A time for this and a time for that!

Are you going to be beaten by a potato says Tom Kerridge

Reading the Saturday newspapers at this time of year is a guaranteed recipe for disappointment although our Saturday supplement promised quite the reverse.  The first headline says Eat to Beat depression but that is disappointing because all the marvellous things which are being suggested are simply just out of reach, the ingredients are usually rather expensive or include the one ingredient that I just don't have so I turn that page.

Not Grandpa

Next up, Couch potato to super-fit in 12 weeks;  even we at our age could (they mean should)  train to do a half marathon but we should be backing up the running by resistance training to build up core strength.  There are pictures of people (who don't look our age) doing the exercises which have marvellous names, the abdominal crunch and oblique plank are just two of them and of course, they all take time as does the running.  So, that is disappointing because I am going to disappoint them by never running the marathon, half or whole.  Then on to Page 7 where we could lose weight a different way by going to a therapist.  I do agree that our relationship with food makes us fat but instead of therapy I just need to follow Tom Kerridge's wise words and realise that if I want to lose weight I need to stop eating the things (chips) that I love. I must look at a chip and realise it is just a potato and decide if I am going to be beaten by a mere potato.  It, he says takes self discipline to make us change but also recognising that I must be more powerful than a potato!

Not me

Next article which no-one who has followed the marathon advice and then the complicated recipes for healthy food could follow is that we could spice up our sex life even if we are older.  In response to someone who writes to her at weekendsex@thetimes.co.uk, Suzi Godson advises the older couple to spend time rediscovering and enhancing their sex lives.  "Look, oh therapist",  I want to say, "we are married for over 45 years, have plenty of children and have had our share of the ups and downs of relationships, we are looking for a steady way out of life avoiding excessive activity of any kind besides for which your fellow journalists have been advising that we will need to spend so much time getting fit and eating quinoa that we won't have time to spice up our sex lives as well".  So, I am both disappointed and disappointing.

I go past the pancakes dripping with maple syrup picture and the low alcohol wine article, pause briefly on the hellebores on the gardening page and land on the 50 best holidays in France which are definitely not for those on the diet page but  might suit the older people spicing up their sex lives.   I pause at the Spa breaks; am I stressed or burnt out?  I could try a healing holiday and they all sound wonderful at several thousand pounds a destress. Yoga, jacuzzi, meditation and massage in  fairytale havens around the world all vie for my attention.  I don't mean to disappoint the travel writers but by now I am confused with so  much advice and think that I should offer to do a single page for the newspaper bringing all these advices down to earth and meaning you can stay where you are, keep the pennies in your own purse and be happy.  Meditation doesn't need you to go to Thailand or Italy or even India, exercise can be taken at a nice easy pace and digging your garden will make you fit and probably so tired that the idea of a spiced up sex life can be left firmly in between the pages of the weekend paper.  Meditation just on your own chair or out in the summer house doesn't disappoint.

Not me either but this is a meditating older person just sitting on the beach