Flatten the curve? I thought they said ‘fatten the curve’!

WAIT! What? Those HSE guys said we need to ‘flatten the curve’? Makes sense now, but I think I misheard at the time. I could have sworn that Tony Holohan fella gave me a steely look out from the television a few weeks ago and said I need to self-isolate and fatten my curve.

Sure I thought that’s what all the panic buying was about, what with the trolley loads of food - topped with a 24-pack of toilet roll. Fattening the curve. Not that mine needed much additional help in that regard.

I have to admit that the closure of pubs, cafes and restaurants didn’t quite chime with the whole thing, but I went along with it anyway. Sure with the whole no sport to attend or watch on the telly, it made sense to pull back from the bar counter and shove a little closer to the kitchen table.

(If, in some past life, I’d ever been a Kerry footballer in the Micko era, I’d have been one of those fellas coming back after the Christmas break carrying a bit of extra timber and subjected to a few extra wire-to-wires to knock the winter arses of us.)

It’s even got to the stage where we’re miss-quoting the old Kerrygold ad and telling the wife that she can put a bit of spud on the butter.

As for taking the horse to France, he’d never make it out past the deep-fat fryer.

There are two types of people that are going to emerge from this Coronavirus-induced lock-down: skinny and the other kind. Never have some people walked so much or so far within two kilometres of their own homes. With the clocks springing forward a couple of weeks ago and the bright evenings stretching out almost as far as when Fergal Bowers appears on the Nine O’Clock News, it was time for the Lycra-clad lads and lassies to take to the highways and byways anyway. But now that walking is about all anyone is allowed do now by way of a pastime, one can hardly draw a leg or swing an arm for the amount of walkers out of an evening now. That’s for the ones so inclined.

The problem is that if you’re not walkin’ you’re eatin’. And I don’t suppose strolling over to flick the switch on the kettle for the umpteenth time counts as exercise. One of these days I’m expecting your one, Dr Eva, to hit me a slap with a baguette when I open the press in the kitchen for the tenth time before lunch.

It’s said that there’s a book in everyone, and the fear is that while this lock-down is going on that most people will try to write it out of themselves. As someone who squeezes a living out of words I should be all for that, but do we really want the Christmas book market to be flooded with ‘How I Not Only Survived But Thrived in the Coronavirus Lockdown’ or ‘My 19-Week Survival Guide to Covid-19’ or, heaven forbid, a compilation of all those painful and nonsensical emoji quizzes where someone thinks some footballer or town in Ireland can be accurately represented by a smiley face, an arrow, a fist, a tree and a clock. (Newsflash: it can’t be.)

My good wife tells me I should write a book, but the only thing down on paper so far is the title: Stick The Kettle On

There, Will Ya.

It hasn’t helped waistlines all round (no pun intended) the country that sport and leisure of every kind has ceased, and that gyms and swimming pools and squash courts are all closed. Even those who counted snooker halls as sporting venues have had to go without their weekly walk around the 12x6 foot Riley table.

There’s the old joke that goes: How do you know if someone has run a marathon? Answer: Because they will tell you over and over again.

So with that in mind I won’t bore anyone with how I joined a gym last year, beat an early-morning path to it for several months, and lost a decent few pounds in the process. Nor will I trouble anyone with the fact that things began to slip long before the Coronavirus took hold here or elsewhere. Let’s just say that the ‘all inclusive’ family holiday to Lanzarote late last year should have come with clearer warnings: ‘all you can eat’ doesn’t have to mean ‘eat all you can’. Suffice to say, we were still trying to shift the last of the Canary Island pounds when the gyms closed...

Now that we’ve realised that Doctors Holohan, Henry and the wonderfully named Cillian de Gascun were telling me that I needed to flatten, not fatten, the curve, that’s what I’m going to do. With Easter over now (Sunday started with proper scrambled eggs followed for the rest of the day with the chocolate type) and a clear run of nothingness ahead - no pints, no parties, no (Electric) Picnic - it’s time to get back on track. It’s time to paint on the Lycra and pump the bike; time to charge up the FitBit and get back jogging; time to push back from the table and get the scales moving in the other direction.

Of course, there’s going to be no Operation Transforwhateveritscalled type diary or vlog or any of that nonsense. Just a quiet, solitary effort to shed a few pounds and flatten the curve. With a prolonged lock-down forecast and a bracing recession to follow, everyone of us will have little choice but to tighten our belts in an economic sense. Makes sense that we try to tighten the other belt too. Sure what harm could it do?