Sunday, 9 November 2003 - 3:51 PM GMT

Running will get you fit, however it won't get you a flat stomach. And sit-ups are a waste of time - You need to crunch. And I don't mean on two day old microwaved carrots..

Sunday, 9 November 2003 - 4:38 PM GMT

Crunch? is that the lying on back, bringing legs and head up together?

Sunday, 9 November 2003 - 4:52 PM GMT

no, you should hang upside down from a bar across a doorway and, hands on ears, bring your head up to touch your knees. My old flatmate did that, and she had a six-pack and a really impressive selection of powertools.

Sunday, 9 November 2003 - 5:08 PM GMT

I stay in shape by semi-regular exercise and not eating complete meals. Half portions that wouldn't fill up a child are too much for me. Tis' why I'm so svelte and wonderful.

Sunday, 9 November 2003 - 8:53 PM GMT

Come swimming with me. Under the thick layer of blubber eclipsing it entirely, I'm sure I must have an amazing six-pack. Flip turns are the answer.

Sunday, 9 November 2003 - 9:26 PM GMT

Is she single? :D

That's so far from my reality the wimpiness if I even tried it would be legendary.

I was the kid who never hit the ball in games at school. In the last two years, they allowed you to take numpty subjects like 'keep fit' or 'meditation' instead of sport, which generally translated as if you can keep the teacher chatting long enough about inconsequential things, the most exercise you'll do is getting changed.

Sunday, 9 November 2003 - 9:28 PM GMT

Having seen photographs of your nipples, recently, I can but applaud your toned bod, Paul. All this and a blog.

Swoon.

Sunday, 9 November 2003 - 9:30 PM GMT

I do appreciate the invite (very much!), but I've been swimming with you. After the eight lengths it takes to wear me out for a week, there's another thirty to forty minutes shivering by the edge, watching you go faster than anyone without dolphin genes should be able to.

Then you get out and tell me you cut it short because I was there. I think crap sportswomen need crap sports buddies. You're an athlete!

Sunday, 9 November 2003 - 9:43 PM GMT

I'm sorry, I feel so mean.
Well, apparently shopping counts as exercise - do you want to join me in a couple of circuits of Selfridges' lingerie department next week-end?

Sunday, 9 November 2003 - 10:22 PM GMT

A little bit of a roll is kind of sexy, not a spare tire, but the kind that makes your belly button squinch up a little bit, amd I think I've revealed more than I meant to, so just pretend like I didn't post this.

Sunday, 9 November 2003 - 11:40 PM GMT

I used to loathe Aerobics, but had a trump card as they made us do trampolining in first year, which severely f*cked my knees. The doctor who first treated them knew straight away which school I was at, and my dad didn't sue the school in exchange for me being able to skive any PE lesson I didn't feel like doing.

So I did weight-training with the lads instead of aerobics. Typically.

Aye, she's single, but bare in mind my nickname for her was "head fuck"

Sunday, 9 November 2003 - 11:43 PM GMT

I told Vanessa just the same thing on Thursday! Who wants to snuggle on an ironing board anyway?

Monday, 10 November 2003 - 12:17 AM GMT

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat's more like it! And any web-stalkers can hide behind the 'nude strapless bras'.

(I feel mean now, but i do have a very clear memory of wondering if you'd been swimming for three hours or four, and you got out of the pool, and said "that's one Mars Bar worth". Scared the hell out of me.)

Monday, 10 November 2003 - 12:25 AM GMT

That's a lovely photo blog. Especially all and every piccies of cats.

She looks a bit minging, but i think it's probably the sheer proximity of the nasty carpet.

Monday, 10 November 2003 - 6:21 AM GMT

Making this all about me, as is my wont:

I was always terrible at gym in school. Terrible. Always the cliche kid who got picked last for any sporting event. Even when I was a senior, there were freshman who got picked before me. Humiliating.

The only time I've ever been able to exercise consistently was when several maniacs in Smokey the Bear hats were standing over me screaming abuse and threatening me with hateful things. When I got back from Basic I was in decent shape, and I kept up the running and push ups for all of maybe four days after my return to civilian life, and then one day said 'fugg this' and instantly reverted to porkdom again.

All the diet books that tell you 'you cannot make fundamental changes in your lifestyle for someone else, you have to do it for YOU' are full of horseshlt. The only time I've ever lost weight on a diet since Basic was when the girl I was living with at the time asked me to, and helped, by basically going on the diet with me and encouraging me to stay on it and taking out diet books and teaching me to count calories. I dropped probably thirty pounds. But I only did it to please her. For myself, well, people aren't going to like me and women aren't going to sleep with me if I'm fit and obnoxious rather than fat and obnoxious, and if I'm not going to be well liked I can at least be well fed (and lazy). Besides, it's good for the self esteem to disregard society's shallow ideas of beauty and just say to yourself 'I'm just going to look like this for a while, and fuggem if they don't like it'.

The good news is, with all the genetic mapping and such like, they should come up with a breakthrough to allow people to stay young and healthy and look like whatever they want pretty much forever... right after I perish of decrepitude and/or some sort of massive cardiac event. Since I think I have about ten years on you, you might get lucky, if you keep eating the carrots.

Monday, 10 November 2003 - 9:32 AM GMT

it's my mate Svens photoblog, he has an impressive beard.

Actually, she's considered by many to be fsking gorgeous, although less so since she grew her hair long and went femme, which doesn't really work when your shoulders are that broad.

Monday, 10 November 2003 - 4:44 PM GMT

Just thinking about exercise does add muscle, according to research.

Monday, 10 November 2003 - 5:50 PM GMT

An iron?

Monday, 10 November 2003 - 7:28 PM GMT

Surely, she probably is. I'm being a Bloody Gurl (tm) - she's lying next to a filthy minging carpet, and I can't take my mental Dyson off it.

Hah! As if.

Monday, 10 November 2003 - 7:29 PM GMT

Well.... um .... at the risk of sounding unpopular, it appeals to me. I guess that makes me the odd one, then.

Monday, 10 November 2003 - 7:31 PM GMT

Yay, Martin!

Wait a minute, does that mean I have to stick to visualising eating cookies?

Monday, 10 November 2003 - 7:37 PM GMT

Freshman? Basic? Smokey the Bear hats? Senior?

Can you translate into English for us non-colonials, please? I know we watch a lot of your movies, but honestly, we're not quiet that fluent just yet....

Monday, 10 November 2003 - 8:30 PM GMT

Could you visualise eating these?

Monday, 10 November 2003 - 8:56 PM GMT

Ugh. More than that, I can visualise them at the other end, unsurprisingly.

Although, in my insomniac delirium, I just found myself defending people's right to make and serve sperm salad dressing over on Eurotrash's blogspace.

Bet that comes back to haunt me.

Tuesday, 11 November 2003 - 6:00 AM GMT

I was writing perfectly good English. I'll try to translate into idiomatic British patois, however...

Freshman and Senior are the youngest and eldest levels in the highest sort of pre-university school, which we call 'high school'. I suppose you call them 'first form' and 'fifth form' and other dreadful and appalling phrases that make no sense whatsoever, but I don't know what those correspond to. In general, in high school over here, when kids first arrive, they are 'freshmen', which usually corresponds to 9th grade. When kids graduate, they are 'seniors', which usually corresponds to 12th grade. The two grades in between are 'sophomore' and 'junior' years, respectively (10th and 11th).

We use the same terms for college (university) years as well... freshman, sophomore, junior, senior.

Basic = Basic Training, or, military training, or, boot camp. A Smokey the Bear hat is a drill hat, one of those awful brown leather things with the round tops and the wide round brims and chin straps, such as Canadian Mounties wear. In the American military, drill instructors wear them. Those of us who have had any military experience hate them profoundly.

So, in other words, what I was saying was, even when I was nearly graduated from school, I was still chosen last for athletic teams in gym class, and kids much younger than I were chosen first, which was rather humiliating. I also said that the only time I have ever exercised consistently in my life was when mean men with guns were bullying me constantly into doing it, and I quit as soon as they did. As some character or other in a Robert B. Parker novel once noted, "military training works because they threaten you and they mean it". Or something like that.

Tuesday, 11 November 2003 - 11:37 AM GMT

yum

Tuesday, 11 November 2003 - 6:07 PM GMT

Oi, colonial boy; did the anecdote merit all the parochial stuff, then? ;-P

Allow it, as they say in Sarf East Lahnnan.