You know those waking hours when you have a hundred things you could be doing [e.g. reviewing the course of your life … picking up that novel you began reading but got bogged down in … dealing with long-overdue replies to incoming correspondence … going for a run and/or to the gymnasium … just basically ‘getting a grip’] and yet somehow you just cannot get your mind or body out of ‘neutral’?

I had one of them yesterday.

‘Live’ coverage of Andy Murray’s loss to Roger Federer in the final of the Australian Open tennis; England Saxon’s rugby victory over Ireland ‘A’ at Bath; Arsenal’s 1-3 loss to Manchester United

Surrounded by the Sunday papers, I watched them all in their entirety - start to finish.

There’s a slim dividing line between having a lifelong & healthy fascination with games of all shapes & sizes and (for a top professional athlete like myself) indulging in what I’d describe as ‘sports porn’ - a glazed vicarious enjoyment out of watching others doing what you should have been doing yourself. During the course of over six hours’ worth of voyeurism yesterday, broken only by pauses to wolf down meals at regular intervals, I fear I may have crossed it.

There are only two kinds of people in this world: those who are doing positive things and/or expanding their minds … and those who are ‘existing’. The world belongs to the former. The rest of us are just marking time & taking up valuable space & resources.

It’s time to buck up, methinks.