Today we had a really great family day out. Our stake (regional organisation of our church, consisting of all the branches of our church throughout East Yorkshire) organised a Highland Games for the 2nd year running. Last year's was quite good, but was marred by me losing my temper with and almost punching one of the organisers (he let my eldest daughter, who was 9 at the time, queue up for 45 minutes to have a go at moving some objects around with the arm of a small mechanical digger. When it was her turn he told her she was too young, despite having let several BOYS who were both younger and smaller go on it, and wouldn't let her have a go! Needless to say I had quite a lot to say about this, but he just argued back and wouldn't change his mind. Anyone who knows me well would know how lucky he is to still have his own teeth, despite my having renounced violence, and as it was I had to go for a walk for about an hour before I had calmed down enough to be able to be anywhere near him! We have always brought our girls up to believe that they are every bit as good as boys in every way and we deplore sexism in any form - what this idiot did could only be ascribed to pure sexism and it still makes my blood boil). Anyway, I digress.
There were lots of fun things to do. There were donkey rides for the kids, a bouncy castle, sumo wrestling for both adults & kids, complete with padded suits etc., giant jenga, a barbecue.... and all free! The weather even held out and even got warm & sunny after a while. Indeed my bald patch is now glowing bright red as I hadn't taken a hat, not expecting that bright round thing in the sky to appear. Anwyway, all was going well until they announced a tug of war. Obviously, with me being the size of a barn I was given no choice in the matter and told to anchor my team's end of the rope. No problem - I may be very overweight and extremely unfit but I am still strong and have done many tug of wars in the past. Unfortunately the teams were quite evenly matched, which meant that it took a long time for one team to emerge victorious. OK, I thought, I am very tired now but at least my team won. That was when they announced that we had to compete against another winning team to see who were the champions. All right then, I told myself, I can manage one more effort, just about. Off we went, and after a fierce tussle we lost. No problem, after all you can't win them all - at least we went down fighting. Then they announced it would be the best of three. Oh no, I thought, you have to be kidding - I can hardly stand up and I need some recovery time. No chance. Off we went again, and this time the other team were so worn out from their exertion that we won. Not a good move, because this now meant that we had to have a decider! It was at this stage that I had one of my rare sensible moments. As my heart was now beating so hard & fast that it felt like it was about to burst out of my chest, and as my legs had turned to jelly to the extent that I could barely stand, I decided to put self-preservation before team spirit. I hobbled away and left my team to win without me, which they did. As I attempted to walk back to my folding chair across the field I realised that I was in deep trouble. I was so tired and aching that I just wanted to lie down on the grass - it was only pride that wouldn't let me do that in front of everyone. Through sheer willpower I managed to slowly stagger back to my chair, perspiring freely and puffing and panting like a thirsty dog. And there I stayed for about half an hour, exhausted.
Oh how I wish I had stayed fit when I was younger. I am progressing slowly towards getting thinner & slimmer, but things like this just make me realise that I have become older & more unfit than I sometimes realise. I will be trying harder from now on. Now I'm off to bed for a lie down!
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