See?! No sooner do I promise that I will try to write more, and in a more structure ‘weekly note’ way, I disappear off the face of the earth and you don’t hear from me for two weeks or more.

And I’m not about to change that right now.

Well, I mean, I *am*, but also am not. I’m not going to write something long and considered, because it’s Sunday Night, and I’m lying in bed with my computer trying to delay the fact that once I put it down and turn the light off, the next thing I’ll see is Monday morning (and who has EVER wanted that?).

I’m just going to break my silly mental block of not posting on this blog when I haven’t got time to write something long and involved. Because frankly, when has that stopped me in the last nine and three-quarter years? Hm? Never. Never is when.

So let me think of a thing that I can tell you. Nothing about work, annoyingly. Honestly, I’ve been doing the kind of job that I used to consider taking for the SOLE PURPOSE of blogging about it - but now that I do it, discover that I can’t blog about it at all - any of it - for fear of undermining it, saying something wrong and making the money go away. Which would be non-optimal. It would be bad. Especially for someone who got a surprise bill from the student loans people last week. I could have sworn I’d paid it off, but no, apparently I still owed them twenty quid. Plus £794 in interest for that twenty quid over a couple of years of them ‘not being able to find me’.

University, kids: just say no.

What else can I tell you? I’ve recently considered changing the cats names back to their original (and still full official names, for me and My Beloved, anyway). It’s weird. We couldn’t have known how much like Dame Judy Dench and Sir Ian McKellan they were going to turn out to be, but they still are. Very, VERY like their namesakes. It seems wrong, then, not to refer to them by these proper names.
But I don’t want to confuse the blighters. Especially with their having turned out to be girls in the meantime (not that that gets in the way of the comparison. They’re still so very very like).

And look at that. I’ve managed to procrastinate a whole other half hour.
Bad anna.
And with that: to bed. I will write more this week. I will.
Yes.

“SPRINT ANNA!” shouts the voice at the top of the hill.

“Sprint, legs” I tell my legs.
“We ARE sprinting!” say my legs.
I look down at the ground, then back up to the voice at the top of the hill. She doesn’t seem any nearer.
“Actually, I’m not sure that you are sprinting, legs.” I tell my legs.
”Oh, no, we are totally sprinting. Ungh! Look how hard we are sprinting!” Say my legs.
“You are barely walking, legs.” I inform them.
”Oh fuck off with you,” Say my legs. “It’s really hard.”

They have a point. It is. But that is no excuse for lying, is it now? Hm? Legs?

It is the second day of bootcamp, and a mixture of boxing drills and uphill sprints.

The boxing drills I like - I should clarify, by “boxing drills”, I mean neither “Putting drills in boxes”, which is something I would expect to be paid for, nor “Engaging in fistfights with power tools”, which is something I would advise against, as it sounds extremely dangerous. I just mean little flurries of boxing and sets of the kind of movements you use in boxing, you see… The boxing drills I like very much. I like boxing. It is extremely cathartic. And punchy.

The sprints I am less fond of. Running I have been getting better at, but have somehow managed to avoid hills in almost all of the running I have been doing. It is a knack. And it has generally been more jogging-paced. Sometimes running-paced… barely ever sprinting-paced.

So combining the speed thing with the sudden introduction of hills, and doing both of these before breakfast, is a bit of a shock to my recalcitrant legs.

And not even so much the FIRST time, when we are running up and down a long tarmac ramp from the promenade to the beachfront. But the second set? When we’ve moved and, mid-boxing-drill, we are dispatched to run down the hill of pebbly shingle to the edge of the sea and back? At low tide? This is when they stop being unwilling and start being downright disobedient.

“Legs” according to my legs “are not meant to run up and down hills made of pebbles. It is not…” my legs inform me “…a thing that legs are meant to do.”

We do it anyway. Albeit bloody slowly. And more at a walking stumble pace than anything approaching a sprint.

A while later, as I walk home, pleased and happy and slightly knock-kneed afterward, my legs make me very aware of their feelings about the whole ‘hill/pebble’ combination.

In fact, as I approach home, and a shower, and a pile of eggs and ham and spinach, my legs are kind enough to write me a little list of the thing they are having the biggest problem with:
The LOGIC of the whole thing.

This is the list my legs write for me:

LIST OF REAL SITUATIONS IN WHICH YOU MAY NEED TO RUN UP A HILL MADE OF PEBBLES.
1) Encounter with a land-shark.
2) Being a Viking on pillaging duty.
3) Sudden extreme fear of waves.
4) Encounter with a particularly aggressive sea-shark.
OR
5) Running away from other people who are Vikings, when you yourself are not one.
6) Nothing else.

They then ask me to rate out of 100 how many of these situations I am likely to get in in the near future. Apart from “Nothing Else” which they admit is a situation I am in almost all of the time.

But I elect not to, because I really like boot camp, and think my legs are just being petulant.
I tell them so.

I have a gammy arm. The right one. Rotate it the wrong way, and it will pop out, sit uncomfortably on the back of my shoulder socket for … some time (could be thirty seconds, could be five minutes, I never am in the right frame of mind to check my watch at the time) … and then, with a little rotating, the ball joint pops (I say “pops”, it’s more a mixture of “pops” and “grinds”) back into the socket, leaving only stiffness for a day or two, and me in tears from the shock for a few minutes.

Having just written all that, I realise that some people, people of a squeamish disposition, may have preferred a warning before I launched into it. I apologise, but then… it’s not like you just dislocated your shoulder, is it?
I did.

Well, I did this morning. I was skipping. With a skipping rope. One minute my shoulder wasn’t dislocated, the next, it was.

But I am starting front to back. I should start at the back, and work my way forward.

When I was 17: I was running down a hill to fetch something, and, before I knew it, realised I was at a 45 degree angle to the floor. And then a thirty degree angle. I was falling forward, and to stop myself, I put my hand out. I still fell - that bit I didn’t think through thoroughly enough - and instead of stopping me, my hand simply forced my shoulder out of the socket.
It wouldn’t go back in.
Some hours of been driven around, some hours of waiting rooms, and two casualty departments later, a nice doctor gave me some morphine, put his foot in my armpit and put my shoulder back in.

THEN: I was meant to have it in a sling for eight weeks so the cartilage could heal, but I was 17, and feckless, and when it stopped hurting after a week or so, I took the sling off.
This was a mistake.

After a few dislocations I was meant to have an operation when I was about 21, but I was, if anything, even more feckless than I had been at 17, and forgot to go.
This was also a mistake. And a terrible waste of NHS time and resources. Trust me, I’ve given myself a hard enough time for it. It’s mainly why I’ve never asked for help since. I squandered it the first time.

But then, I’ve done it lots of times since:
– I’ve done it putting on a jumper.
– I’ve done it changing a duvet cover.
– When throwing a ball, I’ve dislocated it.
– While swimming, yup.
–Certainly, while doing a commando roll over the bed trying to get to the bathroom in the smallest flat in the world, yup. That’s in the blog.
– I have done it lifting things.
– I’ve done it slipping over.
– I’ve done it rolling over in bed.
– I’ve even done it… well, actually, never mind about that one. Just take my word: *AWKWARD.*
– While dancing.
– Playing tennis.
– Painting a wall.
– About half a dozen dozen other times.

And I’ve got quite good at knowing what the risks are. And then going with a practical…
“Doctor Doctor, it hurts when I do this” - “Well, don’t do that then.”
…view on the matter. If I know a certain thing will most likely dislodge it, I won’t do that thing anymore.

Which usually works fine.
Right up until the point when it doesn’t.

Like this morning. First morning of bootcamp, when I was nervous enough about being the newest fattest girl in the PE class, what happens? I discover that skipping - SKIPPING! With, like, a ROPE! - can, somehow, dislocate it as well.
Cue: collapsing in a little pile on the floor, wincing until I manage to finagle it back in to the socket, crying until I can control the tears and catch my breath and then telling everyone it’s fine until the stiffness goes away. Or just saying that it’s fine, whatever the case.

I really, really hate my gammy arm at the moment.
So excuse my ranting. But I do.

point one: Gah. I missed a trick there.

Last week, I begged on my blog for someone to return spring to its rightful place (here, now) and the next day was as sunny and bright and adorably springlike as I could ever hope.

Did I do the proper and clever thing, and follow that up with a post the very next day requesting that the internet send me a million pounds? Or an enormous pile of new work? Or a pony?

No.

Honestly, I shouldn’t be allowed access to magic, I only end up squandering it, it seems.

point two: Life continues, filled with gymming and cooking and working and sleeping and more gymming and some sociability but really, not that much at all. I have decided, however, that I will start writing weekly notes on this blog, to tide me over between the other things - and there will be other things, just weekly notes as well. My Beloved does them, mainly to keep track of which bits of work he’s currently doing, and how they’re going. I will keep them for everything BUT work, I think. And I shall do it on Friday. Or the weekend. Because that is better.

Good.

point three: But in the meantime, here is a bear we found when we went for a walk a few miles down the coast to Shoreham the other day (thanks to lovely Diamond Geezer, who did the same walk a few weeks ago. Although I somehow managed to gloss over the part of his post where he described the unending drudgery of several miles of industrial estate when I sold My Beloved on going on the walk with me).

He was perched slightly uncomfortably - no, VERY uncomfortably, as it happens, and somewhat unhygenically - on a bollard outside a teddybear themed cafe.

It was the miserably resigned sag of his shoulders that killed me.

“Oh, the indignity”, I can almost hear him saying.

point four: I start bootcamp again in the morning. As you wake at 7 - those of you who are unfortunate enough to be awake at seven - think of me already on the seafront, swinging kettlebells and doing press-ups. I know I’ll enjoy it - or I did last time - but right now, the butterflies in my stomach are killing me. It feels a bit like the night before school starts, and school starts with a double PE lesson, and you already know you’re the fattest girl in class, and everyone’s going to laugh at you because you can’t catch a ball, let alone throw one.

In fact, let’s face it, it’s *exactly* that.
Which is insane. I’m 33, not 13. I’m happy enough, and reasonably successful, not quite the size of a bus (not a double decker bus, anyway), and fitter than I used to be but… well, I can’t help how it feels.
And it feels like that.

But you know what? However bad it gets, I’m not that bear.
Poor bear. Oh, the indignity.

…I hadn’t noticed.

That’s not true. I had noticed. I keep waking up and hoping against hope that maybe, this time, I will stick my leg out of the bed and find it to be balmy and warm. Or at least not claggy and frozen.

It is almost always the latter.
The freezing fog outside the window should be a clue, I suppose. But I’m not that bright.

Anyway: I would like, if it is at all possible, for whoever is hiding the spring, to return it, forthwith.
I can look the other way while you do it.
I don’t care where you’ve been keeping it. Maybe under the bed? Perhaps in your kitchen cupboard (the little one, next to the cooker) so you can open the door and get a bit of sun in your face and the whiff of new leaves. Maybe in a little biscuit tin on your desk at work.
Wherever you’re stashing it, please - I’ll look the over here, and when I turn back, you will have handed over Spring, and Spring will be EVERYWHERE, correct?

I’ll give you till the morning. The morning tomorrow.
Unless you’re reading this tomorrow, in which case you’ve got five minutes.

Thank you.