volcanic's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- how my arse got sore Life, from where I'm looking at it, seems pretty good right now... It's two weeks since I got back from Menorca, and even longer since I took afew minutes to update here. It's not even that I haven't had the time, because I have, but the motivation's been sadly lacking. Whatever. I had an amazing holiday: lots of sun, swimming, cave-hunting adventures and good food. Fatboy had a marvellous time too, and it all passed far tooquickly. Still, I've got a nice tan and lots of happy memories, plus two months' worth of very cheap tobacco and a nice bottle of brandy to remind me of it all. I bought myself a bicycle yesterday. This bizarre purchase came about as a result of me weighing myself last week and being pretty horrified by the figures on the handy little ticket that the scales in Boots print out for you. Those numbers were about 26 lbs more than they should have been, even though I'd typed in "Large" for my body type (because I knew I'd get the most sympathetic reading!) Thus I'm on a very sensible healthy eating plan and I've made the decision to get more exercise. We've got a fully fitted gym on the ward at work, which is free to use, but to be honest, 40 minutes pounding the stairclimber and looking at institutional grey-painted walls leaves me cold, even with the funkiest music blasting out of the CD player. I can't see the point of just using up energy meaninglessly (well, I can- obviously it gets you fitter if you keep at it) - but I'd rather be doing something with the energy. So the bicycle will be transporting me to work from now on. It should take me about half an hour, which is fine. My route'll take me along the river and through some nice residential areas, and there's only one really nasty hill, which will be blissful to whizz down on the way home. I think the saddle may have to be replaced though- the current one has left my buttocks (which I'd assumed were more than adequately padded) in a very tender and sorry state. I need springs and squishiness beneath my derriere, because right now I'm sitting clenching in a bid to relieve the pain a little. Still, Fatboy and I went out for a good bike ride today- it took us about 2 1/2 hours, and I felt really virtuous and invigorated afterwards. We stopped and had a picnic lunch, and saw lots of good things, like a moorhen and her chicks swimming across a weed-encrusted canal, looking like they were gliding across grass. Fatboy didn't believe that there was water underneath it until I chucked a log in and it made the requisite "splosh". Later on today, we went up to my mum's for a Jubilee tea party. I blew up loads of red, white and blue balloons, and didn't feel like I needed an asthma inhaler afterwards, which suggests that my fitness must be improving. We ate lots of nice little goodies and, despite my general anti-monarchy stance, I humoured my mum by wearing a plastic Union Jack bowler hat at a rakish angle all afternoon. If she thinks I was being patriotic, she's wrong. In my head, I was in "A Clockwork Orange" and enjoying the irony of it all. Oh, and I went out last night, with a chap from work. It was strictly as mates, rather than as dates, and we had a splendid time. Admittedly, I did get rather drunk on a relatively small quantity of alcohol, but I don't think I embarrassed myself too much. Well, actually I probably did, but I'm not bothered. I think it was about time that I let myself get uninhibited and let my hair down a little. I've been a bit too buttoned up for too long. And I guess the biggest news of all is that I got accepted for Uni. They want me! Now all I have to do is sort out money and accommodation and all that gubbins, and I should be off to the seaside for three years in September. Sounds jolly, doesn't it? So yes, life's good. I'm trying, in a loose and abstracted kind of way, to discern what exactly is making it feel so right, because it does seem to have felt very, very wrong for a lot of the past few years. I'm intrigued, and feel that I should try and learn whatever lessons there are to be learnt from it all. I feel calm, healthy, optimistic and quite contented, and that's priceless... 9:32 p.m. - 02.06.02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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