Comedown

You know how, when you haven’t been to the gym for a while, and you are absolutely dreading it, and then you finally drag yourself down there and resentfully, furiously get changed and then flap your big feet into the room, and stand there looking at all the fit people and you mentally shake yourself and say, ‘COME ON, I CAN DO THIS,’ and you clamber onto the treadmill or the step machine or whatever, and off you go, and then, to your profound surprise, you find that in fact it wasn’t nearly as hard as you were expecting, that actually, it was positively easy, and you conclude that clearly you are not as unfit as you’d feared, not even close, and that it is now apparent that you are just one of those very fortunate people who has a high level of latent fitness, who can lie around eating and boozing for weeks on end and then just decide on a whim to run a half marathon and find it irritatingly easy, and you leave the gym with a bounce in your step, and then a day or so later, you’re feeling optimistic and almost perky about going again, just like any latently fit person would do, because it won't be any problem for you, and you go and get changed and jump onto the treadmill, and set off full pelt, iPod blaring, only immediately it’s like trying to sprint through the sea, and your face goes red and the sweat starts pouring and some good Samaritan comes over to help you off because it is obvious to all and sundry that you are but moments from death, and you can't understand how you've gone from latently fit to dangerously unhealthy in less than 48 hours, and then reluctantly you have to admit to yourself that maybe what you called 'latent fitness' was, in fact, your body finding something so unfamiliar that it doesn't know how to respond in any helpful way, and it just bounds on happily, unprepared for any consequences, and that the second time around it knows what to expect, and makes it immediately obvious that a-ha, I've been here before and I know about this, and please stop as a matter of urgency because this is not actually something I am comfortable doing due to the fac that it may well lead to my imminent death? Well, it is very lucky that you know about that, because it is a metaphor for what I feel like to be at work today.

Having been, AND I QUOTE, “thrilled” to be back at my desk not 24 hours ago, sprightly, efficient, and uncharacteristically smiling, I now feel as though my eyes have been sluiced with nail varnish remover and my posture stool, far from feeling pleasingly challenging, is now rock hard against the flesh of my buttocks. Gasp. Maybe I have lost too much weight and am now at risk of posterior bruising. I will just check. No, that’s not it.

I think maybe yesterday I was delirious from lack of sleep, whereas today I have lost the delirium and am merely utterly exhausted. And guess what I have to do tonight? Go to the THEATRE. Yes. I must sit in a dark, warm room watching people talk about serious things. I will be asleep before they set foot onto the stage. Help. Oooh but what is that I see on the horizon? Double gasp! It is the man from the loading bay bringing me A BOX OF NEW CLOTHES FROM ASOS. I could not be more excited than if I was 11 and he was bringing me a note from the head saying my mum had called and that I need to leave early, and I already know that she is getting me out of school because we are secretly going to meet Joey MacIntyre from New Kids on the Block. Right, I’m off to the loo to try everything on. Oooh AND my boss is simultaneously putting on his jacket which means he will leave… yes, he’s leaving, which means I can be ages trying things on and NO ONE WILL KNOW. Except you, but you won’t tell anyone, will you. Will you? Hmmmm. Maybe I will wait until after the clothes-trying-on session to post this, to cover my back. Yes, I think that is sensible.

OK, I'm back, and I've tried everything on and I am keeping one blouse, one pair of shorts and one pair of leggings. I am sending back four jumpers, one dress and an alternative pair of shorts. Non-existent God bless ASOS for doing free next day delivery if you spend over £100 and free returns, and not minding that I totally take advantage and order pretty much anything I like just to bump my small order up over £100 so that I get it the next day. I'm now even more shattered following the adrenaline frenzy of trying on new things. Consume sleep consume sleep consume sleep die.

The past and the future are illusions. The only thing that is real is the I, and the now.

Thrilled

Guess what I just caught myself doing. You'll never guess. I was whistling at my desk, proving without question that, for now, the snake has crept away. I can still see its tail-end, but it's definitely retreating, and I am watching it leave, waving it off with a maniacal grin on my mug. And it feels inCREDible, a new lease of life. I went for lovely gastropub chats with Kate and Ses last night and my perspective shifted, and today the sun is out, I ran for nearly five miles with Laura this morning through our beautiful city, over Waterloo Bridge, weaving around Southwark and back over London Bridge, up through Bank and back to the office, exclaiming every now and then at the architecture, stark white stone radiating against deep cyan, and making fun of an unfortunate man's running style. It was elating. And god it's good to be back.

Guess what I found out today? You'll never guess. Laura was telling me that Michelle told her that Lisa told her that a girl came out of our basement gym last week, went into the changing rooms and got into the shower, without her glasses (obv), and TROD IN A POO. Someone had had a poo in our work showers. Amazing.

God I'm excited. I feel like running through the streets singing and high fiving complete strangers. Also I feel like drinking a lot of white wine. Will do the latter but not the former. Woop.

And I'm back

Given that I am the world's most efficient person, it should come as little surprise to anyone that I decided to organise a New Year party on 2nd January, to start five hours after my plane was due to land. I'd had a delivery of food and Cava before I left for Prague, and miraculously, everything happened on time - the pate was made to schedule, the olives were baked, the chorizo was chopped, the wine was cooled - the only thing I had neglected to factor in was people being absolute wusses and deciding they were too tired to come. My eventual stats for the evening were something like:

Invited: 79
Expected to attend: around 15-20
Responded: 68
Ignored altogether: 11
Refused point blank: 47
Accepted: 12
Maybes: 8
Cancelled on the day: 6
Gatecrashed: 4
Attended: 14
Bedtime: 4am

It was really fun. Really, really fun. Possibly too much fun for Leo, who I had to send home with a bottle of mostly-drunk whiskey as he had disgraced himself somewhat. But everyone else was excellent, the pub quiz went well, the charades were raucous, I LOVE the addition of the sabotage option, only one drop of red wine was spilled and was hastily removed with my beloved power laser carpet shampoo miracle product (thank you OxyKIC), my flat looked lovely and candlelit and I had a groovy time.

On Sunday I got butterflies when I realised I was going to buy a new camera, and I went to Jessops and did, and it's amazing amazing. And then I went to see Tokyo Story at the BFI, which I absolutely loved. God I want to go to Japan. I am drawn there like a freezing cold moth on a icy night to a roaring log fire surrounded by halogen lamps. Blame Murakami. And Hello Kitty. And my conviction that I'll take, like, the best photos ever. And write brilliant things that have never been thought before, let alone written out loud.

On Sunday evening I met up with Em at the BFI bar and we caught up after weeks apart - she'd been at my party the night before but we hadn't really spoken - and we giggled helplessly over my favourites on Texts From Last Night (still funny, not a passing fad).

Monday was my first day back and I felt so rank and exhausted but I dragged myself to the gym and then went at 5pm and Kazu, a gorgeous Japanese man at the hairdresser next door to my office, gave me the best haircut, not just of my life, but of anyone's life, and I literally can't stop looking at myself in the mirror. It couldn't be cooler. I look like I should be wearing a Seventies ski suit with a white polo-neck jumper. Best of all, even BEFORE he'd cut my hair, Kazu asked me if I'd ever MODELLED! Can you imagine?! I laughed in his face. Too hilarious. But then after he cut it, I suddenly thought maybe I might be in line for Kate Moss' throne. Maybe if I swap fun size Crunchies for heroin, it'll work out. I'll keep you posted.

Yesterday was Tuesday and, even after one trip to the gym, I felt like a new woman, convinced I could see the beginnings of a six pack. It's absurd how quickly I expect to see results. Enthused, I went again in the afternoon, and panted my way through a forty minute stint on the treadmill. And I will go again shortly. I would be feeling absurdly pleased with myself were it not for the fact that I ate approx. three times my own bodyweight in leftover Christmas/party chocolate last night, including, in fact, an entire bag of M&S chocolate-covered raisins that I'd bought yesterday evening because they were reduced to 50p, even though I knew full well that, back at my flat, there was enough chocolate to fill a large skip. I'm putting it down to hormones.

Now I'm grumpy because, although it is snowing heavily, I live and work in a frustratingly warm microclimate, and while many of my colleagues have been unable to get to work due to thick snowfall, I woke up to a feint dusting of white, like a meagre sprinkling of icing sugar on a cake, and was able to travel into work on the underground without incident. I had been dreaming of a snow day, snuggled under a blanket with the heating on Permanent, watching bad movies and live Celebrity Big Brother, and possibly having a little snooze around now. Instead, I am drinking green tea, struggling to stay awake and delaying my gym trip. Nothing more motivating than the idea of me in too-tight salopettes, though. Ick.

V Fun

Ow. Ow. Ow. That's basically what I've been doing fairly non-stop for the past 36 hours. You really haven't missed much. On Wednesday after work, Laura and I made use of two free guest passes she'd been given, and went to our local Virgin Active! gym in the City for an evening of intense exercise. Determined to get our money's worth, we optimistically decided to go to not one, not two, but three classes throughout the evening. We started with 30 minutes of 'V Core', which was basically a selection of really Sixties exercises like stomach crunches and press-ups, but with the letter V stuck in front of each of them to suggest some sort of unique and 'now' vibe. Believe me, holding yourself in push-up position with your elbows on the floor for minutes at a time is no more fun than it is normally when it's called The V Plank. Likewise, the V Crunch and the V Lunge can V Fuck Off.

Then was 45 mins of 'Body Pump' which is, for the uninitiated, V Hell On Earth. A perky woman with a Madonna headset plays bad house music and shouts at you to lift a dumbbell in time to the songs. The girl in front of me was unquestionably strong but had the rhythm of a drunk toddler. I resisted following her, determined to follow the beat of the music as I had been instructed, but because she was confidently doing the opposite to me, while being about a stone lighter than me and wearing serious gym kit including a top made out of some hi-tech breathable fabric and special gloves to prevent blistering while gripping the weights, the result was that I looked like I was the one doing it wrong. Livid.

I finished off the evening with an hour of yoga, which was fantastic, until yesterday morning, when I tried to sit up and go to work, and felt like I had been on the rinse cycle in a vigorous human-sized washing machine with several large bricks. It has been agony ever since. Thankfully, yesterday evening was a perfectly-timed and long-awaited treat: an after-work spa session at The Sanctuary with Em, my birthday present from last year. We saunaed, we steamed, we jacuzzied, we lounged with the koi carp, and we ate healthy food. It was blissful and exhausting and, despite an awkward incident when handsome young Pete from choir busted me on the tube home wearing no make-up, with wet, unbrushed hair and blotchy skin that made me look as though I'd been in a fight, I still managed to maintain my zen state and arrived back at the ranch convinced I would be dead to the world within moments.

So it was frustrating that my V Broadband decided to work for the first time since Sunday, as I was then unable to tear myself away from my laptop. I was faffing around with Skype for some time, and eventually got to bed just before midnight, where I became transfixed by the Presents for Men Travel Paraphernalia & Outdoor Leisure catalogue for Summer 2009. Always a favourite, I was sure there would be a gem or two therein, but even I wasn't prepared for the brilliance of this fanTAStic telescopic photo arm. I can't think of a time when I've seen two models look more like they would rather be dead. And who can blame them? Their product is the most desperately humiliating gadget known to man - if you can't read the text, the photo arm even includes a mirror to help you aim the camera. The kerchief alone is winceworthy enough to justify storming off the shoot but the guy's terrible faux-surfer necklace is equally terrible. The rictus grins say it all. I was so excited with my find that I didn't get to sleep until nearly 1am.

Worrying

Now, I know he's the first digital president and all, but you'd have thought the new Leader of the Free World might have better things to do than read about the self-absorbed life of a 31 year old London lass. Clearly not. Just moments ago, I received an email (see left) entitled: 'Barack Obama is now following you on Twitter'. Hmmm. Not sure how I feel about that.

Anyway, in other news, yesterday evening after work, I got to the gym, undressed out of my office clothes, put on my gym kit, and then realised I didn't have any socks. So, in what may have been a first for the gym at work, I went barefoot. Thirty minutes on the cross trainer and a few weights - no one batted an eyelid. Liberating.

Right. It's Saturday, I've been looking forward to the weekend all week and I'm wasting it by lying in bed. Must get up. Later dude.

Flagging

For some incalculable reason, I seem to have regressed into a shell of my former self. No longer buoyant and keen to exercise, I now delay going to the gym as a dentistphobe might delay going to the dentist. Just as I have, in fact, for the last three years - but that's another story. And despite several inspiring topics dangling in front of me like a Magic Tree on the rearview mirror of my life, I have been singularly reticent to write my blog.

I could have written about the man in the gym last week who was roaring with such ferocity as he weight lifted that I eventually stopped laughing and started feeling quite threatened by the brute force of his testosterone-fuelled idiocy. This is the kind of man who needs to be told, quietly and firmly, that he is a moron.

And I definitely wanted to write about the nationwide press coverage today that the results of anti-depressant medication are so similar to those of a placebo as to render the drugs' continuing production unjustifiable. The study's advisors are suggesting that use of SSRIs is limited to all but the most severe cases of depression - partly to cut down on the negative side effects often caused by these drugs and partly to reduce the huge cost of supplying all these to the 16 million Brits who take them every day. Now, I am one of the 16 million. I could be on a placebo - I don't really care. All I know is, a few months ago, I started taking a pill in the mornings and now I feel better. If you stop giving medication (or something purporting to be medication) to people like me, I think that would be a bad thing. That said, I do understand the problem. I saw a documentary about the effective treatment of Parkinson's with a placebo of saline solution not so long ago. Clearly the placebo effect is very real - but it works, and somehow we have to take something that we believe to be medication to get these positive results. Really I think the health service should just give us all water and sugar pills for all our conditions - as long as we never found out, we'd probably all be a lot healthier and happier as a result.

Yeah, so I wanted to write about those things. And I have to go to the gym. But.... meh... I really don't want to. I don't understand how I can have been so enthusiastic about exercise so recently and now feel like even standing to put a letter in the post tray is too much effort. Maybe it's the sheer weight of flat-moving stress that is exhausting me physically. In my defence, I have had a lot on my plate, painting the flat for over 20 hours this weekend, rushing to Brixton to pay for things after work and making big decisions with gay abandon. Then this morning I not only found out that I have a gas leak in the flat but that my boiler is dripping sporadically and covered in limescale. This will be expensive. But what can you do? The show must go on... Thankfully tonight I will find respite in our company wine club's Spring tasting evening which includes 'hot finger food'. Wine and carbohydrate-laden snackage... I feel better already.

Note to self (and others)

Do not, under any circumstances, go to the gym after work and then let Laura persuade you that going to O'Neill's is a good idea. Going to O'Neill's, in my experience, is rarely a phenomenal idea as the visit almost always culminates in some degree of personal humiliation for participants, but the crucial lesson here is to make sure that one's visit to said drinkerie does not follow hot on the heels of physical exercise. After over an hour in the gym last night, we settled downstairs in the pub and had a large glass of Sauvignon and a bag of McCoy's. This was unarguably silly. What was sillier still was allowing a nice young man from the building to buy us both a second glass and no further McCoy's. This amount of alcohol would normally have made me fairly tipsy - but with the adrenaline pumping round my system post-workout, I was pretty much legless. The journey home involved more Puzzle Bobble and aural nostalgia, playing old compilations on the iPod. Once back at the ranch, I went on my computer, watched Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, tried on and rejected my new skinny jeans, ate some German Christmas biscuits, moisturised and passed out. This morning I could barely remember anything and had to piece it together like a struggling amnesiac. Now it's not even 10am and I've already had to eat a Twix. Something tells me today will be difficult.

Maybe, maybe not

Hmmm. This disparity in my blog topics has me thinking. The cogs are turning fairly slowly but I'm still not catching the message. It's something about focussing. About people's appreciation for structure and form and, to a certain extent, predictability. Maybe my blog would be more popular if I wrote about one topic.

Maybe I should become 'known' for something. Maybe I should concentrate on a particular issue - like music. The comments I received in response to my Amy Winehouse review made me feel quite warm and fuzzy: it was great to find my words were read by strangers and empathised with too. What's more, Mark (whoever he is) even wished he'd spent the gig next to me! Sure, given my luck with men he's probably short, married, bipolar, aggressive, apolitical, rightwing, humourless and/or gay, but still. It was nice to elicit such a positive response.

But then, maybe I shouldn't be worried about how many people read this blog: maybe the joy of a blog is that a writer can be entirely selfish and not consider a particular audience or publisher or editor. And maybe it's my blog's breadth that appeals to my readers. Maybe if I restricted myself to one topic, I'd miss my absolute freedom to write whatever pops into my head. It's all so disconnected, but maybe that's a good thing. And since that is a true reflection of my life, maybe that's what's interesting. This is the head of a 30 year old London girl: internet dating, office chairs, varicose veins, David Cameron, cerebral palsy and Legoland.

Ach. All this hyperactive mental oscillation is wearing me out. I'm going to carry on filling in next year's diary with important events and pondering my latest quandary: why, when I can swear, hand on heart, that every single time, without exception, that I go to the gym, I leave feeling a) happier, b) more at peace and c) healthier, why on earth don't I want to spend my every waking moment there? Why do I delay doing something that boosts my immune system, makes me physically toned and mentally stable, all the while improving the appearance of cellulite? It's the eighth wonder, I tell you. For all my attempts to be rational, I am fundamentally irrational and absurd. Sigh. Also: commas: high on my list of world's most underrated item. Ooh, am I allowed two colons like that? Actually, I make the rules, it's my blog. I can put colons wherever I want. : : : See? : : : OK. Now I feel queasy. God, I can't even rebel through punctuation. This is pathetic. Even being at the gym is better than this. I'm off.

To gym, or not to gym...

Today I promised myself I would make it to the gym. I was actually almost nearly looking forward to it. But as the day has worn on, I’ve become more and more lethargic. London’s appalling July weather curbed my enthusiasm and left me feeling like eating stew and watching a romcom rather than doing sprints on the rowing machine.

An hour ago I started to accept that the gym might not happen. I then allowed myself to experience the glee of imagining I didn’t have to go. Immediately I felt the familiar rush of relief flooding through and, in a sign from the heavens, the sun burst through the clouds. Suddenly everything seemed bearable again. Even God didn’t want me to exercise. To celebrate, I bought and inhaled a Kit-Kat.

It’s frustrating to be so short-sighted and simultaneously so self-aware, to give in to unhealthy desires while steeped in the knowledge that my ultimate yearning is to have the toned body of a supermodel and the eating habits of a young bluetit.

In my experience, however, it is exceptionally hard to regret a chocolate-covered wafer. Let’s be honest: it’s hard to regret a chocolate-covered anything. Coat a nail file in Cadbury’s and I’ll eat it with relish. Smear Nutella on a duvet and I’ll tuck in. Sadly, there’s absolutely nothing petite about my appetite – and until I stop using tenuous excuses like ‘the weather’ to postpone trips to an (indoor) gym which is reached via internal corridors and requires no mingling with the elements whatsoever, I think my thighs will remain, like my appetite, disappointingly grande.

Gym Dangers

On Monday, in what must have been a fairly comical moment in itself, I was on the cross-trainer in the gym. As usual, I had moved beyond the joys of perspiration and was firmly into the phase to which I refer fondly as ‘Drenched’. As Madonna’s Like A Prayer moved into its second verse, I became aware that my energy levels were flagging somewhat and, preferring to blame my sluggishness on the Queen of Pop rather than my own risible fitness levels, decided to fast forward the track. I reached down to the iPod which was nestled in the cross-trainer’s integral cup holder, but – horrors – instead of seamlessly spinning on to the next upbeat number, I managed to become manually tangled in my headphones wire, wrenching my white rectangular friend out of its holster and sending it clattering to the floor between the footrests, as I accelerated towards the angina-inducing peaks of Workout Level 24.

Breathless and pouring sweat in an Amazonian fashion, I cantered onto solid ground as quickly as I could and scooped up my iPod from its final resting place beneath the cross-trainer. Nervous about potential injuries following the not-insubstantial fall, I gingerly replugged in my headphones and was relieved to hear Madge warbling away as before. Resuming my position on the exercise machine, I recommenced my workout – but just a few moments later and without warning, Like A Prayer stopped, mid-middle eight, and no amount of frantic button pressing in any number of desperate combinations would coax it back into action.

Back at home, the hated grumpy file symbol had appeared on my screen and, following the instructions on the Apple website, I attempted to ‘restore’ my iPod. Sadly this option was forbidden to me: my computer informed me that it was experiencing Error 1418 and was unable to proceed. Feeling outwitted and guilty, I began the grieving process for my little aural wonder. And things looked no better when, on Tuesday night, Simon found a website called www.1418hell.com. This explained that my error message was a cumbersome problem suffered by thousands of iPod owners that mean old Apple was refusing to fix. Clearly, the time had come to start saving for a new pod.

But then, at 5am yesterday morning, my previously mute iPod began emitting a series of random beeps. When my consciousness finally came to me around an hour later, I took a look at the screen, realised the unit was low on battery and plugged it in to the mains. And immediately, miraculously, normality was restored. The music of the spheres tinkled merrily above me and as I commuted into work today, Bob Dylan warbling away in my ears, I felt unmistakeably lucky to have survived this example of my own carelessness without the need to fork out for a new machine and grateful to have been handed a(nother) splendid excuse to steer clear of the cross-trainer for the time being.

An Unforeseen Delay

With an hour or so to kill between the end of work last night and the start of choir, I deemed that this would be a good time to visit the in-house gymnasium for the commencement of my week’s fitness regime.

Strangely, although I spent exactly the same amount of time on each of the machines as usual, my workout took a fragment longer than expected, and I entered the changing rooms slightly behind schedule. As per my routine, I showered off, towelled myself with my highly-recommended sports towel (dries in seconds, weighs next to nothing even when wet) and then attempted to put on my skirt.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible that I was jumping the gun somewhat here. Perhaps I should have known to wait until my skin was perfectly arid rather than merely not-wet. But in the heat of the moment, I naively tried to get dressed – and it was here that I encountered a small hitch.

Still sweating from my vigorous workout, the skirt’s inexpensive lining stuck to my thighs like cement, locked in place and became impossible to pull either up or down. The outer layer of the skirt, attached to the lining with a few threads at the bottom hem, was consequently pulled underneath and up into the dark recesses, exposing the top of my popsocks. Reader, I have rarely looked more glamorous.

When another gym-goer breezed into the changing rooms, I was too humiliated to remain, and shuffled into the next door hand-washing and coiffuring zone. Pretending to blow-dry my hair, I put the hairdryer on its not-cold-enough setting and wafted it in the vicinity of my still-perspiring legs. But of course, in my panic I merely began to sweat even more and the situation did not improve. Eventually I realised that I would have to leave and hope that a few minutes outside the gym environment would assist my internal thermostat to kick into action. And gradually, as I returned to my desk to collect my choir music and various other items, my skirt rearranged itself into its proper place. There’s a lesson in this for all of us and I’m happy to share my wisdom in the most selfless of fashions: the convenience of synthetic fabrics cannot be denied, bar those few occasions when one is both damp and rushing. At those times, a pair of tights or a slip may be of use. Here endeth the lesson.