Not thinking…

In the days of formulaic media coverage of virtually everything, many people react emotionally, or automatically to certain questions or circumstances, two recent examples:

It’s the first day of Wimbledon, and the BBC ask the traditional “Can Time Henman win Wimbledon” question. (No, he can’t.) Now this year he’s not seeded, so that should tell you all you need to know, but manfully, the BBC press on:

Interviewer: Do you think not being seeded helps Tim this year as there will be less pressure?
Jeremy Bates: Yes, I do, I think he’ll do really well this year.

He has Federer in round 2.

Second, some drone “NHS Chair of the Rochdale hospital” (or somewhere up north) resigned because she doesn’t like private sector involvement in healthcare. “People shouldn’t make profits out of sickness”

Why the fuck not? Does she object to Siemens who make some of the best MRI scanners making a profit, does she object to virtually every drug company who research and invest in new lifesaving treatments, or the people who supply uniforms to the nurses, or the people who build the hospitals, or the power company who supply electricity? It’s this mindless “no profits” attitude that really stops us from providing the best possible healthcare.

And please, this “argument” that company profits mean less to invest in the product, ergo a worse product have yet to explain why profit making Mercedes, made a car so much better than “non-profit making” Trabant?

Paris...

....is expensive, lovely, crappy, annoying and captivating.

French women don’t seem to me, to be unduly hirsute, but they are slender, rather stylish and damnably attractive. Gyms don’t seem to have made much of an inroad over there, so I guess it must be a dietary thing. French men, similarly, are fairly lean, not overly muscled individuals, with a really crappy dress sense.

English tourists by contrast were fat, loutish, boorish, annoying, shaven-headed and for the most part, bedecked in “England” T-shirts, and without any style. And they were loud ~ not “Yank tourist in Paris loud” but still plenty loud enough. Curiously, the world cup, seems to have made only a minor impact. The lunatic jingoism being experienced in England seems to have past France by altogether. Not a single “car flag” was in evidence, nor a single adult in a football shirt, (apart from on the afore mentioned English).

French culture is singly unsuited to a service industry concept. Some of the waiters and ticket guys were virtually snarling at me, and I wasn’t being hostile or unpleasant. Some guy at the Louvre, (one of the world’s great museums, with a high proportion of English speaking visitors, Brits, Yanks, some Aussies and Canadians plus various others whose second language was English) simply REFUSED to speak English! Now forgive me, but tourists feed you my friend, you can’t get all Gallic on them. This was by no means isolated. My highly dodgy high school French was essential. Outside of one or two of the nicer districts, the accommodation seems to suck.

But I still fell in hopeless love with half a dozen beauties on the Metro.

Government to replace parents in one more field?

There was a story on the BBC news at lunchtime about some government funded “learn to swim” program. It featured some drone northern kid who couldn’t swim “only six weeks ago” and now he could do a length. The piece went on to show the kid’s hapless father praising the government about what a great idea this was (are we in North Korea for godsakes?). The journalist went on to tell us that this program was “so successful” that it was being rolled out across the country and the government was “investing” a gazillion pounds in it.

As a child, my mum taught me to swim at a cost to the government of nil. The kid’s dad could quite easily have done likewise, but no, he chose to allow the government to extend yet another tentacle into our lives. Why anyone would choose to let someone else teach your own children basic skills escapes me. Surely one of the joys of life? But on a more serious note; first it shows how the government is becoming surrogate parent, as actual parents increasingly abandon the role, and second spending tax money on scheme like this is surely why my taxes are so high.

Feeling pretty good

My legs are feeling pretty shot today following the weekends various gym sessions, but I have to say, training has a renewed focus of late. I’m targeting the 250/315/405 numbers for powerlifts. For a competitive guy these are pretty modest, but compared to the average guy in the street, they are stellar.

A 250lb bench maybe the hardest as I seem more suited to dumbbells for some reason. Currently at about 200lbs for a working poundage, so maybe 20lbs more for a max lift. The 315 deadlift should be pretty attainable in time, (indeed if things keep going the way they are only 8 weeks). I never used to deadlift as I was always getting back problems from it. But if you take your trainers off, no problemo. So I should get there quite easily. As for the squat, I’m currently at 315 for many reps and can do 350lbs so 405 should be easy enough. The squat is one of those things that’s easy for me and I really don’t want to much more poundage.

Also the new nutrition recording, (really just writing down the calories, protein, carbohydrate, fat and fibre of what you eat every day) keeps you really focussed on good dietary habits. It’s kinda like writing something down makes you think “Do I really want that double choc, lardie burger” Also, eating “clean” seems to give you way more energy, like you can’t believe.

I worked out over the weekend that I need about 2400 calories for maintenance, plus another 300 calories for the daily exercise. So by consuming only 2000 per day, (really quite easy) I should drop about 1.4 lbs per week. So by early August, I may at last get that long sought leanness.

Drug dependence

It’s kinda funny how some drugs are acceptable in some countries but not others. For example, in Jamaica or closer to home, the Dutch capital Amsterdam, no-one looks twice if you have a marijuana cigarette, where as in the UK, it is far less tolerated, (in some areas anyway). Whereas in Kuwait, or Saudi, a beer or a Scotch means you wind up in big trouble.

The point of these ramblings is this. For about 6 weeks now I’ve been off the booze completely. First week it was a bit of a struggle, but then, apart from the odd hot evening near a country pub, it’s not hard. Anyway, I went to see the Omen last night (which sucks incidentally) and was driving home, top down, about 11.30pm. Normally, you’d be a magnet for the cops, but as I hadn’t indulged, it was liberating. I even went for a drive through town.

The fringe benefits are substantial. I’m getting way lean (in combination with diet and exercise), never wake up with a headache, I seem to be “clearer” also as UK alcohol is taxed heavily, I end the week with so much more cash, my athletic performance is improving (as referenced by my gym records), and best of all, you can see drunk peers and other people, when you aren’t one of them. It’s kinda like not living your life in a daze, as you have way more energy. I’m not saying I’ll never drink again, but it makes you think

Kinda bored with World Cup hype ?

The run up to any major sporting tournament that is heavily hyped, does create problems for broadcasters/newspapers etc, viz; what do you actually put out?

You could do the whole, “speak to former players, coaches etc to get their opinions” bit. But it’s tedious stuff, mostly repetitive and pretty obvious, (Ian Rush on Sky this morning “You need to score goals to win games”) or, “the lads are really up for this game” etc

Or, you could do reports from the various teams training camps, but in essence all this amounts to, is some bullshit montage of players running about a bit fore a few seconds and saying they feel confident.

Or, you could do injury reports – is there anything more tedious?

The Daily Mail yesterday, opened with (yes, it was their lead, page 1 story!) that a player’s wife, (a former singer from 10 years ago) had a bunion, (accompanied by pictures) which had no impact on the team, the player, or the players wife in any way at all.

The World Cup is starting to grate on me a bit

So, this is the end ?

Many years ago, when I married, I asked a university friend called Matt, to be my best man.

We had our ups and downs over the years; my wife and he did not get along, which made my position difficult, but by and large I steered a reasonable path. Matt’s dad split when he was young, leaving his mother to bring him up. She did a pretty decent job of it, but, being a woman, there was inevitably a female focus.

For instance, I would expect girlfriends to be a bit emotional or touchy, but I wouldn’t expect that from men. But that’s what I often got from Matt. Anyway, you learn to make allowances. And over the years, I went out on a limb for him in a number of different ways.

So, some months ago, he announces, somewhat out of the blue, that he’s getting married. It soon became clear, that this bolt out of the blue, was a doctor, and his oft protested love for her (way too oft protested, who was he trying to convince?) was in my view, love of her salary. She was a fairly plain girl, homely and nice enough though a little tedious, dumpy and quiet for me. She was in no way exciting or anything like many of the previous better looking, more interesting but poorer girlfriends.

But each to his own. If she can’t see the truth for what it is, fine, and if he’s happy being a himbo (i.e. male bimbo) good luck to them. Anyway, he says, “will you be best man” and of course I answered in the affirmative. It’s in some hellish Northern slum like Sheffield or Huddersfield, and lots of Yorkshire dolts for guests but okay. Anyway, preparations are well under way, I’ve got the suit, confirmed the attendance, booked the hotel room and bought some crappy gifts off the wedding list, as well as written a slightly dodgy best man speech

So, the stag night comes around last weekend, and I’m laid up with some kinda virus. Can’t work, can’t hit the gym, can’t eat, can stand up, freezing ~ not lethal by any means but debilitating, so I tell him I can’t go to the stag night.

Three days before the wedding, I get a text saying it’s best I don’t come to the wedding !

In some ways this is probably a good thing, because I was increasingly getting the feeling I’d outgrown him, and I wasn’t certain how to proceed, but all the same, desperately disappointing.