The Fat Bloke Diaries

Episode Forty-One – Time is Tight

[WARNING! Today’s FBD features gratuitous full-frontal nudity

[STRONGER WARNING! The nudity in question belongs to Shaun]

My weekends are very precious to me.

I relish not being at work and having all that time to myself. I love it so much that I don’t want to waste a single moment of it sleeping. Carpy Day-o, as Del-Boy might have said. Or was it Harry Belafonte. Anyhow, I like to make the most of my leisure time so much that I get up at silly o’clock on Saturday and Sunday without any prompting or assistance. On workdays I almost have to be prised out of my bed by a team of burly Sherpas when the alarm bursts into life, but it’s turned off at weekends. It’s been tuned to Radio Two for some years now. I’m getting to be an old fart. I always woke up to Radio One when I was a young fart.

At weekends however I need no rousing, I rise with the lark, wide eyed at around five or five thirty, all excited like a kid on Christmas morning. There’s so much fun to be had, so much leisure time to fill. So many sofas to laze on, so little time.

But a big part of my leisure time these days is filled with exercise. Or preparing to exercise. Or recovering from exercise. Or reading about how people who are better at exercise than me exercise when I’m not exercising. Surely that burns off some calories in itself?

There’s no doubt about it, this fitness lark takes time. Let’s say that I intend to cycle for an hour. That’s a fine idea, but it never takes just an hour, does it? There’s getting changed into shorts, shoes and a shirt, specifically one that I don’t mind getting drenched in ‘Shaun’s natural body lotion’. That takes about ten minutes. Then there’s the warm-up. Hmmm, so now I’m at ten and a half minutes.

Finding my MP3 player and fixing it to the static bike via its new-fangled hi-tech restraint – also known as the cloth bag that my Beloved sewed together just for this very job – takes another few minutes.

Eventually I’ll clamber aboard and cycle hard for the allotted hour before dismounting in a state of dripping wet through-edness. (Sometimes I loathe the clumsiness of the English language, and specifically my terrible grasp of its subtleties). Then I have to recover from this unnatural exertion before I can do anything else. So that’s twenty minutes doing the ‘fish out of water’ thing on the dining room floor.

I love a bath after exercise. I’m not one of these who can just take a quick shower and get on with the day. Showers are functional and perfunctory. Having all the time in the world to immerse myself in a tub is a luxury. It’s what makes the muscle burn worthwhile, knowing that I’ll get to soak the injured part of me afterwards. In this case it’s legs. It’s very unusual for it to be anything else.

I once read that cold water baths are good for overworked muscles, so that’s what I’ll usually start with, running just the blue-topped tap. I kneel for as long as I can in the chilly liquid, letting my legs get the benefit but being very careful not to deep-freeze ‘little Shaun and the twins’. After their incident with the Ralgex last week I don’t think that they could take the other temperature extreme.

Then I’ll pop a bath bomb in – some manly aroma (if there is such a thing as a manly bath bomb) like Coral Reef Dredgings or Eau de Bison – but I’m always very careful where I place the fizzing ball. Those things can effervesce incredibly violently sometimes and there are certain non-frozen bits of me that I wouldn’t care to have them bubbling against. I’ll settle back with a book, maybe a glass of something red (not Tizer), or perhaps some football on the radio. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is my little bit of therapeutic heaven. If I put my ears below the surface even the shouty bloke next door constantly testing his lungs and my soundproofing can’t get to me.

I’ll remain in this blissful state until the water goes cold. Then I’ll top it up with hot and settle back again until my skin goes as wrinkly as Cliff Richard’s neck. Then, and only then, I might have a shower to rinse off the indulgence of the last hour. And to wash away the image of Cliff’s neck.

So suddenly this ‘hour of exercise’ has taken up the entire evening.

I run. I cycle. I stretch and I soak. It takes forever.

Which leaves me with one question; however did I ever fill my free time before I started exercising?

© Shaun Finnie 2009
 

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