Gym Phobic

I’ve always resisted the urge to join a gym.  When we were in the US I got in the habit of going a couple of times a week simply because it was there in the apartment building. I’ve never  felt the need to go out of my way to drive to a gym. Why not just go for a walk?

Anyway, the weather had been bad, my power walks along the river bank had been curtailed due to rising tides and copious amounts of mud, I hadn’t been working out in the garden because of rain, and someone mentioned a special offer.  Before I knew it I’d gone for an inquisitive nose around a local leisure club and the next minute I’d signed on the dotted line.

I have tried to be good. I set myself a realistic target – twice a week.  Mark it on your calendar, the gym assistant said.

Quite naturally the weather has now improved. It’s positively balmy.  I’ve been to the garden centre. I’ve lugged bags of compost from the car to the house; I’ve spent whole afternoons out of doors filling pots and digging holes. I've cut the grass. Yesterday a friend suggested we go for a four mile hike – I even got sunburnt.

This morning there it was on the calendar. Gym.  Every muscle in my body ached. The last thing I wanted to do was go to the gym.

I noticed as I sat having my breakfast that the cat had left paw marks on the living room window.  I cleaned the window. Then I realised all the other windows in the house needed cleaning too. I ran upstairs to collect the dirty laundry to put in the washing machine. Then I ran back up two flights of stairs  to the teenager’s room to collect her dirty laundry, and empty her bins. Then I swept the kitchen floor.  

By eight thirty in the morning I felt like I’d already had a pretty good work out and the grocery shopping was still on my list of things to do. 

So what's the answer? I've paid for the gym so I'm going to have to use it. I'll just have to quit doing the chores.

A Weekend in Bath

I’ve just spend a great weekend catching up with some old friends and enjoying an afternoon at the thermae spa in Bath.

Bath is a great city to visit with or without the relatively new addition of the modern Thermae Spa,  and of course people have been coming to Bath to ‘take the waters’ since Roman times.

It’s a relatively compact, slightly hilly city, easy to walk round, and of course a complete tourist trap.  Even my friends in the US had heard of Bath. The city centre is full of  bustling speciality shops and boutiques as well as the usual high street department stores, a multitude of cafes, tea rooms, bars and restaurants.  It is one of those quintessentially British places, eclectic, bohemian and rather posh.  

I was meeting up with old friends from the Tech college I had attended over 30 years ago, two of whom I hadn’t seen for 20 odd years. We had a lot of catching up to do.

The Thermae Spa was a real treat.  Two hours sat in bubbling hot water in a roof top pool overlooking Bath’s glorious Georgian  rooftops and the surrounding countryside. So what if it was raining, we were wet anyway.

There are two large spa pools and four differently aromatic steam rooms available on a two hour ‘open’ ticket at the  Spa.  As all we wanted to do was sit and talk, it was great.  It was only the fact that we were turning (more) wrinkly that made us want to get out.

When I first met these friends, I was a teenager, just like the one I have at home now. Partying, drinking, and desperately trying to squeeze college work into a busy social life.  We all got married within a few years of each other and all have children approximately the same age. Obviously there have been some major life changes and everyone has had their ups and downs, but it was a great reunion, reminiscing about college days and discovering what we’d all been up to in the last thirty  years.  

In my head I’m nowhere near as old as my birth certificate insists, and by the end of the weekend  it really did feel like we had only walked out of that college refectory twenty minutes or so ago.  The wonders of modern technology make it so much easier to keep in touch - the odd like or comment on facebook really does a go a long way to preserve or re-new a friendship.

Naturally after a night of heavy drinking, and a weekend climbing up and down three flights of stairs to our attic room in a B&B, the soothing effects of the Thermae Spa had totally worn off. My body was definitely telling me I was nearer that birth certificate age than I would ever care to admit, but if I have to grow old, at least I'm going to do it disgracefully in a very posh place.

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Week What-ever

It’s all back to normal here after the excitement of Saudi. The calendar is looking pretty blank and to be honest I’ve no idea whether this is week, 14 15 or 27.  I need to get out more.

My one night a week at the local pub quiz has now been curtailed due to the teenager’s new job. Her evening shift finishes during the second round.  As I elected to become a full-time housewife, or “stay at home mom” as it is referred to in the US, I can hardly reneged on my motherly duties.  I chose to be a stay at home mom so now I have to stay at home so I can pick her up. I have no-one but myself to blame.

Perhaps the time has finally come to return to work myself - meet some new people and spice up my social life. I didn't want to look for work when we first returned to the UK  because (a)  I wanted to have time to dedicate myself to writing a book, and (b) I wanted to be at home when my husband was - darling if I was at work all day you'd never see me on your two weeks leave.

As for my book,  that potential bestseller chronicalling amusing anecdotes from our time in America – progress is slow. Part of the preparation for this book involved enrolling on my creative writing course –  from which I have subsequently learned that writing something creative, amusing and marketable is not such an easy combination as it sounds. I am now having serious doubts about my ability to write anything, let alone the lightweight chick-lit I have fantasies about or the standard formula short story my creative writing teacher insists is the easiest way to commercial success. 

It's a crisis of self-doubt and now I'm  older and a lot wiser about all things literary I realise I should have made the most of my LA Bubble blog when I had the chance – promoted it simultaneously on several websites instead of just the one, sold advertising space, commented on other people’s blogs simply to get my own noticed and snapped up by some major publishing house with the minimum effort. I’ve missed the boat. Writing 500 words at a time on the idiosyncracies of American life came easy – a saleable book I’m told has to have 80,000 words. There’s a huge difference.

However, I owe it to myself to fulfil my potential  and write that bloody book even if it kills me, because if I don’t do it now, I never will.  I do have lots of time – when the teenager cries out ‘don’t you dare tidy my room!’ I should see it not as a hindrance to, but as a reprieve from, my housewifely duties. Back to the study and soldier on!