Is this the world's strangest motivation to exercise?

This is going to sound a little odd, so bare with me, I promise I will explain myself. As anyone who has known me for a while can testify, I am terrified of spiders. I don't mean that I shriek like a baby and squash the poor little arachnid, I mean I scream loud enough to wake the dead. Since I am fairly certain that none of us want zombies walking the earth, I would like to request that all spiders remain outside and do not enter my home.

Unfortunately at 4:00 am this morning, one particular spider decided that it did not want to stick with this restriction. My husband and I were sitting in the living room on the sofa, as lying down was - and is - causing quite a lot of pain around my rib cage. I glanced down at the floor, impersonated a boiling kettle and attempted to exit the room vertically, via the ceiling. It would appear that although me shoving the pouffe across the floor as I attempted to move my legs did cause the invader to pause momentarily, but it soon resumed the attack.

I promise that I am not exaggerating; it was the size of the palm of my hand. I am including the legs in that size estimation as, to me, they are the worst part of the spider. There is a strong possibility that the spiders do have a 'terrify her to death' contract out on me. There have been times in the past when it should not have been possible for any spider to confront me, but... Some eighteen years ago I was walking across a car park in West Bromwich with my mom after checking out a wedding dress shop - in the days before I got my wheels.The rain was torrential; I mean it was so strong that it was bouncing a good three inches off the floor when it hit. We were around a third of the way across the car park when something made me look down; a huge spider was sitting on the car park, in this terrible rain, giving me the evil eye. It is no exaggeration to say that I was both petrified and astounded to see this hairy-legged critter there.

Believe it or not, I am actually a lot better than I used to be. I once missed college because I couldn't get up the stairs to get showered or dressed, I have called friends round to dispose of them and once refused to sleep in my bedroom for several weeks because my dad had squashed a spider on the ceiling. To be fair that had left a spider-gut stain that I just couldn't cope with. I slept in one of the spare bedrooms until dad had disinfected and re-painted the ceiling. Yes, I am full-on phobic rather than a wee bit unnerved by them.

Yet there is something I am more afraid of than spiders; daddy long-legs (crane flies). Those things have lead to some far more dramatic room exits than the spiders. I once ran out of a meeting with senior managers at the DWP, back when I worked there, because a crane fly was dangly-legging its way round the room. Someone did eventually take pity and remove it, but not before everyone had laughed themselves silly.

Oddly this does have something to do with exercise and mobility. As you have probably guessed, it is a little difficult to scream like a siren and run out of the room when you can barely move. Add to that, I am certainly not sitting in my wheelchair all day, as my butt tends to go numb after a while. So, seeing that huge, monstrous beastie has given me motivation to carry on with my physio exercises in the hope that mobility will improve somewhat. 

I am continuing to be very careful about what I do and making sure that I don't go overboard with the physio. I will be honest and confess that I haven't yet started my yoga as I can't find the DVD. Yes, I know, bit of a lame excuse really as there are, no doubt, hundreds of low impact yoga videos on the internet. I do want to be careful though, hence the desire to stick with the DVD that JJ - the physio at my GP practice - recommended.

I hope that you are getting on with whatever challenges have cropped up in your life lately - and more than that - I hope that you are coping better with your fears than I am with my arachnophobia.

Dead Rising: Watchtower, movie review.

I have been doing online competitions since the beginning of the year and it is proving to be an entertaining hobby. I have won quite a variety of things, ranging from DVD's to vouchers for a holiday cottage. The latest prize to drop onto the doormat (also a prize) was a DVD of 'Dead Rising: Watchtower'. I'm going to give you early warning that I am about to discuss the contents of the film and the storyline.

Based on the video game series this movie was far more entertaining than I was expecting it to be. Set some ten years after the initial outbreak survivors of zombie bites receive a medicine called 'zombrex' which keeps them from changing into one of the living dead with a taste for human flesh. When a zombie outbreak occurs, a twelve-mile wall is erected around the town to prevent the spread. Healthy people are directed to a particular location within the town, where the large number of bite survivors from previous outbreaks are given their preventative medication.

The sarcastic journalist hero from the earlier games, Frank West, makes an appearance in this film as an expert guest on a news show that is covering the outbreak. He manages to frustrate and anger the news-reporter within moments of first opening his mouth, as he insists that the residents trapped within the walls are all going to die. 

Inside the walls journalist duo of camera woman Jordan and reporter Chase are after a scoop that will make them famous, or at least Chase is. The duo become separated as the preventative medication fails to work and those who should be safe, have a sudden desire for human flesh. Jordan makes it out, Chase is trapped inside with two women who seem to have a far better grasp of the realities of zombie fighting than the reporter does.

Between zombies, bike gangs, a government willing to deploy the most extreme of tactics in order to contain the zombie outbreak and - worst of all from my point of view - a clown zombie (argh!) Chase, Crystal and Maggie have a hard task just trying to stay alive, let alone making it out of the town. Meanwhile, Jordan is having her adventures as she tries to prove that she is not infected, after witnessing FEZA and the police shooting those fleeing the zombies as they approached the gate to freedom. Just who is the bad guy and will she make it out alive? Good questions and not something I am going to answer. Instead I will leave you to watch the film and find out for yourselves.

What I particularly like about this movie is that the zombies act like zombies, not some warped CGI version crawling along the ceiling. The action moves along at a good pace with plenty of dark humour included; at times you don't quite know whether to laugh or cringe and this combination works well. It isn't an all-out rom-com-zom movie like Shaun of the Dead, as Simon Pegg put it, but it is still entertaining.

If, like me, you enjoy a good zombie movie, then this one is worth a watch. It isn't the best zombie movie you are going to come across - for me Romero remains the best - but it is a decent film with interesting characters and a pretty good plot line. I would definitely recommend it.