Bionic Parents

Much the same start to the day, a quality lie-in, followed by a not so quality amble with MD on the park. He wasn't too bad to be fair, just so exuberant.

In the afternoon, I join L at the gym. I whack the treadmill up to 15kph and almost immediately fall off it. Somehow, it seems a lot faster at John Carroll than at the Tennis Centre last week. I slow it down and then gradually ease it back up to speed, and then when I get back to 15kph it doesn't seem too bad. Just as I'm flying, the damn thing cuts out. Apparently this is to stop you hogging the treadmills but there's loads free, so I ctrl-alt-del it and start all over again.

Eventually I've done my planned 5k and I start a warm down, then I think sod it, go for it, and I do another flying kilometre. Then feeling smugger than a collie pup with a stolen loaf of bread in its mouth, I stagger off the contraption and try to recover.

I head to the pool for a swim, only to realise I've forgotten a vital piece of kit. Swimming trunks. I have a shower instead and retreat to the coffee room for a Mocha. L joins me and we have four between us. After which we still have change from the equivalent of just one at Starbucks and also around 1000 calories to play with, not to mention our taste buds still intact.

In the evening, we head off for a Chinese meal, which is to celebrate my Mum’s 80th birthday. This is a bit of a surprise to me, as I was under the misapprehension that she was only 79, very sneaky of her. My father's 80th is coming up later this month.

This are both feeling and looking very spritely since they both went bionic. My Dad has had a replacement hip joint and has now made such a good recovery he's contemplating marathon training. At least I think he's joking, I hope he's joking.

My Mum has had her eye done and can now see without glasses for probably the first time in 50 years. She'll be even better when she's had the other one done in a few weeks time. I hope medical technology is standing by to do a whole host of necessary stuff on me.

We go at 6pm, when the place opens, so that my brother’s kids can go and still get home for an early bedtime. Personally I thought that when we first took L's kids out and they nodded off and we had to eat their food for them, that was the way to go, but each to their own. Also, as L points out, once they're full of Chinese they'll be high as kites, or at least a high as MD, and won't be interested in bedtimes.

It's a good evening but it's a good job we got that gym session in, as it's a very heavy and greasy meal. Beforehand L did ask how far she'd have to run to shed the expected calorie overload. Well I've looked it up and the average cheese meal contains 1436 calories which would take 291 minutes of moderate exercise to burn off. Whether my 30 minutes of frenetic exercise did the trick, I don't know.