L has a problem with her ankle again, so she turns down my
offer of the gym and I go on my own. Well, just me and my Biobank activity
monitor.
I wonder if it’s actually detecting anything as I set off on
15k on the gym bike. Perhaps I should be waving my arms around so that it
doesn't think I'm sat at home watching TV.
To make matters worse the gym bike starts playing up. The
distance readout seems to keep sticking as if I’m going nowhere. Then it suddenly
starts roaring through them or perhaps I’m simply going downhill. Then it
freezes totally. I get off and stand by the bike but the screen still says I’m doing 78
revolutions per minute. I think it’s time to do something else.
I do some leg weights, a few arm weights and a spot of rowing.
This time thankfully without an Olympic rower beside me.
While in the gym I finish my latest audio book. The Rosie
Project by Graeme Simsion.
It’s about a chap who is certainly an autistic Asperger's type
on some level and his quest for a life partner, namely the Wife Project.
It’s full of great characters. The man himself Don, a university
lecturer who has a difficult time understanding and connecting with other
people and dealing with social situations but has a superhuman capacity for
memorising procedures, anything from dance moves to sexual positions all of
which can be practised upon one of the university’s skeletons.
Then there’s his mate Gene, who has open relationship with
his wife which allows him to pursue his own research project of sleeping with a
woman from every country in the world.
The Wife Project involves a detailed questionnaire. It aim being to find
the perfect woman by systematically eliminating non-suitable partners - the unpunctual,
the overweight, the vegetarians, the smokers, the heavy drinkers etc. So Don rejects
the advances of a French nymphomaniac on the grounds of her drinking and
smoking. Gene though finds the Wife Project very helpful.
Enter Rosie, a PhD student come barmaid, who is late,
drinks, smokes and fails on almost every score. She is also trying to find her
biological father, which Don helps her with via some secretive
DNA testing.
Don becomes intrigued by The Father Project, as he they call
it, and then by Rosie herself.
It’s all very much typical romcom fodder except the author’s
narration as Don is brilliantly deadpan, all the characters are eminently
likeable and it’s also extremely funny. Loved it.
(Sunday 12th January)
No comments:
Post a Comment