Effortless good health

Relax. I have good news. Three bits of cheering news, in fact, all announced last week You can be happier, and healthier – and with absolutely no effort at all. Forget the gym – you need go no further than the back door. The first bit of news reported that one of the healthiest things you can do is just get outside.

Fresh air is good for you. Granny was right all along as she shoved you out of doors or parked the baby in the pram in the garden. Yes, of course, exercise in the fresh air is even better – walking, biking, gardening are all more interesting than the gym and a lot less smelly. But it’s the great outdoors itself that’s the magic ingredient.

Nature, greenery, makes things better. Good for the soul, the psyche and the blood pressure. A green thought in a green shade and all that. Then there’s Vitamin D. It soaks into your bones just as easily when you’re sitting in the sun as when you’re making yourself red and sweaty playing tennis. Who needs food additives when you’ve got a deck chair?

You also needn’t bother with so-called superfoods. Although very good for you, revealed the second report last week, there are other cheaper alternatives which are just as beneficial –raspberries instead of exotic goji berries for instance.

Then there’s the third piece of good news. Reading is good for you. People who read a lot of fiction live longer, healthier lives – up to two years longer. Even accounting for class and education, reading somehow boosts the life span.

Isn’t that wonderful? Experts don’t quite know why, but the research seems solid.

So fresh air is good for, reading’s good for you. Which means – oh joy – that one of the healthiest things you can do this summer is sit in a deckchair in the garden and read. Add some raspberries to nibble on and you can honestly say you’re following a proven healthy lifestyle. And you don’t even have to buy a new pair of trainers…

IN all the hundreds of times I’ve been to Hawes, last Sunday was the first time I’d gone into the Friends’ burial ground – on the corner on the way to the Dales Museum.

Just a few headstones but intriguing because they don’t name the months of death but give them numbers instead – not March, April, May, but the third, fourth or fifth month. Further research (OK, Google) revealed that early Quakers refused to call the months using names derived from heathen gods. Same with the days of the week which were also known as First, Second or whatever.

As their newsletter now talks about Sunday, August 14, I assume those days have long gone.

But amazing what new things you can find even in places you think you know well.

ORLANDO Bloom was pictured in all his naked glory while paddle boarding last week but the star of the show was his girlfriend Katy Perry. While he was showing his all in the Sardinian sunshine, she, comparatively demure in her bikini, was sitting with her back to him and a priceless expression on her face so it was easy to read her mind.

“It’s not big. It’s not clever. Stop showing off and put some clothes on. Now!”

She’ll have the last laugh though. Whatever Orlando Bloom achieves in the future, whatever Oscars and accolades, he will always be remembered as the man with the pixillated penis. And serve him right.

OF course we have to protect our children but let’s be sensible about it. Children as young as five have been accused of sex offences – against other five year olds. Sex offences? Isn’t that we used to call “playing doctors and nurses?”

Still, maybe after all this time I can sue Geraint Morgan for that game of kiss chase round the sand pit….

WHEN Judge Patricia Lynch was sentencing a 50-year-old to 18 months for racist abuse, he turned round and gave her a mouthful from the dock, calling her all sorts of foul names.

The judge, to everyone’s surprise, retorted in kind. Not funny really, just making such foul language acceptable.

What she should have done is give him an extra six months for contempt of court. Why resort to his level of foul name-calling when you have much more powerful weapons?

PRESENTER Helen Skelton caused a minor furore when she wore a very short skirt to report on the Olympics. You could actually see – gosh – her legs. Shock. Horror.

This is the Olympics. All around are toned and honed bodies wearing the merest scraps of engineered Lycra. Nowhere else is so much exposed flesh on view. So you’d think, really, that TV viewers could cope with a flash of thigh.

Meanwhile, Helen’s co-presenter, Mark Foster, wore shorts, revealing his thighs too.

But no one seemed to get into a tizz about that…

STARTING last year, new parents were offered the chance of shared parental leave after the birth of their baby. Apart from the first two weeks, to allow mother to recover, they could share a year’s leave between them as they liked.

So far, only four per cent of new dads have taken up the offer. Frankly, knowing how keen even the most loving father is to get away from that milky hormonal, squawking time and back into their normal world of work, I’m amazed there were even that many.