En Passant: 2015 – time to be proactive

ALRIGHT, now you have no excuse. You’re back at work, the mother-in-law has gone back to her cave, and this week the little dears go back to school and there ain’t no reason why domestic routine has not returned to your home. Now is the time to take stock.

You will notice that your bank balance looks about as plumply healthy as a supermodel upon whose jutting hipbones you could sharpen chisels. You may even be anticipating a polite but formal note from your bank manager expressing concern at the dismal state of your account. Mind you, in this day and age do bank managers still write letters? Everybody I know has a bank card, and it’s probably a bloodless computer that decides that you can’t have any more money.

I haven’t got a bank card and have never had one. I have never used an ATM, preferring my meagre cash requirements to be handed to me by a human being in the form of a bank teller. This creature may be as indifferent to my existence as an ATM, but at least it has the merit of being warm blooded (although sometimes you have to wonder).

Anyway, if you have got any sense you will not have made any daft New Year resolutions, which by now would anyway be as binding and as worthwhile as an Eskom maintenance schedule. But that’s not to say that you can’t now take stock and decide, I dunno, to run the Comrades this year (yeah, right!).

But you know what? it’s a cliché, right? but today is indeed the first day of the rest of your life, and true, you could be hit by a bus at the bottom end of Church Street tomorrow, but you could also live to a ripe old age, and end up sitting on the stoep, talking kak to your mates, at the old age home. Thing is, see, your quality of life then is being determined now. What you have to do, I’ve learned, is simple:

1. Give up smoking;

2. Eat proper food;

3. Exercise.

Everything I read points to those three things. They also point to lots of other things, but those three seem to crop up in any list compiled by anyone remotely connected with health issues, from a colonic irrigationist to a brain surgeon. And the thing is, at this time of year when you are completely broke, only one of the three might cost you more.

Giving up smoking ain’t that difficult and will save you a packet (ha, ha), and I’ll tell you how I know this. I’ve done it. And I also know this because I can be sitting in the Spoeg & Spittle downing a small one, and there can be a dozen okes in there, all with different levels of will power, and they’re all ex-smokers. It’s a reflection of our society, I suppose, but there are now more women who smoke at the Spoeg & Spittle than men, and blokes my age who were brought up on Texan, Chesterfield, Lucky Strike, Springbok, Lexington and Gunston no longer smoke. We’ve seen the light, hallelujah, and if we could give up then anyone can. Just get your kop right.

Eating proper food is more difficult. We all know olive oil is meant to be good for us, but have you seen the price! And eat plenty of fruit and vegetables they say – you need to be on very friendly terms with your bank manager (or ATM) if you want to buy a few grapes, let alone a single flippen mango. I dunno. If you have a back yard and you’re not growing vegetables in it then I’m pleased to meet you Mr Oppenheimer.

It really does seem to me (and it’s just me and Doris, no kids to factor in), that the prime consideration in preparing domestic meals has to be the unit cost, like KFC. They count the slices of gherkin; mothers dishing up count fishfingers. How else can you come out? How on earth can you include in your supermarket trolley all the recommended foodstuffs, and not die of a heart attack when the cashier smacks the “TOTAL” button? Cash or credit, sir? An ambulance, please, and hurry, I’m dying here!

Exercise is the thing that defeats me. I have the energy levels of a sloth, although fortunately not its toilet habits. Apparently sloths urinate or defecate only about once a week, as I understand it (and I don’t), most often during the few times that they come down from the trees. We live in a flat, not in a tree, and I come downstairs every day, if you catch my drift.

But I have recently learned that all one has to do by way of exercise each day is walk 10,000 steps. And there are loads of exercises that one can do that require absolutely no equipment, and can be done at the office or at home. There’s such a thing as “deskercises” that can be done at your desk. You can in effect exercise and not leave your home or office, and have no need of all those weird and wonderful machines that they advertise on TV with the promise of abs of iron and a butt of steel. You can exercise for free!

So you see, folks, there really is no excuse.

See you at the start of the Comrades.