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My previous midlife crises have revolved around getting drunk and having sex with strangers, but those options are no longer appealing or practical and sound like a lot of effort. So instead I am channelling my existential dread into attempting to get as fit as I was two years ago (or to be honest just halfway there would do). And hopefully when I am fit I will have more energy and be able to get drunk and destroy my marriage and family. Or at least buy a motorbike.
In truth all the things I covet are the trappings of late middle-age: doing puzzles, maybe taking up gardening and snoozing in the afternoon. But I'd like to stay alive long enough to be able to do those things, so I think it's wise to arrest the progress of the fat that has once again formed round my tummy and my lack of breath when climbing the stairs. So I am back on a proper diet and have an online personal trainer who has sent me some exercises to do.
Some of it I don't like. I am only allowed to eat protein in the morning (unless I am exercising) so am having to give up my famous morning porridge (I just had it for lunch instead) and I have to go over to the bit of the gym where the proper men congregate and lie on the little bench things and make my weak-arsed (and more importantly weak-armed) attempts to move tiny dumbbells in the least graceful way possible. I prefer running or sitting on the machines where everything is set up for you, but I'd like to give this system a proper go and when my personal trainer talked me through it last week it all made sense. I fear that I am the kind of person who needs someone standing over me, both to force me to do it, but also to make sure I am not damaging myself. Having said that I did OK today. I mainly got stuff right (I think) and the proper men didn't openly laugh at me or the pathetic weights I was working with and I managed a good 25 minute session of walking and sprinting on the running machine. I must fight old age by convincing my body that I am young and the only way to do that is to turn into a kind of white-haired Superman by the time I am 50.
Goal one is to fit back into the suits I bought two years ago by the time the next tour is properly underway. That's just economical.
I have tried so many times to become a less unfit person and have catalogued the temporary successes and the abject failures here. But this time, more than any other time, we'll get it right.
Sorry I just started singing an old World Cup song. Obviously it will go wrong. But I am hope over experience personified and I have to aim for a healthy fifties, if I am going to be around to put my kid through college in my sixties.
I already feel much better for it. And I think in the long run it will give me the energy I need to cope with the rigours of work and my boisterous and insane daughter, who got into about three seriously dangerous situations in the two hours I was looking after her at the end of her day. The most scary one was when she jumped up and tried to run across the bathroom, slipped on some water, but luckily landed on her back with her head on my feet. However much new energy I get, it will not be enough to keep up with the new levels of energy she has on a daily basis. So my marriage is safe. From this side at least. To be fair it always was. But God knows how my wife will feel when she realises she's married to someone in their fifties. I will just pretend it hasn't happened. Which it hasn't yet. Or am I pretending?
Phoebe is already over the sneeze thing and back to treating me with the disdain I deserve. Even though I saved her life. Or more accurately, even though I failed in my fatherly duties and allowed her to put herself in danger and happened to get lucky with the direction that she fell in.
