New Year's good intentions and wassailing our lovely old apple tree

Normally I would skip breakfast as I have trained myself to drink black coffee rather than café latte, and actually don’t mind it any more. But because we are eating healthily these days I had two boiled eggs and was just about to scoff a bowl of Greek yogurt topped with a kilo of blue berries and thinking whether I could get away with some honey or maple syrup when Gianni said, ‘Isn’t it the gym induction today?’

‘What!’

Now, bit of back ground, Gianni was a national rower in his teens (what a hottie he must have been- Poldark good looks, and rippling muscles on a 6’4 frame) but that was a few beers ago. Before we started dating I was never more than a size 8-10. But Gianni lives and eats well, and I kept getting injured so the weight has been attempting to sneak up. We have been holding it back- until we moved we were members of a country club. I spent most of my days doing Zumba or Balance or Stretch, but not Pilates as it gives me whiplash and makes the crystals in my ears go off piste, and I naturally swerved anything too high impact as the light fittings would fall of the walls.

The Country Club was quite posh, everyone has the same designer vagina by the same surgeon, Kegel muscles so strong and tuned they could crack nuts or -mentioning no names Ms Ping-Pong- fire a speculum across a cubical in A&E, and the loos flushed with neat gin and the urine of pregnant horses also known as HRT.

Then a friend said she fancied playing tennis too. Before we knew it we were playing tennis at 8am in the morning, jumping around the net like leaping salmon in our ‘Lucky in love’ delightful tennis frocks, feather light racquets and more protective gear than gladiators. When I got pale and scared with breast cancer everyone rallied around- it turned out that everyone else had had it too, some got born again15 year old virgin boobs, another had a nipple tattooed on as the prosthetic kept floating off in the swimming pool. Oh the joy of early morning tennis, fresh fruit by the pool, a hot tub and swim. We thought those days would never end, but then we moved, my beloved bestie tennis player moved and it’s too far to get there now.

In Italy we don’t do much exercise. I can’t persuade Gianni to go out for a walk as a) he doesn’t do mud, b) he thinks we will be mistaken as wild boar and shot by hunters unless we get hi vis jackets, c) it’s too cold/hot/wet/sunny/early/late or time to eat and d) I got banned from walking in the woods by the locals when I got a TV crew all over the village (a long story starring a horse called Ribs. I’ll tell it next post).

Meanwhile, between litigation and writing my books, I’ve been sat at my desk padding a path to the fridge for months. It turns out I’m a stress eater- filling my cheeks like a hamster at every opportunity. But unlike a hamster I don’t spit and bury but swallow.

The inevitable happened. With an exercise void unfilled, the weight piled on with alacrity. One second I was in my arty and creative baggy velvet dungarees, the next they were snug filled with a Winne-the-poohesq silhouette. Christmas I was horrified to find I couldn’t do up my jeans. Bypassing size 14 altogether, I had ballooned to a whacking size 16 (albeit with a low-slung gusset and a rolled over waistband) but this is, is way north of cuddly, past stout and into treading into sumo wrestler territory.

Something. Had.To.Be.Done.

Losing weight and getting fit is like preparing for exams. You put if off for as long as possible in the certain knowledge that as soon as you start you are going to regret not doing it earlier and will have to go all out. Until the official start, it’s a lot easier to sit under a blanket and eat mince pies. But the mince pies are all eaten, I don’t even like stilton but the crackers have gone too. It was time for the belated New Year weigh-in.

I find it disconcerting that our weighting scales wink to show they are ready, (braced) for a ground up view of my naked body. I was officially in hippo territory at 78.7kilos with 40% fat.

I went and played tennis, gingerly testing out my post cortisone shoulder; that was fine. There was a £1 January membership offer at the gym. I signed up, went to a strange Zumba class where the teacher said nothing but danced out of beat. Then I booked the Gym Induction.

For a second, I had a stay of execution -it snowed, the world went magical and gave a great excuse for more hibernating and then in a flash sleet was falling. Gianni drove us the 500ms to the local gym.

I do have a fetching collection of tennis skirts, tops and frocks. I have a collection of yoga pants too… somewhere. But given my expanded form and lack of knowledge as to where they might be, I was dressed in tennis shoes, some thick grey joggers of unknown provenance, a stripped Portofino T shirt with wood polish stains from my upholstery days and a baggy cardi with pockets for my phone. The gym was rammed with muscled and toned intense athletes in sleek gear.

I presented myself at the desk and was soon being taken around the gym by the inductor. My word, gym equipment has come on a long way. I’m not saying the last time I was in a gym was in plimsoles, trying to vault ‘horses’ over green rubber mats or scale some ladders with a rope (why?why?) but it was a crash course in QR codes.

My instructor, a man of a certain age, was fit as a flea. He looked at me with a kindly, if incredulous eyes. I tried to focus but my eyes were constantly drawn to his hair.

‘You have a go’ he said after he’d got entangled in this contraption

‘What?’ Now, it takes me two hands to lift a full kettle.

I managed two repetitions at 2.5kilos.

Then this angry badger woman arrived. She was maybe a decade younger than me, with jet back hair, apart from a white stripe, black and white kit, a scowl and a shouty voice.

‘They told me to wait downstairs!’ She snarled. We continued our tour of the torture chamber. I was starting to feel a bit self-conscious as I was definitely the lardy one in the gym.

‘When is a quiet time?’ I asked

‘February’ answered fitman.

‘I’m going to be coming at 6.30am’ said Badger. I laughed until I realised she was serious.

‘Is there like, a fattie hour?’ I asked. They stared at me in silence.

Anyway, my staged resolution is to get to 70 kilos by the end of the year, and to drop a dress size by 20th January when we return to Italy. And guess what! This morning I was 78.1kilos, 39% fat and comfortably slid into size 14 jeans which was good as I had to look respectable going to London. Only 8.1 kilos to go!

‘It’s epiphany’ I said to Gianni, as we rushed to the station ‘when we get back from London we have to Wassail the apple tree, bash saucepans to wake her up (just like in the olden days of Covid), tie ribbons on its boughs and sing it the Wassailing carol.’

‘You are going to sing to it?’ he said, ‘Are you trying to wake it or kill it?’

*

We were late home so it was pitch black when I went out. It is a different world beyond the glass- no moon, the shaggy grass crunchy underfoot. The air was full of the frost too, it hung in the air as particles of white like dispersed ghosts. Into the black I went, blinded by darkness, hoping not to end up in the pond or bashed by one the urns.

I sang to my lovely old apple tree, thanked her for the apples rammed in our freezer and on behalf of the blackbirds and squirrel. She has a new ribbon on her boughs to go with the tattered rags we put up when the tots were little, but no drums, we’ll let her sleep in for now.