Day 42, Wednesday February 11, 8.30pm - I blame my Dad. Except that my Dad was wonderful, so that can't be right.
It must be my fault, although I find that very hard to believe.
It turns out that I can't swim. Well, not properly, anyway. I am fish-unlike.
To be honest, I'd suspected as much for some fair while. I've been watching Seven-Year-Old's swimming lessons and been left confused by some of the instruction. Dad never taught me like that. Or perhaps I wasn't listening.
Anyway, I went to an adults' class today. There was a fair mix of abilities, with non-swimmers on the one hand and triathletes on the other. I was left floundering somewhere in the middle.
I was there, I told the teacher, because I seem to run out of breath while doing the crawl. I reckoned I could do about four lengths at most, as opposed to 10 lengths of breast stroke.
Put through my paces, I discovered that I could, in fact, only manage one length of crawl.
Teacher says, to be perfectly honest, I'm not really swimming at all. I'm Greco-Roman wrestling the water. My head's in the wrong position, my shoulders are tense and bunched up and I'm not breathing out vigorously enough, meaning that my lungs soon fill up with carbon dioxide. I also rock too much from side to side.
By the end of the half-hour, I was managing about half a length before spluttering to a standstill.
Swimming 20 length of crawl is not going to be easy. I am not, it turns out, a natural. I have the swimming aptitude of a brick, rather than of a Phelps.
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
John The Fish or John The Photoshop?
Day 42, Wednesday February 11, 1 pm: A belated tribute to John The Fish.
While the rest of TRSNYRC were quaffing wine and eating muffins last Saturday, he was out braving the West Country snow in search of that 20lb pike of his.
As many of you will know, he returned home having caught two fine specimens - one weighing in at 19lb 8oz and the second at 17lb 3oz. So near and yet so far...
I have, incidentally, tried to post his pike picture but the blog does not seem to like it.
I am wondering why.
Perhaps it is because I am technologically inept (see Head Sloth's resolutions).
Or perhaps the picture has been doctored some way. I gather Photoshop can pretty much do anything nowadays, in the right hands. Perhaps John The Fish has airbrushed his face onto a photograph of someone else? Or perhaps he airbrushed the pike in, after catching a 3oz goldfish?
Answers on a postcard.
Keep letting the rest of us know of your successes, be it with rod or Photoshop.
While the rest of TRSNYRC were quaffing wine and eating muffins last Saturday, he was out braving the West Country snow in search of that 20lb pike of his.
As many of you will know, he returned home having caught two fine specimens - one weighing in at 19lb 8oz and the second at 17lb 3oz. So near and yet so far...
I have, incidentally, tried to post his pike picture but the blog does not seem to like it.
I am wondering why.
Perhaps it is because I am technologically inept (see Head Sloth's resolutions).
Or perhaps the picture has been doctored some way. I gather Photoshop can pretty much do anything nowadays, in the right hands. Perhaps John The Fish has airbrushed his face onto a photograph of someone else? Or perhaps he airbrushed the pike in, after catching a 3oz goldfish?
Answers on a postcard.
Keep letting the rest of us know of your successes, be it with rod or Photoshop.
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
The Indian Mutiny (War of Independence) Mark II
Day 40, Tuesday, February 10, 3 pm: I sense a new Indian Mutiny. Or rather - apologies to my New Delhi friends - a new Indian War of Independence.
I refer, of course, to Kuldip's comment to Monday's post "TRSNYRC First Meeting Declared a Grape Success."
The man is clearly beginning to question his own resolve to halve his own body mass. All we asked for was a progress report and Kuldip immediately hides behind his admittedly sharp sense of humour...
(It's the sort of comment Boot Boy would have posted, if he weren't ignoring us. You remember the one - he with Fragrant Wife who refused to have anything to do with TRSNYRC - see January 3 posting.)
So, Kuldip, you have challenged us. Now it is time for us to challenge you - what have you managed to do towards your resolution so far?
Best wishes,
Head Sloth
PS I am down from 83.4kg to 79.5, in case you wanted to know)
I refer, of course, to Kuldip's comment to Monday's post "TRSNYRC First Meeting Declared a Grape Success."
The man is clearly beginning to question his own resolve to halve his own body mass. All we asked for was a progress report and Kuldip immediately hides behind his admittedly sharp sense of humour...
(It's the sort of comment Boot Boy would have posted, if he weren't ignoring us. You remember the one - he with Fragrant Wife who refused to have anything to do with TRSNYRC - see January 3 posting.)
So, Kuldip, you have challenged us. Now it is time for us to challenge you - what have you managed to do towards your resolution so far?
Best wishes,
Head Sloth
PS I am down from 83.4kg to 79.5, in case you wanted to know)
Thursday, 5 February 2009
Charging the Wrong Guns
Day 36, Thursday February 5, 7.30pm - I've just has a Road to Damascus. Like Captain Nolan did, at Balaclava.
There I was, happily having my 25th green tea and ninth raw carrot of the day while answering emails, and it suddenly came to me.
"Get a life", I'd concluded this morning and in my last post. But I don't need to get a life.
That was my 1999-2006 problem, when I spent most of my time being less than healthy and feeling sorry for myself.
I'm fine now, though. I've got a life. The trouble is, it doesn't work.
What I need - what my family needs, I think - is a life that works.
It was easy before Seven-Year-Old Daughter. Jan and I went to work and that was that.
You don't need to be particularly organised when your life is full of work and bereft of any other content apart from the odd Medoc, late-night film and recuperative holiday.
But now I want all of us to have more time, even at the expense of a fat wallet, those foreign holidays and the latest generation of MP3 players. I want us to concentrate more on where we are now, rather than the commute. I want every day to be a holiday.
So many of us seem to live to work. Gordon Brown can't get enough of the stuff and wants the same puritanism for us.
I'm happy to work, but it's the living part I'm really after.
I want to halt this Charge of the Light Brigade and reconsider. I think I may be hurtling in the wrong direction.
What has this got to do with New Year resolutions? Well, they're the bits that I like about my life, I suppose.
I thought this TRSNYRC lark was a blogging game but perhaps it's more than that.
As from today, I'm on holiday. I'm turning around. I'm not sure I'd know what to do with a battery of Russian guns even if I did manage to capture them.
There I was, happily having my 25th green tea and ninth raw carrot of the day while answering emails, and it suddenly came to me.
"Get a life", I'd concluded this morning and in my last post. But I don't need to get a life.
That was my 1999-2006 problem, when I spent most of my time being less than healthy and feeling sorry for myself.
I'm fine now, though. I've got a life. The trouble is, it doesn't work.
What I need - what my family needs, I think - is a life that works.
It was easy before Seven-Year-Old Daughter. Jan and I went to work and that was that.
You don't need to be particularly organised when your life is full of work and bereft of any other content apart from the odd Medoc, late-night film and recuperative holiday.
But now I want all of us to have more time, even at the expense of a fat wallet, those foreign holidays and the latest generation of MP3 players. I want us to concentrate more on where we are now, rather than the commute. I want every day to be a holiday.
So many of us seem to live to work. Gordon Brown can't get enough of the stuff and wants the same puritanism for us.
I'm happy to work, but it's the living part I'm really after.
I want to halt this Charge of the Light Brigade and reconsider. I think I may be hurtling in the wrong direction.
What has this got to do with New Year resolutions? Well, they're the bits that I like about my life, I suppose.
I thought this TRSNYRC lark was a blogging game but perhaps it's more than that.
As from today, I'm on holiday. I'm turning around. I'm not sure I'd know what to do with a battery of Russian guns even if I did manage to capture them.
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
TRSNYRC gets set to party...
Day 36, Thursday, February 5, 8.30 am - The Really Serious New Year's Resolution Club meets for the first time this weekend. I wonder if anyone will turn up.
It will be odd. I intend to bake a few cakes and open a few bottles of red, then watch everybody else indulge while I sip green tea and nibble on rice cakes. What a fun guy I've become...
I also wonder how many of our members realise that we're already a tenth of the way through the year?
I've been panicking ever since realising.
And I've also been panicking at my apparent inability to stop my resolutions proliferating.
We're meant to be returning to the warm embrace of the sofa by now and jettisoning all those ridiculously good intentions, but I seem to be collecting more and more on a daily basis.
I began with three main resolutions:
a) contact as many old friends/colleagues from my over-populated email inbox (I had no idea that 900 unsorted emails in your inbox was out of the ordinary until one of my neighbours burst out laughing).
b) get back to my 1989 weight (11st 7lbs - more laughing).
c) learn to play the piano to at least grade 3 (whatever that means - I think grade 8 is 'A' level standard, but I may be wrong).
I can report that:
a) I have to date received 174 emails from people I'd lost touch with over the years.
b) I'm down from 13st 3lbs to 12st 8lbs since the start of the year (although I seem to have hit a buffer over the last week) and
c) I am entered for my first piano exam in March (it's for buffoons, apparently, but it's a start).
Since then, though, there have been additions.
d) I won't eat crisps or sweets or drink alcohol for a year (that last one is copied from m brother-in-law and, amazingly, I'm still on track)
e) I will get myself the first six-pack of my life (I don't appear to have any stomach muscles at the moment, nor do I ever remember having any - how do I manage to stay standing up?)
f) I'll read at least two German books this year (no progress there, I'm afraid) and learn rudimentary Spanish (no progress).
g) I'll make more money than I did last year (which won't be very hard - all I need to do is get a paper round)
h) I'll learn how to blog (I reckon I've cracked that one) and try to master more domestic technology (I can't work the video, our cameras and I'm barely literate when it comes to computers. Jan's taught me how to use the Dyson, unfortunately).
i) I'll swim 50 lengths in one go at the local swimming pool (yet to find my swimming trunks)
j) I'll finish unpacking our removal boxes (we moved into our current house three years ago - or was it four?) and I'll put up a few pictures and paint the odd wall or two (no progress).
k) I'll start my own website (no progress).
l) I'll play at least one round on golf to seven over or less (I last picked up a club three months ago but I intend to make a comeback once the snow has melted).
m) I'll improve as a cook (Jan is getting food poisoning a lot less so the signs are good...)
n) I'll eat more fresh fish.
o) I'll do some DIY and clean some of the house at least once a week (I'm considering relegating that to once every two weeks).
p) I'll sort out the study so that we can at least get in the room (no progress at all).
q) I'll stop making so many stupid resolutions and try to get a life...
It will be odd. I intend to bake a few cakes and open a few bottles of red, then watch everybody else indulge while I sip green tea and nibble on rice cakes. What a fun guy I've become...
I also wonder how many of our members realise that we're already a tenth of the way through the year?
I've been panicking ever since realising.
And I've also been panicking at my apparent inability to stop my resolutions proliferating.
We're meant to be returning to the warm embrace of the sofa by now and jettisoning all those ridiculously good intentions, but I seem to be collecting more and more on a daily basis.
I began with three main resolutions:
a) contact as many old friends/colleagues from my over-populated email inbox (I had no idea that 900 unsorted emails in your inbox was out of the ordinary until one of my neighbours burst out laughing).
b) get back to my 1989 weight (11st 7lbs - more laughing).
c) learn to play the piano to at least grade 3 (whatever that means - I think grade 8 is 'A' level standard, but I may be wrong).
I can report that:
a) I have to date received 174 emails from people I'd lost touch with over the years.
b) I'm down from 13st 3lbs to 12st 8lbs since the start of the year (although I seem to have hit a buffer over the last week) and
c) I am entered for my first piano exam in March (it's for buffoons, apparently, but it's a start).
Since then, though, there have been additions.
d) I won't eat crisps or sweets or drink alcohol for a year (that last one is copied from m brother-in-law and, amazingly, I'm still on track)
e) I will get myself the first six-pack of my life (I don't appear to have any stomach muscles at the moment, nor do I ever remember having any - how do I manage to stay standing up?)
f) I'll read at least two German books this year (no progress there, I'm afraid) and learn rudimentary Spanish (no progress).
g) I'll make more money than I did last year (which won't be very hard - all I need to do is get a paper round)
h) I'll learn how to blog (I reckon I've cracked that one) and try to master more domestic technology (I can't work the video, our cameras and I'm barely literate when it comes to computers. Jan's taught me how to use the Dyson, unfortunately).
i) I'll swim 50 lengths in one go at the local swimming pool (yet to find my swimming trunks)
j) I'll finish unpacking our removal boxes (we moved into our current house three years ago - or was it four?) and I'll put up a few pictures and paint the odd wall or two (no progress).
k) I'll start my own website (no progress).
l) I'll play at least one round on golf to seven over or less (I last picked up a club three months ago but I intend to make a comeback once the snow has melted).
m) I'll improve as a cook (Jan is getting food poisoning a lot less so the signs are good...)
n) I'll eat more fresh fish.
o) I'll do some DIY and clean some of the house at least once a week (I'm considering relegating that to once every two weeks).
p) I'll sort out the study so that we can at least get in the room (no progress at all).
q) I'll stop making so many stupid resolutions and try to get a life...
Piano Man's In Need Of A Plastic Head
Day 35, Wednesday, Feburary 4, 12.21pm - My piano teacher has some good news for me, and some bad.
(Oh, yes, sorry, I'd forgotten to mention. Learning the piano is my third NYR, after (i) getting back to my 1989 weight and (ii) emailing as many as my old friends and colleagues as I can find in my email box).
The good news?
I am not, it transpires, tone deaf, as I had always imagined. And I could learn to sing, he says, I really could.
"Not that I would necessarily pay to listen," adds Neil Piano Teacher after forcing me to hum 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'.
Apparently I have never recovered from being humiliated by my prep school music teacher, who used to make each pupil stand up in front of the class and sing. As a result, my vocal chords have been tied in the tightest of knots ever since. Appropriately, that acutely short-tempered teacher was called O'Kill and still stalks my nightmares to this day.
The bad news? Well, after four lessons and a fair few hours of practice, I currently perform - and I use a direct quote - like a "buffoon". I'm willing enough, apparently, but my fingers do not appear to be capable of obeying the simplest of commands, my timing is erratic and I have the disconcerting habit of humming the wrong tunes while clapping out a piece of music.
"I'm not sure I could do that if I tried," says Neil Piano Teacher, secretly impressed and not-so-secretly exasperated.
Apart from that, everything is fine.
To my utter surprise, I am rather enjoying this introduction to crotchets and quavers, even if much of what NPT says seems to be in medieval Latvian (what the heck are tonics and mediants and sub-dominants? - answers on a postcard. I just nod whenever Neil strays into Latvian, press down the nearest available key and smile simply at him while hoping the question will go away.)
Emma, meanwhile, who is also having lessons, remembers everything. She just plays. She just does. I think, she does. I ponder and she presses keys. Apparently, it's something to do with mental plasticity. She's malleable and flexible and open and I'm hard-wired and ancient and as pliable as ironing boards.
My measurable goal, incidentally, is to get to grade three within the year. I was told by one of my School Mum Chums that I'd struggle to get beyond grade two, so I'm determined to show her.
One current form, I'll do well to find middle C by December 31.
(Oh, yes, sorry, I'd forgotten to mention. Learning the piano is my third NYR, after (i) getting back to my 1989 weight and (ii) emailing as many as my old friends and colleagues as I can find in my email box).
The good news?
I am not, it transpires, tone deaf, as I had always imagined. And I could learn to sing, he says, I really could.
"Not that I would necessarily pay to listen," adds Neil Piano Teacher after forcing me to hum 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'.
Apparently I have never recovered from being humiliated by my prep school music teacher, who used to make each pupil stand up in front of the class and sing. As a result, my vocal chords have been tied in the tightest of knots ever since. Appropriately, that acutely short-tempered teacher was called O'Kill and still stalks my nightmares to this day.
The bad news? Well, after four lessons and a fair few hours of practice, I currently perform - and I use a direct quote - like a "buffoon". I'm willing enough, apparently, but my fingers do not appear to be capable of obeying the simplest of commands, my timing is erratic and I have the disconcerting habit of humming the wrong tunes while clapping out a piece of music.
"I'm not sure I could do that if I tried," says Neil Piano Teacher, secretly impressed and not-so-secretly exasperated.
Apart from that, everything is fine.
To my utter surprise, I am rather enjoying this introduction to crotchets and quavers, even if much of what NPT says seems to be in medieval Latvian (what the heck are tonics and mediants and sub-dominants? - answers on a postcard. I just nod whenever Neil strays into Latvian, press down the nearest available key and smile simply at him while hoping the question will go away.)
Emma, meanwhile, who is also having lessons, remembers everything. She just plays. She just does. I think, she does. I ponder and she presses keys. Apparently, it's something to do with mental plasticity. She's malleable and flexible and open and I'm hard-wired and ancient and as pliable as ironing boards.
My measurable goal, incidentally, is to get to grade three within the year. I was told by one of my School Mum Chums that I'd struggle to get beyond grade two, so I'm determined to show her.
One current form, I'll do well to find middle C by December 31.
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Where's Aikido Phil when you need him?
Day 35, February 4, 0.25 am - I found myself wishing I were Aikido Phil the other day. Or, at the very least, that I'd had him by my side.
Aikido Phil, for the uninitiated, is just that - Phil who teaches Aikido in Brighton. He's fit and fearless. His New Year resolution is to get into boxing as well.
I'm Head Sloth, unfit and as brave as a snake with a yellow underside.
So there I was, in the Tube late at night, when wild-eyed Man A for no apparent reason takes a sudden dislike to bespectacled, studious-looking Man B and begins hitting him.
This, of course, is where Phil would have moved in, quietly and calmly defusing things with i) a few quiet words of warning or, failing that ii) a few quickt Aikido blows to the head which would have rendered Man A unconcious.
But Phil is not there, just me and my knocking knees. Man A punches Man B again and I ponder, along the lines of:
Reasons to take action - Man B looks like he could do with a little help/it's the right thing to do/nobdy else seems to be reacting/how would I feel if I'd had the misfortune to be bespectacled or remotely studious-looing?
Reasons not to take action - Man A might have a knife and is, incidentally, young and fitter than I ever was/I've damaged my ankle following an argument with a factory gate and would not be much help to Man B even if I wanted to/I'm a committed coward.
And while I prevaricate an elderly gent who looks a more wrinkled and significantly less fit than me (which is saying something) charges into the fray, kicks Man A, brands him a good-for-nothing bully and chases him off.
There is not a knife to be seen and I go all the way home with my tail between my legs.
And I think: "I wish one of my resolutions had involved Aikido or boxing or bravery."
But it didn't. My first resolution involves losing weight and my second, even more uselessly, involves learning the keyboard.
If I'd had my keyboard with me, I suppose I might have used it to hit Man A over the head.
Or, if my lack of courage had not even permitted that, I could at least have tried giving him a headache with an erratic, error-strewn rendition of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."
Aikido Phil, for the uninitiated, is just that - Phil who teaches Aikido in Brighton. He's fit and fearless. His New Year resolution is to get into boxing as well.
I'm Head Sloth, unfit and as brave as a snake with a yellow underside.
So there I was, in the Tube late at night, when wild-eyed Man A for no apparent reason takes a sudden dislike to bespectacled, studious-looking Man B and begins hitting him.
This, of course, is where Phil would have moved in, quietly and calmly defusing things with i) a few quiet words of warning or, failing that ii) a few quickt Aikido blows to the head which would have rendered Man A unconcious.
But Phil is not there, just me and my knocking knees. Man A punches Man B again and I ponder, along the lines of:
Reasons to take action - Man B looks like he could do with a little help/it's the right thing to do/nobdy else seems to be reacting/how would I feel if I'd had the misfortune to be bespectacled or remotely studious-looing?
Reasons not to take action - Man A might have a knife and is, incidentally, young and fitter than I ever was/I've damaged my ankle following an argument with a factory gate and would not be much help to Man B even if I wanted to/I'm a committed coward.
And while I prevaricate an elderly gent who looks a more wrinkled and significantly less fit than me (which is saying something) charges into the fray, kicks Man A, brands him a good-for-nothing bully and chases him off.
There is not a knife to be seen and I go all the way home with my tail between my legs.
And I think: "I wish one of my resolutions had involved Aikido or boxing or bravery."
But it didn't. My first resolution involves losing weight and my second, even more uselessly, involves learning the keyboard.
If I'd had my keyboard with me, I suppose I might have used it to hit Man A over the head.
Or, if my lack of courage had not even permitted that, I could at least have tried giving him a headache with an erratic, error-strewn rendition of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."
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