God I hurt. My muscles are as frayed as the knees of these jeans and all the tiny broken threads are ribboning pain throughout my entire body. It hurts when I sit down. It hurts when I stand up. It hurts when I walk. It hurts when I raise my arms. It hurts when I type. It hurts when I turn the page of a book. It hurts when I lie on the floor and watch telly. Whatever I do, even if I do nothing - it hurts.
It probably doesn’t help that my legs are a glorious melange of technicolour bruises where I’ve hit the coffee table, each bruise a ducks egg of riotous pain. Admittedly the fact that I spend a large proportion of every day prodding the bruises just to see how much they hurt isn’t helping the healing process but I can’t help it. It’s like having toothache. You have to prod a bit just to remind yourself of how painful it is.
The net result of all this pain is that I am in a foul mood. It’s not being helped by the fact that my blood sugar has hit an all time low, gone right through the red and come out on the negative side of empty. For the past three days I’ve been living on watermelon, sardines and black coffee. You try it and see how good your mood is (never mind your mood, try your breath. Two bottles of Listerine down and I’m still swallowing sardines). Lest anyone mention that this is perhaps not the healthiest of diets, I point you in the direction of Michael Holden who won the 1999 Light Heavyweight championship on a diet of the same (except he ate tinned tuna not sardines but I don’t like tuna – tinned or otherwise). It’s not exactly a recipe for healthy eating in the long term but for a month or so it doesn’t hurt (other than those people you breathe on) and it gets results. Not perhaps the same sort of results as the black coffee and amphetamine diet which used to be a favourite of mine when I was modelling, but somehow the older I get (not that I’m getting old btw, Herebe is now years older than I am) the more I value my kidneys.
What it doesn’t do it guarantee a good mood (something it has in common with the amphetamine and black coffee diet). Which is probably fine if you’re aiming to knock seven shades out of someone and become light heavyweight champion but isn’t so good if the most energetic you get in a day is moving a set of three lines .14 mm to the left. So right now I am not happy. Right now I make Satan look like Santa Claus. Right now I’m a simmering mass of seething hatred waiting to boil over into physical violence of the pounding kind. Or at least I would be if it didn’t hurt so much to raise my arms.
It’s all my mums fault. And my godmothers. And her friend. It was their bloody idea in the first place. “It will be fun” they said. “Just three days” they said. “A slow meander from pub to pub” they said. “It will be a bonding experience” my godmother said. (Not only does my godmother say such things she actually believes them too bless her. She’s probably right if by bonding experience she means four people united in the desire to do away with the other three in the most painful way possible by the end of day two). “R’s dropped out and I’ll have to pay for the room anyway” mum said. I’ll give them their due; I didn’t have to agree to go with them. No-one twisted my arm, although it would have been a bloody sight less painful than the way I feel right now if they had. It just seemed like a good idea at the time (A phrase which really should have warned me because everybody knows that things which seem like a good idea at the time always turn out to be a really bad idea in retrospect.)
I suppose that I was seduced by the romanticism of it all. A gentle stroll through some of the most scenic scenery in Scotland – God knows Scotland doesn’t have a lot to recommend it but even it’s most vehement critic (me) has to admit that it has the market cornered when it comes to scenery. I had this picture in my head – little lunches in country pubs, hip flasks among the heather, quiet dinners of fresh local produce and maybe (definitely) the odd dram (or two) slowly sipped in the sinking sunset of a Scottish summers eve. It’s a sad fact of life that my imagination is not only overactive but that the rose tinted filter sticks. I know this. It’s got me into trouble before and will get me into trouble again. So I agreed to go, hung up the receiver, wandered back to the computer and googled the West Highland Way.
It has its own website you know. It’s a really good website. It tells you all about the West Highland Way; its history and the history of the various villages you pass through. It lists the flora and fauna you might be lucky enough to see. It suggests accommodation and places of interest to stop at should you wish to break off your journey (there’s a distillery tour which I’m counting on to ease the pain somewhat). It also - in what I consider to be a bit of a throwaway fashion - points out that the West Highland Way stretches from Glasgow to Fort William and is a distance of approximately 97 miles, most of which seems to be vertical and not the easy downhill sort of vertical at that.
All things considered, it’s not the distance which is filling me with dread. I know that in order to complete it in three days we’ll have to step a bit lively but that shouldn’t cause any problems. Mum runs 10-15 miles a night for fun (if you ask me it’s a warped and twisted way of having fun and I consider myself somewhat of an authority on warped and twisted ways to have fun but hey if it makes her happy), their friend T has walked the Great Wall of China and then swung up through Tibet and cut through Russia on her way back to Gateshead and anyone watching my godmother cut a swathe through any standing between her and the Ischiko rail during Fenwicks French Salon sale would call odds on in her favour against any heavyweight champ you care to mention – Michael Holden wouldn’t stand a chance. I’m the weak link in all of this and I know it. Long gone are the days when I could blithely run up the escalators at Kings Cross (and from the Piccadilly line too – an ascent which roughly equates to the north face of the Eiger) and then light up with nary a raise in my heart rate, an ability which was solely due to the fact that the one benefit of knocking back copious amounts of amphetamines and dancing your ass off (literally) in some dingy club round the back of Kings Cross Station – was that your general level of fitness increased exponentially until it was nearly as high as you were.
In general though, I don’t believe in exercise. I never have. I don’t see the point of it. Not exercise for the sake of exercise alone anyway. If there’s a point at the end of physical exertion – fine. If you need me to dig the garden, I’ll not only call a spade a spade but I know how to double dig. If it’s wood you need chopping then just chuck an axe in my general direction and I’ll make like Gimli at the battle of Helms Deep. But beating the clock for my own personal satisfaction has never appealed unless by beating the clock you mean throwing the thing at the wall and snuggling back down for a lie in. Given the choice of being stared at in a gym by men with greasy perms and orange pecs or lying on the sofa with a good book (or indeed any book) I’ll choose the book every time. Just as long as I can fit into my jeans without (or even with) the aid of a coat hanger then I’m happy. Beauty is after all only skin deep.
Given my known and proclaimed antipathy to exercise, it’s hardly surprising that everyone I’ve mentioned my “holiday” to has sniggered. (BTW, I’m using the term “holiday” incredibly loosely. My definition of what constitutes a holiday is a period of time which involves no exertion other than the amount of energy it takes to stretch an arm out to the side and pick up the big glass with the paper umbrella in it). At the thought of me walking for three (and a bit) days, Herebes depression has vanished like snow in the springtime, F now periodically takes a break from creating weird and wonderful guitar sounds to wander through to the kitchen, point at me, mutter the words “97 miles, walking” and then wander back into the computer room convulsed with laughter. Even my mum has a twitch whenever the walk is mentioned (although that could just be the paranoid psychosis which accompanies any of the sisters when they realise they’ll have to spend more than an hour in the company of another sister) and it was her bloody idea for me to accompany them in the first place.
Look, I’m not completely dumb. I know that this walk is going to hurt. In fact I’d go so far as to say that I know this walk is going to hurt a fucking lot. Of course I know this. The overactive imagination and the rose filter only ever last as long as it takes for you to commit yourself to whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. Almost before I’d hung up the phone, I know that the whole strolling through scenic Scotland little lunches in country pubs vision was bullshit – although not only have I bought a (large) hipflask, I’ve also borrowed one from my Auntie Jo so that part of my illusion will at least remain intact. I know that the reality will be me plodding through clarts in the pissing rain while plotting matri, aunti and frieni – cide. I know that the reality will involve being eaten alive by midges and worse than that I know that no matter how waterproof the container claims to be, my cigarettes will get soggy. Or, and I’ll put a million pounds on this happening , half way between nowhere and the arse end of nowhere, my lighter will stop working even though it has loads of gas left in it.
None of this is a problem. Despite the sniggers, despite my lack of physical fitness – the thought of walking 97 miles in three days does not faze me at all. I have legs. I have willpower. Where’s the problem?
So it’s not that. Oh no. It’s way more important than that. It’s what the fuck you’re supposed to wear while walking thirty-two and third miles a day (I worked it out) which is not only doing my head in but is causing me to balance on a bloody Pilates ball while chucking weights about. It’s that worry which is causing me to eat so many bloody sardines that give it another three days I’ll be balancing the damn ball on the end of my nose and clapping the weights together like I’m a fucking sea lion.
(I’m using the term balance extremely loosely here too. I don’t know if any of you have ever attempted any of that Pilates stuff. If you have then you will sympathise – unless you’re like herebe and were born to be fit. If you’ve never attempted Pilates before - don’t bother. Despite all statements to the contrary – Pilates is not a gentle form of exercise designed to align mind and body. It’s a vicious and undignified way of going on and it’s made even more vicious and undignified if there is a coffee table anywhere in the vicinity of you attempting it.)
You see, I’ve thought about it and considered all the options and I’m very much afraid that for this particular venture, combat trousers will have to be worn. In fact I know that they will have to be worn. You can’t be plodding through the pissing rain of a nicotineless hell, plotting how to commit matri, auntie and freni-cide with no other weapons than a half empty hip flask and a defunct lighter while you’re wearing jeans. Jeans – as anyone who ever tried to get them to fit properly by sitting in a bath full of water while wearing them will attest – are a bugger to wear wet. It’s a bit of a pity really because at the last count I had over eleven pairs of the damn things, but there you go.
According to the West Highland Way Website the correct trousers to wear while walking are “designed with walkers in mind”. Apparently they often have many “handy pockets”. Now I don’t know what walkers the designers had in mind while designing walking trousers but I’d hazard a guess that they were thinking of their worst enemies. For a start, the only colour the damn things come in is beige. Over a million different shades of beige, it’s true but all beige is the same – distinctly unflattering to just about everybody in the known universe (and that includes all life on other planets). Secondly, trousers are designed for walking are not trousers at all – they’re slacks. You can tell that they’re slacks because they have an elasticated waist and it’s a well known fact that the step from wearing slacks to buying a big slipper, an all in one leisure suit and one of those padded trays so that you can eat your tea while watching Countdown is but a small one and I have no desire to cross that particular Rubicon. Ever.
So hiking trousers are out and the only option left is combats.
It’s not that I have a problem with combats per se. In fact I like combat trousers. Not the watered down version you find on the high streets obviously and definitely not “cargo” pants but proper combats – the sort which might potentially have seen actual combat- are dead cool. On anybody except me. Because I don’t suit the damn things. I’d love to. But I don’t and when it comes to clothes I’m a perfectionist. I’d rather go barefoot than wear the wrong sort of shoes with an outfit. It upsets me to the point of almost physical discomfort. This doesn’t mean that I’m one of those women who is constantly doing her hair and makeup and looks like she stepped out of the pages of a magazine. Hell I work from home – F’s lucky if I take a shower and change out of my pjs in the morning. But, way before “What not to Wear” I’d ripped off the rose coloured spectacles, looked at my body coldly and dispassionately in the most unflattering light I could find (daylight), worked out which was my best (and more importantly my worst) side, worked out how to accentuate the positive and detract from the negative and decided what shapes suited me.
This is why under no circumstances will you ever see me in one of those A-line gathered under the bust dresses, I’d rather die than wear completely flat shoes ( I’ve got calf muscles) and although I absolutely adore bias cut skirts it’d be more flattering if I just wore big broad black and white horizontal stripes. For better or worse I’ve got an old fashioned eastern European body, which is to say I’m tall and I’ve got a bust and a waist and hips (oh god do I have hips). I don’t want that – I’d much rather be one of those teensy weenie indie London chicks with an urchin cut, big eyes and prepubescent body but I’m not, so I just have to make the best of it (and pray they all get osteoporosis and age really badly). My cousin J is. She can fling on a baseball cap, combats and a sweatshirt and look ingénue. I do the same and look like a Kalashnikov wielding sergeant in the tank repair core of the Red Army.
So the only option left to me, is the Sara Connor look. You remember her. The one from the second Terminator film. The one with triceps you could crack nuts with (and working with Arnie I’m sure she did). She didn’t look ingénue. She looked a damn sight meaner than a Kalashnikov wielding sergeant in the tank repair core of the Red Army. I’ve got two weeks. All I need are the triceps, the six pack and the mirrored sunglasses. Excuse me while I go crash into the coffee table again.
