Words, Simon Hollway
Images, Seb Baltyn

Writing for a living ent a bad gig. I prefer doing monthly mags as the pressure of meeting a daily deadline for a tabloid is far too much for my delicate and verbose constitution. However, the monthlies do have their downside and there are plenty of deadly traps for the novice, particularly on the occasions when you have to react to a current event yet remain topical in an article that won’t be printed and distributed for another two weeks. Two weeks after the event is a long time so you have to kind of hedge your bets, remain ambiguous or go for the obvious gag.

Sadly, I have been terribly caught out on two infamous occasions in the UK. The first was in the Evening Standard where my fatal mistake couldn’t be tucked circumspectly away behind the letters page. Idiot here and gob-for-hire had just heard about the emergence of a new singer called Beyonce Knowles. Pfft I thought and got all in a lather. The singer’s debut occurred during the week when my favourite barfly rant was protecting the purity of the English language against mindless assaults from the great unwashed and their insistence of coining names, phrases and words that they had welded together from soundbites off MTV and OK magazine.

So there it was, I spouted. Beyonce – yet another one of these absurd made-up Christian names that echo through every shopping centre and high street across the UK when school’s out. I was sick of hearing about Shadice, Louetta and Karona. Bemused by parents calling their kids Nivea, Michelene or Formica. Staggered to stumble across Cheyenne, Zinfandel and her twin, Chardonnay. Mortified by the ignorance that saddled innocent children with the names Oranjello, LeMonjello and Dementia. All these absurd hybrids of the English language, Beyonce included, stitched together in a pathetic attempt to evoke glamour and the exotic on those mean urban streets. Oh I went on. And on. I was being so clever and had such foresight into the decline of the English race as we knew it.

Turned out Beyonce was her real name. She was originally French you see. The famous French joie de vivre rapidly disappeared. The Evening Standard lost their sense of humour too. I looked like a right pratt and lost my job. Should have just waited a few weeks until all the facts were in…

The other terminal mistake was thankfully hidden in a more obscure publication. It happened when Mo Mowlem started wearing a wig for the first time BEFORE she had told anyone why she had to wear it. I picked up on it. Accused her of trying to outdo old Tank Tits Widdicombe in the ugly glamour stakes. Oh I went on. And on. I was just sooo painfully funny. And yes, three weeks later, she finally revealed that she had to wear the wig as all her hair had fallen out during chemotherapy for cancer. I wasn’t that popular for a while.

Those two faux pas made me avoid commenting on others and concentrate on myself (not a difficult switch according to my friends and family). Which is all well and good until you start second-guessing yourself and discover that the things you write about tragically come to pass. This dreadful foresight becomes a little uncomfortable – half self-fulfilling prophecy, half inevitable demise. I remember writing a scathing but well received column at the tender age of 23, denouncing all those elderly gents over the age of 30 who insist on wearing baseball caps to nightclubs. How absurd they looked and who did they think they were kidding. I remember it lucidly mainly because some lovely launched into me one night at a club for false advertising. I was wearing a baseball cap and, from a distance, appeared much younger than I actually was. I was 31. The hunter had become the victim.

So, after that insanely long digression, I’ll get to my point. Last issue, in my ongoing bid to develop rippling muscles out of expanses of blubber in time for the Aussie beaches this summer, I vaingloriously described how I had reached the pinnacle of fitness. I was running dozens of kilometres a week, cycling and was, in general, an all out Olympian in training for gold. My fitness age had been caculated as a 20 year old’s. Ominously, however, I did mention that although I was as fit as a spring chicken, my bones, joints, tendons and sinews were still quite a few years older.

And so it came to pass. A few days after I wrote that article and celebrated my elite athleticism, it all went Pete Tong. Curiously it didn’t happen at the gym. A stressful morning at the rockface of independent publishing in WA forced me to dash for the office door, stumble into the sunlight, take a deep breath and crick my neck to relief the tension. I rolled my neck one way. Click. I rolled it the other way. Clack. I went to roll it back to the centre…and it wouldn’t move. I was stuck, head lop-sided like an awkward, inquisitive woodpecker grimacing every time I went to turn my head. That one movement had sent my entire left side into a seizure and also blew my left hamstring. Brilliant. Match postponed due to age.

Thus began an infuriating round of medical care. Seemingly everywhere you turn in Australia, there is a physiotherapist’s and chiropractor’s clinic. They all claim their abundance is due to the fact that Aussies are so much more active than the rest of the world and, consequently, suffer from more sporting injuries. I would suggest that is only half the truth – the other reason is that many of them are so rubbish that it sometimes seems that anyone with a Tafe evening class degree in woodworking can set up shop as a sports therapist.

To make matters worse, there is a palpable internecine war between the different disciplines. Physios hate chiropractors, chiropractors mistrust osteopaths and alternative healers love everyone but have little or no effect on the problem. They all offer conflicting advice and many push treatment courses that last months at a significant dollar outlay for each visit.

In two weeks I went through three chiropractors, four physios, inummerable X-rays, athletic supports and mountains of neurofen. It was utterly frustrating, particularly as I so desperately wanted to get back on the treadmill after all the months of hard work that were now evaporating away as I was unable to lift, run or even walk like a normal human being. Eventually I found a handful of decent professionals who were able, slowly but surely, to ease the pain and get me back on my feet. So, I now have a support team that would make a Nascar racer jealous. One physio, one chiropractor, a sports masseur and my trainer. The expense is ludicrous but I am determined to get all those bumps and ripples back on my torso that I worked so hard for. However, it kind of makes me wonder whether packing in the fags, stopping the booze and getting to the gym was a false economy.

The one person who was the most helpful was my trainer, Jeremy, owner of the fantastic training company Committed2Fitness. Ironically, he bust his shoulder during volleyball a few days after my injury so was also out for the count. Not so surprisingly, he had turned 30 a week prior. It’s all downhill from there I constantly reminded him. Still, we are both now back at the gym and gingerly lifting lighter weights, trying to achieve our previous form. My neck still twinges and I still run like the Elephant Man on speed with my gammy left hamstring but I’m determined to make the grade.

This was to be the last installment of Gymtastic with a shiny pic of me at the beach with a sixpack, bounteous biceps and solid proof that us Poms, with a lot of hard work, can go from blubber to buff in six months. That will have to wait till next time now. I hope. I expect I’ll suffer from extreme nipple chaffing on the bench press machine next and have to stop all exercise whilst I undergo a nipplectomy. Oh God, I hope I haven’t jinxed myself again…

Thanks to Committed 2 Fitness
www.committed2fitness.com.au   Tel: 0416 326 288
Phys-Care Physio
www.physiotherapy.asn.au  Tel: 08 9335 7733