Your new year's resolution

My weight problem is just that – weight. My cholesterol is normal, blood pressure's borderline high but not too bad, no heart problems, I'm not diabetic, anything like that. I tend to eat mostly healthy, it's just that years of desk jobs, physical inactivity, a bad back and knees from my military service and lots of snacking after I quit smoking year before last have left me a tubby heap of man-flesh.

My problem, as I discovered this morning, is that I have the same mindset that a lot of aging veterans have. Military tough is a whole other level of toughness. And you want to believe that you can still get out there and hump it like you could when you were 20, 21, 22 years old. So you end up doing something stupid like trying to hike three miles up and down a mountain despite years of inactivity. The most exercise I've gotten over the last several years is unloading the occasional 120 lb propane tank for my decrepit aunt down the road. Yet in my mind I'm still that bad-ass infantry stud who field marched thirty five miles in one night with a fully loaded rucksack, an M-60 tripod and five hundred rounds of ammo on my back, didn't bat an eye about the three toenails I lost in the process, and could could have done another twenty miles without a complaint. Even knowing my back and knees are shot from all that infantry stuff years ago, I still felt confident and had it in my head that I could hike the damn mountain.

So yeah, today was a wake-up call. I'm going to need to pace myself, that's all. So I'm going to give myself a month or two to build up to that mountain hike. I figure twenty minutes of brisk walking twice a day on the treadmill and free weights a couple times a week should get me there.

I've been a plasterer for almost 40 years, it's very physical and unlike all the other trades in the building game, you can't stop for regular breaks, when the plaster is mixed you have to stay with it. I also did Karate from age 13 to about 45, running my own club for about 5 years, after which I did Iaido for a short while, (swordplay) which was also quite physical, if it wasn't for the beer belly I'd fade away

Cool. I'm a bit of a martial artist myself, mostly Aikido and Muay Thai, and I've done some grappling and boxing. I've also dabbled in Praying Mantis and Kendo, and my favorite weapons are the Escrima and staff. It's been years since I've practiced, though. Life and responsibilities got in the way, I guess. I've always wanted to try Iaido, but for whatever reason never got around to it.

Yeah, martial arts weaponry laws are weird here, as well. You can buy pretty much any kind of martial arts weaponry at, say, a flea market – mostly because there's no registration involved with second-hand items – but actual licensed stores aren't typically allowed to sell them without some kind of special permit. Meanwhile, you can walk into just about any Wal-Mart and buy a pistol, rifle or shotgun – apparently because they're being sold as “sporting gear,” not “weaponry.”

Speaking of America's much-in-need-of-revising second amendment which guarantees us the right to bear arms, recently in New York a judge lifted the ban on nunchaku that had been established in the ‘70s, thanks to a martial artist who cited that the right to bear arms shouldn’t be limited simply to firearms. So now it's legal to carry them in New York – which could mean a drop in deaths by gun, but might also result in a rise in cracked skulls by 'chucks.

One of my older brothers was in the Ulster Defence Regiment and lived with his family in Newtownards not far from Belfast. When he retired he moved to France and a few years ago he bought a vintage Brown Bess Musket online. Because it was coming from the Middle East French law didn't allow him to import it from outside of the E.U. So he asked me if he could have it sent to me in the U.K. Which I agreed to, but it turned out it wasn't possible as I didn't have a firearms licence. I got in touch with my local sporting gun shop who agreed to handle the import for £100 so I rang and told him, he wasn't best pleased, he said, “For Gods sake, when I lived near Belfast at the height of ‘the troubles’ I bought a 9mm Ruger and the postman delivered it!”