Only in your imagination

My girlfriends and I had dim sum in the ludicrously grandiose surroundings of City Hall.

After a very girly choice of dim sum - nothing heavy, all steamed stuff, bar one or two items that T. couldn't resist ordering and unfortunately we couldn't resist eating! - A. managed to spoil the attempts of the girls to narrow down the calorific content (and their waistlines) by bringing out ultra-rich, mega-expensive cheesecake she had bought in Tokyo. Somehow, in the middle of this extravagant food fest, someone mentioned 'exercise'.
"Ah yes, exercise. I do a lot of imaginary exercise," T., mother of a baby girl, said. "I spend at least half an hour every morning lying in bed, trying to work out whether I should go for a swim or not. It's very time consuming to decide such things, you know. While I am washing my face, I wonder if I should stop and go for a swim. But I never get around to actually doing it."

Unfortunately I think I've fallen into the habit of imagining myself doing exercise, too. I have not been to yoga classes since June. I feel I ought to have carried on the hapkido I learned when I was twelve. In my imagination, I'd kick better than Angelina Jolie. I'm capable of performing gravity-defying running jumps, kicking around bad guys who try to assault me (so far in real life, the 'bad guys' have been wise enough to refrain from such suicidal attempts to come near me). Compared to all that stuff I could have done , going to yoga classes seems so tame. Wouldn't it be so much cooler if you could 'download' a jujitsu programme as they do in the Matrix so that you could do it without having to train for it? Or worry about when you would be able to do it.

One of these days....