Football

I'm out of my depth here. As someone who took the executive decision aged 14 to follow her brother rather than Mark Owen and give up Man Utd to start supporting Charlton Athletic (as I can recall, PURELY to be controversial in a town full of Ipswich supporters and manufacture some kind of peculiar rivalry), I'm really not qualified to go into any real detail on the match in which I have participated. Though I did rip off a few choice phrases from Alan Hansen's Match of the Day punditry, in my youth, and I still wheel them out from time to time.

But watching England play makes everyone English angry, I think. We seem to be falling out of love with football, which is a bit of a shame given that if I have to listen to my male friends banging on about a particular sport I really would by far prefer to hear about football than cricket - you know who you are.
I was recently explaining the various trials and tribulations of the England team to important OCJOG lady, Ruth, and realised that it sounded like I was describing a Hollyoaks plot rather than our actual national team. I kind of think a lot of the rhetoric around the England team and footballers generally speaking is a bit lazy. Yes, a lot of them do appear to be thoroughly unpleasant, but then they do have a lot of money and rather a lot less sense. Is that an excuse for being a racist? No. Then again, I don't know if John Terry is a racist. Ashley Cole says not, but can you trust the judgement of a man who wears those pants let alone a man with such a chequered history with people accused of hate crimes?
Is having a lot of money a good enough excuse for causing the distress and embarrassment of an entire nation with alarming regularity? What if it's not because they get paid an obscene amount of money - what if maybe, just maybe, they're just a bit shit at football?
Despite disparaging remarks about women's football by FIFA President and potato-faced menace, Sepp Blatter, who believes that women players should wear "tighter shorts", the good news for my Sasha Fierce drum banging is that its popularity seems to be on the rise. The BBC even show the Women's FA Cup final these days, though I do wonder if anyone's watching. It seems to me that our women's team might be quite a bit more likeable than the men's side (even if they are ranked by FIFA as 8th, whilst the men's team is INEXPLICABLY ranked 5th best in the world - my crushing disappointment begs to differ, stattos), so maybe we should try giving them a chance if we want to continue our national love affair with the "beautiful" game.
In my "Note about the Author" I omitted the information that I once captained a cup-winning ladies football team. This is because we competed twice at our employer's sports day, coming second once (in a competition of three teams) and winning the tournament the following year (in a competition of two teams). And I subbed myself in all of the matches, because I was frankly terrible. I saw my role as being more in an advisory capacity. Alongside us, our male colleagues also had a less successful team. In fairness, they had to face significantly more competition than we did.

So a little reunion was taking place at the Brixton Rec, on the very day that the FA unveiled its new code of conduct for footballers. I.e. don't text pictures of yourself wearing awful pants to ladies who perhaps can't be trusted with them; don't be a racist; don't abuse your employers via Twitter (these are all good, solid pieces of life advice guys - you could do worse than take note).
As we prepared to say goodbye to our dear former colleague, Ali Davies From Perth (who has selfishly decided to go back to Perth, as in Australia), I thought it would be nice to get the gang together again for a kick about. Unfortunately, only six members of the gang wanted to play. So, there was Gemma (who was always our star player), Steve and I against Ali, Pete and James. 10 minutes after kick off on the tiny indoor pitch, complete with a faux, wallpapered crowd and a suspect drip from the ceiling that was either the sweat of the great unwashed or a squiffy air vent, and I felt physically sick. Maybe I couldn't blame our national side for being rubbish, it is actually quite hard.
The match went a bit like this. Steve or Gemma scored, then Pete scored, then Steve or Gemma scored, then Pete scored. Every now and again, when he wasn't booting the ball at my face like an actual terror-beast, James scored. Occasionally Ali saved a goal. I ran towards numerous balls that Steve or Gemma had set up for me in front of an open goals, and missed EVERY SINGLE TIME. In a game of about 15 goals a side, I scored one goal, when Pete literally jumped out of the way of the ball because he felt sorry for me. Humiliating.
Fortunately, I wasn't let down by my team, who in our final first to five goals competition, managed to edge the fift goal past Pete to secure a 5-4 victory. A huge relief given my very precarious position at the top of the medal table. I needed that gold.

Seven Habits of Highly Unhealthy People

Habits are mighty. They have the ability to make or break us. It seems as if bad habits are the easiest to create, yet the hardest to cease. Good habits however, take a lifetime to build.
More often than not people habitually conduct themselves in a manner that does nothing but sabotage their state of wellbeing. As if physical and mental discontent were highly sought after conditions, these people work at being stuck in a rut of self-imposed limitations and a lack of interest in their state of physical and mental health.
Most of us are familiar with the myriad of agendas and self-help books that target those in desperate need for a change. From the classic 12-Step programs to seemingly easy-way-out titles such as, Think Yourself Thin, Americans have plenty of choices to find ways that will help them make positive changes. The problem is, very few follow through, and less will actually succeed.
Stephen Covey, author of the famed book, "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," sold millions of copies that spelled out his methods to find success. Perhaps the alluring word that put it on the bestseller list is 'habit.'
A habit is an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary. We all love to aspire to practicing good habits, yet it is much easier to recognize and identify with the bad ones.
Inspired by Covey's practical application of his seven very specific habits for effectiveness, the following is a closely matched yet contrasting list of the sevn habits of highly unhealthy people. Call it reverse psychology or my own clever way to catch your attention; I want you to understand that habits like these are meant to be broken.
If you identify with at least one of these habits, find out how you, or someone you care for, can break it and adopt a healthier lifestyle.

Habit 1: Be Inactive
Sitting is a silent killer. A large number of studies show that living a sedentary lifestyle promotes deadly diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and even some cancers. According to Dr. David Coven, a cardiologist with St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York, the workplace environment is one of the main contributors to dying an early death. But, your desk job is not just to blame. What you do outside the office will also make a difference.
The key is to understand that exercise can be done anywhere and at any time, and certainly doesn't need to be extreme to yield life-saving results. Find something you love to do, be it playing a game of Ping-Pong or chasing your grandkids around the yard. You will be amazed at the difference it will make in your overall fitness, not to mention your life expectancy.

Habit 2: Begin With No Friend in Mind
Social interaction is key in maintaining mental health. For some, reclusive tendencies take over, and our days spent in relative isolation can turn to weeks, months, or even years. Spending time alone is generally healthy, but when you wake up and realize you have no friends to call on, depression can threaten your mental health.
Whether you are trying to make a change in your diet, exercise regime, or general attitude about life, try and avoid doing it alone. The support you will gain from a confidant will be worth the initial pain you feel from letting go of your old habits.

Habit 3: Put Fast Foods First
Fast food is not only fast; it's also very cheap. The lure of a quick meal while you're on the run is certainly appealing, but over time indulging in fast food or convenience store spreads will cause serious damage to your health.
Not having enough time or money is no excuse to eat poorly. Try planning ahead and learn how cooking at home can save you a ton of cash. When you do cook meals at home, try resisting a second helping. Instead, pack it for lunch. What you don't eat for dinner the night before will make a meal the next day, plus help to reduce overeating, and your food bill.

Habit 4: Think Slim Wins
Attention dieters: the goal is not to be skinny; the goal is to be healthy. To do what it takes to adhere to an ideal image based on the media is to not pay any attention to your own body's intrinsic needs. Ignore your nutritional needs, and you might find yourself sick, tired, and without energy.
Resist the temptation to compare yourself with others. Ask yourself if you are strong, healthy, and fit. If so, why squelch your happiness just so you can fit into your teenage daughter's jeans? It is just not worth it.

Habit 5: Seek First to Overestimate, Then Be Underwhelmed
Marketing companies love people who do not do their research before buying their products, because if they did, they wouldn't be spending their hard earned dollars on something that is not likely to be a success. Fad diets that claim miracles won't change your lifestyle habits; they only put them temporarily on hold. When the excitement of hope fades, so does all ambition.
Try and not overestimate the promises fads and trends assert. Read books that spell out the facts. Get educated so you can make wiser choices, and not give up because you are underwhelmed by the lack of results.

Habit 6: Supersize
Eating healthy doesn't mean you never get to enjoy decadent pleasures. It is not a crime to taste, sample, and savor something. What doesn't work is to overindulge your senses until you've made yourself sick.
Whether it's drinking too much alcohol, binging on copious amounts of pure junk food, or participating in some other type of unhealthy behavioral habits, remember that moderation is the key.

Habit 7: Don't Sharpen the Saw
A sharp mind is the best tool you can use against ill health. Mindless activities such as watching television deaden neural activity in the brain. When your neural activity is compromised, you lose your ability to think clearly. When you lose your ability to think clearly you make poor decisions. When you make poor decisions, you become depressed. Why go down that road?
Engaging in creative activities that sharpen the tools of your mind such as drawing, listening to music, or writing will do just the opposite. Do what you can to stimulate your mind. Think outside the box and look at life through a refreshed set of eyes. When you are letting your creative juices flow, you will feel better about yourself. And when you feel better about yourself, you will make healthier choices, not to mention develop superior health habits that will last a lifetime.

Water Polo

In planning a programme of participation in almost 40 sports, some are easier than others to pin down. For example, I can play table tennis in a pub on London Fields, and this really is my proposed venue for that particular competition. Women's Water Polo teams in the London area are considerably trickier; there are only 3 leagues of 8 teams in the whole country.

It's pretty difficult to run a water polo team. It's an expensive sport because you have to hire a pool, and it can't just be any old pool, it has to be deep enough for you not to be able to stand up in. It's also not a particularly mainstream sport in the UK, so I guess people aren't going to be naturally inclined to seek it out. So then, how do you get the funding if the demand isn't great?
Aside from this, you have to be a pretty good swimmer to be good at water polo and the very good players, as with most sports, start young, but swimming lessons in many schools just aren't enough to get kids to the level they would need to be at for water polo. Peggy, from Otter Women's Water Polo team, tells me that they've recently started an under 15s team, which they are recruiting for, and have had to target their recruitment at public schools because the standard of swimming in state schools is so poor. Then there are more common issues relating to women and sports - for example, teenage girls feel self conscious and don't want to be seen in their swimming costumes or they don't want to get their hair wet. (I want to say, on the latter point, really? Really girls? To be fair, if you've got a mane like mine, it is a pain in the arse).
So, after an email exchange with Peggy and Lex from the Otter Polo team (which almost felt like fate given that otters are one of my favourite species of the mustelid family) in which I admitted that whilst I can swim, I'm probably not the strongest swimmer in the world, they very generously offered to play host to me at one of their training sessions.

As I was leaving work for the training session, chatting to some colleagues about my planned activities, they did little to allay my fears. "It's like rugby," Jamie tells me, "really rough, they just beat each other up". "Yeah", Sam chips in "What happens below the water stays below the water - just be thankful you don't have balls". So I was pretty nervous. What I'd not understood, as I headed towards Crystal Palace National Sports Centre to join them, was that their first team is actually the second best in the country. So, I was basically training with the Chelsea (sorry, Otters, for drawing this comparison) of the women's water polo world.

This became apparent pretty quickly. We did some "warming up" - some lengths of the pool. Coach Nick instructed them to do six lengths at around 70%. Being naturally competitive, I really went for it, by my standards - probably around 110% for me - but they were well into their third lengths whilst I struggled on my second. I was practically dying by the end of the warm up.
The thing about Water Polo is that you can't stand up, so you're trying to catch or throw a ball (with one hand), or drown someone else who is catching or throwing a ball, whilst treading water, which is not easy. Not only this, but the strength of these women is INCREDIBLE. I could not, as anyone who has seen me play netball will testify, throw a ball that hard with both hands, standing on dry land.
We did some passing and shooting practice and suffice to say I was terrible. At about half the distance that the other girls were from the goal, I still couldn't reach the net. Then I tried some attacking, against the defence of Peggy then Michelle, during which you pretty much both push each other and swim. Peggy had pushed me halfway down the pool before I turned round to try and catch the ball.
By this point, I was starting to feel like it might be time to call it a day and maybe even that the coach would tell me enough was enough and they had some serious practice to be getting on with. But then we actually played a match. I couldn't tell you who won - I was so busy trying not to drown. I did score a goal, and Nick said that if I scored my team could have 10 points, but I'm not sure the points were awarded given the extent to which my goal was enabled.
There is a really scary statistic about the amount of water it takes to drown a person, and if it's true, I must have died about 8 times that night. Maybe it was the excessive ingestion of chlorinated water, the fact that I wasn't feeling entirely well, that I'm terribly unfit or perhaps a combination of the three. Regardless, I'm not too proud to admit that I did a small but not insignificant sick in my mouth as I was leaving the centre that evening. For this reason, I have to award the Otters the gold medal. I don't deserve one at all but I'll take the silver because I'm greedy like that.
The Otters run a beginners course for those of you who fancy dipping your toe in slightly gentler waters, where you can learn the basics. I would highly recommend this from witnessing these women in action - Ladies, I am literally in awe of you

Happiness Levels Rise After The Age Of 45

Dispelling the myth that we get grumpier as we get older, a new study has found the opposite is true and that our happiness levels soar from the age of 45.
Researchers from Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick found that participants reported a better mental quality of life as they reached middle age, despite experiencing a decrease in physical quality of life.
The study analysed lifestyle and health patterns of more than 10,000 people in both the US and UK and looked at their mental and physical quality of life, as well as health status, looking at factors such as general health, social functioning, mental health and pain threshold.
“It’s obvious that people’s physical quality of life deteriorates as they age, but what is interesting is that their mental wellbeing doesn’t also deteriorate – in fact it increases,” Dr Kandal Ngianga-Bakwin said in a statement.

“We suggest this could be due to better coping abilities where older people tend to have internal mechanisms to deal better with hardship or negative circumstances than those who are younger.
“It could also be due to lowering of expectations from life, with older people less likely to put pressure on themselves in the personal and professional spheres.”
The study also looked into the effect sleep has on a person’s quality of life, and found there was an optimum window of sleep duration.
The participants who slept between six and eight hours a day tended to have both better physical and mental health than those who slept for less than six hours a night.
In a separate study last week it was revealed that typing on the right side of your keyboard makes you happier.
Plus, mood-boosting foods that help us eat ourselves happy.
Instant happiness tips you can try now, by Cognitive Hypnotherapist, Lesley McCall:
Pretend
If you embody happiness you might be surprised that it can make you feel happy in reality. Using the body language of happiness convinces your unconscious that you are actually happy.
Sing
Get rid of your worries and negative thoughts by singing them - preferably in the most operatic and overly dramatic way possible! If you can make a problem sound funny, it's harder to be anxious about it.
Laugh
It might sound obvious, but when you watch something funny, the mirror neurons in your brain copies what you're watching, giving you an instant feel-good boost.
Count your blessings (literally)
Count your blessings, out loud. Take five minutes to list all the things that are good and positive in your life at the top of your voice so you can hear them loud and clear. You might be surprised how many there are.

Middle Age Begins At 55

Middle age starts much later than originally thought, a study has claimed.
According to the research, the average perception of when middle age starts was at 55 years old and the mean average figure for when middle age ends was 69 years. A sizeable minority, nearly one in five, believe that middle age does not begin until past 60 years.
It pushes the tipping point for the final year of youth much further than previous surveys. A Kent University study published two years ago found that middle age began at 36 and that adults were considered ‘old’ at 58.
19% believing middle age was a state of mind and shouldn't be bound by numbers - a testament to "you're as young as you feel" if ever there was one.

The research, commissioned by Love to Learn, surveyed more than 1,000 UK adults aged 50 and over. It asked them about their attitudes to life, ageing and what, if any, were the benefits of being older today in 2012 Britain.
Its results demonstrate the extent to which older people are living more active lives and undertaking new pursuits, such as learning how to use the internet and starting their own businesses.
The findings also suggest that, as the UK population is aging, new cut-off points are being drawn. For the first time, there are more adults in the UK aged over 45 than under 45 and more people aged over 65 than are under 16, according to Office for National Statistics data.

As the over 50s own a disproportionate amount of wealth, the 'grey pound' is increasingly important. The life style of the 50 plus is a growing market, and it’s even had its own Hollywood take on it with the release of the film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel featuring Judi Dench and Bill Nighy.
Earlier this year research suggested that people aged 65 and over would prefer to be called "grey panthers" than old-age pensioners - showing a resistance to age-focussed identity.
Age UK celebrity ambassador and fitness guru Rosemary Conley, said: “The older I get, the more convinced I am that age is just a number. Through eating well, exercising regularly and having a positive outlook I feel as young as ever.
"Everyone faces different challenges with age and general health and fitness differs from person to person."
Professor James Goodwin, Head of Research at Age UK, said: “With the number of people aged 60 or over expected to pass the 20 million mark by 2031, these top tips are really important because they offer a practical guide to people of all ages about how to age better.

“Individually the tips are important, but together they give each of us the best chance of ageing better. By bringing together global experts in ageing research as part of the Age UK Ageing Better Together campaign, we are aiming to show that the message is clear: whether you are 25 or 85, you can have a positive impact on your life as you grow older.”