I have returned to the gym.
I was not looking forward to this, and milled about the house procrastinating for absolutely ages first.
When I got there I discovered that my suspicions of having become hideously unfit were entirely correct. I managed to do 4k on the rowing machine, although I needed a little rest in the middle, but 10k on the bicycling machine proved beyond me and I had to stop after eight and a half.
When I got off my legs had turned to useless stone slabs. I could hardly lift them to stagger across the room to the water fountain.
I had been secretly hoping that my cough would resurrect itself, and render me unable to carry on due to being the hapless victim of terrible illness. However it didn’t, no matter how much I gasped for breath, and so everybody else in the gym just thought that I was idle and unfit instead of a nobly suffering invalid. Obviously they were correct about this, but it is disappointing to have one’s frailties thus displayed to the world.
I am not the only one in our family striving for bodily perfection. Number One Daughter has been in a fitness competition this last weekend. It was in Portugal on a beach.
I can’t think of a better way to spoil a day at the beach, but as we all know, Number One Daughter is a shining example of cardiovascular aerobic perfection, and seems to have had a very good time indeed They competed for two whole days, during which they had to do all sorts of things, like running up and down the beach pushing a tractor tyre. After that they dived into the sea and swam a couple of miles and eventually came back with a shark that they had wrestled into submission.
I tried to think of this as inspiration whilst I was gasping for breath on the rowing machine, but it wasn’t much help really. Next time I shall just take an audio book on my phone and try not to think about it.
Apart from the gym, which was the last bit of the day really, at least if you don’t count work, which I don’t, because it is very quiet this evening, I have been busy doing house things.
I did the Lake District housewife thing this morning of pegging the washing outside ‘because it was only raining a little bit’. I do not know if this is a thing in other parts of the country, or if it is an adaptive behaviour brought about by a locally rubbish climate. Anyway, I hung it out despite the rain, and actually it dried more than it got wet, so in the end it was a success, and afterwards it went over the fire anyway.
After that I went back to writing my novel, except when I got upstairs to the office I remembered that I had got as far as September with the tax return spreadsheet. The bank statement was open on the computer, and before I knew it I had been drawn into the eternally fascinating and challenging world of arithmetic. I don’t recall finding sums that interesting at school, in my youth I would have written a story in preference to working out a capital gain any day.
Tomorrow is another day.
Mark has been building the conservatory all day, and every now and again I went out to help him.
It is much easier to get on with things when you are not very troubled by health and safety, and we had some exciting moments at the top of some very wobbly ladders. As you can see in the picture, they are leaning against the new conservatory. This looks fine, except that at that stage the conservatory was not attached to anything else much, and I stood on the end ladder and held the conservatory in place whilst Mark climbed the other ladder. Of course this worked fine and nobody was hurt, because mostly life works all right even if you are an idiot.
They are next door’s ladders anyway. He comes round and politely asks to borrow them sometimes.
I have just got out of my taxi to put something in the bin and discovered that my muscles have set like overcooked toffee. I can barely move.
I am going to go and read my book and feel sorry for myself.
