I have just come from my psychologist after a long and painful session. I was advised uninterrupted rest, in sympathy with my recent trauma.

It all started when I read the latest advice for 19 to 64 year olds. According to the BBC News website ‘strengthen muscles as well as heart to stay fit and healthy say top doctors’ – I am considered to have the same body as a 19 year old despite the fact that I am 64. This body requires the same amount of physical exercise as when I was young and they don’t hold their punches with their recommended exercise regime.

It starts badly. Each day I must be ‘physically active’. This means, presumably, that my normal day of lying in bed holding my breath, is not a good idea. Wow! I wish I had heard this advice before. OK. That was sarcastic I am sorry but really? Do we have to be told to move? Yes, we do so, I have spent the last month not only ‘active’ but taking exercise. Number one on the list of advice is to do ‘heavy gardening’ ‘carry heavy shopping’ or ‘resistance exercise’ at least twice a weak.

I am not sure what heavy gardening is. It sounds a bit like heavy petting and I don’t like the implications of that, so I skipped both.

Heavy shopping sounded appealing. Instead of my normal half trolley full, I filled up with chocolate, cakes, bread, beer – heavy items – so that walking to the car was going to provide my twice weekly exercise and maintain my nineteen year old body. I don’t think I have eaten so much chocolate and drunk so much beer in my life but I consoled myself with the fact that I was doing my muscles and heart a great deal of good.

As for joining the Resistance? Well I have never been much of a political activist preferring to totter to a polling booth and put an x (or is it a tick?) next to the party candidate who stands no hope of winning. It’s what being a Liberal is all about. But as for joining the Resistance? I can see that the average pimply nineteen year old who has had little chance to sort out what makes life tick or even tock – will find this appealing. Me, I have never felt I could wear a black beret with quite the tilt that Che Guervera managed. As for planting bombs on railway tracks. Well as someone who regularly writes to his MP complaining about my daily rail commute being delayed for unforeseen reasons – such complaints would become somewhat hypocritical. I couldn’t feel good, even if it was good for my muscles and heart.

Then comes the double whammy in the advice. Not only do you have to be ‘physically active’ – so breathing – but the advice hammers home a list of unrelenting and unnatural amount of activity. On offer is ‘brisk walking or cycling’. Now I have never liked walking ever since I first tried it as a baby – in fact my first few attempts were down right embarrassing. I guess I have the hang of it now but really it’s not much to write home about and raises little admiration and praise from family and friends. The idea of brisk cycling is more appealing.

I set out yesterday on a jaunt and gave myself twenty minutes to achieve it. After twenty minutes getting the electric bike ready, due to flat tires, rust etc…I realised that if I was going to be sincere to my task like a true Resistance fighter, then I should use my ordinary push bike. That took another twenty minutes to prepare but finally I was ready. I balanced the recycling bag on the back and headed uphill towards the recycling bins. I mused for the first hundred metres about the irony of cycling with recycling and thought it would make a good joke sometime – then I spied Jim filling up my neighbour’s swimming pool and I stopped for a chat. I explained what I was doing and how the last hundred metres had been a challenge. He suggested I sit down and he had some cold beers in the car – all of which I accepted.

Well, the next hour passed very amicably and I thanked him but said I needed to do some more muscle and heart exercise. I explained how I had to do 150 minutes every week, and he asked how much this was each day. A simple question and maybe the beers hadn’t done much for my brain but I had to pause and then ask if he had a pencil and paper.

If it was 140 minutes a week then 20 minutes a day. Easy.

But these ‘top doctors’ had thrown in another ten minutes, seven times a week. Eventually Jim found a calculator on his phone and read out in full – 21.4285714286 minutes.

‘How many seconds is that?’ I asked. Well, even with a calculator he couldn’t work it out. We settled for twenty one and a half seconds each day so as not to offend the top doctors.

Jim asked what the hell was a top doctor and I said I had never met one. They must be like ordinary doctors but much much cleverer…which in human terms these days is probably not very clever. Anyone who thinks 21 and a half minutes is easy to calculate is either dim on theory and dim in practice or unbelievably clever on theory and dim in practice.

I reached the recycling bins about an hour later since most of my cycle ride became a slow walk pushing the dam thing up hill. Coming back was a breeze though I resolved to spend more time going downhill than up in the future – the kind of wheeze a nineteen year old would think of.

I ignored the next top doctor suggestion on health grounds, which was 75 minutes of running each week. Surely the invention of the motor car means that no person has to be humiliated by running along the road in their mid sixties. I can see switch boards being blocked with calls for emergency services to attend this wreck of muscles and bones, every ten minutes.

Lastly, the top doctors pulled out all the stops with their crowning piece of advice. ‘Minimise time spent being sedentary’. I was pleased to read this one as it is clearly the same as ‘be active’ but in reverse. Why, if you were so brainy to be a top doctor, would you advise; ‘don’t lie down too much’ and ‘stand up a lot’? It’s the same advice twice!

Never mind, it just means an easy tick in the achievements box.

What the top doctors did not reckon on was the massive guilt complex that developes in those challenged mentally and physically by this ‘do or die’ advice. How could an old wreck like me ever match the muscular and heart exertions of my nineteen year old doppelgänger? The guy doesn’t exist any longer and if you want the older version, he will be lounging in the hammock on the terrace at the back of the house for medical reasons.

And the medical advice I have been given by my psychiatrist, called Jim, is to wait until my next birthday before attempting physical activity. The reasoning is that on that day the exercising regime becomes considerably more lenient. All it says is that ‘some physical activity is better than none’.

Yes, over 65 years old the top doctors have a suggestion that frankly, a hospital porter on their first day at work could come up with. But I am not complaining.

Another activity befitting the muscular physique of a 65 year old is ‘bowls’ Fortunately I can ‘bowls’ is doable as I have a fine collection of ceramic bowls in my house; I presumably only need to look at them.

Then they advise ‘Tai Chi’ and I have always been keen on these oriental things. Whether there is room in the garden for a Tea House I am not sure. I might have to move the shed in which I store the sun loungers but never mind. The tea ceremony is very calming and promotes mental as well a physical inactivity. Very Zen.

But I am not so sure with the last piece of advice I am going to have to follow. ‘Break up long periods of being sedentary with light activity when possible, at least with standing.’

The longest period of inactivity is a close call between watching Net Fix and sleeping, but I think sleeping tips the scales the most. How I can be expected to either sleep standing up or wake up at intervals in order to stand up and lie down again, I am not certain.

What I do know is that it is all good practice for the grave, in which there is no requirement to stand up.

Bring it on.