davywavy | Arms maketh the man.

The real downside of the current economic crisis - from my point of view, anyway - is that I'm having to work. Normally my working day involves writing jokes and surfing the internet for pictures of ladies in the altogether and amusing videos of kittens on youtube, but at the moment I'm spending a distressing amount of time whizzing around the country meeting clients, pressing flesh, kissing babies and doing deals. The sort of thing I really ought to do all the time if I'm really going to make a success of this entrepreneuring lark, in fact.
What this means is that I'm spending far too much time in mediocre hotels and eating restaurant and hotel food, and nothing like enough time in the gym with the result that my tummy is beginning its inexorable expansion once again. It's a depressing sensation to sit in a train seat and feel your arse slowly expanding onto the seat next to you and then perhaps over the side and into the aisle and so I decided that I really ought to do something about it and hired Ninja Master to give me some full-on personal training. In the meantime, I sewed the button back onto my trousers with extra-strong cord.

I actually have two ninja masters; T'ai Chi Ninja Master is quite astonishingly nails in that one-with-the-universe oriental sort of way and is capable of causing you quite extravagant injuries with only one finger, but I'm not sure how well fitness training with someone like that would go:
"There's only two sorts of T'ai Chi Masters come from Yorkshire, David! Those who are wise and in harmony with the universe, and queers! Now which the Hell are you?!"
"Sir, I don't know, sir!"
"Well you should know! Now get down and give me inner serenity!"
"Sir yes sir!"

On the other hand, Kickboxing ninja master is a heavily-muscled bloke with a shaved head and line in invective which wouldn't be out of place in Full Metal Jacket, so it was inevitably him that I ended up hiring.
Now, I like to think I'm at least moderately fit. I do go to the gym a fair bit and on those rare occasions I still go clubbing I can keep up with the 19-year-old speed freaks pretty well and that's really all I ask for, but this was...this was something beyond any comprehension of pain I had previously encountered. I observed this to ninja master on the track on Sunday afternoon as I gasped for desperate, ragged breaths and clutched urgently at my left arm. He nodded in the benign, relaxed way of someone watching another person suffer limitless agony without having to experience any of it themself and agreed that, yes, general fitness training is one thing, but proper athletics training is in a league of its own.

He's not kidding. When I got out of bed yesterday morning and tried to stand the pain was such that I actually gave a little scream like a Japanese Schoolgirl faced with a tentacled monstrosity, and when I walked downstairs to leave the house I had to take the steps backwards as my legs would no longer properly function.
But I'm sure it'll be worth it, right?