This week we have come up with the finest bum and leg workout the world has ever seen. No more spinning in a dark and noisy room (yeah, like I ever did…), no more drowning in a sweaty aquabike session, and definitely no more losing your sanity in a step aerobics class. My new and improved workout also allows you to work on just 3 out of your 250 muscle groups, damages most of the cartilage in your legs, and runs the risk of a crippling spinal injury too, just for added fun. I call it the “Lets plant a vineyard by hand workout”. If anyone is interested in joining us for some more sessions, just give us a year or so to recover and then pay the ludicrous recurring charges to my paypal account. Here’s how it works:
Step 1. Survey the surroundings. Using a poodle to do this helps reduce lactic acid buildup later in the day.
Step 2
Spend a load of time and money sourcing some syrah vines of a specific clone and match them to a specific root-stock which your foolhardily believe will make a good combination for your “terroir”. Keep on believing it as you ignore the fact that its a total guess as there haven’t been any vines on this hillside for over 50 years, and even when there were, they certainly weren’t syrah.
Step 3
Find a very cool old tractor. It will turn out that the tractor is primarily there for decoration and to make you feel that you aren’t the one doing the hard work.
Step 4
See how many men you can huddle around the back of the tractor to fix a bit of machinery onto it. Do this in black and white to give it an artistic feel.
Step 5
Take your vines and whack their roots with a butchers cleaver to “wake them up”.
Step 6
Find an old guy who happens to have planted almost all the vines in the southwest of France. That’s a lot of vines. It turns out that he knows how to do it. Yup, with a spade.
Step 7
Repeat the digging action over 2,000 times as the sun beats down.
Step 8
When everything is planted, allow daughter number 1 to get a lift back to the house in the cool old tractor. I get the feeling that’s the thing she will remember….
So yesterday was a pretty momentous day for us. We feel like we have finally been able to put some roots down in the village. Quite literally.
Next time, if the vines havent been washed away or eaten by something, I will show you my new toy, a backpack mist-blower! It looks like that jet-pack thing that guy used in the 1984 Olympics, but is even cooler. Well, maybe that last bit is a lie, but it’s definitely more useful. See you soon!