Something Better Change

It’s that time of the year when many people make a decisive change in their lifestyles. You know the sort of thing: join a slimming club, join a gym, Dry January. All these things and more will have you looking super slim and capable of running the London Marathon by the middle of next week, at the absolute latest. I’m afraid I fell at the first hurdle last night by consuming a few cans of Madri lager, brewed in the Spanish capital of Burton on Trent, and then with a single (gigantic) glass of Chilean Viognier, as well as munching my way through the remnants of festive season cheese. There’s always tomorrow, I reckon, or in my case the day after tomorrow. On a more serious note, I know that if I carried on at Christmas levels of consumption, I might not survive until the spring. Something better change.

I certainly won’t be indulging in Dry January, not least because if we all did it there would be no pubs to return to in February. And the Big Bang diet doesn’t work as well as a steady as she goes change in eating and drinking. Believe me, I know this to be a fact. The only New Year Resolution that worked for me was giving up smoking for good on 1st January 1994. And after a few weeks of abject misery, turned out to be far easier than I might have expected.

Many of the newspapers are encouraging readers to adopt a healthier lifestyle. This is what they are saying:

• Daily Mirror – ‘Get thin with Slimming World you fat fuck.’
• The Times – ‘Men, get off the pies and do some exercise. Slob.’
• Daily Express – ‘Angry right wing fat pensioners, join Slimming World.’
• The Sun – ‘Get your tits out and fight the flab.’
• Daily Star – ‘Great news for the hard of thinking: join Slimming World.’
• Daily Mail – ‘Kill a migrant and win a subscription to Slimming World.’

That was the gist of it, anyway. Either way, the message from our newspaper proprietors is that their readers are all fat and unhealthy so do something about it for a week or two, at least until everyone forgets about New Year resolutions and gets stuck into the last dregs of Christmas spirit (Single Malt Whisky is my favourite spirit) or those final chocolates. It would be a shame to throw them away, wouldn’t it?

My own vague plans have rather gone to rat shit given that I have had to put up with, as opposed to suffer, the effects of an endless cough and cold, rather like Man Flu, only much, much worse. I’ve had neither the inclination nor the energy to do anything healthy, possibly down at least in part to consistently coughing myself awake throughout the night. I have a GP health check in the next few days which I may well have to cancel due to illness. How utterly bonkers is that?

Things are going to change, I promise. Like all of you, I’m steadily falling to pieces and regularly ache in places I didn’t know were places. If only beer and cheese were healthy foods I’d be expected to live to 100. My sole aim at the moment is to get through 2023 and maybe by then I’ll have come up with a better set of plans for the next New Year. Don’t bet on it, though.