Category: Health

Tights – the new exercise routine

The other day I decided to sort through my remaining pairs of tights to see which were wearable and which should be sentenced to cloth recycling.

This involved trying on every single pair of the twenty or so I found, to make completely sure they a) still fit me and b) weren’t full of holes.

After only a few pairs I realised something interesting – trying on tights is exhausting.  Their name is entirely accurate – they are tight and most pairs do not slip on and off easily.  Those which do are priceless beyond rubies and should be treasured for all time (or until they completely fall apart).

Mostly though, you have to wriggle in and out of them using a lot of effort and care in order to get your foot way down in to the foot shaped bit, without tearing the material, then carefully rolling/pulling the remainder up, hoping against hope that the crutch will actually align itself comfortably with your crutch and the waistband will stay up above your expanding waistline.  Then finally you have to gently coax all the wrinkles upwards, again trying not to tear anything, so your legs look vaguely respectable.

After I’d repeated this process three or four times I was sweating and breathless, just like I am after a good aerobic workout.  By the time I’d tried all of the adjectival things I needed to lie down for half an hour.  (The good news is they all fit and only one pair had a hole in it.)

So I realised there is a gap in the market for a new exercise routine involving this activity.  I plan to call it “Tight-ercise” (or, over the Pond, “Pantyhose-ercise”, but that just doesn’t have the same ring, in my honest opinion).

 

Health and other concerns

So I finally saw the cardiologist.  The ECG done at the hospital that day was fine and he obviously wasn’t too impressed with the one done at my GP’s surgery.
He discussed my activity levels with me and reassured me that I do not have a heart condition.

Because of my history of high cholesterol he is going to send me for a CT scan of my heart to see if the arteries are furred up, but that won’t be for another few months as it’s not regarded as urgent.

Meanwhile I have the go ahead to travel/work/take cardio exercise etc.

If only life were that simple.

Almost inevitably, as a result of my total failure to go to Thailand, my husband and I have been thrown back together and have decided not to get divorced after all.  Instead we’re trying to “make it work”.

So I can’t just rush abroad again and look for employment teaching ESL.  My husband works in the U.K. and his earnings pay our enormous mortgage instalments. Well, they seem enormous to me, as I expected to own a property outright by now.

Thus I need to stay in this country too.  And, ideally, find employment.  I have three choices for earning a living.  Lawyer, secretary, ESL teacher.

In all honesty I have no desire to teach ESL in the U.K.  The only point (for me) of teaching ESL is you get to live in an exotic and hopefully sunny country with a low cost of living.

I can’t really face doing clerical/secretarial work again.  So much stress for so little money.  If I’m going in for that lifestyle I might as well go back to Legal Aid work.  Assuming I can find any.

I was admitted as a solicitor in December 1992.  In December 2013 I transferred to the Bar and was “called” at Lincoln’s Inn.  For most of what I jokingly refer to as my career I worked in criminal defence.  During my entire working life I felt I was running in front of a juggernaut that was eventually going to knock me down, to wit: the ever increasing cuts to Legal Aid and the justice system generally.

When I last worked as a secretary a few years ago it was for the NHS. “Bank” work, i.e. zero hours contract, for a couple of local hospitals.  I seem to have a compulsion to work for important institutions that are being systematically destroyed by the government.

I have now sent out applications to the five local chambers that cover criminal work, two in Exeter, two in Plymouth and one in Taunton.  I am currently in that comfortable zone between applying and being rejected when one can fantasise about what the work might be like and how much one would enjoy it.

The reality is that any chambers which are recruiting want barristers with Crown Court trial experience, which I do not have.  I would love to get some – it’s a feeling of unfinished business I have in terms of my legal career.  But my time is running (has run?) out.

If I don’t find work as a barrister locally then going back abroad will be seriously tempting. And what happens to “making it work” then?