Morning…happy Bank Holiday Monday. Oh look, ‘quelle surprise’ it’s chucking it down outside. I can’t even claim a pyjama day because my dog is still going to expect a full service walk. Try and get away with anything like a short cut and I’ll get the doggy death stare as soon as he senses we’re homeward bound…it’s like he taps into my thoughts when we leave the house and if I deviate from the planned route somehow he just knows. You know how you tried to skip two or three pages when your kids were nodding off mid-way through their bedtime story, and three words into thinking you’d gotten away with it they were wide awake and protesting..? That’s what I’m talking about.
But today that’s ok, because didn’t I make a deal with myself that I’d do some exercise this weekend…I even said it out loud, what’s more I wrote it down and a bunch of folk have read it so I’m committed to the cause. In the rain. I mean it’s not just a bit damp out there, we’re talking big fat raindrops falling from a heavy grey sky and every car that drives past my house sounds like it’s driving through a stream. Lovely.
I think I’d enjoy walking in the rain if I was skinny. I’d have on some chic little raincoat, and a pair of adorable wellies, which would accommodate my calves without so much as a grumble. Somehow, those big fat raindrops would surround me without actually landing on me, and I’d arrive back home looking rosy-cheeked, without a hint of frizzy hair and looking for all the world as though walking in the rain was my favourite thing ever. I would have walked so far that the dog would be exhausted and he wouldn’t nag to go back out again for the rest of the day.
But because I’m fat, we all know it’s not going to be that way. My chic little raincoat in fact resembles something you might find at the local camping centre. My calves will be shoved into wellies that were not designed for fat legs, so they’ll kink somewhere around my ankles and give me blisters, which if I’m lucky I won’t notice because I’ll be too busy grumbling about the red hot poker someone’s wiggling about in my knee. I’ll arrive home soaked to the bone, with a hyper excited spaniel who feels short-changed because we didn’t stay out for at least 3 hours, and he’ll be ready to go again within 10 minutes of getting home.
But, with every step I’m going to imagine the warm shower afterwards, and the feeling of achievement I’ll get when I’ve followed through on my promise to look after both the dog, and myself by not settling down in the armchair with a cup of tea and a packet of custard creams because it was raining too hard to go out.
Happy days!
