The 30 Year Old Virgin

When carrying out any form of repetitive activity over a period of time your mind starts to wander. For me the most acute manifestation of this occurs when swimming, I assume because of the limited sensory distraction. To date, during the monotony a training session I have managed to write best man’s speeches for people not yet getting married (let alone likely to ask me to be best man), devised and forgotten the world’s funniest sit-com, pondered why it is that people are so obsessed about chickens crossing the road and had a one man debate on whether the green lobby are carrying out an important environmental function or just performing socially acceptable class discrimination by promoting higher prices on, or the boycotting of, products, services and goods that (as these front room ecocrusaders are generally members of the leisure classes) they can afford to either continue using or find an alternative whilst doing nothing of real value for the environment but instead burden guilt and financial pressures upon those who cannot afford to exercise the luxury of choice. But I digress.

Yesterday, at about 64 lengths, it struck me how this year, essentially independent of the 30th Year Challenges, I have done a number of things for the first time in my life. I am not counting travelling to new places (hello Ipswich, Brighton, Tuscany et al) or manufactured challenges. I am referring to things that millions of people do as part of their everyday lives. I quite like this thought and so have decided to keep a list of some of the best examples to remind me that it doesn’t take physical exhaustion, embarrassment, fear or even planning to obtain a new experience. I have added that list to the left hand side of this page. I might add to it or I might remember the sitcom and focus my attention on that instead.