Stayin’ Alive

Merhaba arkadaşlarım

Here in Turkey one of the unspoken Victims of the Virus is the motor vehicle. I refer particularly to those vehicles belonging to seniors (as I have reluctantly come to define myself). Our Volvos, Harleys, mobility scooters etc. sit motionless in the driveway whilst we are confined to our homes.

I will sometimes pour a glass of wine, sit on the verandah and watch the Dacia Duster gently depreciate in the sun. This is its only activity. I washed it yesterday. It has feelings too.

Perhaps Mrs Jones and I will go for a virtual drive. People seem to be doing all sorts of innovative and virtual things to compensate; some work quite well, others less convincing. I have no idea how the Zoom birthday party went which Daisy (our granddaughter) participated in yesterday but I suppose it was at least easy to clear up afterwards. Every cloud.

And my petrol consumption for the months has tanked faster than the American economy which is good. The petrol consumption I mean.

Our vehicles can withstand idleness a lot better than our bodies. The well tuned machine that is my own requires constant maintenance. The Devil finds work for idle hands. It usually involves making cheese sandwiches and pulling corks.

Edmund Blackadder is wont to say “When the going gets tough, the tough hide under the table.” Not me, however. I have converted Leto Towers into a veritable Boot Camp.

I did come across some Scientifically Proven Research findings about the health benefits of making love; a twenty minute love wrestle burns more calories than cycling three times round the world, apparently. And to those of you thinking 20 minutes! Get real. I give the same response that I gave to my friend Barry the Builder. Start with two minutes and build up.

All to no avail anyway. My Partner in Lockdown did not fall for my Twenty ways to Boost your Immune System in Bed type of clickbait.

The boot camp beckoned

The first thing was my beloved mountain bike, The Trek. I am not a fan of fixed wheel cycling (spinning). Would you exercise on a treadmill when you can walk in the mountains? I get it if you have to squeeze exercise in between a hectic Metro, Boulot Dodo Parisian lifestyle, but here? Come on.

In A Time of Corona I have had to suck it up, however, and buy a Turbo Trainer. This little baby fixes the back wheel on resistance rollers and away you go. Or not, as it were.

The first problem is that it emits a noise like an amplified 1960s dental drill.

To remediate that you need headphones and music. After experimenting unsuccessfully with Cosi Fan Tutte I was forced to concede the point and download some exercise beats from Spotify with  titles like Kiss My Tuss and Shake Yo Batty Grandad.

Both of which sound like quite pleasant activities if I knew what they were. In the end Daisy explained them to me, not without a good deal of embarassment. On my part that is. Your Seven Year Old of today appear quite shameless.

I have also bought a bungee harness to attach for swimming. So this too enables you to go nowhere whilst exerting considerable amounts of energy but in the water.

Of course this is all very well for we landed gentry living on spacious estates. For those of you battened down in the teeming slums of Kalkan, I highly recommend the skipping rope. Jump rope if you want to sound more like a boxer than a primary school girl. I am on three repetitions of 100, which go something like this.

“One, two, three, ouch, four, five, six, fuck, seven eight, nine, shit..”

The creme de la creme of my exercise options is my Watch the Jandarma circuit. For this I walk out the gate down the road bordering my manor, keeping an eye out for the flashing blue and red light, then jump over the stream back on to our land and safety. A run uphill, jog up the steps, five pull ups, run up more steps, then across to the gate and start again. 200m in all. Ten circuits equals 2 km.

Mens sana in corpore sano.

There you are: Turkish, French and Latin for you today.

Arriverderci!

Stay fit. Stay safe