Fitness and the far-off past
At the risk of spreading boredom amongst Rusters I am beginning today’s post with an update upon my recent attempts to hold back the effects of old age with an ongoing fitness campaign which have been only partially successful.
Regular readers may be vaguely familiar with my progress in this endeavour which has involved periods of intense physical activity punctuated by those of the complete opposite caused by one or more of the following: previous engagements, domestic and/or family commitments, sloth, disinterest, sporting injuries or conditions, the burning down of the health club to which I belonged and sundry other circumstances which – I would submit in mitigation to the court of public opinion – come broadly under the heading ‘beyond my control’.
Subsequently I acquired a fitness wristband device capable of measuring several activity-related data items, most importantly my walking/running, and set myself the ‘advised over 50s target’ of 10,000 steps per day, a figure that I have since broadly been able to achieve.
For instance, if I take no specific exercise at all, I have found that I tend to take between 6,000 and 8,000 steps a day in any event.
However, if I make a conscious effort to take exercise – depending upon its form and for how long – I can quite easily achieve a total of between 10,000 and 15,000 per day. If I really apply myself I can occasionally post over 20,000 – and my all-time record in a single day is 32,000 (and something).
On 1st September this year – an event chronicled in this organ – on a long walk and a whim, I foolishly decided to try some jogging and thereby yanked my right Achilles tendon. It has troubled me ever since, despite taking medical and other advice and undergoing ultrasound and laser treatments, resting, taking vitamin supplements and applying anti-inflammatory gel.
Ten days or so ago I had a hospital ultrasound scan which happily confirmed no tear or rupture but instead diagnosed chronic inflammation.
Currently I am continuing “taking the tablets” but still limping like Long John Silver on a drunken night out. Jogging and running are completely out of the question.
I guess you’d call it life at a certain age.
Quite separately, I happened to spend an hour yesterday reviewing the contents of a large area of the loft in my father’s house in which, by arrangement, historical items relating to my specific family have been stored for varying periods up to forty years.
The trigger for this is a general programme of assessment of similar family hordes being undertaken as part of a potential clear-out of either what might be termed absolute detritus or rubbish on anybody’s terms and/or items of no longer of any interest to their owner(s).
As you might expect, amidst the dross and hundreds of books acquired over the past half-century of which precious few will ever be looked at, still less read again (at least by anyone in my extended family) there were some items of interest great and small to me personally.
Among the long discarded and forgotten photo albums I flicked through were some going back to my teenage schooldays, my enjoyable dissolute and wasted twenties, my first marriage and the arrival of my kids and favourite pet dog – and so on.
Two of them related to a memorable three-week Bales guided tour on board a battered paddle steamer that my wife and I joined travelling down (or up, if you’re looking at a map) from the source of the Nile to the Mediterranean Sea to behold the glorious wonders of Ancient Egypt. We went on the trip – at considerable cost to us at the time – “just for the hell of it” because my wife had just received her diagnosis of terminal cancer.
One of the albums featured hundreds of photos of our stop-offs and our fellow tourists, which included the musical composer Sandy Wilson – of The Boyfriend fame [I mention this because yesterday I noticed a positive review of a new production of it in the Daily Telegraph] – and his partner Chuck, a Chinese gent, and Richard (Dick) Annand VC, a famous WW2 infantry Army officer, and his wife.
These two couples became our favourite ‘comrades in travel’ and we kept in touch with them both long after the trip.
Sandy Wilson used to send us personally hand-painted Christmas cards every year.
I can recall attending one of his hugely-enjoyable birthdays parties at his central London flat in which I had a lengthy and amusing conversation with the actress Fenella Fielding.
The other album contained about another 500 images of Ancient Egyptian monuments, statues, temples, souks and landscapes.
I have to be honest with you, this far beyond the time in which these were taken – despite their potential historic value as ‘records of their subjects at a particular time ‘ they prompted little or no interest in me yesterday … and the album concerned duly went straight into the ‘discard’ pile.
Another thing I realised as I reviewed these family items from the past on a personal level – some of those I opted to keep were heart-warming, amusing or poignant ones of my own family unit from its earliest days – was quite how unphotogenic I am.
There is, of course, a strange irony in all aspects of self-awareness and/or recognition.
I can recall my grandmother sighing in a combination of horror and disgust at some photos of her from the 1920s and 1930s that we were looking at one day and commenting upon how horrendous the hairstyles and clothes of the ‘Flapper” era had been (“How on earth did we ever go out looking like that?!”).
I’m sure I thought I regarded myself as the coolest guy in the neighbourhood at various points in my past.
However, based on the evidence of what I reviewed yesterday, I was undoubtedly a nailed-on candidate as “the most unprepossessing prat in town” then … and probably also now, come to think it!
