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Saturday is the only day I don’t work, and thus my favorite day of the week. I can sleep in, not have to worry about running late for anything, and go to bed early if I feel like it - which I almost always do.

Saturday is also market day. Richmond has the only weekly street market left in Victoria, and our gorgeous neighbours have got us addicted to the unbelievably cheap fruit and vegetables and community vibe, so we go and buy more than we can ever eat, have loads of coffee (Miss M has babychinos, much to her disgust), then stagger home with my groovy Kmart nanna trolley full of healthy goods. Miss M has recently discovered how to do flips on swings, so we also have to stop by the park for some beginner gymnastics.

Yesterday something strange happened after our market trip. I had a huge urge to be domestic, which manifested itself in these ways:

1. I washed up (!)

2. I stewed apples, then made muffins with the apple and some strawberries I had frozen earlier. As a side note, they’re delicious.

3. I made a giant vat of stock out of leftover celery tops, mushroom stems and various other things. Unlike other times, I didn’t leave it out to go bad, and instead put it in ziplock bags in the freezer, which were marked with the date.

4. I made soup for dinner from the stock. It was fantastic.

5. I totally forgot it was grand final day - almost a capital crime in Melbourne.

As I wandered around the kitchen I wondered what had come over me. I had free time, it was a beautiful day, but I had suddenly become a Nigella Lawson style freak - but without the nanny and housekeeper (oh if only I had the housekeeper …) And I have to say I actually enjoyed it. Knowing myself well though, it would be wrong to expect a repeat of this next week, as I’ll probably have nothing in the house to eat, and spend all day lying in the sun doing nothing. Hmm, I’m already looking foward to it.

Having referenced Nigella Lawson, here is a poem I wrote about her several years ago, when I realised I was horribly jealous of her achievements, and trying to pretend I didn’t like her.

I am not Nigella,
My boobs aren’t quite that big,
I’m not a British toffee and I don’t speak like a prig.
But do I wish I had her house, her money and her luck?
The answer’s pretty obvious.
Well do I?
Do I f**k!

As one of my friends pointed out later, her luck actually wasn’t all that great, but I say if you’re looking for truth in poetry, you’ve come to the wrong place!

Today I’m loving: sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep.

About four months ago, I started a class at Hunts for women with babies aged 12 weeks to 12 months. One of my super talented clientele designed a flyer which still makes my heart skip a beat, and I did the rounds of Maternal Child Health Centres, doling out my gorgeous red, black and white message of fitness.

When Miss M was small, I couldn’t find anything catering to mothers of young children that wasn’t totally depressing. I dropped out of my mother’s group after two visits, wondering why I felt like such an outsider. I knew we all had little kids, and obviously they were important, but the other women seemed to have lost their identities and couldn’t even get one sentence out without mentioning a rushed visit to the Children’s Hospital in response to a runny nose, or presenting an itemised list of nappy rash creams, rated according to price and effectiveness.

My idea was to provide a place where women didn’t have to worry about finding childcare, and could still be grownups, doing something positive for themselves - like reclaiming their bodies, recharging their energy, and just breathing deeply for forty five minutes. There’s no pressure to perform - if it’s too hard, you can rest. If it’s too easy, there’s always a way to make it harder.

At the moment the class is small. Like a business genius, I chose to start it in winter, and each Thursday at 10.15am, without fail, it would be pouring rain. At the gym you can always tell what the weather’s like just by how many people are there - and when it’s raining, the gym ain’t pumping. So coming out with a little child is a big ask - and my three stalwart attendees managed it every week, and have all signed up for the next rotation of classes.

One thing I wasn’t prepared for is how much I enjoy hanging out with those kids each week. I have no desire to have another child, but William, Beatrice and Olivia are all such gorgeous little people, I can’t help but love them. Watching them learn to sit up, grow teeth, and find their voices is awesome - and I think they like me too. Olivia spent most of yesterday’s class laughing at me, but maybe she just thinks I’m nuts. Beatrice, who’s the youngest by about three months, used to hate being on the floor, so I’d hold her while demonstrating exercises - a challenge in itself. Now she’s far more independent and doesn’t need me anymore, which is kind of sad. Still, she can join in with Olivia, and laugh at my antics, and I get the best interaction of all, which is to hand the sweet things back at the end of the class, and go home to my own big grown up girl.

Today I’m loving: my tattoo - even more than yesterday. And my gorgeous friend Leisa, the queen of technological info.

If you’d like to see the flyer for my class, click on the link below.

The Super Fabulous Flyer

One of my clients is a tattoo artist. I inherited him from another trainer who left Hunts, and thought Tim and I might get on well. I’d seen him around the gym, and was fascinated by his amazing artwork, so I was really excited at the prospect of training him. The night before our first session, I dreamed he tattooed dice on top of my feet, showing ones (or snake eyes, as they call it in the gambling biz). Although Freud might have had something else to say about it, I knew Tim would design me a tattoo.

Hunts is full of tattoos. Every second person to walk through the door seems to have one - or more, and it’s fascinating to see what people choose. A famous crop circle, tribal pieces, barbed wire bracelets, script - you name it, it’s there. After six months, I knew what I wanted, so Tim came up with a design, and today I got it done. A mermaid who looks like my daughter, on my lower back.

Tim specialises in Japanese style work, so she’s almost like a little geisha, with the most detailled scaley, curvy tail and wavy black hair. Only bits of it really hurt - over my spine, and oddly, close to my butt. I thought fleshiness would have made it less painful, but I was wrong! Strangely enough, two nights ago I had another dream where I was supposed to get the mermaid done, but instead it ended up being a demon who opened a portal to hell. Hmm, maybe I should check into nautical mythology, and see exactly what those mermaids were about … and where’s that damn book on Freud?

Today I’m loving: the Simpsons series 5 on DVD - some of the most classic episodes all rolled together into a neat cardboard package.

Earlier this year, I decided to shave all my hair off for a fundraising event the Leukaemia Foundation holds. I’d seen an ad on television, and being highly suggestible, knew it was something I had to do. My relationship had recently come to an end, and as everyone knows, a haircut follows a breakup like A follows B. The fundraising also benefits people with Lymphoma, a disease I’d had when I was 24, so it was like a huge neon sign was flashing “do it!”.

Most of my female friends were horrified, and some even offered to sponsor me not to shave my hair off. Most of my male friends loved the idea, and offered me more money to go totally cueball. I had to turn them down, since I didn’t want all my clients running away from my shiny bald head, although it did hold a certain military appeal for a moment or two. I imagined myself running boot camp classes and shouting “I said get DOWN, maggot”, but knew I wouldn’t be able to control my laughter.

On May 2nd, the women in my neighbourhood house exercise class helped me do the deed. My pigtails were hacked off, then after a bit more chopping, my hair was shaved to a No 1, which for those of you who don’t know, is just an 8th of an inch away from totally bald. The Divine Miss M cried, and told me it was hideous, but she’s seven and firmly entrenched in the belief that girls have long hair. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would, and for three months, I kept it at a No 2, which is just a little further away from totally bald.

After a trip to New Zealand for a yoga teaching course, I decided I’d had enough of my shaved head. Possibly something to do with the temperature being minus 2 and not being able to get warm, but I was getting sick of shaving it twice a week to keep it the right length. I suddenly also (to my own great surprise) decided I wanted to look like a girl again, and as my daughter says, girls have long(er) hair.

So after growing it for about two months, I now have a crazy Eurofro, which made it’s first appearance a couple of weeks ago. I was hoping for pixie elegance a la Kylie Minogue, but instead, my hair sticks straight up, regardless of beanies or bike helmets. Everyone at work is fascinated by it, and it’s always being touched, patted or commented on. So as well as raising money for a great cause, I’ve got this incredible hair which would never have appeared if I hadn’t cut it all off. I’ve decided to let it progress organically and make a firm decision on what to do later. Yesterday someone asked if I could grow it like Marge Simpson, and with a little more time and a few buckets of product, the answer is probably yes.

Today I’m loving: the eight people who came to my lunchtime yoga class!

My brother James is about six and a half years younger than me. I still remember being super pissed when he was born, since he’d taken my only child status away, and was a far nicer baby than I’d ever been, thus making me hate him even more. The hatred continued for quite a few years, but then gradually as we both got older, I found that I quite liked him.

Later, after I moved to Melbourne, he wrote me hilarious letters, sent me tapes of bands like Splatterhead, and came to visit with his crazy friends who slept on the floor after we went to see Suicidal Tendencies. I spent a mad couple of weeks “looking after” him while my parents went to Asia, and our friendship was fully formed during that time.

He headed off to the US for a student exchange when he turned 18 (I think), and on New Year’s eve before he left, we got drunk on brandy which was supposed to be used for some kind of Xmas pudding sauce, and I tearfully apologised for being such a hideous sister for so many years. He shrugged it off, gave me his rugby medal, and a note telling me not to worry about him, because he was born lucky. I’ve still got the note and the rugby medal, which my daughter sometimes wears.

Not long after he came back, he moved over to Melbourne, first living with me, and then not too far away with a bunch of friends. Now he lives just around the corner, and we speak nearly every day. He’s been taking the Divine Miss M to play basketball most weekends, which is fantastic, except he’s been teaching her to play hardcore street style, as I discovered when she elbowed me in the ribs as I tried to intercept the ball. Court hustling aside, he’s a truly lovely person, and always there for me when I need him.

Currently he’s in Tibet, checking out the Himalayas, eating yak twice a day, and having a ball. I can’t believe how much I miss having him around, and almost on a daily basis I’ll think about how I have to tell him something, or play him a song or whatever, and then remember he’s still away for weeks.

He’s got a huge amount of plants which I promised I’d water while he’s gone, and for some strange reason I really can’t explain, it took two weeks before I managed to do it. I was pretty sure I’d be faced with some sort of plant graveyard and a hasty trip to the nursery, but thankfully, they were all still thriving, even in the face of my gross neglect - or perhaps, because of my gross neglect. So he’ll never know how slack I was - unless he reads this post of course. And then I’ll just remind him he was born lucky, and therefore vicariously, so are his plants.

Today I’m loving: my coffee machine, which is working perfectly after a period of touch and go high pressure leakage. Hooray!

I have to say my inaugural review of this week’s magazines is a bit depressing - the multitudinous exercise articles, crazy body overhauls and get fit for summer plans I’d hoped to comment on are slightly thin on the ground. But never mind; you have to start somewhere!

On a slightly more positive note, the big news in all the mags is that the Madrid Fashion Week banned all models with a BMI of less than 18. Hooray - is it possible a normal sized human could be considered acceptable by the fashion world?

FAMOUS - OCTOBER 2:

Page 66: “Weight Loss in a Hurry”

A reader’s question about getting fit for summer gets a fairly sane response. The advice is to do cardio 3-5 times per week, and resistance exercise twice per week.
Disappointingly, there’s nothing about eating sensibly, which can make or break even the most fantastic exercise regime. The only upper body exercise advice is to do tricep dips, but something like pushups would be better since it incorporates larger muscle groups. Good advice for lower body exercises, duration and repetitions.

☆☆☆☆

NW - OCTOBER 2:

Page 60 - “You and your shadow” - short article pitching an at-home workout device called the Shadowboxer, which gives you “all the benefits of traditional boxing, but without the heavy impact and jarring neck pain”. Now, I don’t know about you, but where I come from, shadowboxing doesn’t involve impact, or jarring. And hey, if it’s good enough for thousands of insanely fit boxers, then it’s probably good enough for an at home workout. Unless you want to train for competetive shadowboxing, save your bucks and go back to the old skool, Ali style.

NEW IDEA, SEPTEMBER 30:

Page 57, “Get Fit With Guy”

Guy Leech cracks the whip over Dicko, in a mid life crisis rescue plan.

Obviously playing on the fact the two guys involved were recently on Celebrity Survivor together, there’s definately a sense of revenge and punishment in the programme Dicko’s undergoing. The rescue plan is good, but for most people, completing a 10k run, 20k bike ride and 10k paddle twelve weeks after commencing an exercise regime is a reletively unattainable goal. Remember goals need to be realistic for you, and unless you’re capable of training every day, and have a program that’s especially structured around that, you may need to make your twelve week benchmark something you have to work to achieve, but won’t fall short of.

Maybe Dicko will respond well to the idea of being flogged, but I reckon he’s in a very small percentage of people who will. Make sure whatever training you’re doing feels right for you. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be hard, but if you’re at the point of exhaustion within the first ten minutes, it doesn’t really bode well for the rest of the session. Don’t drive yourself into the ground too soon, or expect to be a world class athlete after a couple of workouts. Getting fit and losing weight isn’t something that happens overnight (to quote a famous advertisement), but if you’re able to stick with what you’re doing, you’ll get results.

☆☆

Page 58, “How to be a Winner”

While this article isn’t about exercise or fitness, it’s packed full of awesome ideas to achieve your personal best in key areas of life. I was definitely motivated after reading it, so I give it the full complement of stars.

☆☆☆☆☆

Today I Googled my name. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last. Sure, it’s not the most productive thing I could have been doing, and some people might think the huge pile of washing up in my kitchen should have priority over pure entertainment in front of the computer. And to them I say, you’ve got some nerve, buddy! When your working day starts at 5.50am, you deserve some down time. Granted, at 5.50am I was waiting for the gym to open and shooting the breeze about what Killer Kowalski’s finishing move was, but it was still 5.50am, dammit!

Anyway, back to the Googling. It’s fair to say that almost everyone believes they are totally unique - except my old boyfriend Spotty, who once confessed that he had no opinions whatsoever, and would agree with anything anyone said, like a personality chameleon. He was a strange guy, but he had gorgeous eyes, and sometimes that means you can forgive almost anything. He also had dreadlocks, until he cut them off, and discovered some fairly horrible creatures had been living in them for ages - or so the folklore in Hobart went at the time. Hmm, maybe the eyes weren’t quite enough after all.

A person’s uniqueness is in question though when you discover there are thousands upon thousands of Google hits with your name involved - and they’re not referring to you in any way, shape or form. Which can be a good thing if it’s internet porn - or the website I found which is a systematic review on Chlamydia Trachomatis in the UK, which a doctor with my name had founded. Maybe starting work at 5.50am isn’t such a bad thing after all. I also found a lot of hits involving the Avengers, because my name is Emma, and my surname is Honey, and there were episodes where Emma Peel went to some remote village like Little Sworping on the Swuff (I didn’t make that up, either!) looking for honey, stumbled upon some crazy scheme the villagers were involved in, and had to karate chop her way out of danger in a leather catsuit. Definately cool.

And then, about fifty search pages in, there I really am. Back in the days of being a script writer/editor on Blue Heelers, probably on an episode I would rather forget my involvement in, my name is right next to John Wood’s. Even cooler (!), a couple of pages on, my name is right next to my super talented father’s, in some strange collation of television and movie writers. My listing says I worked in the 90’s (true, but I also worked after that - however forgettable it might have been!), and my father’s listing says he worked in the 70’s & 80’s (he also worked after that, but because it was damn fine work, he should really be annoyed it’s not included).

Oddly, I got less pleasure out of my real name than the Avenger listing with the comma between Mrs Peel and her search for honey. And a rather freaky listing involving someone called Cinnamon Buns, but in the words of Hammy Hamster, that’s another story!

Today I’m loving: Moby’s “We Are All Made of Stars”, which I’m going to use as the cooldown for my spin class tomorrow.

Two weeks ago I dragged myself into the 21st century and traded my dial-up connection for broadband. I admit it’s tragically exciting to upload photos onto ebay at what seems like the speed of light, when before I could walk away, make a three course meal, eat it, and smoke an after dinner cigar before even bothering to check whether it was done. But I’ve got a new addiction to go with the speedy connection - downloading music.

At first I just found music for my spin classes that I’d never have had on CD - gym style music that I’ve always slagged off in the past, but have been warped into secretly liking. Then stuff I’d always wanted but couldn’t find anywhere - like WWF themes from the mid nineties, when it wasn’t quite as embarrassing to be a wrestling fan as it is now (yeah, you heard me - wrestling was cool back then - really!), and freaky covers of things by Duran Duran that I’d never known existed. But there were only a couple of wrestling themes, I swear. And only one Duran Duran cover …

Then something weird happened, and I suddenly found myself taking a musical trip back to when I was a kid. My parents always had wild parties most Friday nights when they both worked at the ABC, and my early years were spent sneaking beer out of glasses that had been left on the floor, and listening to Jethro Tull, Carly Simon and the McGarrigal Sisters. Even when I was young I knew that kind of music was uncool, but my folks loved it - and so did their drunken friends. Gerry Rafferty, some bizarre bawdy tunes by Morris On (I didn’t quite realise what cuckoo’s nest was a euphamism for back then) were all part of the madness, and no one listened to my complaints - until my brother was old enough, and then we’d complain together, but still no one listened.

So I don’t really know how I now have Carly Simon, Gerry Rafferty and Jethro Tull on my ipod. I’ve got heaps of tracks from Simon and Garfunkle’s concert in Central Park, which mostly reminds me of my father singing after a few glasses of wine - I think we’d hire the video practically every week, then he bought a box set of their records which were on high rotation. I not only have the original of Baker Street, but a cover by the Foo Fighters (but it doesn’t have that awesome saxaphone riff, so I could almost go out on a limb and say Gerry Rafferty’s version is better).

My daughter, seven year old Divine Miss M, loves music, but she has very particular taste (mostly awesome, but she’s got a thing for Jesse McCartney that I just can’t forgive) so I played her some of my downloaded music. I’d deliberately started with things I knew she’d like, then I hit her with “You’re so vain”, pretty sure she’d love it. She screwed up her face and told me to turn that boring crap off. I was disappointed, ’til I realised it was all part of the cyclic nature of life. Thirty years from now, she’ll be jacking into whatever version of the internet exists, wondering why she’s typing Carly Simon into a search engine, and remembering me fondly as she thinks “that song IS cool after all”.

Thursday is the day I put my money where my mouth is, and work out with my own personal trainer. I figure if I’m trying to convince people to pay me to train them, I should be seen to follow my own advice. Most people have a trainer because they’re unmotivated to work out on their own, or they get bored really easily and prefer to have someone else do the thinking for them. I can tick both those boxes, so for half an hour on Thursday mornings, Steve - one of my favorite co-workers - systematically destroys every muscle in my body.

Half an hour doesn’t sound long, but I think time in a gym operates on a strange wormhole principle. Work time drags, rest time speeds. I wonder what Steven Hawking would have to say about that? I can’t help checking the clock to see how much time is left, even when I know only ten minutes has gone past, and there’s still heaps of torture to come. Complaining aside, I totally love it. Steve always has an evil smile on his face and an exercise to match. I should get “Squeeze those glutes” tattooed on my butt I hear it so much!

The day after our first session my legs were so sore I cried while riding my bike into work. The gym floor is up two flights of stairs, and I suddenly got a flash forward of what life would be like when I was eighty, as I hauled myself up each one using the banister and as little of my legs as possible. But I go back for more each week, and yesterday I benched a PB of 42.5kg (only one and half legitimate reps, but you gotta start somewhere, right?), which is more than 2/3 of my body weight.

The funniest side effect is how much my clients love hearing the stories about what torture I’ve undergone, and watching me wince as I try to show them the exercises they’ll be doing that day. In the most loving kind of way of course! Whoever said revenge is sweet knew what they were talking about.

Yesterday the gym I work at had their inaugural members day. It was a big event, kicking off at 6am with a live DJ, and ending some time after 10pm, with music downstairs in reception. I really had to wonder if I was getting old when I had to ask the DJ to turn his bad remixes of “Girls on Film” down. It would have been cool if I’d been pinging off my head at 11pm, but hey, it was 6 in the goddam morning, and I was at work - isn’t that enough? It was kind of offset by the free breakfast, which turned out to only be fruit, but was still good. I would have preferred bacon and eggs, but it is a gym after all.

My involvement in members day was teaching the very first yoga class in the new mind/body studio. Bear in mind, this gym used to be called Mike Hunt’s back in the 70’s, so the very idea of a mind/body studio existing there is quite amazing.

I finished training my last client at 10am, rode my bike home and ate my second breakfast - ironically bacon, eggs and hashbrowns (well, I wasn’t at the gym anymore), then walked my dog, Max. I did a little preparation for my 12.15pm class, then rode back to the gym, ready to destress any office workers who came in for a little lunchtime nirvana. I made sure I could work the stereo properly, then hung out with the guys from the downstairs massage studio, making fun of the life coaches who’d set up a stall just in front of the main squash court. They looked quite unapproachable, and I’m still trying to find out whether anyone talked to them all day.

Then at 12.10pm I went into teacher mode, set up my mat for the class, put on music, and took off my shoes. Looked at my notes, did a little warm up, checked my watch - 12.15pm. Decided to warm up for a little while longer, to make any latecomers feel okay with coming in. Checked my watch - 12.25pm. Kept right on warming up, until 12.35pm, when I realised no one was coming, and maybe the photocopied poster advertising the day’s events hadn’t been big enough to let people know about a brand new class. Wondered if a class where no students turn up even exists in time or space - and then went back to my warm up.