Season of the Stubborn Bastard

And so the fight-back begins.
Doesn't mean I'll be able to avoid a faintly humiliating result in the morning, but hopefully, it means I can start to pull this thing back in the right direction this week - we went and got registered for our GP gym referrals today. We start officially tomorrow on a programme of 'at least two classes a week' at the local gym/sports centre. The first one, at lunchtime tomorrow? Gym Introduction. Basically like a low-grade personal trainer-cum-tour of the equipment, from treadmills - (walk, don't fall off, next!) to bikes (pedal till you die) to cross-trainers (again...no, seriously, don't fall off!), to rowing machines (annnd stroke....) to bits of kit far more reminiscent of the torture chambers of the Inquisition than anything the 21st century has devised.

That said, I couldn't let today - my one-month Welsh anniversary (as well, of course, as Chinese New Year. Year of the Dragon no less, surely a good Welsh omen?) - go by without finally popping my leisure centre cherry. I went over tonight at about 6.15, while this time d waited in for the return of Jason the Doors Guy. The pool, tonight, closed at 7, I was told. Bugger...but still, I was there by then, so I paid my money and went on in.

Well....erm...that was weird. It was kinda like Oxford Street, Christmas Eve....only wetter. I'd like to tell you I did ten lengths, and technically, if ya wanna be lenient to my poor Disappearing ass, I did. But what I actually did was about 30 third-of-a-lengths, a little flapping about, and quite a lot of desperately-getting-the-fuck-out-of-other-people's way. Clearly, there are good times and bad times to go a-swimming at the local pool. And clearly, while-no-one-else-can-get-there is the best of times.

Came out and had that horribly compelling craving you get after swimming - for stodge! In my case, for chip shop fish and soggy British chips drenched in vinegar, with lashings of bread and butter and ketchup for chip butties...

S'kinda evil, that, isn't it? You're doing this activity to try and redress your calorie-exercise balance, and it instantly triggers a positively visceral need in you for grease. I've said this before, but I swear, Disappearing is alllllllmost enough to make you believe in a Devil!
(B'doink, b'doink, b'doink...) Sorry, just felt the need to headbutt my desk a few times. Feel better now. Here, let me just swig some healthy water, instead of the gallon of thick, black, sweet, fizzy wonderment I'm craving...

Ahhhhhhh...

Anyhow, as I mentioned - tomorrow's results are going to suck ass. They absolutely are. I've been of course intensely neurotic about these things before, but given half an opportunity, I think this is the first time I could feel really sludgily low about this prospect. Until now, there's always been the idea of being driven on, of backward steps being just blips on the inevitable journey. But, given just the least little bit of encouragement, I could stop now. I could rest on my laurels and go "Fuck it, four and a half stone's not so bad..." and go out and get that fish and chips, that Snickers bar, that Coke.

That's not going to happen though. Am pretty much manufacturing positivity against my own will at the moment, almost directly as a result of KK's intervention this week. Must push on...must push on...Tomorrow's gonna suck, but must push on...Feels like earlier tonight - I'd done eight lengths, and thought "Right, sod it, that's me done." But then I thought "That's not really what you came here to do though, is it?" Bear in mind, I hadn't gone with any particular amount of swimming in mind to do, so this was news to me. But the idea of being able to say I'd done ten lengths appealed to me. It was sort of like a finishing line - a finishing line I could legitimately think of as being a finishing line (damn metric system...). So I flapped on through another six third-of-a-lengths, floundering frankly at almost every pause, every bank, every get-the-fuck-out-of-the-way, completely done, but stubborn-bastardy driving me on. Yeah...it's like that. It's the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese calendar, but for me, right now, it's the Season of the Stubborn Bastard.

And on we go...