Thursday 9 May 2013

Bits and Pieces


I’ve been feeling a bit tired lately and I think that I’m so unfit that I really have to do something about it. By next summer, I’m going to be so fit that I’ll be running, and winning, marathons. Well, that’s the plan anyway. At the moment, if a genie gave me one wish, it would be to look like one of those women on the cover of Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar. As I get older, it’s getting harder to get fit. When I was younger, nothing could slow me down. Now it’s so damn hard. One day I’m going to be lying on my couch eating Pringles chips and watching ‘The Biggest Loser’ and the next I’ll be getting lifted out of my house by a crane live on Jerry Springer. 

The key, of course, is exercise. Sadly, no matter how many fit people I’ve licked, I’ve never caught the exercise bug. They say the best trick is to incorporate it into your regular routine. So to test out this theory, I’ve bought one of those extra jumbo Toblerone chocolates, and have been doing a couple of arm curls each night before I have a piece. I have to admit, it seems to be working. Each night the bar gets easier to lift!!


I wish I was a gym junkie, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t get hooked. If I wanted to get my heart rate up, I’d just walk into traffic without looking both ways. And if I really wanted to sweat, I’d just fly to Bali with a ton of marijuana stuck to my body! Oh well, at least I don’t mind jogging. After all, it’s the only way I can hear heavy breathing without having to pay $4.95 per minute.

Why is it when you get a cold, it’s never just a cold. I’ve been sick for over a week now and I’m convinced that I have bird flu. It’s amazing how the common cold has the ability to turn a grown up into a complete baby. I can’t believe that in this day and age we still have no cure for the common cold. I think we have our priorities all wrong. Surely our brainy boffins should spend a little less time trying to fit a camera, MP3 player and a microwave oven into our mobile phones and a little more time into trying to cure our cold. Of course, the fact that there is no cure for the cold doesn’t stop all your friends suddenly thinking they have medical degrees. "You’ve got to eat more garlic". Oh, you bloody think so. I’ve eaten garlic tablets, garlic bread, garlic biscuits, but it hasn’t done anything to fix the cold, although I’m completely immune to vampires. And also "take some Echinacea"! What? What the hell is that? It sounds like somewhere I’d go for holidays or something Bob Geldof would name one of his kids.

To make things worse, I also have a bad back thanks to a slight accident at work.  What have I been doing to treat my buggered back? Well, as those who have experienced the joy of back pain will agree, it gets to the point where you are so desperate, you’ll try anything to get some relief. Over the past few weeks I’ve had approximately 20 different types of massage and none of them has a happy ending.

I’ve had physio, chiro, osteo, shiatsu, sports massage and even thought of accupunture. To be honest, if there had been a witch-doctor who was willing to slaughter a goat at midnight to help my pain, I probably would have signed up for that too.



Ok, changing the subject completely, it is sometimes said, and said quite insistently, that football is actually better than sex. At first glance, this seems a strange and highly debatable statement. The two activities are so utterly different. One involves sensuality, passion, emotion, commitment, selflessness, the speechless admiration of sheer heart-stopping beauty, rushes of breathtaking, ecstatic excitement, followed by shattering toe-curling, orgasmic pleasure.
The other is sex. Certain women who are not football fans – I am reliably informed that there are one or two such creatures left in the world – sometimes fail to understand the subtleties of this connection. They simply do not relate emotionally to the blissful anticipation of the game, the sacred ritual of preparation, the joyful build-up to the main event, the veritable foreplay that is the brisk booing and tribal barracking of the opposing team and it’s supporters, the plateau phase of the contest itself, as it thrusts first this way, then that, the feverish mounting excitement building up to ….. YES, HE SCORES!!

I need to get out more!

I opened up my e-mail this morning and I’m sure that e-mail is used for the dodgiest things these days. Would you believe on Christmas day, I received an e-mail inviting me to join a cult? No, I’m not talking about the Barmy Army, Tupperware or anything like that, but a genuine Doomsday, End-of-the-World, Apocalypse, Get-Your-Gear-Off, Give-Us-All-Your-Money, Oh-Shit-We’re-All-Going-To-Die cult.

Remember the good old days when most cults feared technology, and even refused to use ATMs because they believed 666was the PIN of the Devil; when ‘Apple’ was Eve’s snack in the Garden of Eden; Y2K was the latest perfume from Chanel? Anyway, after reading this bewildering e-mail, I really wasn’t inspired to sign up. First of all they didn’t mention group sex; that always seems to be a pretty good selling point, so someone slipped up there. Also as a doomsday cult, at some point they’d have to predict the end of the world, if only to justify the name. Well, they did, but I figure if you are going to predict the destruction of humanity, then at least make it a few years in the future, because if your predicted date comes and the world doesn’t end, well it’ll be pretty hard to regain your credibility. Anyway, they predict the world to end sometime this year.  Be prepared.

I’m having a really frustrating day today. No matter what I try, I just can’t turn my laptop computer on. And by this I don’t mean I’ve spent the day dressed in sexy lingerie and reading terms like "hard drive" and "ram" from the manual in a husky voice. No, I mean my computer has just stopped working completely and I don’t know why. Could it be some computer public holiday that I don’t know about? Is it the Bill Gates Birthday long weekend?

Forget "Computer Says No" – at this stage, I’d settle for my computer saying anything at all. It’s as if my laptop is finally sick of all the websites I made it look up, and has decided to give me the silent treatment. Where’s that freaking smug Microsoft paperclip now when I really need him? (I tried asking a regular paperclip for help but, for some reason, people started staring at me weirdly and removing all the sharp things from my desk.)

Anyway, not only am I an idiot, but when something does go wrong, I go to pieces. I’m always afraid I’ll press control-alt-delete and somehow erase the entire internet. OK, so what I’m trying to do is carefully push the ‘on’ button  – I hope I’m not getting too technical for you here – I hope you’re not thinking "Hey slow down there, egghead" – and then if that doesn’t work, I push the "on" button again. But wait, there’s more ... this time I push it harder – you know, in case the computer didn’t hear me properly the first time. Nah, still nothing.

I guess I’d better go find something to do.

 



1 comment:

  1. That is the best-written,funniest, cutest and most entertaining blog post I have ever read!

    I'm really sorry To hear you're feeling so unfit (well I'm not really, do some exercise, you lazy sod). However, I am truly sorry to hear you're ill and have a bad back to go with it. I hope you get better very soon, Katelyn. I'm jumping up and down here, frantically waving my magic wand, uttering ancient remedies.

    Take care of yourself, lovely friend :-)

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