On mortality and exercise

So in March of this year the Scottish Parliament brought in a ban on smoking in public places which after a lot of thought I couldn't help but agree with. As this coincided with the dawning realisation that I might not be quite as immortal as I previously thought and that that morning cough I was having wasn't all that normal or pleasant I decided that after 17 years this would be a good time to give up the old fags likesay.

This was one of the best decisions of my life. I had a pretty hard first week but the girl bought me The Easy Way to Stop Smoking after that and I've never really looked back. Everything smells nicer and tastes nicer and my morning cough seems to have mysteriously disappeared but I'm sure that's just a coincidence. It was a bloody good move but it's not what I'm really here to talk about.

Y'see for most of my life I've been a pretty thin bloke, anorexically so apparently though I disagree. Well since I gave up the fags and started living the good life with Rosa this has changed quite a lot and I've put on a couple of stone mostly in my brand new pooku.

In essence I've got fat.

Not morbidly obese or anything and not even particularly overweight when considering my height but definitely fat around the old belly area. Now I've never been particularly in shape but since I was so thin it didn't really matter and there isn't much opportunity for muscley surfers to kick sand in your face on the beaches of north-eastern Scotland so that wasn't a particular worry. Anyway lots of lassies like slim guys an a'that so no big deal. The problem with putting on weight though is that it really advertises that you're out of shape and whilst being thin can be cool looking like a tattie definitely isn't. I also don't like the idea of dodging the smoking heart attack bullet only get it from the fat bastard bullet.

So I've joined a gym.

I'm spending all the money I saved on fags humiliating myself in front of loads of fit people. I haven't actually got up the courage to try out the weights yet but I've been down swimming in the baths quite a lot and it's bloody hard I can tell you. It appears that I've swapped my luxurious life of chilling smoking fags, drinking beers and playing XBox for what may be a longer life of exercising until it hurts then doing a little bit more just to stretch myself and by and large I much preferred the fags and beer thank you very much. It's not helped by the fact that I'm marrying a Kiwi and those lunatics seem to think that exercise is actually lot's of fun and why don't we go walk a few munroes after we've swum ten miles!

Then again she's fantastic, I have 7 neices and nephews to watch grow up and heart attacks don't look like fun at all so it's all worth it.