you have to leave a donation to take pictures of it. There used to be two formula 1 cars in Bletchley that belonged to the old Arrows team but this one looks far bigger and more advanced than those.
The connection between Rexam and Red Bull is that they have exclusive rights to make all their cans. In fact the bottle can that I am holding is one that I designed when I worked there several years ago and its only just being sold now. Its yet to be sold in England but it is sold in Austria, USA, Czech Republic and Russia. Maybe I can buy one when we go to Prague later this month.
A little bit about the fraudulent FA. Barclays bank must be the most obnoxious bank in the world. Every time I have dealings with them it ends in failure. Daphne had bank accounts with Barclays and Halifax. When she first died I rang them both to let them know and stop the accounts and to arrange to go in and take the death certificate etc. I went in the the local Halifax at Lowestoft the next day but it took me 3 weeks to get to Barclays. Once I was established, I started requesting old bank statements etc from both banks. Halifax sent theirs out by return, whereas the Barclays ones would take several weeks. I only managed to get one lot from Barclays because they started to refuse to send them to me. If you rang them up they told me I was eligible but they couldn't put me through to the one refusing them. I kept writing more and more aggressively without success. In the end I found that the Newport Pagnell branch manager helped me out and printed things off in his office for me if I went in to see him. I later found that I needed copies of all her accounts from 2000 when the Trust was started so he couldn't do that many as a favour. In the mean time, I found all the fraudulent paperwork where my signature had been forged and realized that the check that went with one must have also been forged so I requested it from Barclays. Again they refused because the other Trustee was now the FA’s wife and she blocked it. I wrote a very aggressive letter back in the form of an official complaint explaining that I had found forged documents that would have been presented with the cheque and I had never signed any cheques from it. I told them that I held Barclays personally responsible for this cheque as its their responsibility to verify signatures. I was phoned by a nice man who agreed to send me a copy of the cheque which was not forged but it only had Daphne’s signature on while it was a joint account requiring both signatures. This wouldn't have normally bothered me as it was Daphne’s money but now it was likely to become her FA’s money its different. While the investigation was going on, I wrote and asked for copies of all bank statements again and two weeks later was rang by an obnoxious Scottish woman who again said I was not entitled to them. I got so cross, she almost put the phone down on me. I suggested that she spoke to her boss, I took her name and she rang me back and agreed to send them. Two weeks later they still haven't arrived and I had to ring again. Still haven't got them at the end of the month.
As you know from Claire’s entries this month and last, she has recently made contact with her Mum again. This was more because her sister Julia was coming all the way down from Suffolk to look after her while she has been ill. Claire prepared some photo’s of Harriet to take for her Mum so I have included some here. This one is with her cousin Jessica who now lives in Jersey.
Heres another when she was little; sorry Harriet.
Here is one of Elizabeth (Liz) as a young Mum with her first born Claire outside the gasworks wall.
Another one of the proud young Mum, who looks quite allot like Claire’s other sister Louise with her hair short.
Here is one of Claire and her brother Simon at school.
This is the prettiest sibling.
Mum’s getting a bit older now.
And even older, next to her tree house.
In this one, I think Liz looks a lot like Claire.
Looks like they share some passions as well. Liz is outside her favorite pub; she was either in it or watching it on the tele.
Its Christmas time.
There were quite a few people that Claire of Harriet had never met. Here is Claire’s youngest brothers Nick's wife and children.
And these are the two grown up daughters of her brother Simon. They have their own families now but didn't bring them.
Rest in peace, Liz!
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