I can’t believe it’s been five years since the first Semillons event..... so many memories come flooding back! Nothing could have prepared us for the noise that 200 or so Wine Trade Women made as we entered the room to the erotic sounds of Tom Jones’s version of ‘Kiss’... The squeals and the cheering, (jeering, perhaps??), came from mouths agape with expectation, and the audience was a mass of eyes wide with a seeming mixture of excitement and anxiety! The Semillons had arrived – it was harvest time, and we were ripe for plucking..........Well, four of us have cocked a snook at Old father Time and are coming back for more on July 8th, to be joined by four Semillons virgins, and I for one just can’t wait to hear those screams of ‘off, off, off’ again (surely they didn’t mean ‘get off’?) My love affair with Velcro can be rekindled.....
As the second oldest Semillon, keeping in shape and up with the youngsters is a bit like running up a down escalator – you have to run pretty fast just to stay ahead, and a moment’s hesitation can have depressing results. So the progress towards the honed and toned look has not been helped by a couple of weeks of relative overindulgence. A trip to Rioja for a week involved not only some late nights and copious glasses of tempranillo juice, but also quite a lot of jamón iberico and chorizo. I fear these two delicacies do not feature on the diet sheet so lovingly created by my personal trainer. The last few days have featured a dinner, in the company of the Lord Mayor of London, at Vintners’ Hall, and a Wine Trade golf tour to West Norfolk during which exercise on the links was counteracted by overindulgence on the 19th and 20th holes.
I first started going to Jo, my personal trainer, some five years ago – not long before the first Semillons event – and she does a great job in keeping my waistline under control and making me feel guilty whenever I am faced with a biscuit. I have a one hour session with her (so to speak) every week at a local gym in Ascot and, as her husband is a personal trainer specialising in golfers, I am often likely to be sharing the cross-trainer with the likes of Graham McDowell, David Howell, or Thomas Björn. Paul’s latest client is Hugh Grant (who wants to hone his golfing muscles) but I have yet to come face to baby face with that foppish grin.
Despite the pain and sweat, keeping fit is actually an incredibly invigorating experience, but it also can be quite addictive. My latest ‘drug’ is my Concept2 rowing machine on which I sit every Sunday for about 43 minutes clocking up 10 kms. It’s boring as hell but the ‘glow’ afterwards is only matched, in my view, by the feeling after spending a couple of hours on the dance floor! Now there’s another way of losing pounds (and inhibitions)
If you haven’t yet bought your ticket to the Semillons on July 8th, I urge you to do so quickly – it’s going to be a mega evening of fun, laughter, good wine, and many wide-eyed exclamations of OMG’s. The trade will be discussing the abs and fabs around the water-coolers for weeks to come. In the immortal words of someone cool when I was a mere lad... Be there, or be square!
See you there!
Sir Dancealot x
No comments:
Post a Comment