Every day (so it seems) the Times ‘T2’ section offers health advice, normally, and to be honest, quite insultingly, aimed at the over-40s, over-50, over-60s or pre-dead. What’s even worse is that although I’ve skipped over those pages and filed them under the ‘health bollocks’ section, Mel reads them. Out loud. To me. Even if I’m not listening. And they always say pretty much the same thing. Exercise more. Eat less. Oh, that’s big fucking news, I’ll write that down right now so I never forget. But then they get specific. Over 60 you need to be working with weights. Why? You’re supposed to avoid lifting heavy things when you’re old, ain’t’cha? No, its good for bone density, so you have to do resistance training. Fine by me, I’m so resistant to training I’m way ahead of the curve. Do yoga! Fuck off. I don’t want to. I do tai chi and that’s basically yoga with violence. The way we do it anyway. You need ‘cardio’, yep, I play my tennis. I ride my bike. Just, not very far. 5 minutes each way to the station playing chicken with a bunch of school-run mums in Teslas, and back. 6 minutes if I get stuck behind the refuse collectors on a Wednesday and take evasive action by making new friends on the pavement.

This week is different. Holiday routine. Out at 8 to walk along the beach for half an hour. Back to the pool to swim our lengths. In ‘her’ case. Hundreds of them. I stick to widths and by 12 I’m bored. Though yesterday I zoomed in on my tai chi session on my balcony and that was splendid and bodily-nourishing and I kicked a lot of things. Mainly the glass doors and the table and chairs, cos its not the biggest balcony. So all that lot, coupled with my tennis, twice a week, and quite frankly, I’ll live as long as I’ll live. If doing 32 squats every day (where do they find such precise numbers for a population of such diverse body-shapes and abilities?) will give me an extra 3 days more incapacitated dribbling onto the floor of a care home, then that’ll be my loss, my regret.

Meanwhile, I haven’t reviewed a book in ages, so I must just make a mention of something quite extra-ordinary. The Traitor and the Spy by Ben MacIntyre. Its a completely true story of Cold War espionage written by a fantastic journalist. If it was fiction I’d have put it down as being ‘ridiculous’ and beyond credibility. But its true. Validated. And as such is just the brilliant story of an amazing man.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx