The Fat Bloke Diaries

 

Episode Twenty-Two – Country House

 

My Beloved thought that, as birthday treats go, a weekend at a luxury hotel was a pretty good one. Even if I was going to be there too. The hotel in question is a fantastic thirteenth century priory; it looks like a miniature castle. It’s had a few upgrades since the Augustine monks left – small but essential things like electricity and a well stocked bar – but is still a big old imposing building. And we both loved it.

 

It’s set in grounds so large that it holds two championship golf courses. The staff and the clientele respect and look after the building and gardens. Would it be very snobbish of me to say that you get a better class of overnighter at this place? Yeah, probably. It would be a lie too, because they let me in and I’m from Barnsley. But it’s the little things that make it special, like the pre-printed directions provided for guests wanting to take a walk.

 

They were a lovely touch, but we think that they were a bit misleading.

 

We asserted our right to roam with what their direction sheet promised us was ‘a gentle two and a half miles, with a slightly challenging downhill section running through a wood’. What we actually ended up doing was a four mile cross-country ramble – not too taxing in the main, but more than we had allowed time for – which included a scramble down a rock strewn, ankle threatening dry river bed, in a forest so dark and deep that I was expecting to see a life-sized gingerbread house appear out of the haze. I’m sure I heard wolves in the distance. It was fun, testing and exhilarating, definitely, but not in any way ‘gentle’. And four miles is longer than two and a half – even my O-level grade ‘C’ maths can work that out.

 

I hadn’t got the distance this badly wrong since the time that I went on a six km walk. Being a child of the sixties I fall into that strange middle-ground as far as the imperial / metric divide is concerned. The crossover happened during my school years, so I’m equally at home with either measurement standard, and just as confused by both.  For example I’m quite happy measuring small gaps in millimetres, but I quote my height in feet and inches. I’ll pour liquids in litres, but always travel in miles. Always…

 

As ever in these things, it started out as a great idea. Go for a nice little walk through the country lanes around my home. And it was lovely. It just seemed to be a little longer than I’d thought it would be. It certainly didn’t look this far on the map when I was planning this gentle ten kilometre stroll. It was only when I got home, tired and sweating, and checked again that I realised. It wasn’t ten kilometres: it was ten miles. No wonder I was aching more than I’d anticipated.

 

But back to last weekend; we eventually made it onto a series of small country lanes that the hotel’s directions promised were hardly ever used. Hardly ever, it would seem, apart from the almost constant stream of high-end four-by-fours with personalised number plates.

 

We finally got back to the hotel and I did the decent thing as any Fat Bloke would. They have a wonderful bar with picture windows on both sides. The views to the left were over the magnificent eighteenth hole. We both agreed, as our drinks warmed our tummies and raised our voices, that it had been far too long since we’d swung a club in anger. Or played golf. I used to be quite poor at golf. I’ll have to work hard if I’m ever to raise my game to that level again.

 

Out of the other picture window was something that stirred me in an unusual way.

 

I don’t swim, haven’t done for many years ever since I first set foot on the route to Fat Bloke-dom. Regular readers will know that I’m as likely to unveil my physique at a swimming pool as I am on the stage of the Windmill Theatre. Maybe it was the endorphins from my ramble. Maybe it was the beautiful décor and the shape of the pool. Maybe it was the alcohol. Whatever it was, I had a sudden urge to swim. To take a plunge, a quick dip. To dive like a majestic whale into the blue, free to move in three dimensions as I pleased.

 

Luckily another beer sent these urges packing.

 

So I stayed in with my Beloved and enjoyed all the other delights that the hotel had to offer. We had a fabulous time, but I can’t help looking on it as an opportunity missed, a chance to see how I’d fare in a pool that wasn’t on home turf with all the self-inflicted pressures that that brings.

 

But at least I did the right thing the following morning. I cut down my number of trips to the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet to ‘quite a few’ instead of ‘a very lot’.

 

That’s dedication to my weight-loss cause. Every little helps.

 

 

© 2009 Shaun Finnie

 

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