Hernias Aren't All Bad

Day 111, Tuesday April 21, 10am: It's been a bad, bad few weeks.

I've a) got badly-paid work coming out of my ears b) had yet another another another cold c) so my ME is absolutely rubbish and d) if that wasn't enough, I've gone and got myself a hernia. Oh, and e), a trapped nerve in my left shoulder to boot. Otherwise, things are just great.

At least I'm not Brother Roger. He's just had his appendix whipped out and has requested he be released from his TRSNYRC pledges. Our second faller. That we know of.

I feel a bit like a fall-guy myself right now. This is the first blog entry for about 10 days, for which I apologise (to myself in particular, on the assumption that I am the only one reading it anyway). I have been snowed under writing sports internet pages on rugby and cricket. It's interesting, I can fit it in around family life, but I'd earn more per hour at Tesco's. Mind you, did you know that William Webb Ellis's grave was only re-discovered in 1958? He's buried in the south east of France, apparently. And did you know that Barry Richards only played four Test matches, all against Australia, averaging 72.57? And Graeme Pollock only played 23, all against England and Australia, and his average was only surpassed by one Sir Donald Bradman? And did you know that New Zealand took 26 years to win a Test match? No, neither did I.

Anyway, back to the hernia. Hernias, it turns out, are quite interesting too. Did you know that men are predisposed to having weaknesses in their muscle wall around the groin area? And that you can get a hernia by coughing? I think I got mine from writing sports internet pages. Anyway, I'm due for an op at the start of June. Which has rather curtailed my resolutions. I haven't been to the gym for a week, but that's mainly due to the cold. I shall go back today and do a light bike session, while wincing. Hernias, my piano teacher informs me, should not impinge on my keyboard practice (damn - there goes another excuse!).

Golf, though, is out. It's pretty painful. As for swimming, I've not tried that for a few weeks either (cold, and internet sports pages, and hernia, and shoulder) but I'll give it a go on Wednesday. Right. I can't chat on like this. I have to write the history of Pakistan cricket. Did you know that...

Some More Updates...

Day 101, Saturday April11, 11.59 pm: Some more updates…

Stopcock Clare: Resolutions - Take plumbing course/do more knitting/regular 6.15am swims/enquiring about plastering and bricklaying course/teaming up Nicky on a sewing course/taking up the guitar again.
To date - Completed plumbing course.

Fragrant Wife: Resolution - One sketch a day.

To date (I quote Burgess Hill Boot Boy, Fragrant Wife’s less fragrant husband) - “My dearest wife (who does not have access to this email account) has crafted a veritable Sistine Chapel of pictures. Some quite good and some, frankly, obscene. She's popping 'em out like rabbits pop out poo and I fear that she'll get RSI and/or the police will shut down my house as an artistic sweat shop.)

Burgess Hill Boot Boy: Resolution – To make no resolutions whatsoever.

To date - “You might be interested to hear that, due to excessive and tearful pressure from a brain-washed Son One, I have not had a fag since around 2200 on 02 February 2009. No hypnosis. No patches. No gum.”

Babak The Potter: Resolution – To do something artistic, like taking up pottery.

To date – “I'm struggling to find head space. Now that the days are a bit longer, anything is possible!”

Ramrod Rachel: Resolution - sort out weak back.

To date - Stopped going to the gym after doctor’s advice. Now taking up Pilates.

Kate The Toe Throb: Resolution – Do some serious running.

To date – “Hi Tony. Yes running still (ask recently witnessed by David Walker if you need confirmation!) All going well, still throbbing toe though!”

Sleepless Ruth (mother of nine, at the last count):

Resolution - To get some more sleep.

To date – No more sleep, not because of children but because of plumbing and electrical work on her and her husband’s work-in-progress house in Ireland.

Bill The Board: Resolution - To learn to surf before his new-born son.

To date – “Alright alright....I'll readily concede that my progress has been pitiful. I have, though, managed to fix a roof rack to my jeep for the yet-to-be purchased second-hand surfboard (please note I am learning to surf, not windsurf, bodysurf or anyothertypeofsurf). I have also selected my venue, the rather large and scary Gwithian beach near Hayle in west Cornwall. It's on the opposite coast to where I live which ensures none of my neighbours will witness my remarkable lack of balance. Local life guards have been duly alerted. However, should anybody spot me and wonder, I'm fairly sure I will be drowning not waving”

Roger The Thespian: Resolutions: 1. To adapt a one-man play for radio and hopefully get it produced and made. 2. To reacquaint myself with the piano. 3. Since I need to get one failure out of the way, to not be 43 years old in 105 minutes time. 4. To do the London-Brighton cycle ride.

To date: “Still waiting to hear if I've been accepted for bike ride. Er... that's about it. What were my other resolutions?!”

Cricketing Kuldip: Resolution - Do some walking, do some yoga every morning, in an attempt to lose weight.

To date – Walking/yoga each morning, but no weight loss. “Am told it took years to put on the weight, so don't expect it go so soon. Logical I suppose. But I am not giving up. Cant let this group down, can I ????"

Jenny The Penguin: Resolutions – Get on Facebook and try and keep in touch with people/get head around Twitter/learn how to put tunes on iPod.

Resume dieting. Become a filmgoer again after 9 years of children's films only.

To date – Going to the cinema regularly (seen Australia, Slumdog Millionaire, Frost Nixon and Revolutionary Road, Milk, The Damned United, Young Victoria ). Not got head around new technology at all.

First-Tee Juliet: Resolutions - Dyslexia teaching course/Nurturing old friendships/say ‘do more, dream less’ at least 100 times a year/learn to play golf (one lesson a week).

To date – On target with everything, even the dreaming.

Six-foot Laurie: Resolution - Hole more six-foot putts than he misses.

To date - Still missing the majority.

Matt the Mad Magistrate: Resolutions -1) ride 100 miles in a day on the way to losing weight (while eating and drinking whatever he wants – cakes and alcohol most welcome). 2) Prepare for a Masters degree in Maths. So as to carry out research at the Dept of Cosmology and Gravitation. So as to get a Phd. So as to stick two fingers up the doctors, consultant and anaesthetists living in his road (if Brian May can do it, why can’t Matt?)

3) Climb Mount Washington in New Hampshire (despite hips/kidney) 4) Rebuild his Z1000 Kawasaki and upset his neighbours (Matt was never a Hell’s Angel, he tells me, just leather jacketed, anti-social, immature, heavy drinking and belligerent). 5) And, of course, become a magistrate (thus giving him the power to incarcerate leather jacketed, anti-social, immature…

To date: 1) Magistrate application. “This is in, locked and loaded. I have been to court several times to observe the proceedings (hangings) and now it is up to the Magistrate service to accept or reject my application, which may take more than this year.” 2) Kawasaki rebuild – “The basement is now completely finished and decorated. I’lll move the gym equipment back out of the workshop and oily work can commence.”

3) “Cycling still up around the 60-70 miles level, but am sure I will get to 100 miles. 4) Health – “My kidneys have taken a big step down in the last two months and I have to be realistic that I might be on for a transplant in the next couple of months. 5) Maths Masters degree – “Revision on hold on the pure math’s as I have diverted my attention into more study on Cosmology at present. Hoping to attend a course in MIT (Boston) in a few months and to this end am revising/learning Einstein’s Special and General Theories of relativity and broad introduction to the principles of the models of how Universe is supposed to be constructed. 6) Mount Washington – “Damn hips are really buggered, but I have signed up for a 10 days walking holiday in Sutherland (Cape Wrath) area of Scotland in June to see if I can stagger up and down lots of 2,500 and 3,000 mountains.”

Sarah La Française: Resolution – Brush up French.

To date: “Little progress. I did dust down my Teach Yourself French CDs last week.”

Try Laughing Now, Scornful Suzuki Four-Year-Olds!

Day 96, Monday April 6, 11.30am: From now on, I shall answer to the name of Amadeus. I passed my Initial Grade Keyboard Exam (capital letters to try and make it sound more impressive) last week. No, I didn't just pass - no hiding of lights under bushels here - I got a merit.

Not that it was that smooth a ride. In fact, I felt like a schoolboy in short trousers for most of the day as a result. The examiners were dead-pan officious and that threw me from the very start. Then I began making more and more mistakes, the longer I warmed up. Then the keyboard stand was at the wrong height. Then my hands seized up and felt like they were playing through treacle. Then I botched my first arpeggio. Then…

But at least there were no frilly pigtailed four-year-olds present. I’d been warned that I might be surrounded by some rather young fellow examinees – Neil, my teacher, said I would probably raise the average age to about seven - but fortunately I was alone. Not a single Suzuki kid to be seen.

I walked out of the exam thinking I might have just squeezed a pass, so I’m very chuffed. I’ve seen the examiner’s notes. The best thing was that he did not mention my nodding head or make any reference to pigeons.

Ha! Try to laugh at me now, scornful four-year-olds! See you for the grade two exam in June! And just remember to call me Amadeus in future…

Introducing Chris The Tooth and Siobhan the Songster

Day 94, Saturday April 4, midnight: We have two new members! Well, one, to be honest. Chris is bona fide, Siobhan is mere coincidence.

Chris The Tooth, Lindfield Primary parent and useful golfer, says he’s been reading the blog since the start, but has chosen to keep his quest(s) quiet, in the hope of avoiding too much scrutiny. Chris is a dentist. His resolutions are 1) to finish his MSc (in some subject loosely related to teeth, I fancy) and 2) to learn the guitar part to “Under The Bridge” by The Chili Peppers.

Apparently, the two are closely intertwined. As close, in fact, as his guitar is to his home computer. Every time he gets ready to sit down to work, Chris finds himself drawn to strumming instead.

As he puts it… “I figure that by the end of the year you will either have to add some extra letters after my name if you wish to address me or you will be regaled by a haunting rendition of a drug abuse song. I feel the way things are going it will be one or the other but definitely not both.”

Siobhan The Songster, meanwhile, Lindfield Primary nanny and would-be rock chick, began the year by joining a band after taking singing lessons. The bank is called “Keef”. She’s been told it’s thus named because of Rolling Stone Keith Richard. I looked the word up on the internet and found it is related to the preparation of cannabis. Keith Richard - and rock chick - my hat.

Anyway, Siobhan is making her public debut as a backing vocalist this weekend, I believe. After years of singing to her admiring Dad at Christmas, she faces a wider public. I believe Shrinking Sarah is also one of the singers.

I told Siobhan that if Keef were ever in need of a keyboard player… Perhaps she did not get my text. I have not yet received a reply. Despite staying up late in anticipation.

Quarterly Update: Like Sand Through Fingers...

Day 91, Wednesday April 1, 10am: It's rather crept up on me - we are a quarter of the way through 2009, a quarter of the way through our resolutions! How time slips away, like sand through fingers.

So...

I am still overweight. And useless at the piano. And I still swim like a brick. And I don't have a website. And I've only managed one golf game all year, which was an unmitigated disaster. And I'm not sure I've managed to chew my food 30 times more than once (you remember, that day that I took 57 minutes to get through a small bowl of soup).

Actually, no, let's be fair. It just feels like that. I'm a bit down after having been dogged by one Lindfield Primary School cold bug after another for the past three weeks. So what have I - and, more importantly, what have you - achieved?

My weight is down from 13st 4lbs to about 12st 5. Wow. That's actually rather good, even if I have almost a stone to go to my target. I have taken a piano exam (alright, I probably failed, but at least I turned up for the darned thing). I have managed to swim eight lengths of crawl in a row (I began on one), which is more than a quarter of the way to my goal of 20. I've had five glasses of wine this year. I eat porridge most days, and walk to school with 8-Year-Old (she's just had her birthday - sleepover with three invited friends - don't, ever!). And I've thought quite a bit about the website, even if I haven't much progressed.

Now how's everybody else getting on?

Well, to date, I only have a handful of replies from TRSNYRC. So either 1) people are too busy to blog/email (understandable) 2) people have all given up (even more understandable) or 3) my pleading email for information has been filtered out as spam (also understandable - not the first time something I have thought/suggested/communicated has been treated as unsolicited junk). Never mind. I shall just send out the emails personally to the other 40-odd of you today.

But anyway...

1) John The Fish

A real success story! He has yet to succumb to a single drop of alcohol, continues with his gym workouts (well, when I say gym, I mean the living room, which he has now filled with benches and weight and dumbells). He walks up to 10 miles three times a week and continues to have cunning plans to catch that 20lb pike.

2) Kate The Tech

Kate has proudly overcome her technical phobias and has now downloaded several albums. She continues to sketch.

3) Motorman Mike and Yogi Clare

Motorman is turning into a monster! He's given up work (an month earlier than planned) to have a re-think n what this living lark is all about. He's managed a 36-mile training bike ride (and a couple of 20+ milers) with the team who plan to go from London to Paris on 28 June. A 40-mile expedition beckons in May. He's also gone and bought a Harley Davidson Road King Classic bike - the blog awaits pictures! He reads newspapers a lot.

Clare's major achievements appear to be 1) staying sane (quite an achievement considering her recent turmoils) and 2) putting up with Mike and his sweaty bike training gear (a major achievement, no doubt). Her music has yet to take off again although she has been playing recorder and piano (just the left hand, I think) pieces with her daughter.

4) Prohibition Roy and Shrinking Sarah

Ouch! Roy and Sarah both fell off the wagon two weeks before their intended three-month aniversary and ended up with next-morning headaches. Roy, though, says there is good news. He seems, he says, to have lost the thirst for the booze - "once you take the habit bit out of it drinking ain't that much fun" - and will continue 2009 drinking only at weekends. He makes no mention of his weight, or of cheese, or puddings but says he is considering "some more initiatives for the rest of the year". Hhe has, he adds, bought an excercise bike and intends to remove the wrapping at a later date.

Due to the falling-off- the-wagon bit, he will henceforth be called Head Vacillator.
Sarah, meanwhile, continues to work out with her personal trainer (if that does not sound too improper...)

Right, I'd better send off some of those emails again...