Too much time

I have a lot of time looming in front of me (not my favourite thing) so I have decided that I am going to STRUCTURE this time so I don’t fall into the Jeremy Kyle/Loose Women trap too early and end up moulded to my sofa and giving in to the mean reds. In fact I’m quite excited about it (although obviously I would like it to be a parcel of time with a definite end so I can:

• enjoy my freedom
• not feel guilty about not working
• not start freaking out that the freelance financial cushion is getting too thin)

Plan one is to reverse office lardiness which has crept on in the past few months of sitting on my bum at a desk and means I can’t get my slightly fatter day jeans on let alone the magic jeans of power and also means my white trousers are languishing away in the spare room cupboard when they should be facing the grubby perils of tube travel on a daily basis. To achieve this I have bought a skipping rope which I am very excited about. I am actually allergic to most exercise but skipping is fun, makes you feel like a joyful child (until the day it rains and I don’t want to play obviously) and is very, very cheap (my skipping rope cost £1.77 - bargain!).

Plan two is to do some writing which means not neglecting my blog quite so much and also start doing something with the many scribbled notes I have lurking round the house. Actually I have been getting some inspiration recently (don’t know where from) and wrote quite a lot when I was home alone on Saturday night. Haven’t actually read it yet - it was probably bollocks. But anyway the great novel is not going to get written unless I put some pen to paper so it’s a start.

Plan three is to have one or two trips/social events planned per week so - at the moment - my diary is looking pleasantly full without being too full on scary (I used to love cramming ‘things’ into every moment of my week but I have come to realise that nowadays an overly full diary terrifies me - bless me in my dotage).

Plan four is to try and try and be a bit more positive about life in general. I did say I was going to try and do some 3BT of my own but then I realised I was basically far too cross with the world and despite every effort could only come up with three grumpy things. However, things are now on a slightly more even keel (despite impending joblessness) so I am going to try really hard to take note of some of life’s more positive moments and perhaps do a 3BT once a week.

So just need to devise my plan for bringing about world peace and then I’ll be set - well as long as those evil forces of daytime TV don’t conspire to suck me in.

Smaller balls please

As an armchair sports fan I usually limit myself to 22 men chasing a ball around a pitch or people driving unfeasibly fast and changing their tyres a tad too frequently but every so often I get hooked into another sporting occasion and like the rest of the country I’ve become somewhat preoccupied with the goings on in SW19.

So I was cooking dinner last night preparing for confirmation of another woeful collective British performance as Mr Murray seemed to have lost the plot…and then suddenly all was transformed. Not only was his grit and determination something of an inspiration - but the tennis was fab too. The men’s game has become so much more interesting in recent years. Even though they’re serving consistently faster than ever, the game has become much more rounded - there are real rallies and real excitement.

Interestingly I think his performance last night will do more for his popularity than if he’d won in straight sets. Here in the UK we don’t really like our sportsmen to be too successful. We like them to make us suffer. Oddly as a nation we’re actually happier when a sportsman (or woman) doesn’t do that well. We like the opportunity to moan. Hmmm…well I’ll get back in my sporting analysis box as I seem to have come over all serious.