I have managed to survive the last few years with as little exercise as possible, and have the body to prove it. Getting passed by an old man on his way to Bingo (admittedly he was in a bit of a hurry) was the last straw. The time had come to take serious action.

I’m not really a gym person; I have started going regularly on several occasions and always stopped just as suddenly. Finding the motivation to push your body to extremes of pain whilst in the gym is one thing; finding the motivation to leave a nice warm house and go there when it’s cold and raining is quite another. With this in mind I decided to start with an exercise bike from Argos.

OK, before you go pointing out that Argos isn’t exactly best known as the purveyor of olympic-quality sporting goods, this is a half-decent Reebok machine which they somehow managed to slip into the catalogue. (I’ll just quietly ignore the fact that it’s the Reebok CyberRider and acts as a gaming device as well as a bike.)

The bike came flat-packed, and assembling it was an experience in itself. I’m quite sure that a universal set of instructions was developed years ago which covers everything from Ikea bookshelves to this bike. For what it’s worth though, it looks the part, feels incredibly stable for something I put together myself, and, most importantly, there were no pieces left over.

Tomorrow begins the re-entry to the world of fitness.