Tuesday 3rd August

It's Tuesday, so for the fourth week in a row it's time to go for an evening swim. It's a humble achievement, but I'm glad I've managed to keep it up even this long - and now that Saturday's two-day hangover is but a grim memory, it feels more necessary than ever. My energy and enthusiasm for the project waxes and wanes during the day, but when I get home I manage to find some resolve and walk under a darkening sky towards the leisure centre to meet K.

I arrive a little early and sit around for a bit waiting for K, resisting (for now at least) the tempataion to engage in the perverse pleasure and shame of smoking a cigarette outside a gym. Either way, plenty of others are coming out of the doors with their wet hair dripping onto their almost-lit Marlboros in a manner that must make the super-toned gym staff cringe with horror. K turns up and we head in, facing none of the massive queues of last week but still having to wait for the staff to finish their conversations before giving me the wrong change from a tenner. It really must be hard working there if they have to let their professionalism slip at the counter with such regularity.

Happily, the pool is much quieter than it was last week, and the water is much cooler. These combined factors, as well as the fact that I'm in better practice than I was a couple of weeks ago, help me do far more lengths of the pool than I managed when we started swimming together four weeks ago. I have to stop occasionally but I smash my target and surprise myself by not passing out or being sick. It seems that, despite being ill from cider all weekend, I might still have a young man's body under there somewhere. It's all good motivation to carry on with this regime and step it up as time goes on. Operation Don't Look Like a Fat Bastard in Your Wedding Photos is still very much in the early stages, but it is at least still active.

We get home at around 9 and Ant pops round to swap some films and TV shows with us, then we all sit and watch Shooting Stars at 9.30. Now back for a second series following its resurrection, it's somehow still getting better and better, and is probably the only thing on TV at the moment that makes me laugh the entire way through. Vic and Bob are still unselfconsciously weird and funny, without ever resorting to the sarcasm and knowing humour that plagues so much other TV comedy - and I genuinely think I could watch them piss about for hours and never get bored.