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I parted with my passport today. I have trusted to royal mail to take my passport away so that I can apply for my British citizenship. They dont make it an easy job, this is what you have to do to become British.

You must have worked in the UK for 5 years and not have left the country for more than 3 months in any one year.

You must have held permanent residency for one year.

You must pass a “Life in the UK” test, which asks hard questions about parliament, the queen and other trivia even the British dont know the answers to.

You have to fill in an application form and specify every time you left the UK in the last 5 years. You know how much travel I do!

You then send this information to a third party and pay them £1000 to make the application for you.

Then in about 6-12 months time your application is processed. If your application is successful you then have to attend a citizenship ceremony. I’m not sure how long it takes to get a British passport once you have become a citizen.

Anyway, this should make it all worthwhile having dual nationality. I can work anywhere in the EU and I’ll have two passports! 

 had my second session at the gym today with my trainer and I am well knackered. We did some interval training and supersets (pretty fancy “I think I know what I am talking about” words). 

Supersets are where you go from one exercise to another without a rest. This can be done for the same muscle group or for different muscle groups. By getting rid of the rest period between exercises, you are not only saving time, but adding intensity to the workout.

Performing supersets on opposing muscle groups helps create good muscle balance.

Performing supersets on the same muscle group gives the muscles an intense workout. For example, instead of doing your usual 12 reps on that muscle group you are now doing 24 reps.

We started with interval training on the treadmill As I havent been exercising for a couple of months we started slowly by running for 60 sec at 13kph, then walking for 60sec at 5.5kph. We repeated this four times, after which I was ready to collapse in a heap. My heart rate maxed out at 180bpm!

Then I did 3 sets of 12 squat jump type things where you jump from squat position and land in squat position on a bench. You really feel like a frog doing this.

The first superset was the chest press on the swiss ball followed by pushups. (first time I have done push ups in years and it was absolute agony. I grizzled and whinged and pleaded for mercy but she made me complete 3 sets of 12. )

Next superset was a shoulder exercise with my hips draped over the swiss ball and my legs up against the wall. This also worked hamstrings and glutes. Then the cable machine for squats and back work. Then those dreaded one legged squats (these are the hardest things I think I have ever done) All of the above was done for 3 sets of 12 reps.

The weird thing with doing weights is you don’t expect your heart rate to get too high, but mine was up to 165bpm (thanks to my polar heart rate monitor) for most of these exercises.

Now I am expected to be dedicated enough  to try all of this all on my own for two more sessions before seeing the trainer again next Tuesday. I’ll be sure to cheat a bit.

I went up to London today. I thought I should show my face in the office, though the real reason was to catch up with a mate who was over from Aussie. This basically ruined my alcohol free month but I did manage 4 days in a row!

Thankfully the cleaners had cleaned out the cereal and mouse droppings from my drawer and the trains were running on time.

Anyway I was up at 5.30am this morning so I am off to bed now for an early night.