The machines! The machines!

It sometimes feels as if I spend my entire life counting the minutes until my eventual demise (at the age of a hundred and three, surrounded by gin, chocolate and satin pillows, thank you).

I revel in the eight-minute extra snooze that my alarm clock allows me. I count the time it takes to microwave my breakfast porridge. I tut and look at my watch while waiting for Mrs Persistently-Late to open the classroom door in the morning. Of course, I watch the clock (mostly on people’s blogs….) during the working day. Twice a week when I go to the hospital for my phototherapy I count off fifteen minutes soaking in the solution, five minutes drying time and ten minutes on the groovy light-machine thingy (I haven’t asked too many technical questions as there isn’t any point. If I am told the complicated answers my mind will immediately revert to thirteen-year-old type and start huffing and make me kick the floor and scowl and think about boys and huff a bit more because, like, nobody understands me).

If I go to the gym, sorry, when I go to the gym, I count the minutes on the treadmill. I count as if my very life depended on it because I’m fairly sure that sometimes it does. I make myself do half an hour* on the treadmill because it’s all that I can stand, and even this is pretty much beyond me. I’m signed up for the Race for Life this year and I know that at some point I really have to start training properly. However, my complete lack of commitment coupled with my abject failure to give up smoking when I go to the pub is hampering this slightly. So, a couple of times a week, I clamber clumsily onto the treadmill, lie to it about my weight (owing to paranoia that someone will see it if I tell the truth and it will be broadcast over the public address system: “Fat girl on treadmill three!!! Fat girl!! See the fat girl!!”), and spend thirty minutes in desperate discomfort, trying not to think about the ignominy of dropping dead in unfashionable trainers and a sports bra which should probably have been consigned to the bin around the time of David Blunkett’s first resignation. Just counting the seconds gets boring after about a minute and a half, and makes me feel slightly panicky to boot. So I irritate the bejesus out of everyone around me by continually pressing the button that changes the display from minutes to distance to km per hour to calories per hour to actual calories burned (which is wildly inaccurate owing to the fact that I have lied about my weight but I console myself by remembering that at least I’m burning off more calories than it says) to the pretty lights showing how long you’ve run without dropping dead and back to minutes. And then I do it again. Every time I press the button it beeps but I can’t hear it because I’ve got my iPod up loud which is also irritating to those around me because every so often I forget where I am and start singing along. Add to this the fact that I am generally red-faced, sweating and on the verge of collapse and it will be obvious why a) I don’t like going to the gym and b) nobody else likes it when I go to the gym. But go I must, if only because it means I can justify not losing any weight in a week that involved an eight-hour lager-drinking session and a curry by reminding myself smugly that muscle weighs more than fat and that’s why I’ve put on 2lb.


*Do you see how I have been ambiguous about my patheticness in the hope that it will seem as if I actually run for half an hour rather than owning up to** the reality of running for five minutes/sweating and gasping for three/running for five minutes/crying for ten/giving up that I actually achieve most times? I so rule!!

** Ah.