Like a Duck to Water

DO YOU LIKE the duck picture? That is supposed to be me in a swimming pool. Do you know that I was forced into weekly swimming lessons by my Mum aged six. I hated them so much I spent entire sessions in tears. So I must like swimming to even be considering it now. Swimming is the only sport I genuinely love. I'm still looking for swimming trunks I know I've got. One pair is baggy, the other is 1910 style, kind of like cycling shorts. I'm too tubby for the close-fitting ones. They only work when you're doing the swimming strictly as recreation, which I'm not. I'm swimming for thinning. The major reason for doing it is in order to be Calm and Stress-Free. I get very stressed very easily. And I don't think it is "anxiety" as such, it's more Stress than Anxiety. I don't have the cognitive style anxious people have, turning things over and over in their heads. I tend not to think about things, or to think about them so distantly they're vaguely real. But I've heard sports are like a drug. And being as I'm hell-bent on leaving a life of drugs Behind Me I need any new drug I can try. I have to wait till next week when the DSS deign to pay me. This getting money every 2 weeks instead of weekly thing they want us to do is not working for me. It means I keep running out of money now and I don't have the £5 spare swimming requires. And I'm not feeling fit enough (yet) to walk four miles there and back. Which I will do when I get on a roll. Keeps you even fitter walking an hour and a bit there and back!

And how was your day?!

How Was Your Day?

I HAVE DECIDED to manufacture my own happy-chemicals through diet and exercise because this is what I wrote just now: Oh my head is running out of happy chemicals. I feel very stressed, or rather I did earlier. All about an appointment.

So instead of popping a Valium or two I'm going swimming, which I like. And I'm sure afterwards that I'll feel better.

The idea that heroin completely disrupts the body's natural opiates, the endorphins, that you access through exercise, is patently untrue. Because I feel better when I go out walking.

I'm a heroin addict (actually a methadone addict) and I do feel better when I go out walking. So I must still have active endorphins.

If walking makes me better, swimming can only make me Much Better.

Queue into this today's Morrisons trip. Donuts. And not only Donuts but Raspberry ones. Now I'm going to have to do twice as much swimming. I haven't thrown any out of the window (yet) so I live in hope.

And how was your day? Did anybody do any swimming? I need COURAGE PLEASE to get my stark naked body into that pool. Because that's what it's going to be like that dream even I have had (as a child) of going to school, going wherever and being stark naked. And that's what I have to do. Strip off (in a cubicle; they DO have cubicles still, right?) strip off in a cubile and be As Good As Naked in a pool full of strangers who all want to swim boring lengths when you may as well time yourself and swim all over the place as I do. I do stuff like breathe out then sit cross legged at the bottom and make the lifeguard think I'm dying.

So how was your day. C'mon. Comments please:~~~~~~~


Illustrated: this is exactly how I look when I'm swimming. And if you believe that you really Will Believe Anything..!

Going Swimming

MY FRIEND ANNA GRACE is doing gym membership stuff. She does this thing when you can use a step machine or other machine at a cinema, while watching a movie! That is so American!

So I decided instead of getting laughed out of the boxing club I was going to go swimming. I have about 2 stone I want to lose. That's about 14kg or 28 lbs. An unsympathetic doctor (ooo where you gonna find one of those?! Try a prison. Try a drug clinic!) one of them they'd tell me I'm ideal weight. Bullshit I am I'm overweight I hate having any fat on me so I have to do Water Torture x3 a week. I looked up the prices. Without a special card it costs £6 with a bus or about £5.50 at the really posh one or about £3.80 at the less posh one. I was going to walk there to use up more calories. If I can eat one meal divided in three and cut alcohol out I should be able to lose weight despite antipsychotics. I know this sounds OTT but you have to be strict. One meal means a BIG meal, about 1500 calories. I can easily survive on that much. Most of the population of the world eats between 1000 and 1500 calories a day. I've been to India and eaten with the natives. I know.

Risperidone like most atypical antipsychotics causes weight gain and everyone says I look fat. Not that they use that word. They say I put on weight since January when I had that breakdown and literally exhausted myself so bad I felt physically sick from exhaustion. If I could keep up a level of activity I could get really thin and lithe. Last thing I want to be is that steroidal look. I want the karate-type look.

I would quite like to go swimming while in my "elevated mood" that would be fantastic.

Exercise always makes my mood go higher. I need to sort this shit out. I'm less scared of going swimming than I am of going into town and buying paints. Paints are stressful. Swimming I've done endless times before and it's the only sport I genuinely like.

OK so remind me in 3 weeks time I said I'M NEVER GOING SWIMMING IN LONDON. EVER. NEVER EVER GOING.

If I say that then I'll definitely go. I only make resolutions these days to break them... ha ha ha!

0420 OK I don't know how much weight I wanna lose or how fit I want to be but I wanna do something and swimming is it

I Wanna Learn How To Fly!

THIS IS SOMETHING I'VE ALWAYS wanted to do. Apart from potholing and caving the reverse pole of my fascination with has long been an obsession with flying. By flying I mean "proper" flying ~ in the open air. Not hang-gliding, which is, of course, merely gliding, but powered flight in a glorified canoe hanging from a human kite with a giant fan behind. Yes! Microlight! I would seriously like to have a go at this.

Nearest I've ever been to true flight (and I don't count being in the confines of an aeroplane: I wanna feel the wind in my hair, man!) is parakiting. This I have done about five times. Two or three times running behind a jeep in a field (which was the best) and twice on a Scottish loch behind a speedboat. Most people who do this do it behind a boat. Running behind a landrover in a field of cut wheat is far rarer. I was only about nine. Just when you'd expect to get knocked off your feet and dragged at 30mph by the knees, suddenly the knees are trailing in the air and you're 20, 30, 50 feet or more up. I can't remember how high I actually went but it wouldn't have been over 100ft. Of course you stay well away from trees, but I think I'd have been able to look down on the canopy of an English oak... This is one of life's experiences I'm so glad to have had. I was only eight or nine when I first did it and wasn't scared a bit, just excited. I had to wear a crash helmet and do emergency drop-and-roll procedures among the haybails...

The latest I heard about exciting "true flight" was an English road team who are taking a vehicle by road, sea and AIR from England or Scotland, cross Channel to France, down Spain and across to Morocco and on to somewhere near Timbuktu. There in the Sahara, where nobody probably much cares about aerial regulations (or there aren't many/any) they get the true capabilities of their vehicle in action. Basically it's a dune-buggy type thing with a giant fan behind and a parascender's chute on string behind. So, providing they can get going properly without the chute dragging in the ground, theory is they take off and fly (for hundreds of miles, I believe the intention was...) They said they were looking forward to surprising African villages. Surprising!!?! You can say that again. Then again there's no limits to the antics of crazy Englishmen in the minds of most foreigners... What I'd be most cautious about would be landing. I mean: have they had much or any practice? They said restrictions were pretty great against operating said "car" in this country and you need a pilot's licence to do it. They made it sound like they were just going to get to the desert and take off...

... I hope they don't crash into a scorpion... (Hey it might stick them with its tail and puncture their tyres...)

What can compare to drugs? They miserably ask. Well I answer you: extreme sports most certainly can and it's my intention on my multimillion pound novels' royalties to launch myself high up in the air... I'll post photographs and youtubes once I'm up there!

Link: Wikipedia's article on microlight aviation ... (also known as ultralight in the United States and former British colonies)...

VIDEOS

1. This is exciting! (To me... !!) Yeah how, geektastic is this! MICROLIGHT FLIGHT...



2. This is from a brilliant documentary I found called MIRACLES IN BIRDS. Here's part 3 of documentary 2, to see the rest on my "random" blog, click here ...



3. IN THE NEWS: JADE'S WEDDING SMILES

Jade Goody, UK television's biggest reality star by far: made famous by Big Brother and OK Magazine, caused an international incident by going back in the "Celebrity Big Brother" house and doing "racism" on Indian actress Shilpa Shetty... went on Big Brother India only to get dramatically pulled out midway through thanks to unexpected medical test results returning a verdict of TERMINAL CERVICAL CANCER. This is really nasty. The girl whose popularity soared then plumetted is now riding, media profile wise at an all-time high with even the Prime Minister offering her best wishes earlier this week and the Justice Minister overriding her fiancee's post-jail curfew for 24 hours so they can spend their wedding night together click here to see those clips. A on tomorrow's "Wedding of the Year"... poor Jade, who doesn't expect to live out this year, reportedly sees tomorrow as her last chance to wed fiance Jack Tweedy. The £1 million +plus++ she's raising via magazine and TV deals will go in trust for her kids... How very sad this all is. I'm not a huge fan of Jade Goody but I'm gutted for her ...