The lifestyle changes are slowly moving into place. It took a day or two to turn the half empty glass into a half full one, but in inevitable Jack style it came true as ever. A couple of days mulling over the ramifications of being doomed to a high cholesterol count irrespective of diet has now led to the nightly consumption of a statin. Since Saturday I’ve alternated between a cycling session for 25 minutes on the exercise bike, swimming and a session at the gym. The cycling on the exercise bike rather than my beloved real ones is done with a view to building up enough stamina to cover a hilly 6.2 mile route (can we have Kilometres please, they’re so much easier?) without embarrassingly being overtaken by OAP’s riding town bikes…yes that has happened before!

The swimming was something I got rather proficient at but due to lack of practice the power levels have dropped alarmingly. Whereas once I could knock a 100 lengths out, nowadays it is far less unless I want 10 minutes breaks between each set of lengths. As for the gym…..well many years ago I used to go weight training (as we called it then) using free weights and loved it. It was hard but ultimately rewarding and the difference in terms of body shape and strength was frankly amazing. Nowadays of course I’m way too old to be pushing barbells and dumbbells around the place, so I told the gym instructor I wanted machines only. I don’t think he quite understood this as of the 4 (to start with) exercises he’s given me one is with dumbbells and another using a bar! Still, from acorns………..

I’ll periodically update my progress or otherwise here, but for the time being apart from the aches and pains the freedom from studying has settled in and perhaps given me the impetus to shape up. I know my target weight loss and so with baby steps I am now starting the journey to comparative fitness and better health through, admittedly, fairly minor lifestyle changes. But will it last?

That’s as positive as it gets at the moment.!

Just some observations.

I see the spineless cunts in the City are still as clueless and moronic as ever, acting in their usual cowardly like way to rumour and hearsay by trashing company values and our pensions by bringing the markets down. Is this really the only way? Why do we trust these people? They are no better than you or me, and I would argue that the knee jerk mentality of how they work would actually see most of us sacked for sheer bloody incompetence.

The M6 tragedy which killed 6 people yesterday – after what happened to us it certainly made me think again of just how lucky we were. Just what is the DVLA doing about the increased number of incidents that relate to foreign HGV drivers?

Did George Osborne actually do anything wrong? Are we now a society whereby drinks on a yacht automatically means corruption? The actual offence would be a valid news story if the Tory party had taken any money, but they didn’t and the whole story seems premised on someone overhearing an alleged request. Are we heading into thought crime territory? Must be a slow news week. Maybe even the press are sick of financial Armageddon stories.

I think my proposed political party might under a re-branding from Liberation to Reform. Hmmm…..doesn’t sound quite so positive to me, but maybe it says more about my political beliefs.