no more champagne and the fireworks are through....

Judging from the volume of cars crammed into the car park this evening, the credit crunch is apparently having little impact on my gym. It seems that the desire to shed a few pounds around the waist currently still outweighs the need to save a few pounds in the pocket. Only a week ago, in the gap between Christmas and New Year, I had the whole pool to myself, but tonight I was forced to share my lane with three other people. Luckily for me, they were all reasonably considerate swimmers, and I was able to snuffle my way through 42 mildly cold-ridden, ache-y lengths of the pool.

I think it's great that people have made New Year's resolutions to be healthier, even if it means that going to the gym is going to be even more of a pain in the arse for the next few weeks than it is normally. I do the majority of my exercise outdoors, either running or playing 5-a-side football, and I only really go to the gym to use the pool. I might have to wrap up warm against the cold, with a whole pile of hats, gloves, thermal tops and lycra leggings especially for that purpose (calm yourselves), but I won't be spending any time queuing up to use any of the machines in the cardio theatre with sweaty people in ill-advised, overly tight sports kit.

I hope I don't sound snobby, as everybody has to start somewhere, and not so very long ago (well, alright....a decade ago), I was several stone heavier and very much one of them.

Good luck to them, I say.

I hope that for many of them it's the start of a healthier and perhaps happier way of life. Certainly, I think, it's a healthier way of losing weight than the nasty bout of campylobacter that carried away a hefty chunk of my bodyweight inside 10 days and did something to my insides that meant that the weight never came back......

The proof of the pudding, I think, will be how many of them I'm still swimming around come March.

Happy New Year everyone.

Me? I've made no New Year Resolutions, but I have been inspired to start something on the basis of a dream I had last night that featured me having a conversation with Stephen King in my kitchen.... I woke up at 4am and knew what I had to do. It's nothing special mind, but when Stephen King visits you in a dream and suggests you do something, what else can you do? I don't even like the man's books very much, but frankly I'm scared of him and I don't want him to be angry next time he dreamwalks into my head.