Experiences in Bournemouth

So as you'll have gathered from everyone else's blogs, we've just spent a delicious week with the family in Bournemouth. But what you might not have picked up on are the wonderful subtleties of the fine English language. I'll give you an example... this week the girls have spent as many waking moments as humanly possible playing with their Uncle Steve's Nintendo Wii - a small games console with wireless controllers, for the uninitiated. That was fine, but it then led to a number of embarrassing experiences, as the tongue ran on ahead of the mind, leaving the speaker in considerable discomfort. At about 6 o'clock one night, Mum asked where Linda was, to which I helpfully replied, "She's in the front room Wii'ing". Mum was aghast! Having not yet fully attuned her ears to tell the difference between "wii'ing" and "weeing", I'm sure she must have suspected her third-born was up to some foul and vulgar practice of the Northerners....

This made me think back to a time about a year ago in the wastelands of Merthyr Tydfil, when we invited our two best friends round to play some board games. I tactfully asked Esther if they were busy on Friday; she checked her diary then replied "No, we've got absolutely nothing on". I couldn't help it, though I tried and tried to suppress it - the words escaped my mouth before I could stop them: "Oooo! Sounds good - we're going to have a Naked Friday!" Esther, bless her, went a shade of red I have only ever seen in sunburned beetroots, and we all rolled on the floor, genuinely laughing our bottoms off. And from then on, when we met on a Sunday at church, one couple would ask the other of they were up for a Naked Friday, much to the consternation of the occasional member who caught the wrong end of the stick when passing by...

Whilst we were in the mouth of the Bourne, we visited Littledown leisure centre for a dip on a hot day. I couldn't resist donating a pound to a machine that promised to tell my weight, height and fortune. I seem to be struck with a fitness bug at the moment, and decided to take the opportunity of having a machine speak blasphemy to me whilst I still can. So here, for the very first time in the history of the internet, you, dear blog reader have either the awesome privilege or the terrifying ordeal of reading my vital statistics, as of the 1st August: 5'11", 19st 12lb with a bodyfat of 32%.

Although my weight is not the recommended 12 stone ideal (so that I can hide in a box of pencils), what concerns me more is the fact that I've shrunk by 3 inches over the last ten years. I'm not quite sure - apart from in some hideous accident - how I could have lost three inches in height. Obviously they make up some of the many extra inches of waistland around me these days, but the question is why? Why would they abandon my height and settle around my hips? Why not around my bicep, or even give me one of those fabulous man-bosoms like Arnie? But three inches beware: the owner of these hips has hereby decreed that you are an endangered spcies. You, and many of the others of your kind are wanted men (or women) (in fact, do waistline inches even have a gender??). Before long, there will only be 30-something of you - aha!!