RANDOM JOTTINGS

Yes I am.  I have to face up to it.  Middle aged spread (or should I say  Senior Citizen Spread) is taking over my body.  The body that for years I have kidded myself is nearer to Twiggy than Nigella is now rapidly assuming Mr Blobby proportions and I have to face up to the fact that slobbing around on these days off I now possess shoving chocolate digestive biscuits down my throat is doing me no good at all.

I promise that I am not going to bore you with my dietary problems, nor will I give you a week by week account, but in order to bring some discipline into my eating habits and make me accountable, I am telling all Random Readers that I have joined Weight Watchers so you can CHECK UP ON ME.   I joined them years ago after I had my children and lost two stone and have more or less stayed in that area, with the odd blip or two, ever since.  The main reason I have rejoined them is that for the first time in 30 years I find myself weighing the same as when I had just given birth so it has to STOP.  I have tried doing the WW thing at home and I have no will power whatsoever.  Going along each week and being weighed and handing over MONEY does concentrate the mind wonderfully.

(Mem: must get out of habit of putting words in capital letters and remember how annoyed you got when JK Rowling did it in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and desist. She can get away with it, you can’t)

Oh, has anybody else noticed that the scales used at WW always put you another 7lbs heavier than those you use at home?  Mine are electronic and I would have thought pretty accurate but no.  Now, cynic that I am, I cannot help the thought crossing my mind that the heavier you are, the more you have to lose, the more classes you will attend and the more money you will hand over.

But I am sure they would not do that…

So  two days into it all and I am trying to avoid the temptation of weighing myelf each day and in the spirit of adventure and thinking I must up the ante, I took myself off to the Leisure Centre yesterday morning.  I have not visited this place since the children were small as I loathe leisure centres and gyms with a deadly loathing.  The gym is always full of size ten women with designer training outfits and matching sweat, clutching their bottles of mineral water and pounding away on the treadmill, and making all of us in our baggy old t-shirts and leggings feel inferior and self conscious, and the swimming pool is noisy, full of screaming children and  unpleasant.  However, I did some investigating and discovered that there is a swim every morning at 11am for one hour for the over-fifties so off I went. I tell you, I nearly funked it but told myself to get a grip and just go.  Women there all shapes and sizes and girths so I felt better straight away and then felt even better when I found the concession reduced the fee to £2.20 which I thought was pretty good.

Initially swam in the slow lane but kept bumping into other swimmers who were paddling around and chatting as they went and then would stop and clutch the side, one couple talking about bunions (TRUE) and getting in my way so I felt like kicking them (the bunions that is if I could have located them) so hied me off to the Medium lane feeling very superior.  After five minutes of crashing into everyone else in that lane as well, I porpoised over into the fast lane and found that I could cope with the speed though I think the word ‘fast’ here is a misnomer.  I have swum all my life and actually have a bronze medal (Argyle Street Junior School I hasten to add, not Olympics) but did not think I was that nippy in the water and it was a great boost to discover that I was better than most of the swimmers I met this morning.

Did twenty lengths, stopping in between each two to catch my breath so please don’t think I was hoovering up and down like Mark Foster (be still my beating heart) and I enjoyed it and will be going back next week. (Just put this pic of Mark Foster in Striclty Come Dancing ffor your delight. Did you see him on Saturday night in THAT SHIRT?  He cannot dance but as Tess Daly said ‘Mark, on behalf of all the women in the world, thank you for wearing that shirt…).

I digress.

Then, of course, comes the bit I loathe most of all. Changing.  I decided not to shower and wash and dry my hair there but to do it at home so I dried myself off, hurled talcum powder all over the bod and then came the bit that always used to drive me to screaming pitch – trying to get ones clothes on a a damp body so that the bra and pants stick to bits of you that should not and as for pulling up the trousers without them jamming on the damp knees, well forget it. Also bear in mind that you are standing on a wet floor and have to get the trousers on without getting them wet, you cannot put your shoes on to keep your feet dry as they get stuck in the trousers (Still with me?) and it is All too Much to Bear.

However, I shall go again.  I fell fast asleep on the sofa this afternoon wiped out by this exertion and woke feeling pretty good and I do feel better for the exercise even if it is a penance.  But it is good I now have the time to do this and no excuses.  I have a chicken in the oven cooking away right now with grilled peppers and mashed swede to accompany.  All frightfully healthy.

Gosh I fancy a Krispy Kreme doughnut…