163 days to go

You can go too far of course. I spent much of yesterday in the big leather armchair snorting chocolate milk out of my nose laughing at The Thick Of It. Today I feel that, while that may be excellent preparation for kicking the Labour Party back into shape after it gets vivisected next week, it’s not going to flex the hamstrings.

So I leapt out of bed at 6am to go to the gym, all the better to be back in time to work before going on ‘a walk’ with my best friend, The Brain*. She duly took me out to Seven Sisters, where we tested both our map reading and hill walking skills, in a prime example of English countryside done up festive with Vote Conservative posters.

The Brain’s motivation for taking me up hill and down dale was, I’m sure, majority-weighted in favour of supporting my training. She certainly doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life hearing me moan about the fake leg I have to wear because I had to saw mine off halfway up a mountain. However, by her own admission, she was itching to see me in performance outerwear. So maybe 80:20 generous trainer to laugher/pointer. OK, 60:40.

Having admired the spectacular setting (complete with dead rabbit surrounded by exchange students looking to supplement their all rock/doughnut diets) I got back to Brighton in time to scurry off to pilates. By the time I had reached the Hove border marker that is Farrow & Ball (don’t let the council tell you the Hove marker is the Peace statue. It’s Farrow & Ball) my body had started to seize up.

For those who favour the Terminator series of films, and who doesn’t, it was very similar to the scene in which the, I believe, T-1000, is caught in a pool of molten metal, but continues to struggle forwards, limbs fusing and snapping, until it is merely metal crumbs leading to a sinister flexing finger.

Happily pilates was able to make me more liquid metal, less like the casts of those poor chaps from Vesuvius.



*Apart from Wendy, who is culpable in this whole adventure**, everyone who comes into contact with us will remain nameless, thus protecting the innocent. What constitutes ‘innocent’ will of course remain open to interpretation

**/debacle, delete as applicable


What we have learned:
The Brain also bought me a trekker’s guide to Kilimanjaro. A generous act, for which I give thanks, but I’m not sure the massive photo of a plaque commemorating a climber who died of altitude sickness was necessary
If you build your house on a cliff, the government may not act as insurer
Check out the shade of performance trouser. Wherever that is effective camouflage must be the most boring place on earth.


Boot update:
I kept my coveting of The Brain’s broken-in boots to myself, for fear of boot reprisals