The sleep of reason produces monsters!

 

 

 

This particular time in early September is a date I dread.

     This is not because of any lingering horror of being a teacher and the inevitable quoting of the deathless line in Wordsworth, “shades of the prison house begin to form Upon the growing boy” which seemed to me to work for pupils as well as teachers approaching a new year, and I have thought and quoted it through my life – right up until retirement.  From retirement onwards the metaphor of the “prison house” takes on a rather more terminal meaning that merely getting a new timetable!

     No, the dread here is the annual closing of the swimming pool for its “Essential Maintenance”.  This usually means a fortnight of closure which in the past I have compensated for by using other pools in Castelldefels and Gava, using the community pool, and swimming in the sea.

     The community pool and the sea are free, but the other options come with complications.  As I no longer use my bike thanks to the element of instability that my new knees have gifted me, I need to take the car and park, and in some cases the distance from the pool that a vacant parking space offers itself, I might as well as walked from home!  That is not strictly true, but a long walk is something that I do not relish, and neither do my knees.  There is also the cost of swimming in another pool.  A one-off swim is expensive, so you need to buy a season ticket or a multi-swim card and that is all a bit of a faff.  So I look for alternatives.

     For the last couple of years during this time of enforced dryness, I have reasoned that as I pay a subscription to my swimming pool and gym, I should really take advantage of the latter and use the various machines that are dotted around the torture area assigned to those who like to sweat.

     As I vividly remember asking one attendant at a gym in Cardiff to “walk me though” a reasonable workout regime – and not being able to move a muscle without exquisite pain the next morning, I now take things relatively easy.  When you are a swimmer, you take for granted the cushioning and supportive elements of the water in what you regard as fairly hard exercise.  When you transfer that level of effort to the air, the gravitational drag on muscles is rather different.

     Therefore, when I go to the gym, I have a Survival in Relative Comfort approach to the machines which, to my eyes all look like instruments of torture.  I start with the static cycle, especially one machine that has real back support, I then move on to some sort of knee bend thingie where the weight that you push is adjustable by the use of weights.  I always check where the rod in the weights is situated before I start, because once or twice I have started without looking and almost popped my knees with the astonishing heaviness that some people take in their stride.  I then move on to the rowing machine and end up with a gentle walk on the treadmill.

     There are variations in the order and selection of machines because sometimes the ones I want are occupied so I have to improvise with the schedule.  Some machines I do not use because I have yet to work out how one threads one’s body into to them to get them to work.  You might well say, just look at how other people use them and then emulate.  Which is good advice, though I have also noticed that the more professional users have their own individual variations in how they utilize the various flanges and bits of the machines – and given the way that their bodies look with triple layer muscles, I do not intend to match their exertions, even in my imagination let alone in what I like to call “real life”.

     There is obviously an overlap between gym and pool, though there is a distinct sub-species of masochist that concentrates solely on the gym, and usually specializes in an area I never walk in (let alone participate in) the area of the Free Weights.  This is the area that has a mirror wall so that the sufferers can watch their pain.  Each to his (and it is usually ‘his’) own.

     I would imagine that tomorrow, for my first visit to the gym there will be some people that I am on ¡Hola! Level acquaintanceship with who will in various ways question why I am there, when most of them will have seen me (there is a row of machines with a view of the pool) ploughing my lonely (if I’m lucky) furrow up and down ‘my’ lane.

     I am an early morning user of the pool and there are a number of regulars in the pool and the gym who I tend to assume are the ‘users’ of the facilities, but I really fail to understand that there are many more people who have a different timetable from me and so there are layers of ‘ownership’ of various aspects of the pool and gym that are time sensitive.

     It’s like a Sci-Fi story I read that described an over-populated world in which your life was lived according to a particular day, so that if you were a Monday person, you would live your active life on a Monday and then go into suspended animation for a week, until on the following Monday you would be revived and assume that you were in day two of your particular week.*  So, in the pool and gym there are people who would not consider using the facilities at the time that I use them and vice versa.

    The few times that I have swum out of my time I have been confused by the differences in clientele almost as if it was a different place.

     Well, for the next three (sic.) weeks I will be changing my habits and (resentfully) following a different path. 

     Life is hard sometimes.  But at least I’m not teaching!

*Philip José Farmer's “The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World” (1971). 

 

Time is a-fleeting!

 

 

 

This was morning was a lazy one.  The mobile alarm went off to indicate that it was time for me to get ready for my early morning swim and I rejected its peremptory tone, as I rejected the beeping from my watch.  There are some mornings where to stay in bed is simply more convincing that going to the local pool.

     However, that does mean that I feel the accusation of a version of the Protestant Work Ethic about something I have not done that I ought to have done, and there is no health in me - once learned, the language of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (old style) does not leave you – even if your faith does.

     It does mean however, that if I fail to do my lengths, I have to do something to justify my indolence.  This does not entail my going out into the world and doing good works, but rather thinking about getting one (or fewer) outstanding tasks done.

     When you are retired, how you fill your days (apart from the necessary elements of ordinary life like shopping, eating and cleaning) are pretty much up to you.  Which means that success and completion are very much yours for the interpretation.  If you decide that one of the major elements in a satisfyingly filled day is the writing of this blog, then who is to gainsay your achievement!

     In talking to a colleague who has returned from holiday and is about to start a new term in the school that is next to the pool, she vouchsafed to me that my commiserations were falling on deaf ears because she was “looking forward to the routine” that a timetable offers.

     While intellectually I can understand such sentiments, I cannot sympathise with them.  I fall into the category of teachers who say of retirement, “I cannot understand how I ever found time to teach” given the way that elements in their retired lives fill up their days.

     It is very often a case of “in place of” superseding “as well as” in the dynamics of a retired life.  I often give the example of trying to deal with things external to school when I was in teaching.  You have a timetable and a number of free periods with breaks and lunch.  If you need to phone an outside agency, then you have to wait for an opportunity in your timetabled day and do it then.  If you need a response, then you have to tell the people you are dealing with that you will only be able to respond withing a fairly tight clock-defined period of time.  If they phone later than say 11.35 am, you will not be available because you will be teaching.  Few outside agencies seemed to understand the constraints on your free access to communication and were mystified when a call at 11.45 am went unanswered.  Admittedly this was in the era pre-mobile phone use, but the principle is still the same.

     Similarly, medical appointments had to be fitted into a school day that caused the least difficulties for colleagues and teaching periods, whereas now in my retired state I turn up when they ask and other things take second place.

     The set elements in my timetable are concerts, opera, family events, and medical appointments.  As if to demonstrate this, I have just checked my phone and there is a message from my dentist saying that I need to make an appointment.  To be fair, there is an element of choice in this appointment, I can suggest a range of times and days and the dentist is usually accommodating.

    My appointments with doctors are less flexible.  I am now firmly fixed in the automatic schedule of appointments and follow-up consultations, and I am far too grateful to the Catalan medical system to suggest alternatives.  Luckily by concerts and operas are all at the weekend, so they never interfere with the doctor appointments.  The medical establishment in this country has been more than generous with their time and expertise and so the very least I can do is fit in with their arrangements and express gratitude.  This is one occasion when I appreciate the force and necessity of an automatically generated timetable for diagnosis and follow-up supervision.

     I weave my interests around the distractions that play fast and loose with my determination.  But I am aware of what I should be doing and I understand that there is more than enough of what I could call ‘work’ if I cared to, but which is in reality me exploiting my freedom to do pretty much as I like with the time that is not now taken up by paid employment.

     I like to think that I do not waste my time, though the use to which I put it, might be considered individualistic, to put it mildly. 

      But it keeps me off the streets and harms few!  Surely that is a life being well spent!

 

A future tinge of normality

 

I have been able to book a place for a swim on Saturday! 

     We have not been informed that the pool is actually reopening then after our latest bout of lockdown, but I am taking it as gospel and will be there, bright eyed and bushy tailed.  Well, as b.e.a.b.t. as one can be at 7.15 am after a couple of weeks of indolent snoozing in the morning courtesy of Covid - restrictions rather than the disease I hasten to add.

     I have to admit that it will be a relief to get back to my early morning routine, as the swim gives a sort of impetus and structure to my day – as well as exercise of course!  I am not sure that restaurants and cafes will be open again, so my cup of tea might have to wait, as will my writing in my notebook, as that seems heavily dependent on my being in the café as well.

 

 

 

 

I have made an executive decision to stop counting those people not wearing masks as I take my daily bike ride along the paseo.  My insufferable superiority in always wearing a mask when I should, as opposed to the lesser breeds without the law who do not, is already at such astronomical levels that it is impossible to boost further.  All I do, therefore, by my continued counting is to make myself angry as I give hard looks to all those unmasked selfish viral assassins who feel themselves allowed to parade (literally) their homicidal proclivities as I cycle by.  This is not productive.  I must open my sense of forgiveness and pretend to be blissfully unaware of their murderous irresponsibility. 

     I have to admit that it makes the bike ride more enjoyable as well as I can concentrate on the more scenic elements in my journey rather than noting in every face I meet marks of weakness marks of woe.  And I just know that bonkers old Blake would be much more forgiving than I.  So, I really should make the effort.

 

Although my new watch does not have the battery life of my old Pebble (Ah! The watches of yesteryear!) and not even the battery life of my old-new Amazfit, I have decided that the life that I am getting from the new-new watch is, one might say, acceptable.

     As is always the case with watch/app co-existence there are always problems with synchronizing, but I have come to understand that as par for the course and I take such irritations in my stride.  Though I have to admit that the last instance of my app not recognizing the watch in spite of Bluetooth being on and the bloody watch being next to the mobile phone was difficult to work out.  And, although I tried a number of things to make it work (and yes, I did try switching in off and then on, more than once) when it did, finally, decide to do what it had done perfectly normally up to yesterday, I am not sure what it is that I did that worked.  But, extensive experience with things electrical means that I accept success and a glowing screen with a look of quiet competence rather than total surprise.

 

 

Tomorrow is my flu jab.  This is not going to be administered in our medical centre, but in a civic building in the centre of town.  I understand that the flu injections are being administered on an industrial scale and medical centres are pooling their resources and making the process fully central.  Presumably this is something like a dry run for the truly frightening logistics that will have to be run when the Covid vaccine (DV) is finally available for use.

     As far as I can work out, my age group is likely to be in the third tranche of the general population, at least going on the UK’s way of measuring these things I would be.  It will be interesting to see how the state (any state) copes with what is going to be a mammoth undertaking.

     I am not sure how far ‘normal’ doctoring will be affected by the vaccination of the entire population, though we have already seen a change in the way that our medical centre is working and that change can only be more radical when the roll-out of the vaccine is in full flow.

     This part of the world rejoices in bureaucracy which can always be a pain, but at the same time we all have readily available numbers and cards so we can be fairly easily be ticked off on some great flow chart in the sky.  It remains to be seen how fluidly this flows!

 

Meanwhile, two bike rides today – and neither noted by my fitness app because of the recalcitrance of my watch.   

     But tomorrow, things will be different!   

     And roll on Saturday and my first real swim for weeks!