In need of support I
I RECEIVED an email from a fitness firm promising to help make me beach body ready.
This was totally unnecessary as I already have a body that is perfectly adequate for the job.
My pecs may not be as good as David Beckham’s and my six-pack may be a tad floppy round the edges, but it’s the only body I’ve got and, if I do go to the beach, that’s the one I will be taking with me.
I was not offended by the offer, although adverts showing perfect bodies sometimes raise the public ire.
They set impossible targets and cause body shame, folk say. GOT out of bed the other day with a bad limp.
An old football injury, I told my wife, as if I had received it playing against the Germans on the Western Front in 1914.
Actually, it’s been dodgy since the 1980s and I’m convinced it’s because of the rigours of Sunday football.
All that mud at Leeds Road Playing Fields and Bradley Park and tackles to make World Cup players volunteer for an early bath. The generation that grew up with Chopper Harris and Norman Hunter took no prisoners.
It had probably been exacerbated during the previous day’s morning walk through the woods. One slip on a tree root and it can return like a piece of forgotten shrapnel.
But this time it was so bad I couldn’t walk it off with my morning constitutional.
The limp was pronounced – and no, I’m not going to do that old gag – and left me feeling my age for once.
Maria suggested I see the doctor but he’s busy enough, so I asked her to get me an ankle support for a sprain when she went into town, and I bravely took to the settee to watch football and wait until she returned.
During my playing days, I’ve seen blokes wear ankle supports like war wounded veterans. But the one she got me said: “For injured, weak, arthritic or ageing ankles.”
I wanted the sporting edition. Had she got the wrong one?
Right or wrong, it was tight and took ages to get onto an ankle that had swollen and become even more painful.
Any elderly person would need
But Britain is in the midst of an obesity epidemic so maybe we should be setting targets.
We have the highest rate of adult Kwik Fit Fitters to put one of these on, probably with the aid of a pneumatic tyre wrench.
At last, the pair of us managed it and I fell back on the settee exhausted. It had been much more strenuous than walking in the woods.
“What will you do when you have a shower?” she said.
“Keep it on. The trouble we had fitting it, it can stay there until December.”
I limped out to the car on an errand and bumped into our neighbours – a lovely young couple who run and go cross-country cycling. Rachel asked what I had done. “Sprained my ankle in the woods,” I said proudly, as if I had been training for a half-marathon.
Six hours later, back on the settee immobile and in increasing pain, I’d had enough of the ankle support but we couldn’t get it off. The ankle bone had become super-sensitive and Maria’s efforts had me yelping.
I tried to ease it down but it was much too tight. Where was that tyre wrench when I needed it?
In desperation, I cut it off with scissors.
Coffins and burial plots are being made bigger as the population expands, and a firm has started making mannequins weighing between 28 stone and 40 stone to train emergency ambulance and fire crews.
What is worse is that children are also carrying far too much weight.
Not everyone can look like Becks or Kate Moss, and the country would be a strange place if we all did, but most of us probably need to shed a few pounds for the sake of our health.
As for the beach, who cares? You take what you’ve got and have good time.
“Well, that was £15 well spent,” Maria said.
The relief made it worthwhile and, as I lay back with it raised on a cushion with the air to cool it, I realised it wasn’t a sprained ankle at all. It was gout.
I occasionally get it in my toes but this was the first time it had attacked an ankle and it hurt worse than Chopper Harris.
A day later and without a splint it’s already easing.
Just don’t tell Jamie and Rachel next door. They might think I’m getting old.