Leisure time

It’s 8pm. I am having leisure time after having got up at 6:20am to get to Swindon for 9. After a frustrating day at work, I knocked off around five-ish and got to my hotel about half-past. I was in the gym by six, out of the gym by half seven, and with a meal arriving in my room for quarter to eight, I was well on track to be fed and working my way through a pint by 8pm.

It’s 8pm. I’ve finished the mushroom soup and pasta and am working my way through a pint. Flowers best bitter. Very nice, too. It’s the earliest I’ve managed to eat on a work night since I finished working in London a couple of months ago.

I don’t normally go for room service, but this particular hotel requires dressing for dinner. I find that sort of thing all rather unnecessary for a mid-week business stopover, so I’ve opted for the rather less complicated bar menu and the joys of eating dinner whilst wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I’ve chosen the option which more closely resembles what I’d be doing through choice. I stay at this hotel because it has a decent gym with various bits of cardio and weights kit.

I frightened off a teenage lad by shifting rather more weight than him. I didn’t mean to have this effect on the kid, but it’s not the first time something like this has happened. My line manager stopped working out at the work gym after he realised I was outlifting him. Fragile ego syndrome?

Ah, fragility, yes. That reminds me - one of the reasons I’m keen to get back to doing weights regularly is that a recent bone scan revealed that my bones are a bit on the crumbly side of normal, and the remedial action consists of weights, running and extra bonus medication and supplements. Along with doubling the dose of the stuff I was taking anyway, this means I’ve now passed the stage of medication consumption at which it makes good economic sense to pre-pay for my prescriptions. This makes me feel rather old. I’m not even thirty, and I’m taking the same stuff for my bones that my question-marked-shaped osteoporotic grandmother did when she was in her nineties.

I’m also keen to feel well again. I briefly felt well whilst on holiday in the Highlands recently, but the return to work (and to commuting) scuppered that. I’ve been doing about 18 hrs commuting a week recently, which is a fair whack on top of the working week. Worse, it’s all by car, so I don’t even get a ten-minute walk to a tube station and a snooze on the train. Driving’s not really compatible with a half hour catch up on kip on the way to work. I get home late, and tired and not inclined to train. I don’t sleep well if I don’t get a reasonable amount of exercise. It’s a vicious bugger of a circle, this.

I’m staying up in Swindon for most of this week. This does mean that I’m not seeing much (anything) of my boyfriend, but I’m hoping it’ll mean I get some exercise, a few early nights and some decent kip, and may just be able to stay awake past 9pm at the weekend. I don’t hold out much hope of making it past 9pm tonight. Half a pint of Flowers has done for that. I may have leisure time, but I'm going to bed...