Saintly

Do you know what the trouble with having a load of New Year Resolutions is? You realise exactly why you haven't been doing all of them forever - they're difficult and take some effort. Who wants to put effort in during January?

January diets are a myth; I'm totally convinced of that. No one has a clean cut off with the leftover chocolate from Christmas, do they? January is for finishing that guilt free because you have to or it's wasteful and mumbles something about rainforest or something, right?

I have got round the misery of a January health kick by actually starting it in December so that I don't feel like such a New Year twat. I saw a personal trainer once on the 20th December and then ate my body weight in potatoes every day for a week because it didn't matter; I'd seen a personal trainer. This was perfectly because I could confidently rock up to see the personal trainer on the 2nd January without feeling self-conscious that this new fad wouldn't last because I'd cleverly begun it last year. Take that, all you judgey looking dog walkers in the Brighton area who looked sceptical at my leggings. The only slight snag in this plan was arriving at the park only to have the personal trainer look at me with her head on one side wondering why the woman she had trained in December had managed to triple in size since learning what a squat was.

Hopefully, what I've managed to do there, though, is increase her passion for the job by showing her what a difficult task some people can be. I'm not sure she's ever trained anyone with burpee tourettes before but I think constantly being told where she can fuck to every time she politely asks for "3 more" of anything is going to really mould her into a better, more patient person.

As I'm still wading through Hotel Chocolat's back catalogue in order to get to my sofa, I thought when I visited the cinema this week I would try and avoid wasting a literal £20 on a box of popcorn. "I'll take my own snacks!" said 2018 me and popped a bag of hula hoops and an apple into my handbag.

The reason, I now know, that cinemas don't sell you apples in the foyer is twofold:

1. Apples do not provide the obligatory floor stick necessary to make a cinema feel like a cinema.
If someone spills popcorn on the floor it is oddly nostalgic; it's light and fluffy and doesn't get in anyone's way. Unloading a bushel of apples into the row in front causes an issue; apples are much harder than popcorn, they're bigger and they ferment. All in all, it's a ticking time bomb waiting to get the kids club drunk at 10am on a Saturday morning. There's also nowhere handy to put the core once you are finished... for some reason every single seat is furnished with a cup holder, but not even one of them has a core holder for the health conscious film lover. The floor seemed inappropriate for slippage reasons, but I'd not eaten the hula hoops yet so I didn't have a bag to put it in.

2. It is VERY hard to chew an apple in time to songs and dialogue you have not previously seen or heard before in order to not disturb other cinema-goers with the boulder you have decided to eat next to them.

I would have needed precisely two more weeks in a rehearsal room with Zac, Hugh and Zendaya in order to be able to not annoy each and every person sitting within 10 seats of me.

Some combination of apple and tooth provides the amplification of a top of the range Bose. Previously undiscovered levels of volume are exposed to the world when an apple meets a set of gnashers.


All in all, I'm not feeling apples as a cinema snack for the future. Some places I think apples are very appropriate as a snack:

1. A concert largely consisting of white noise.
2. The iPad shop.
3. When being attacked by a horde of doctors you need to keep at bay for a day.


In a week of trying to stick to a few new ideas to mould my life a little, I feel like apart from the apple hiccup* I have not done too badly... exercise has been done, hobbies have been sought, disposable bottles and cups have not been purchased. It is a little disheartening to have got the 6th of January and not been sent any form of medal or light financial incentive but, I suppose it's best not to rub it in the faces of people who haven't seen a miraculous turnaround like me. Who amongst you can honestly say that you've gone so far as to sweat in a park for 40 minutes AND choke on an apple this week?

Quite honestly by the end of next week I fully anticipate looking exactly like Jameela Jamila and rolling my eyes every time poor Meghan Markle is asked how she intends to be more like Laura Lexx in future. All the best women alliterate, don't you know.










*and again, I apologise profusely to the man who got home from The Greatest Showman in Brighton Odeon on Tuesday to find apple on the back of his neck. I hiccupped and the rest is obvious. I'm sorry.