The Finishing Line

It seems hard to believe that nearly two weeks have elapsed and I’ve only just regained my breath, and indeed my wits, to put digit to keyboard.

After several months of complaining that it’s all too difficult and my feet hurt the moment of truth had finally arrived. The day of the Great Eastern Fun Run. In front of me was 4 kilometres (2.5 miles in old money) of chafing and sweat.

So there I was a week last Sunday, up at an unfortunate time of the morning for the so-called day of rest, although the Japanese Grand Prix was on so I had some entertainment to take my mind off things, pondering what I was going to eat. In the day or so leading up to the race this had become a pressing issue for me. Should I eat porridge or poached eggs on wholegrain toast? How, for that matter, do I poach an egg? I normally fry or boil them. In the end, the present Mrs Hayward suggested I just eat what I normally would so I decided upon a couple of slices of toast (plus some peanut butter I found in the cupboard) and a banana. To be fair I didn’t need the banana. 

Fuelled on this cocktail of peanuts and phallic shaped fruit I left the house with Mrs Hayward and my father-in-law in tow for support. Mother-in-law was indisposed with a stinking cold so she was let off. 

I have to say that taking my father-in-law was a risk. The man is just about to turn 65 but is probably fitter than I am by quite some margin. He’s always on the go and when Mrs Hayward did the Race for Life a few years ago he found her on the course and then ran ahead of her at some speed so he could see her cross the finish line. She was most embarrassed that her father who is some 30 years her senior was showing her up with his surprising fleet of foot.

I have to say that, somewhat surprisingly, it didn’t feel weird being stood in Cathedral Square surrounded by people in shorts and fancy dress, after all I go to the Peterborough Beer Festival every year and there’s some rather bold fashion statements made there, although there are many pints of fine real ale on hand to numb the senses. 

It wasn’t even that weird when former Olympic athlete Sally Gunnell wandered past me. When it properly got weird was the moment I found myself about two rows from the front at the start line. Well, I got bored with the whole warm up thing the DJs from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire (bless their cotton socks) were trying to get us to do in Cathedral Square and they were generating far too much whooping and excitement when I was more concerned that the banana I’d recently ate was going to make a dramatic reappearance during the race.

Funnily enough my friend who was attending in her St John Ambulance role later told me that the majority of cases heading her way were not sprained ankles or broken legs but people incessantly vomiting. Oh and there were a couple of runners who should have stopped and done a ‘Paula Radcliffe’ by the side of the road but instead kept going, which is just dirty.

I stood on the road, watching the time tick down and it was all a bit of a blur from there. There were kids jostling around me, a blue dragon thing was on the podium to my right, followed by a woman dressed as a fairy (something to do with a local charity) and then, bang! The start gun went and we were off. 

I had decided before I got there that I was not going to be out of the traps like a Greyhound or else it would be all over for me before I even got to 100 metres. This was the case for a lot of the excitable kids around me who didn’t get very far at all, including the ginger chubby one that had barged past me. Maybe that was just my reflection; it was hard to tell in the mêlée.

My main objective from thereon was just to keep going. I found it useful to identify a fellow athlete in front of me who was going a pace I liked and stick with them, until they either stopped or sped off into the distance. In the end I followed a guy in an NSPCC top who was doing a reasonable pace and was with him until near the end.

My concern had been that I would be overtaken by someone dressed in some sort of animal costume and these concerns were well founded. At the 2 kilometre mark I was overtaken by two guys dressed as parrots. To be fair to them they must have been fit as they were not showing any signs of being hampered by wearing a heavy felt costume. They were part of a group who were running as part of a pirate theme. I met the Head Pirate himself just before the end and he told me he regretted that he’d worn a hat to run in. I was impressed that a) he was running at all and b) that either of us could speak at this point.

Fuelled by a heady mix of adrenaline and peanut butter I kept going and going and going until suddenly I could hear the sound of the tannoy at the finish line. This was the first time my legs started to tell me that they thought we’d had enough, but my brain fired off a terse memo that read ‘Keep going you fools’.

Before I knew it the end was in sight as well as sound and even though by that point I’d just run 3.80 kilometres the last few metres seemed the longest. It didn’t help that the run up to the finishing line takes you off the firm concrete path and on to the undulating terrain of the Embankment but I managed to avoid any embarrassing trips or falls, and as I crossed the line I heard the tannoy announcing the safe return of “…number 57, Terry Hayward…” and I knew it was all over.

I quickly got ushered through a marquee, stripped of the timing chip attached by Velcro to my ankle and handed a cloth bag (which I initially thought was an apron, but having never done anything like this before I didn’t express surprise), some water which was well received, a medal, and a banana. My stomach sent a memo this time to say that quite frankly it had seen enough of bananas for one day so I put it out of sight in the bag.

I was met outside the finishing zone by Mrs Hayward and my father-in-law who hadn’t got down to the finish in time to see me triumphantly cross the finish line and so we consulted our watches. It wasn’t even half ten so I knew that I must have got round relatively quickly for me. 

As it turned out I ran it in 24 minutes and 40 seconds. This will serve me in good stead the next time I go out for a drink with my good friend Ned and he suggests we go to another pub some 2.5 miles away with half an hour to go before closing because it has a rare ale on that we have to try. Trust me, this is not an unlikely scenario.

And so, before I knew it, it was all over and I was off, medal around my neck, heading back to the car. My moment of glory was over. 

When I returned home I had a bath. This is not normal for me. I don’t really like having a bath; I’m more of a shower man. I feel uncomfortable in a bath and usually just sit bolt upright looking quite uncomfortable. However it felt like the right thing to do and so I found myself slipping into the bubbles (come on, I had to have bubbles, do they still sell Mr Matey?) and relaxed.

So, that is one of my New Years Resolutions done. Ticked off. Completed. Oh, and thanks to some very generous people (you know who you are) I raised £423.00 for The Stroke Association. Me and my tired legs say thank you.

It has inspired me to do something else next year. I keep being asked if I’m going to do a half marathon, or a full marathon, or even the Olympics, but I’m wondering whether it’s time to hang up my trainers and just run for fun.

After all, there’s so much else I could do. I’ve never abseiled, or bungee jumped, or walked over hot coals, or climbed a mountain, or jumped out of a plane, or chased some cheese down a hill…..

The mid-life crisis continues.

Running Out of Steam

It’s only 41 short days now until I get to show off my lack of physical prowess to the good people of Peterborough when I take to the streets for the Great Eastern (Fun) Run. I’ve added the hyperlink so that you can look at the website should you choose and to see the alarming countdown timer.

OK, so it’s all fine, but I have my concerns. I am only traversing a short distance, especially given that the full run is 13.1 miles. I am only doing about 2.5. What surprises me is that, whilst 2.5 miles is much better than the 20 metres I could only manage back in February before running out of steam, I still feel that I should be able to do more. 

A colleague of mine is doing a half marathon next month and has only recently started training, however she casually remarks how she went out for a run for an hour. An hour? I can do 35 minutes, but not easily. I have a remarkable ability to make running 2.5 miles look incredibly difficult. I certainly couldn’t get to the end of my run and think to myself, you know what, I think I’ll just keep going for another 30 minutes, maybe even an hour. By the time I’m finished all the moisture in my body has been sweated out and my heart is beating out a salsa rhythm.

Tomorrow we go on holiday, to sunny Majorca, with some friends. I have good intentions to keep up my running but given that the temperature over there is reaching highs of 35 degrees Celsius I’m more likely to be hidden from the burning sun under a beach umbrella and ploughing my way through the turgid bore-a-thon that is ‘Atonement’. Seriously, does anything actually happen in that book? Does there need to be so much tedious descriptions of all the minutiae? Thomas Hardy was bad for that but at least he stuck in a few more twists and turns along the way in between describing the rolling Wessex countryside.

My other issue is more delicate and personal, but one that came close to thwarting my new found running activities. 

I took a trip to a sports shop on Sunday afternoon. It’s not my natural habitat I grant you, as I fall into neither category of an incredibly fit person who is looking for clothes in x-small, and neither do I fall in to the category of a dangerously overweight individual who wears cheap sportswear because they can’t squeeze their corpulent body into normal clothes, however without my recent bursts of exercise I was fast heading in that direction. I think the turning point was when I found myself idly browsing the Jacamo website and suddenly realising that I really had to change my ways.

So I’d gone searching for a new pair of running shorts and settled on a particularly comfy pair that were a little shorter in the leg than the ones I have at the moment. 

Just before you ask they were not lycra shorts. No-one needs to see that. 

Their shortness in the leg seemed to surprise and startle the present Mrs Hayward when she saw me modelling them. She explained that it looked like I was going out running in a pair of boxer shorts. Frankly I’ve seen far more bizarre sights on the streets of Bourne so this did not concern me overly.

I should have listened to her though as my problem did, in the end, come from the shortness of said shorts as the first time I wore them I encountered some unfortunate chafing. 

So there I was on Monday evening looking up ‘chafing thighs’ on Google which feels somehow dirty and wrong but I was heartened to find that this was not an uncommon problem amongst us athletes and various solutions were offered on the Runners World forum, including the liberal application of Vaseline. 

My solution to this burning issue for now is to go back to my original longer shorts and wait until my thighs become less flabby. That seems sensible in the circumstances. Greasing myself up before a run is just not an option, especially as I’m concerned as to what happens to the Vaseline once I start sweating. 

The good people of Bourne, whilst used to unusual sights, might still be quite alarmed to see me panting my way down the road whilst white slime trickles down my inner thighs. The slimy leg guy is a moniker that I really don’t want to get in a small town.

Despite these issues I shall persevere. As the present Mrs Hayward wisely said to me, “If it was easy everyone would be doing it”. This is true, but I just wish the others that are doing it could make it look a little harder.

What I Did On My Holiday (so far)

It’s difficult to know what to do with a week off when you’re not actually going away. My main aim was to sleep which sounds incredibly pathetic but I needed a few hours of shut eye as last week left me cream crackered, which I finally got on Saturday morning but promptly ruined it the following night. So what have I done with my holiday so far?

Saturday

I started in a vaguely healthy manner by having a yoghurt. I would have had some Weetabix but I have discovered, much to my chagrin, that Weetabix doesn’t agree with me any more. I have no idea when or why this development occurred but it’s sudden and I can only assume I have some sort of mild wheat intolerance. I am horrified to be intolerant of anything, but it’s especially disappointing when it’s something you like. If I ever get a peanut allergy I may have to end it all. I love peanuts.

I have to say that I don’t understand where peanut allergies even came from. When I was a kid they were a staple of buffets at children’s parties. When I went to Matthew Cook’s 7^th birthday at his parent’s pub (The Kings Head in Yarmouth) I remember climbing up the impossibly high bar stools just to reach the peanuts on the bar. This was before I heard the statistic about peanuts on bars otherwise I may not have bothered.

Mind you I was only 7 myself, I’d ate much worse by this point, like dirt and cat food. Trust me, Whiskas in the late 70s didn’t contain anything nutritious and it certainly didn’t have vegetables, just ground up chicken meat, a bit like pate. My pet cat at the time, Yogi, was unimpressed with my taste test and swiped little Terry across the face with his paw. I complained to my mother that “Yogi hit me” but she concluded that I probably deserved it.

The rest of Saturday is a bit of a blur. I remember being planted in front of Soccer Saturday on Sky, booing and cheering as the results came in. Then I went for a run, which seemed more difficult than usual for some reason. I came to the conclusion that the benefit of daylight had the disadvantage of making me run faster which in turn caused me to become more puffed out sooner. This may not be the case, it may be my body telling me I’m having a mid-life crisis and to sit down with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit instead.

I got home and showered in preparedness for the evening. We were going out with some friends who come from the home of brewing. An evening out with them is always good but always ends in a sorry drunken mess. As you will know if you’ve read this before, I’m a man with a delicate palate who likes to taste new beers and on occasions, in the right company, fine wines. However it turns out that I can also knock back the Jager Bombs with the best of them, as a sort of chaser.

We ended the evening back at their house playing SingStar. I say evening but it was 2am when we actually left the pub. I have little memory of this part of the evening/morning aside from trying to sing Losing My Religion which, even to my untrained ear, sounded particularly dreadful. Worse still I would imagine for our friend’s neighbours who would have been awoken by my caterwauling in the middle of the night.

We left theirs (much to my disgust as I felt that I should just be left alone on their sofa to slip into a coma) and walked home. The birds for some reason decided to mock me by chirruping in the trees whilst I berated them staring the dawn chorus an hour early.

Sunday

Didn’t happen. Well, it did, in spurts. I got up at 12.30pm. I had a coffee. My stomach did a 360 degree rotation so I decided I’d arisen too early, made some vow to drink less in future and went back to bed. I got up again at 2pm, had a shower, and even managed to get to Tesco, buy a sandwich and some interesting crisps, and get back home in one piece. I ate them and washed them down with lemonade. Half an hour later my stomach made a bad gurgling sound and I realised things were not going well so I went back to bed. At 7pm I made another attempt at getting up. This was more successful and I even made it to Zorba, the local kebab shop, where I demanded they sell me greasy meat based food items and more chips than I could carry. This turned out well. I went back to bed around 11pm and slept like a log.

Alcohol is bad, kids.

Monday

I woke up and felt ten million times better, partly because the hangover had passed and partly as it was Monday and I wasn’t at work. I bimbled downstairs and put the TV on to catch a trailer for that morning’s 'Jeremy Kyle Show'. Someone had slept with someone else they probably shouldn’t have and there was lots of shouting. I turned over and got caught up in the more sedate pace of ‘Heir Hunters’.

Whilst I was embroiled in the whole story of these chaps in suits trying to locate the family of a German man who came to live in the UK and pondering why no-one has tried to reunite me with a lost legacy, the present Mrs Hayward appeared from the shower. I could have stuck with this tale but considered that I could do with being showered before the middle of the afternoon. Besides the shopping was being delivered between 10am and 12 noon so I wanted to look my best. We can’t have standards slipping now, worst still the Tesco delivery guy doesn’t want me to open the door in my dressing gown (that is neither a joke nor a euphemism I promise you).

It seems immensely lazy to order the shopping when Tesco have kindly opened up a store on our doorstep. An eco-friendly store at that, all made of wood, so also quite flammable. If it burns down, don’t blame me, I’m just saying what I see.

The thing is that Mrs Hayward and I don’t do food shopping together. You see, there are usually only limited situations where we consistently have arguments; when I’m driving and when we go food shopping together. Don’t ask me why, these are just the facts. For marital harmony therefore we get the shopping delivered.

Today’s shopping was delivered by a chap wearing a very noticeable sparkly Superman buckle on his belt. It was difficult to take your eyes off it which was unfortunate really as it meant I kept inadvertently looking towards his crotch. It was a good job therefore that I hadn’t opened the door in my dressing gown or I’d end up being black listed or worse still, arrested.

So, once we had our kitchen cupboards full of food we decided to go to The Periwig in Stamford for lunch. Mrs Hayward asked if I wanted a beer and the memories of my hangover came flooding back so I played safe with an orange juice and lemonade, but the food was good. I recommend The Periwig if you’re ever in the area.

Monday got away from me after that, we went home, I pottered about, had tea, watched TV, went to bed.

Tuesday

I got up with purpose on Tuesday morning. 'Heir Hunters' started at 9.15am and I didn’t want to miss that, they might have had an update on yesterday's episode. Mrs Hayward was already up and having an argument with the NatWest on the phone, something to do with their online banking she tells me, but I think she just rings them for an argument, like in that old Monty Python sketch.

I toasted some Hot Cross Buns (well, it’s nearly Easter and they were a bargain) and settled myself down with 'Homes Under the Hammer'. Seriously I can see why the unemployed aren’t desperate to go back to work. No wonder the Government would rather the BBC just showed the test card during the day. These shows are addictive.

To let out some tension Mrs Hayward decided to beat the virtual crap out of a punch bag on the Wii Fit Plus and I decided I needed some air and went for a run, but this time in the woods. I feel that the woods have a reputation for being a bit seedy these days. The car park of Bourne Woods in particular has lots of signs instructing visitors that it shuts at 4pm, to which my suspicious mind thought, 'that’ll be to keep out the doggers', as if they all start queuing up at the entrance just as the sun starts to set.

As it was there were only a few proper dog walkers around and the occasional squirrel as I panted my way around the woods in the hope that I didn’t get lost or meet a troll under the bridge. I decided that I must return as this was a thoroughly pleasant place to come and jog around and wasn’t full of ugly people doing unspeakable things with other ugly people in cheap motors, as the Daily Mail would have you believe.

After that I went home, had lunch, showered and the afternoon kind of got away from me again. I have to save myself though; it’s the next few days where we actually have plans. Tomorrow is the trip to the capital where I shall be whisked away through time and space. Oh, and I’m promised a trip to Cyber Candy so I can purchase rare foreign confectionary. Check out their website, it’s very cool. Who knows, I might even be able to face some beer again. I can’t wait.

I don’t know what I’m going to do about 'Heir Hunters' though. I guess I’ll have to record it.

Love You Long Time

It’s not very often that I get emails via Facebook. Usually when I do it’s from friends passing on a new address or mobile phone number or sometimes an invitation to a party, or even to share the odd bit of gossip. It’s rare, in fact completely unknown, to get an email from someone totally random. Today I did, and I was a little surprised.

I received an email from a Chinese lady living in Ghana who was keen to know whether I was looking for love or whether some “lucky lady” had “won my heart”. Rather than wait for an answer she had obviously decided to crack on and state her case, explaining that I “look like a nice person and a man worth getting to know”. She obviously hasn’t been looking at my Facebook photos in too much depth as she would have seen me in various states of inebriation, often wearing a novelty hat on my head, or worse still, a video of me singing “I’ve got a Brand New Combine Harvester” on karaoke after too many cocktails.

Mind you she may be aware of my newly found sporting prowess. The running is going well. I say running, it’s jogging really, I’m not going to be mistaken for Usain Bolt anytime soon. However I can run/jog all the way from my house right up to the new Tesco (via a housing estate). This will mean nothing to most of you but it was only two weeks ago when I could barely get out of sight of the house before collapsing in a sweaty heap on the pavement. Anyone who has seen ‘Run Fatboy Run’ will know exactly what I’m talking about.

I have to say, the present Mrs Hayward is also running and she’s doing well, even if she keeps complaining that her legs hurt. She’s even started a Zumba class. I don’t really know why, we don’t know anyone who speaks Zumba.

Then there’s the swimming. OK, so I haven’t stepped into the murky waters of eternal doom yet but, a week or so later than I promised, I went to Bourne Leisure Centre to enquire about adult swimming lessons. Pleasingly no-one laughed at me either. I met ‘Manager Lee’ who cheerily told me all about how it worked and when lessons started.

Apparently there are two instructors, one who works with the improvers and the other with those who “are petrified of the water”. He gave me a knowing smile as if to say, ‘but of course you’re not one of them’. I pointed out that I was indeed in that camp, in fact the first lesson will most likely involve prising me away from the edge.

He suggested I might like to go along one Thursday evening for a taster session before enrolling for the new term in May. I agreed that this would be an excellent idea, especially as you have to pay for the full course up front. That’s £88 in one hit. That made me splutter and I haven’t even swallowed a mouthful of pool water yet. I guess it’s so that people who don’t like it after the first lesson keep going. Maybe it’s because they drown after a moment of bravado on week three. Who knows?

‘Manager Lee’ said that it was a good group and they often have little social activities outside of the pool environment. Maybe this is some sort of cult or swingers club, either way I’ll keep you informed. I’m not sure what my new future wife from Shanghai will think about it.

Talking of which, her email became a little forward at one point. She explained that we should get to know each other so I could make up my mind about her “and after that is when we can decide where we want to go with this”. To be fair there is no ‘this’ but she’s obviously not shy in coming forward, especially when she went on to explain that she was looking for “a serious relationship or marriage”.

I decided that I probably shouldn’t respond to the future Mrs Hayward without sharing this communication with the present Mrs Hayward. After all she was the one who “won my heart” first and I didn’t really want her to stumble upon this email by accident, wonder what the hell was going on, and decide to nail important parts of my anatomy to the wall. Seriously, if you'd read the email you’d think that the mystery lady and I were acquaintances of old.

As it was she thought the whole thing was bizarre but amusing. We looked through the photos of Miss Shanghai which evoked the comment “she’s quite pretty” from my good lady wife. I suggested that perhaps we could entertain some sort of bigamist relationship but Mrs Hayward doubted I had the stamina for it, and she’s probably right. Not with all the running and swimming and stuff. As for my shin splints….

So, whatever Miss Shanghai is, either real and weirdly desperate or an elaborate ploy to steal personal details off gullible men who believe that an attractive mysterious woman who posts photos of herself in a bikini are really going to be attracted to them despite not knowing a jot about them, she briefly became a talking point this evening.

Who knows, perhaps she’s genuine and just likes a man who enjoys a drink, sings out of tune and occasionally likes to wear a fez? After all, who wouldn’t?

The Running Man

As of today I still can’t swim. Despite well meaning people telling me that once I get into the water I'll be fine and I’ll just float I have to point out that I have carried out some research and discovered that, on average, 427 people drown in the UK every year and that 95% of all people who drowned whilst swimming were male.

This worrying information comes from the good people at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents who also warn the public against alcohol, bravado, carelessness and recklessness. Funnily enough all four of those were reasons I ended up in The Burghley Arms on Friday night, but that’s another story.

Then there’s non-fatal drownings which I didn’t even know existed but that can lead to memory problems and the loss of basic functioning. Now that reminds me of Saturday morning. I blame the ‘Dr Pepper Bombs’ myself, which strangely don’t contain Dr Pepper but do contain Lager and Disaronno.

So the application form for adult swimming lessons has gone nowhere for now, but I promise I’ll pull my finger out at the weekend and drop it off at the pool. Lessons are due to start in April so I don’t want to miss the bus, unless of course that bus is careering off a bridge and into a ravine full of crocodiles.

Despite this fail on the swimming front, on Sunday I took the first steps towards the non-water related New Years resolution. I put my trainers on and started to run. If you believe the hype, man (and woman) is built to run, we just stop doing it when we get older.

These words of wisdom were firmly at the front of my mind as I headed off down the road and surprisingly I felt good. I built up to a reasonable pace, the wind was flowing through what’s left of my hair and I was jogging along nicely.

Marathon runners will tell you about ‘hitting the wall’ after about 20 miles. I hit the wall approximately 1 minute and 8 seconds into my turn around the block. Seriously, I nearly vomited blood from my ears it was such a shock to the system.

Undeterred I got back on the proverbial horse and carried on walking and before I knew it I jogged a little more and walked a bit and jogged a bit and….well, I’m no Haile Gebrselassie just yet but then who is? Apart from Haile Gebrselassie of course. OK, so I had to Google ‘famous marathon runners’ but maybe one day my name will be on that list. In fact I might go and add my name on to Wikipedia now and see if anyone notices.

What I’m saying is I am on course for October and the little 5k race in Peterborough which at the moment feels like it may as well be a marathon. I went out again yesterday and I don’t feel too bad for it, apart from the fact my legs feel as if they’ve been hit with tiny hammers, probably by leprechauns.

I even have a tricky route that I run. I don’t mean that it’s uphill or anything but it goes past both a pub and a chippy. Mind you I did note on my way past that the pub was selling Woodforde’s Wherry as a guest ale, and some of the regulars were wearing leisure wear so I would have blended in just fine but I resisted and made a mental note to pop back at some point when I wasn’t sweating out all the fluid from my body through my face.

I’m not the only one who has entered the world of athletics, the present Mrs Hayward is also on the run, so to speak. She’s been out twice as well but we don’t go together, we’d just get competitive and try to out-run each other which would only lead to one or both of us collapsing on the side of the road possibly whilst coughing up a lung. We’re going out separately, at our own pace, and that works well for now, mostly as it means that one of us cooks tea whilst the other one is pounding the streets.

So the Haywards are staggering into the world of physical fitness. By the summer I will be slim, toned and energetic. Either that or I will have just had my second stroke. No really, I’m not getting any younger. That would just be weird.

Mind you all this exercise makes a man thirsty, and the pub is only a couple of minutes walk away. In the words of Homer Simpson, “Mmmm……beer”.

Fit as a (large) Fiddle

I used my new Wii Fit Balance board for the first time yesterday. Anyone who has done likewise will have had the same experience as me. To get to the fun and games you seem to have to confess to being an overweight and unhealthy slob and set targets to improve your health. All of these shameful and embarrassing confessions are played out in front of a gurgling and chirruping machine that warns me that I am so unfit that I will probably die very soon, probably whilst I’m on my way to the fridge to check out that slab of Stilton that’s been demanding my attention and offending the nose of the present Mrs Hayward. It has even made me commit to losing some weight in a couple of months and, rather disappointingly, made my little Mii character slightly more portly than I’d designed him.

Don’t get me wrong, the Wii Fit Board is a marvellous little bit of kit and once it’s told me the sad news that I’m so hideously obese that I may have to take down a wall to get out of the house and that I lean to the left a bit (although that could be to the right as I had the board round the wrong way for a time) the games are fun, and this is the point of it. It’s a gaming device rather than a miracle weight losing machine for those of ample girth, despite what Helen Mirren says.

So for a real improvement to my fitness I’ve committed to a couple of New Year resolutions that will either be ‘kill or cure’. One is to do a fun run in Peterborough in October. I don’t like running unless it’s to the bar at last orders so I’m chalking this one up to a mid-life crisis in the same vein as last year’s plan to walk up Mount Snowdon.

Added to that list is learning to swim. Yes, I know, I should be able to do this at my age but I can’t and somewhere along the line I gained a fear of being more than waist deep in water. I particularly don’t like swimming pools because they’re slippery so heaven help the person who tries to teach me to swim.

I also have a secret resolution to watch less reality TV and go to the pub more, but I don’t think my Wii Fitness trainer will approve, so I won’t mention it, not just yet.