Easter weekend musings
Here’s another of my reports from the fitness front line, hampered as it is slightly by the callus or growth – you’ll have to excuse my lack of medical knowledge – on the ball of my left foot and the Achilles tendon yank/chronic inflammation which has troubled me now for seven months.
Regular readers will be aware that when I pitched up for the first of two NHS podiatry sessions on the former, presented my feet to the clinician and asked if she could “sort these”, the gist of her reply was that I’d played a lot of sport, was now old – would therefore be spending the rest of my life managing my issues – so her overall advice was to “get used to it”.
About ten days ago, after again doing some home-style shaving down and then applying a pad to my “growth” with Elastoplast (the better to protect it) I abstained from taking my one per day exercise expedition for 48 hours to let it settle.
That still left my growling Achilles which I manage by strapping it with a bandage, taking a daily Ibruprofen tablet and spraying my ankle with Deep Heat every night before sinking my gin & tonic whilst watching the BBC1 6 O’ Clock News.
My original February appointment with my local specialist physiotherapy unit was subsequently moved the back end of this month but I have assumed ever since that it’s not going to take place because of the two-metre social distancing rule though nobody has yet told me this.
Yesterday’s mid-afternoon fitness outing in glorious sunshine was my first since Thursday and gave me the opportunity to assess the impact of the Bank Holiday Weekend upon life under the lockdown.
The first thing I noticed, despite widespread fears that people wouldn’t observe the rules because of both the Holiday and the pleasant weather, is that generally they seemed to be.
I was surprised to find that there was little traffic in my locality and not that many people out and about.
That said, the process of taking exercise – and keeping the desired social distance whilst doing so – remains relatively unchanged, though evolving slightly the longer the lockdown goes on.
I’m not a great fan of cyclists at the best of times (as a pedestrian you cannot hear them coming, whilst when you’re a motorist they constantly hold up the traffic by riding in the middle of their lane and/or, if in pairs or more, by riding side by side, which irritates the hell out of everybody else) and the lockdown isn’t helping things.
Why? Because they think they own the road and, if chatting to each other, have to shout to hear themselves and thus disturb everyone else’s quiet enjoyment of an outing.
I also learned from a doctor on the radio that – when panting, clearing their throats or spitting as they occasionally do – they effectively amount to little more than mobile Coronavirus-spreading factories, spewing the deadly germs out behind them for everyone else to inhale.
I also noted yesterday that the preponderance of face mask-wearing by the general public seems to have greatly increased, even though (as I currently understand it) the medical/scientific advice is that the practice is of little use as a preventive measure.
My guess is that people have taken to it mainly because it makes them feel safer (the placebo effect?) – and, if it does that, then who am I to criticise?
For me, however, logic demands that – if someone who has the virus is wearing a face mask, all they’re doing after each time they exhale – with the contents then kept within their mask – is to an extent recycle the virus again when they next breathe in … and so (again, as with cyclists) they’re effectively walking virus factories.
(And if they’re a cyclist wearing a face mask, as many indeed do, then they’re little more than mobile virus-spreaders on two different counts).
Yesterday, as usual, I spent my outing listening to Radio Five Live. From about 4.00pm this was broadcasting live the Coronavirus Common Sense Show – hosted by Adrian Chiles, standing in for Conor Murray, with expert medical advice from the excellent Doctor Chris Smith – and I found it fascinating.
Firstly, the Brit phone-in callers from around the world – amongst them two in the United States and no fewer than three in Yorkshire – were all intelligent and asking interesting questions, Doctor Smith’s answers to which were never less than illuminating.
Two examples. If someone (suffering from, or ‘carrying with them’, the virus) enters your lockdown domain, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve kept your social distance from them and/or been hand-washing regularly and taking other precautions.
The virus lives for roughly three hours in the air and on surfaces after someone has departed, any milli-part of a molecule of which can “get” you.
Secondly, when anyone coughs or sneezes, the “spray” leaves their nostrils/mouth at a speed of anything up to 110 kilometres per hour and can travel in excess of three to four metres.
Food for thought.
For what it’s worth, one other thing that did trouble me slightly last night as I settled down in front of the television.
When I’m out on my daily exercise expedition, which takes me approximately one hour fifty minutes to complete, I listen to the radio via a wifi earpiece connected via Bluetooth to my smartphone.
For the simple reason that they possess the only pockets I have with me, I keep my smartphone in the right-hand pocket of my shorts.
It suddenly occurred to me last night that – were the global Coronavirus crisis to continue for say another year or two, with escalating numbers of deaths running into millions, and the call came for able-bodied males to volunteer to help re-populate the Earth in conjunction with young ladies of child-bearing age – that currently I might be damaging my chances of qualifying if the microwave transmissions travelling from my Chinese smartphone on their way to my earpiece have been in any way adversely affecting my nether regions.
