Fitness. The word that should inspire, but in reality makes everyone SAD.

I’d like to start with an apology. This blog has been three weeks coming and has proven to be quite the difficult one to write. I’ve deleted and re written every word countless times, dismissed events and topics that I didn’t think were quite what I was going for. But here we have it, the latest chapter in my ongoing life commentary...

This summer has been exactly the opposite of what I was expecting – three depressing, slow months in a quiet welsh town after the constant buzz of life in Nottingham looked to be on the cards but what a pleasant surprise it’s been so far. In a bizarre programme of fitness and self improvement I’ve managed to lose a stone in weight. We’re not talking pebble weight or even a Joss Stone... moobs have begun to disappear and beer belly is terrified of what it’s become, almost literally a shadow of its former self. I’d like to share with you, my lovely readers as to how I’ve managed it. Today will see part 1, with parts 2 and 3 following next week

Stage 1: The Swimming Pool

A month of visits to the chlorine infested rectangle of water will do everyone good, I’ve been hitting the dizzy heights of 1500m swims three or four times a week. Fitness wasn’t the object to overcome... every swim became an obstacle course of the overweight and the old swimming in much less than straight lines. One woman thought she’d jump in the pool right in my lane and swim ridiculously slowly in a sort of pattern only seen on heart monitors in films.

Some would have been stopped by these small obstacles, but it takes commitment and heart to manage to overcome what followed. This poor woman swam for twenty minutes before getting to the end and having a breather [something I don’t have an issue with. For once.] but it was at that stage i noticed a verruca sock. Not cool. There’s a place for people with verrucas and associated footwear... they call it Quarantine and there are plenty of people in white coats to keep you company. Get the hell out of my swimming pool. Combine that with the smell of death when one old boy gets in the pool and struggles to swim four lengths before stopping & going home... a true test of will and desire to get fit.

If you can overcome this and complete a decent distance then you’ll see the benefits. In the five weeks of the pool stage I went from struggling to swim 800 metres with breaks to doing an uninterrupted 1500m marathon with... dare I say it... ease. I don’t just think it’s the exercise I was doing that caused this change, the potent mix of all the things we don’t want to know about in the pool combined with chlorine strong enough to melt all the fat from my body is more likely to mutate me into some kind of fish-man than aid in my quest for fitness. But there we go... the dirtiest clinically clean place in the world has worked its magic.

So that’s stage 1. Groundwork to raise fitness levels and by combining this with a bit less beer and kebabs the quest is surely underway. Think Lord of the Rings with a fitness programme for “stupid fat Hobbit” Sam. Yeah, something like that. Coming up: Part 2 – Running & Football teams. Tales of teamwork, sport and fitness work to the point of being sick.

Life, Death, Deep Meaning. But mostly Formula 1

It's been an interesting few weeks. We’ve seen the culmination of this year's Wimbledon and with it the end of our nation's interest in the sport for another eleven months. We've also seen England's ladies crash out of the World Cup at the hands of the French. Not a fantastic few days for British Sport, so it looks like our reputation lies with Jensen and Lewis "Gung-ho" Hamilton in the Formula 1. The latter being a man who's been on the receiving end of flak from people saying his style is dangerous.

Really? Driving repeatedly around a track at 200 mph every other week and now one of them is considered dangerous? Are we talking mild danger here? Like turning up the music in the car AND having the windows down or putting a blue sock in a white wash? No... this is literally life and death. These lunatics are putting their lives on the line nearly every week in one long adrenaline rush purely for our entertainment [and huge amounts of cash]. I've no doubt that being involved with the sport is huge fun, like building a really complicated lego contraption and then watching trained mentalists drive said contraptions around a track at astronomical speeds but watching it? I can't see the appeal.

Remember how depressing it was to watch your brother/sister/friends [the last one for me... could never afford one ourselves] set up a crazy Scalextric track and then sit as they raced tiny cars and had the time of their lives? Why on earth would you sit and watch it on the TV? I've no doubt that with a ten minute highlights reel it'd be great fun but I can’t be doing with sitting there for hours watching the same people drive around the same track at fifty slightly different times. If you were colourblind you'd have no hope. If you were completely blind you'd be listening thinking someone was commentating on how flies were buzzing around in a small jar.

It also has the slight problem of severely affecting my driving. While I love my [well... Dad's] 1.4 litre Ford Fiesta it doesn't do much for the adrenaline. If you drive above 65mph it feels like it's going to take off. Which is fine in Wales where it's physically impossible to drive above 45 [you'll either be stuck behind a caravan/tractor or the remains of your car [and yourself] will become part of the lovely welsh scenery. That can’t be good for the tourist board...

 I'd actually love to see a set of regional Formula 3/4 races around the UK, drivers from the local areas in their own cars along slightly purpose built courses. A truly amazing spectacle... Dai Bach cruising around  Aberystwyth's hills and bends in his slightly modified Citroen Saxo, or Humphrey Barton-Joyce taking his Rolls Royce on a death defying trip around Buckinghamshire. I'm already in talks with Somerset County Council to host Frome-ula 1 sometime in 2012. If it gets the green light... the world will be a better place.

My alter-ego's ruled out Schizophrenia...

Confession time: I have a deep seated psychological problem that genuinely affects everyday life. I’ve just turned the TV off and got myself away from Facebook; ruling out Attention Disorders and according to my alter ego I’m not schizophrenic. No, it’s that I can't be late. If I'm even a minute behind schedule something clicks in my brain that no matter what the event is, it's more important than anything else; even personal safety. This means I'm far more prone to running across roads at full pelt and God help you if you're old and walking irritably slowly. You know who you are.

This impulse makes even the most run of the mill tasks incredibly difficult. Take last week when I had to dash to the shop before heading to the pool for the daily 1500m swim [I’m proud of that... can you tell?]. In all honesty I had five minutes to spare but if I say I'm meeting someone at 10:30, I’ll bloody be there. Now I was buying a couple of bags of Doritos, chewing gum and enough beer to drown a small village for the weekend [standard buying for any student really] and sure enough, I had to flash my driving license to prove I was indeed old enough to buy such outrageous products.

This in itself isn't really a problem, I'm used to it but surely you don't have to spend two minutes checking the card, looking at my face, checking the card and look at my face again [I'm guessing the vague hope that I'll magically grow five years younger so my face looks more familiar]. Eventually the poor woman decided that I was indeed who I said I was and eventually put through the beer and crisps. The next question had me fuming... "Do you want any savings stamps?" Savings stamps? I don't even know what they are. I don't even have any postage stamps. I'm buying beer and crisps. Savings stamps are very much not on the agenda, unless it means that my shopping will be cheaper next time... which I very much doubt.

It's not all bad though, this psychological block that means I can't be late. You never miss the start of the football or a film at the cinema. But you also get the comfy end seats at the side of the lecture theatre so I can snooze. Its only downfall is when it comes to going to the shops for your last minute beer; you get the choice of the lonely cashiers who are all too keen to sell you savings stamps. Next time I’ll go even earlier and give the cashier hell. Get to the checkout with my shopping and give the “ooh, forgotten something... I’ll run back and get it” before going back to the beer aisle and picking up exactly the same stuff and taking it to another till. Yeah, that’s right ladies and gentlemen... Power to the people.

I know they’re just doing what they’re told to say but it’s never the rare good looking checkout girl that bombards you with questions, it’s always the ones that look like they’ve been lured down from a mountain with a hunk of meat... or the ones that have been living in the bins outside the back of the shop for so long eventually they offered them a job. Absolutely no justice whatsoever. 

I’d also like to point out that if you were in any way disappointed in this blog, it was because my aforementioned alter ego Ted wrote it... I’m watching a DVD and reading a book.

Wimbledon. for the sake of my sanity, please give it back to the Wombles

So in the past ten days the UK's been gripped by tennis fever as a result of the massive spectacle that is Wimbledon. Now don't get me wrong, I do like tennis but this seems to be the only time that everyone else in the world gives a stuff. Ok, I might have slept through Andy Murray's win at Queens the other week, but I watched literally hours of the French Open back in May. That ladies and gentlemen, is commitment to the sport.

That small opening rant out of the way I've actually been enjoying the events of the last week or so if only for the emergence of Andy Murray, every one's favourite/most hated tennis player [delete as appropriate]. Not since a fully face painted Mel Gibson have we seen a Scot split public opinion quite so well. Personally I like his style and will cheer him on, but I know plenty of people who wouldn't spare urine to stop him burning to death. These are the kind of characters we need in a sport like tennis, [Andy Murray...not the guys that wouldn’t put him out] often dismissed as solely for the posh people or the cucumber sandwich brigade.

Celebrity tennis tournaments would be one way of doing it, getting a bit more excitement involved. Combine some of the veterans of the game with a few more curveball choices. John McEnroe had a reputation for being an angry one on the court, but can you imagine him playing opposite Vinnie Jones. You could do a sweepstake as to how long it'd take for Jonesy to have convinced the umpire that he’s always right and god help any line judge that makes a dodgy call. I’ve no doubt that poor Vinnie would struggle, but I can’t imagine McEnroe would do a great job with a racquet stuck through his head.

If it wasn’t for his unfortunate death, you could have played Heath Ledger against Jake Gyllenhall and see who breaks back most often. Or even get the members of Dragon's Den involved, with prize money made up of those stacks of cash they always have [and yet I’m not convinced is at all real]. Again it'd probably end with a brawl and while the smart money would be on Man-Mountain Peter Jones to win, I bet Deborah Meedon fights dirty.

Now my [slightly more than passing] interest in tennis goes a bit deeper than spending some time glued to the television. I have also dabbled in playing the game myself. Now this is a spectacle worthy of the television. I am much less than a natural talent when it comes to this game and the skills on display weren't exactly second to none as much as second to a nun... who'd taken a vow of never playing sports. Yes, that good. If it had come to rankings Abu Hamza would have been seeded above me. in fact so would the dog, Henry VIII and Yoda.

How's that looking for a game of mixed doubles?

In this Small Town life... Next door’s cat is Public Enemy Number 1.

First things first... when I'm not living the student dream in Nottingham I live in Wales. For those of you who aren't quite sure where that is, I've attached a map. It's the bit in bright red. To make it worse for people who think that Wales is still the land of Magic and Dragons I don’t even live in “The Vaaaallleeeeeeys” – which seems to be the only alternative to living in Cardiff [or as I like to call it... Little England]. No ladies and gentlemen... I live in Aberystwyth – two hours drive away from any cinema with more than once screen or even a HMV. It’s a lovely little place but when you've spent 3 months living in a city the size of Nottingham, coming back is like a scene from Back To The Future made with a budget of £75 and a Mars Bar.

Aberystwyth’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone [cliché I know] but it’s true. In true coming home tradition I took a quick trip up the high street past the charity shops, Poundland and up towards the little corner shop at the top of town whose owner still glares at me for putting 70p worth of pick and mix in a bag and trying to claim it was only worth 50p. That extra jelly snake has proven costly in the past 7/8 years. In that five minute walk I saw an old school teacher, two people from school and an old work mate. The only problem is, with the exception of my old work pal I couldn’t for the life of me remember their names. Smooth work Dave... just fake a phone call or find something of great interest in a shop window to avoid eye contact. I went for both. Outside a lingerie clad mannequin in the window of New Look. God wasn’t smiling on me that day.

It’s not all bad though, it’s been nice to have next to no responsibilities – where feeding the dog is the most important thing that happens in the day. The problem is that not only is feeding Barney the most important thing, it’s also the only thing I need to do, leaving my semi-devious yet active mind to its own devices. I’ve even unpacked everything from bags and tidied my room [all hope is lost]. Fortunately, our next door neighbours still have their cat which means I can have something to hate. And plan to kill.

DISCLAIMER: The remaining portion of this blog is written with tongue firmly in cheek. I like animals, even cats. Most of the time.

This all started after I came across this infamous video of a woman from Coventry dumping a cat into a dustbin. An event that shocked maybe 30% of the UK into hammering on the phone to the RSPCA, while the remaining 70% sniggered and passed it on to a friend [no prizes for guessing which category I fall into]. Now I'm not sure why exactly this cat has become [in my eyes] public enemy number one, maybe it’s the brazen look it gives me that just screams “this is my estate” while it’s sat on the roof of my car or the fact that our massive golden retriever is terrified of it. Either way, this menace is now top of my hit list.

Now armed with the Wallace & Gromit DVD collection and my Book of Bunny Suicides, I’ve been coming up with a variety of ingenious contraptions with which I can dispose of said cat and with the amount of time I have on my hands, it promises to be quite a spectacle. My favourite will have to wait for Guy Fawkes’ day and involves smothering a small remote control car in tuna and catnip and making the cat chase it into a pile of fireworks. Paint the town red you say? Not quite.

With that off my chest I can get back to normal small town life for the next couple of months, make every effort to remember people’s names and actually talk to them in the street [if I have time or even remotely like them]  and use this time of relative freedom to play guitar loud enough for our deaf neighbour to hear it and write a few more of these. It’s going to be a hell of a ride.

Now where’s that cat? 

So officially I’m 21- but inside I’m enjoying my mid life crisis.

As 21^st birthday evenings go, this would have been one to remember. I say that because I have no memory of it. In fact I’m not sure it even happened or if it did, whether I was even there. I have it on good authority that at least twenty of us had a BBQ and ventured into town for the night. All I know for sure is I woke up the next day with three holes in my face, a t-shirt covered in blood [my only reasonable solution is that I got intimate with some tarmac on the way home] and a hangover to eclipse all others. It felt like somewhere inside my head King Kong was having a fight with The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to a Dubstep soundtrack. Yeah... that good.

Why though? At the end of the day (post hangover recovery of course) I just felt exactly the same as I did 3 weeks ago. Everyone seems to consider 21 a milestone age, at this stage I should [in theory] be considered an actual adult. I can now drink and gamble in the USA (and everywhere else for that matter) but I can’t afford to get there and won’t be able to for the foreseeable future. That’s that bonus taken away before I’ve even got started. What else is there? Not a lot that I couldn’t do since I turned 18. In theory I should get more respect from people as if by becoming 21 you just magically gain wisdom beyond your years. I’m not getting my hopes up for that, anyone that’s ever met me will know I really don’t deserve any respect [which I’m fine with, I’m far too sarcastic and childish to be taken seriously].

There is one bonus to take – I already know what it’s like to be old and disparaging. I’m one of the grumpiest and cynical students in the area but I can’t help myself. I’m forever moaning about things that have very little consequence in the long run – like the point of revolving doors. Why? Just why? Normal doors are far simpler & quicker to use as well as much cheaper to install [told you I was getting old... stop me before I start moaning about my tax return].

Another favourite topic of concern for my middle aged self is music. Specifically why people seem to jam what’s popular this month down my throat relentlessly, at hideous volumes and normally through speakers that make it sound like it was recorded in a garden shed fifty feet from the M25. We’ve all got that one friend that justifies their [awful] taste in music by saying “it’s really high in the iTunes chart this week” forgetting entirely that Bob the Builder and Slipknot were also, at one point in a similar position. Did you have those when they were popular? Definitely not. I probably bought the Slipknot track though. In fact, I’m going to buy hundreds of copies of the loudest, angriest screamo just to see if they end up listening to it on popularity grounds.

My third and final source of great annoyance is people that drink Guinness solely for St Patrick’s Day. Any other day of the year and you wouldn't buy it if it was 20p cheaper than Fosters or Carlsberg or the cheap spirit of your choice. Yet the idea of a shamrock in the foam or the lure of a cheap fabric hat and all of a sudden your cousin’s mum’s next door neighbour said hello to Patrick Kielty once so you’re Irish enough to be considered a leprechaun. [and I can say all this... my Nanna’s mum was Irish. Boom.]

Yet with all this vented stress, I’d like to point out that I’m a massive hypocrite. This very St Patrick’s Day I was seen and photographed in one of the aforementioned Guinness Hats dancing like a leprechaun after at least 8 pints of the black stuff. Probably to the music that’s riding high in the iTunes chart and having a whale of a time. Thus leaving only revolving doors to be my one chance of keeping some integrity [a sentence I NEVER thought I’d say]. 

Somewhat fittingly, that’s well out of the window. Every time I see a set of revolving doors (whether I’m planning to go into the building or not) I’ll wait until the last moment and "Indiana Jones it" at the last second. Needless to say I believe I’m Harrison Ford for a matter of thirty seconds before I feel like a dick. Unfortunately that comes 20 seconds after everyone else has had the same thought.

Forget Facebook Privacy... give me something that stops me going on it when I'm drunk!

 “I know it’s not my place to say...”, “I know I shouldn’t be doing this” and “I definitely wouldn’t dare do this sober”. All are words that I’ve typed in the early hours of the morning to people that I definitely shouldn’t have and now true to form, I rarely talk to now. Good work Dave. As much as the blame lies at my fingertips alone, I’m pretty sure it’s a widespread problem for us young people. Social networking at its finest. Give us an internet connection or a mobile phone and I guarantee you we’ll all make a fool of ourselves.  Don’t try and deny it, we’ve all done it. Mobile phones and Facebook. Two things that have become ever present in everyone’s life; both fantastic inventions and yet possibly the worst things to ever happen to me.

Before these newer online ways of embarrassing ourselves [Facebook especially] the limit was what you could send in a text message, limiting your chances by at least having their phone number. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve sent messages to all the wrong people... a few in school years even leading up to an awkward Monday morning walking into school to that infamous message echoing along the corridors by people I’ve never met and were probably about the age of 11. Give me carrier pigeons and messages in bottles any day. Far harder to make a total crumpet of yourself and that’s if they ever arrive at their intended destination anyway.

Even with that in mind, my own failings pale in significance to some of the stories I’ve heard from friends.  One unfortunate chap confessed deep feelings to the wrong person via a simple address book error... I can imagine that was an awkward one to wake up to the next day. How many are true I’m not sure but if they are... the world’s a cruel yet hugely entertaining place

Even worse, newer mobile phones make it far easier to make a total clown of yourself; they keep records of messages and pop up in conversations so that every time you go to send a new message that last moment of shame is there glaring at you. If that wasn’t enough you even get a date and time accurate to the minute where you’ve essentially been mentally grouped with wasps and the people off the Jeremy Kyle show.

This is where Facebook has it wrong, after a spate of recent questions over privacy [or twitter super injunctions... don’t worry Ryan, your secret's safe with me] it seems that privacy and security are at the top of their agenda. I’m not that bothered if some advertising company pinches my phone number and gives me a call one afternoon trying to sell me a new mobile phone contract; I just pass on my Dad’s number and say he’d be willing to take a call about it instead [then laugh like a bond villain when I get a message from my old man saying “you’re a bastard you” or “we’ve changed the locks back at home. Unlucky.”]

Which is what brings me nicely across to my request to Facebook: forget all these qualms over privacy; give me something that stops me going on it when I’m drunk. That’s much more important and I think I’ve worked out a few solutions for all us sufferers of drunken texting/Facebooking. First of all, we all need an insomniac friend. Enlist this friend to abuse you fiercely if you’re seen online in the early hours of the morning [I’ve tried this, it works a treat] and I guarantee it’ll work for you too.

If we get technical, I’m sure Facebook can find a way of locking out people that have posted that they’re intending to get trolleyed that evening. Or even a list of people you can set to “don’t talk to when drunk” as a safety measure. In all honesty I think we should all just stick to twitter. I can’t put an opinion into 140 characters anyway, let alone a drunken monologue. That’s the solution ladies and gentlemen, stick to twitter after midnight. All blushes will be saved and dignity held intact. Actually sod it; it’s worth embarrassing myself every now and again so I can retell stories like these for everyone’s entertainment. I’ll keep you posted. Before midnight, in less than 140 characters.