I awoke New Year’s morning all bright and breezy, but after foregoing my coffee I started to sniffle and snore. So up from a snooze more than two hours later, I treat myself to a Pepsi – diet of course. And fixed with caffeine of a more moderate flavour, after eggs but no sausage and thinly buttered slices of toast, there stood 2017, erect for the taking, and I was straight out the door as I pulled on my coat.
Yet what is it with the gym and with everybody staring, and my pink lycra leggings which seem to conjure plump rolls? And why is it only my back which seeps and shows sweating, and what’s fun in pretending to run, climb or row? The weight machine cowed me with its incessant clanging, and my right knee clicked as I pushed up from the floor. And the locker rooms smelled and they lacked all decorum, and in the showers someone’s towel flicked me as I reached for my cubby-hole.
So it was off into town, time for lunch, the joy of eating! How I laughed at the man who spelled out guac-a-mole! Yet the vegan bean burrito soon had me belching, and the mock-meat hamburger had me drooling for more. Putting hunger aside, it was time to be crafty, and how could I eat with hands covered in clay? Alas the pot that I made suffered structural deficits, and water flowed swiftly through my too-simple bowl. I would have gone for a walk only then it began raining, so I wiped myself off and gave my chauffeur a call.
A foreign language can wait until I know what I’m packing, melodious piano under my fingers sounds like click-clacking, I could paint but what artist ever lacked the utensils and I squint and the colours don’t mix anyway, and though I stretch and sit for meditation I soon twitch lacking patience and besides there’s always a text, game, or show. Best to celebrate the year’s turning with a takeaway pizza and a moving picture, a romcomicelfepic that I’ve seen ten times before.
And then the lure of the sofa and after that slumber I flick on the computer, a step up from cathode. A whole world at my fingers, Facebook friends who live yonder, and Twitter, and YouTube, all that glitters blue-gold. And would you look – before I know it, I’ve gone done and blown it, and whistled past bedtime whiling the long night away. But I’ll be back later this morning, gains and losses, who is counting, and there’s only 364 days left to go.
