Fathletic Prowess

Stop panicking, man

I've been banging on about this health assessment for some time. The results were far from expected. Turns out I have a heart rate that would make Hannibal Lecter look like he's suffering from an anxiety disorder. A stress-recovery response that puts me, hilariously, into the 'elite athlete' category. And a spine that could not score higher for regularity and flexibility.

Daisies before balls

Admittedly, I am hiding these Olympian gifts under a considerable and shameful blanket of blubber, but nonetheless they are there. And this is a revelation to me, and my sense of identity. I am the offspring of a fat father, and an asthmatic mother, and the currency in our house was words and music. So I trawled through the all the grades on piano and bassoon, and won awards for public speaking. I was fat, but so were all my family - and I accepted this as the natural order, picking daisies on the hockey field and staring blankly at any ball that came my way. It was almost a matter of pride that I was last choice for team selection.

With adulthood came the recognition that exercise was probably a good idea. So I started taking some, in a dutiful fashion. Never enthusiastically.

But now my feelings have changed. Who knew that I'd been hiding an engine like that under my shitty bonnet? Now I just want to know how fast I can go. This is better than a Viking hoard turning up on Antiques Roadshow.

We are not always who we think we are*.

(*Though would still ignore a ball if it headed in my direction.  So don't pick me for your team.)  

Stool Pigeon

Stools.  You owe me for this restraint.

As I mentioned last week, I am facing a health assessment. Part of which requires a 'stool' sample, which I harvested* this morning. There are more glamorous ways to start a day.

I think the experience has scarred me slightly. Wandering around H&M this afternoon and I become aware of the chorus of the bland R'nB track they're playing - 'Faeces in the crooo-wwwddd, faeces in the crooo-wwwddd.' I freeze by the leggings, half-sniggering, half-disbelieving, and wait for the chorus to come back round.

Realise that it's the strangled pronunciation that's misleading me. It's not 'faeces', it's 'faces'. Less of a bowel problem; more of a vowel problem.

Not a surprising mondegreen, though. Just a reminder that it's important where you put your focus at the start of the day. It can stay with you.

(*I am pleased by my choice of the word 'harvested' - it gives the whole procedure a bucolic glow.  All is safely gathered in etc).

No Jacket Required

Who knew?

Don't panic.  This is not a post about Phil Collins.  Just excited that I could wander around outside in
shirtsleeves.  An odd term, as you also need the front and back of the shirt, not just the sleeves - unless you wish to make a spectacle of yourself.

Today I have experienced that weird phenomenon where you decide that you are no longer interested in
something, and then that thing, whatever it is, starts dancing around in front of you (probably wearing nothing but shirtsleeves) turning somersaults and gurning for attention.

No.  Still no clearer.  Can you explain again, please?

I'm sure Brian Cox could explain it via quantum mechanics, but I wouldn't understand it any better if he did.
 
It is a test.  Do you give into the tiny dancing gurner, to the constant hem-tugging and gibbering?  Or can you tune it out, just enough to hear that small steady voice from deep within?

My dancing gurner comes with a full laser show, goodie bags and interval ice-cream.  No jacket though.  Not required today.

Not Getting Away With It

The temperature this morning disputes my belief that it is spring.  A good five minutes to scrape the hardest of frosts off the car.  Fingers still numb an hour later.

The sky is clear and blue, and the sun is bouncing off all the new gilding on Holborn Viaduct.  Dedicated runners pass me, huffing out cloudy breath, rucksacks of work clothes bouncing on their backs.  I retire to a coffee shop, to warm my teeth and fingers.

Still not completely back into my running. There's a new stabby pain beneath my right knee cap.  It's not serious, but it is a warning.  Last time I had knee issues, it felt like my knee cap was going to spring off, like one of those sucker toys.  Very unstable and weird.  I went through several packets of frozen peas and a lot of physio to sort it out.  Don't want the same again, so I'm going steady.

I'm just big-boned

Or that's my excuse anyway (nothing stopping me cycling or rowing, is there?).  I am being very sluggish in shifting the extra winter insulation. Next week I have a health assessment.  I will be weighed and measured and cholesteroled and blood pressured.  In my pants, goddammit.  I planned to have everything in hand by then - I thought the deadline would make me step up.  Interestingly, the closer the assessment comes, the more I find myself cracking out the toast in carb-based acts of rebellion.  I've always been a bit of a last minuter, as demonstrated by my eternal pre-Fringe writing panic.  A hairy week of weeping and pacing normally allows me to squeeze something out, and get away with it.

Cannot use the same approach for the health assessment.  Nowhere to hide when you're in your pants.

Oh, the shame.  The terrible, cringing shame.

Georgian By Choice

Too cool

I've had a week of contrasting environments. Last Friday I was at a big record label. Laconic, beardy, achingly cool - even with post-Brits seediness. Walls plastered with black and whites of pretty much every big star you could imagine. Floor to ceiling speakers.  Interesting lighting.

Too hot

On Tuesday, I was deep in the labyrinthine warren behind a massive supermarket. Stiflingly hot. No natural light. Endless corridors. Grey linoleum. Swing doors and lockers with stern notices - 'This area is often left in a disgusting state. Clean up after yourself'. Next to the lift, a poster titled 'Smile of the Week' - featuring snapshots of slightly happy staff.

Sort of cool/sort of hot.  Just right

Today I am in a Georgian mansion. Rooms with high ceilings, flooded with lights from huge windows, vast staircases (both wide and shallow). Staircases to glide up and down.  Staircases from which to make a Grand Entrance. If you shut your eyes you can almost hear the rustle of silk taffeta. The house is set in the middle of rolling park land, with old walled gardens (schwing), and a lake and a crumbling stable block.

Last Friday was a sleek showroom - tight and staged, effortful, impressive and slightly intimidating. Tuesday was bleak utility - the ugliness and grind behind the scenes. Today is peace and confidence. Nothing to prove. Nothing to hide. This place KNOWS it's beautiful.

Fallback Position

Ballsack

A crossword puzzle. I am faced with the conundrum of _ ALLBA_ _. My internal lexicon immediately offers up a solution: BALLBAGS. And now I'm seeing BALLBAGS, it's like I'm blind to any other possibility. But is this really likely on the MindGames page of The Times? Let's be rational and search for an alternative. Maybe, just maybe, the B is wrong. Which would leave me with _ ALL _ A _ _.

BALLSACK. This seems more feasible. It's the sort of down-to-earth term that Dr Christian would use on 'Embarrassing Bodies' to put a patient at ease. 'So Lee, I understand you're having problems with your ballsack?' Yes. Perfectly reasonable.

I'm about to ink it in when I realise, sadly, that the answer is FALLBACK. Not BALLBAGS. Not BALLSACK.

Of course, there is nothing to stop me writing the letters I want in those tempting spaces. Occasionally I choose to do this. The only bit I can manage in a cryptic crossword is the cross. They make me disproportionately angry. Like riddles and anything involving a man filling a bath with a dripping tap. But on a busy commuter train there is nothing I enjoy more that filling in a cryptic crossword at breakneck speed. With drivel and rude words. Particularly if I am respectably dressed.

1 Down - Spanish magistrate offers new deal after gangster gets caught (7)  PATATAS
51 Across - Move slowly, being at communion? (4)  ANUS
44  Down - Get very cold outside?  One needs shelter round start of evening. (3, 4) DOG LARD

To any competitive onlookers (and they do exist) I appear to be some kind of autistic savant.  Only those closest know the truth.

My fallback position is ballsack.  Always and forever.

Running In - Please Pass

Imagine with beard + overalls

Last week my car became due for its first proper service.  Not one of the silly intermittent one - which seems to be little more than an oil change and a flannel swiped round the privates.  For these I've been taking it to the dealership, in a scaredy-cat-not-wanting-to-risk-the-warranty's-validity way.  It's now out of warranty, but the dealership contacted me, so I asked for a quote anyway.

When they told me the price, I laughed, and then retched, and then laughed again.  Then I rang the local garage up the road.  I told the chief mechanic what the dealership had quoted me and he laughed drily.  'They would, wouldn't they?' he dead-panned, like a bearded Mandy Rice-Davies.

And with that, I woke from my dealership enchantment, slashed my way out of the forest of complimentary key fobs and showroom Nespresso, and came to my senses.  Back where I belong, in the garage up the road, where nobody raises an eyebrow at the tooth I've lost from my front grille, or the scuffs on my wheel arches.  Was going to get these fixed, but quite frankly they're the only thing that stops my car looking like Noddy's runaround.  Know who you are.  Know where you belong.

Anyway, I'm back.  And the title of this post is not actually about my car, but more about this blog.  I've been SORN for a long time - there's rust on my brake discs, corrosion on my exhaust system and a great deal of bird shit on my bonnet.

Nothing that a road trip and a flannel can't sort.

Good to be back.