Today I discovered that the capital of Malta, Valletta, has a congestion charging scheme. I learned the hard way - I received a bill for having driven there in November. It wasn't a terribly hard way though - I owe them a total of 0.83 euros - about 60 pence I think. So it compares favorably to the London one.
I tried calling them to pay over the phone but they wanted this princely sum by cheque. I think that the cheque processing cost would be higher than the value of the cheque itself, but I suppose the cost of their time to do it on the phone would also have been higher.
They have the facility to pay online, but to use it you have to download, print out, fill in and send off a form requesting it. You can't sign up online. So I did that for future payments. They also have a direct debit scheme so I downloaded, printed out and filled in a form for this too. 'Why not send them all off at the same time?', I thought.
So all in all I spent nearly an hour paying the 83 cents.
This morning marked the glorious success of my new diet. I've been on a 'No Hunger' diet of my own invention. It's based on the theory that if you put yourself through a lot of hunger then your body will react by thinking it needs to store more fat for the future, and so you'll end up fatter than you started. They say that dieting makes you fat. Plus I hate being hungry. Instead I just eat some very healthy food that I've cooked myself when I'm hungry.
Plus I've stopped using the microwave (except as a kitchen clock). A study commissioned by the UK government on the obesity epidemic concluded that there was no significant increase in calories consumed that could explain the epidemic and the only lifestyle factor that correlated with the rise in people's weight was the use of microwave ovens. They didn't offer much of an explanation as to why microwaves might cause weight gain and it could be a coincidence, but why chance it, I say? I haven't missed using it.
I made a resolution to not eat out without Mame until my weight dropped to under 10 stone (I was 10 stone 3.5). After 6 weeks of my own cooking and without any hunger, this morning I was 9 st 13.5. I'm so happy! I'll probably put most of it on again while Mame is here this weekend. But it's not a very onerous diet at all so I'll just start again. The only real loser is the all-you-can-eat restaurant down the road which was probably the cause of the problem in the first place.
Now I just need to write a book about the diet and make millions.
