At last the secret of the perfect body!

I am fed up of reading how fabulous walking is for you.I have been walking since I was 15 months old and I still have a big bum. It’s nonsense.

No reason to show this other than LOOK HOW FAT THIS CAT IS!

Next on the list for  all over toning and making you look 25,  is swimming. I swam last year on holiday a few times and when I came home was so convinced that I was transforming into a dophin that I cancelled one gym membership ( because they didn’t have a pool) and joined another because they did.  What an excellent idea. What a clever girl I thought. Fool. I haven’t been since September which by my reckoning means my dip today cost me a rather buttock clenching £240. Holy Tamoly.

The money makes me limp, it’s so much and so stupid and so predictable. If I added up the money I had paid to gyms that I haven’t gone to  over the years I could have bought a great big house in a big hot place and as a result would be calmer, more relaxed and thinner anyway.

So by the time I got to the changing room todayI was sick of myself. Add to this  the trauma of having to  bare my winter body to the world and his wife.  Of course when I say ‘the world and his wife’ what I actually mean is 15 drizzling toddlers and their parents all playing with giant inflatables in the shallow end  as I bobbled past hoping against all odds one of the toddlers didn’t rush towards me thinking I was a pink and black inflatable Orca who’d bounced out of the pool in error. It was not a happy experience.

There I go

Once the body was submerged and the  googles were strapped on I looked at  the clock. 1.30 OK surely to God I could make it til 2pm. That’s just 30 minutes gentle ploutering for heavens sake. An 85 year old could manage that. Couldn’t they?

Well yes they probably could but not me. I was wheezing away like a daftie after the first 4 lengths. Well you may think you were  ploughing up and down those lanes like David Wilkies secret sister – wrong! I was flailing with my top half floating and my bottonm half sinking fast.  This was not poetry in motion this was an assault on the pool and all swimmers world wide.

So. How unfit am I?  Answer very.Idid 30 minutes, clambered out, wobbly legged, got changed, pinged the googles up to reveal the elastic had done it’s worst and almost popped myeyeballs out, the mascara I had forgotten to remove was smeared all over my face and the exertion had turned everything else a worrying red. Hell it’s sunny and I’m starving I thought I’m off to the supermkaret to get the bare essentials I’ll just keep my sunglasses on no-one will even notice.

This woman didn't even get her swimming cap off.

10 minutes later in the aisle holding a tin right up to my face trying to read labels with my sunnies on. I hear  ‘Alison is that you in there? What the hell are you doing?’  Spotted, smeared, red, chloriney and hacket I would have said’ no it is not this woman Alison you speak of’ in a strange foreign tongue’ and limped away had it been anyone else but Fiona one of my oldest and dearest pals who had just returned from a skiing holiday.

‘Yes’ I hissed in her ear, ‘it’s me. Come to mine for coffee now I’m off’. and with that I put down the basket of stuff, and made a run for it.

I made the coffee, she took the biscuits and we sat outside and polished off a packet of Chocolate Hobnobs. I’ve looked it up I will have to swim for 5 and a half hours to work that off tomorrow. Bugger that. On the other hand an hour with a great pal laughing like a drain – must burn at least 500 calories so off to get my Fawlty Towers DVD out that should do it. I’ll be a supermodel by Christmas!

AlisonsDiary

Writer & broadcaster.

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