An old schoolfriend contacted me through MySpace this week (don't you just love MySpace?!). While thumbing through her (annoyingly stunning) photographs I remembered that she was really into sports in school -- the sports captain of our "house", I seem to remember -- and that doesn't seem to have changed. She's in to skiing, skydiving... you name it. So this set me on a train of thought: something about wishing I was more active. In her message to me, she said something about not being surprised that I'd done an MA; I was always the 'academic'. That is so true. In school I was the one who hated sports and used every inventive excuse possible to avoid the process of changing into sports clothes in the cold school "cellar" that smelled of sweat and shoes. I was never very good at sports (with the possible exceptions of indoor hockey and badminton. Which is not to say I was necessarily good at those sports; I was just less sucky.) I would have exchanged three history classes with the formidable Mrs Layman for one P.E. lesson. Sport was my enemy.

But I think I may have come to realise that sport is one of those things that school can seriously mess up for you. Like food, for instance. I hated school lunches. This was, of course, exacerbated by a terrifying experience when I was about six or seven where, because I hated most of the foods served at lunch (most notably lasagna, pizza, rice pudding, and quiche), my malicious teacher decided I would not be allowed to eat anything. Standing in line for chips one lunchtime, breathing a huge sigh of relief that today would not be one of the days I was stuck in a corner all afternoon with a plate of pizza and a bowl of cold rice-pudding and not allowed to join the class until I ate it (which I never could bring myself to do), the aforementioned teacher came striding along, removed my plate from my little hands, and told me that I was not to eat the things I liked at lunch if I wouldn't eat the things I didn't like. Of course, this made me cry. Rather pathetically. But after a few days I realized it might not be so bad; while the other children munched through sticky, gooey, foul-smelling lasagna, I was able to sit in the corner sucking my thumb. There was no more crying into a bowl of rice pudding. Of course, after a few weeks I started to lose a bit of weight and get rather sickly, which caused my mother a little concern and promptly elicited a confession and an angry visit to the headmistress.

This story is a roundabout way of noting how school can ruin good things for you. Like lasagna. Like pizza. Both wonderful foods. (I still can't stomach rice pudding). Like exercise.

This morning, pumping away on the treadmill, I turned on my iPod. This was a first for me (the iPod, not the treadmill), and I almost killed the little white machine by catching the headphones cord with my hand during a particularly intense running-session. I saved the day by a rather impressively timed catch-reflex and only stumbled a little bit and banged a shin. Exercise is good. Honest.

So I want to learn to ski. And to dance. Perhaps even to sky-dive (I may try the other two first). Perhaps even one day I'll be able to make it all the way around the ice-rink without looking like a complete moron.

I should close with an ode to the treadmill and the rowing machine, wonderful apparatuses that make me feel good about sitting on my butt all day trying to figure out what to do with my life. And watching Gilmore Girls. I'm not getting much exercise watching Gilmore Girls...

La di dah.