The birthday boy thinks about ways of getting fitter.

Today my birthday age matches the year in which I was born. I am now 56 and was born in 1956. Only once will that happen in my life unless I survive to 2056. So happy birthday to me and thankyou to all my Facebook friends for your birthday wishes and thanks too to those who have sent cards and thanks to Rick and Janette who are taking me out for a meal tonight at Piccolino's in Nottingham. http://www.piccolinorestaurants.co.uk/nottingham.html

I'm not a sporty person, you have to know that about me. At school I was crap at the egg and spoon race, skipping was a nightmare of  bad co-ordination, near self strangulation and savage rope burns and I almost broke an ankle in a rather rough sack race event when two of the fattest boys in the class for twelve year olds fell over in front of me ( I was third from last anyway) and I went arse over juvenile tit and spent two weeks off school getting familiar with constant bags of ice cubes around my practically frozen purple and blue coloured right ankle. The two fat boys, Toby and Terry Jenkins just bounced away without injury. At senior school I cried off all ball sports, was terrified about vaulting the horse, and jumping hurdles. I refused to climb the rope ladders due to a terror of heights and more rope burns and the only sport I excelled in was cross country running. I was surprisingly good at this and loved to splosh through wet fields and hidden amounts of dog poo and run down country lanes in willy exposing shorts and floppy green flash tennis shoes. Nothing better than a scolding hot shower to ease those muscle aches and wash away the mud from my skinny legs.  After school I got interested in cycling for fun and for a while followed the Milk Race and The Tour de France in the media if not on my bike itself.

Then the seventies arrived and me and mate enrolled in a Shukokai karate class for a while because we were big Bruce Lee fans and couldn't find a Kung Fu class in Derby at the time. We lived, breathed and idolised Bruce Lee and loved to watch the TV series, Kung Fu, too. The karate classes were physically tough and we didn't stay long. At home my Dad suggested I use his abandoned Bullworker to build up some muscle. I over did it and put my back out for the first time in my life.

Crossing the channel

hmmm, sexy shorts.

It wasn't that I hadn't been adventurous.I loved to go hiking for miles and, by my mid thirties, I'd been caving and sailed in a yacht across the English channel to Cherbourg and back and almost got the crew and myself marooned near the Isle of Wight. Later in life I took up Tai Chi and loved the slow exercise and only really finished the classes due to not being able to afford them, being out of work at the time.

Today I have been amusing myself by taking photos and thinking up ways of exercise that I could adopt to get myself fitter.

extreme ironing

weight lifting

orienteering

indoor running on the spot

Spatula tennis

Horse riding

Skate boarding! This is the shot seconds before I fell off the skate board.

fell walking

hugging competitions

Men's Health magazine exercises

barefoot wet rocks walking

dry land swimming

And so back to my birthday. Thanks to Rick and Janette for a lovely evening out tonight. Fabulous company as always.