Dream - sitting in a nice cafe overlooking a lake with a large coffee and cheese scone (yes cheese scone) by my side.
The Reality - hammering away for five miles on a treadmill.
Self inflicted pain of the dream on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the most painful - 0
Self inflicted pain of the reality - 8. BUT
Health benefits of the dream on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being total benefit - 1
Health benefits of the reality - 7
No gain without pain as they say and it just proves that reality is a long way divorced from the dream. Mind you the coffee and cheese scone scores highly on the after eating feeling of guilt scale whereas the treadmill scores highly on the feeling smug scale.
Yesterday was a prime example of a feeling of de-motivation. Woke up and it was cold and it would have been so easy to have gone back to sleep in the warm bed. But motivation for the day had to come from somewhere.
So I dragged myself up and thought about my marathon and just how far I have to go. By the end of yesterday I had completed 65 miles at an average of exactly five miles a day. Keep that up and I will make 1,825 but there will be days ahead when that figure will drop.
So I did a walk and then dragged myself along to the gym to do some running. I don't know what it is about the gym but I always find it intensely boring. But my visit was prompted by a personally addressed letter. I opened it with anticipation as I didn't recognise the return to sender address and it wasn't a Cruise brochure.
I think we are averaging 10 Cruise brochures a week. I do like looking through them in a dream rather than reality kind of way. I love a Cruise. Some people do and others don't. For me it's the perfect mix of relaxation and visiting places. The food is universally excellent and what better after a busy day sightseeing to chomp into a five course meal? The problem with Cruising is it is becoming prohibitively expensive. We do like Viking River and Ocean cruises but some of those are now working out at about £900 a night for two people. That is an awful lot of money. Would you pay that for a night in a hotel? I think not.
But back to that letter. Was it a tax rebate or an invitation to something nice? No. Well actually in a strange way it was an invitation. It was actually inviting me to my own funeral. It was from Pure Cremation and it proudly informed me that "our customers rate us 4.9 out of five from over 7,000 reviews." I might have this wrong but surely their customers are in no condition to rate them on Trustpilot.
It goes on to say: "Introducing a fuss-free alternative to the traditional funeral that could save you £2,290." Apparently if I take out a funeral plan with Pure Cremation I will be making things easier for my family and making it easier for them to celebrate my life.
And when I started writing this an advert came on the television promoting the East of England Co-op Funeral Service with lots of smiling faces - happy days.
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Seems it's ok to lie nowadays. After all some very high profile people are at it. Our esteemed leader wouldn't know the truth if it sprang up and hit him on his very scruffy head. The World's number one tennis player Novak Djokovic wouldn't know the truth if it sprung up and hit him on his carefully manicured head and there's a certain member of the Royal Family who is also being branded a liar. I loved the description on BBC of Prince Andrew's interview with the BBC. "The next day the Prince was sacked by his own mother on the grounds that he had become a national joke." I see he's now lost his Royal and Military titles.
Talking about the Royal Family. I thought you might like the cartoon sent to us by our friend Graham. He has created a cartoon family which he calls the Foons. They crop up just about anywhere. Hope you like his latest piece of artwork.