Just call me Bruce...

Well, after shedding a few unwanted pounds recently, I decided to take it a step further and invest a whopping £4 on a wide elastic band with handles from Tesco. The idea (I think - there were no instructions in English on the box...) is that you hold it or otherwise suspend from various bodyparts, whilst pulling in the opposite direction with another. It's a gentle form of resistance exercise, so it's ideal for the rather overweight and feeble. Having had lots of fun with that for a few weeks, I started to feel brighter in myself and have more energy - hurray!

As a teenager, I was really into martial arts and weight training, though sadly, I spent more time reading "Muscle & Fitness" than I did actually training. But the desire is still there, so with my new-found energy, I decided to start kickboxing - a fitness class rather than combat. And oh my goodness, do I ache! The session lasts an hour, and I was determined that however much it hurt, I had to not puke until it was over and noone was looking!

We spent much of the hour doing punch bag work, which develops power and speed, and then we moved onto focus mitts, which makes sure you're looking where you're hitting! Everything about the session was geared towards developing stamina, and the ability to recover quickly from high intensity exercise - I guess like you would do if you were recovering in the corner between rounds.

One hour after the end, I still haven't puked, and actually feel very good, though I was careful to drink a lot during the session, as well as afterwards. My shoulders are hurting with exhaustion like I've never known, and I'm sure my legs will start to complain in the morning. Which leads me to another of my deep and meaningful questions... Why is it that you can walk past something time after time, day after day, it's always in the same place, but then when you actually need it, it's never there??!!?? I'm thinking of the Arnica tablets now - regular attenders on my living room shelf, but now that I need them, they've scarpered! Never mind, I'll go and watch some TV and fall asleep - I usually wake up at 3 in the morning remembering where I last out them!

Things that make you go BOOM!

I found a drafted blog entry from mid-June that I wanted to share with you - it really tickled me looking back on it. I hope you enjoy:

I had an interesting experience this morning - I moved something off the kitchen table only to reveal a very strangely-shaped pop bottle. In its heyday, it contained 2 litres of Tesco's best effort at ginger beer, but being the adventurous type, I decided to try and make some Elderflower cordial whilst the girls were away. We'd run out of white sugar, so I had to use to brown instead, which has a much stronger flavour.

It just didn't taste right, so I took it out of the fridge and left it on the kitchen side, just as a temporary measure until I could be bothered to pour it on the compost heap. Well, this morning, one week later, I re-discovered the bottle, now expanded to bursting point, having now fermented a good part of the brown sugar into finest home-brewed elderflower wine!! The bottle was shaped more like a barrel than a bottle, and was so hard to touch, it felt like it would blow any minute! I immediately sprang into bomb-disposing-hero mode and sent everyone out of the way, which did nothing but attract them all to the danger! I carried it out to the garden at a snail's pace, fully aware that not only could it have taken my eye out, but I was also wearing my Sunday best, and didn't really fancy ironing another shirt.

Well, at arm's length, I slowly relaxed the bulging lid, expecting a little fizz as the bottle released its carbonic acid, but oh no! The fizz continued for nearly five minutes!! Finally, when all the gas had been set free, I took the lid off and cautiously took a sniff of my first, inadvertent homebrew, with the result that I nearly fell backwards, spilling the whole beverage on my white shirt. I've never smelled anything so powerful in my life: even sharing a missionary flat didn't come close to this stuff! I then proceeded to pour it liberally all over the compost heap, thinking that it would add variety of nothing else to the composition of my garden droppings.

For some weeks, there has been a strong and not particularly pleasant smell coming from the garden. In fact, all you need to do to experience it (should you want to) is step out of the back door, where you will be hit (and I use the word deliberately) by a strong, sweet, very alcoholic stench. Certainly, I intend to make the most of the experience and am now putting together a PhD thesis entitled "A study into potential uses of homebrew in modern biological warfare". I shall be adding that should my elderflower cordial not have the desired effect, we could simply catapult a barrel full of retired missionaries' shoes towards enemy lines!

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!!