The Price of Exercise

 

 

 

“You know that the pool is closed?”  Was the question that greeted me this morning as I waited to get into the centre just before 8 am.  Yes, indeed I did know that the pool was closed and I was about to begin my via dolorosa of gym use for the next three weeks.

     As I went through my selected series of exercises, I was interrupted by a number of acquaintances who questioned my presence, with a smile it must be added.  And they sympathised with me as I explained the extra time that the pool would be closed.  And if anything their smiles grew wider.

     The interesting thing is why I am bothering to go to the gym.  The choice is mine after all.  I can choose to do something else for the next few weeks and not moan about doing something for which I have, to put it mildly, little enthusiasm.

     Why I do it is all down to self-knowledge.  I enjoy swimming.  I like the difference that water gives, it is a different element, and moving through water is not the same a moving through air.  When you have suspect knees then the support that water gives allows you to glide without artifical aids – an experience that is unique to the element.  I am also able to do my exercises that are supposed to strengthen my knees and the muscles that support my new bits inside those knees!

     There are some that enjoy hard physical exercise and thrive on the pain that comes with pushing oneself to the limits of physical endurance.  I am not one of those people, and I look for an easy life.  Generally.  So, left to my own devices I would probably let exercise slide and do my mental exercises inside the pages of a good book.

     Having an early morning swim, getting up at 5.45 am, takes effort.  If that effort can be integrated into a regime, then all the better, habits are difficult to shake off, the trick is doing something enough (if it is an effort) to make it into a habit.

     When I played squash I was a member of a squash league at my local leisure centre, that meant that I ‘had’ to play a certain number of games each month or I would be relegated.  It is the same methodology that keeps me doing a Duolingo exercise each day as I do not want to be relegated from the arbitrary league that the program has placed me in, and which encourages me to participate offering electronic digital inducements to keep myself applied.  We all need those incentives to keep us in line, because so few of us are real self-motivators.

     When I was in Cardiff, I used to swim early morning and after school.  After a day in work, virtually the last thing on my mind was calling into the David Lloyd Centre on my way home for a swim, and I spent the greater part of the journey home debating whether or not I really wanted to go for a swim.  Often that question was answered by the fact that I ‘found’ myself in the David Lloyd car park, while my internal debate was still going on.  Location trumping questioning!

     In a similar way, I go for a swim ‘most days a week’, it is a habit and I wake up at the appropriate time and get ready before I am fully awake!  It is built into the system that is me.  But, I also know that were I to break that system then the whole edifice of exercise will come tumbling down.  So, just because the pool is closed (other pools, and the sea are available) I know that I have to keep up the routine, even if it means going to the gym.

      One problem of gym going, as I found this morning, is that there is a different list of things that you must take to make the experience enjoyable and hygienic.  I forgot to pack another shirt ,and so I had to wear the soiled garment in which I exercised when I went for my cup of tea – luckily outside!

     And I learned my lesson.  Even though I liberally dowsed myself in Citronella, my sweat infused T-shirt attracted more than the usual tribe of blood sucking mozzies as punishment for my lack of preparedness.

   Tomorrow (Day 2 – only 20 to go, sigh!) I Will Be Prepared, and I will take a more potent repellent for fight off the desperation of the latter-part-of-the-summer insect life.

 

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!

 

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 5

How comforting instantly created routine can be!

     I have decided, after my exploratory ‘walk’ around the pool yesterday that my day will start with a ten-minute walk before breakfast.  Before I venture out I will set the robot hoover going and when I come back I will have my cup of tea, my bowl of muesli and sit down and complete the Guardian quick crossword on my mobile phone and, after that is complete, I will change the hoover to mop and send the robot on its way for the second part of the cleaning process.

     As a special domestic treat for myself today, I loaded the dishwasher with dishes that Toni had not put away and also loaded the dryer with clothes left from yesterday in the washing machine and then loaded up the washing machine for its next wash.

     It is now almost time for my next little ‘walklet’ around the pool as I am determined to get in half an hour of mild exercise a day.  And then there is the writing.

     My main blog is up and running again, and I am beginning to feed my poetry blog (smrnewpoems) with description and individual works.  There is also my young adult novel with the working title of The Standings, that has not progressed very far beyond a few notes and scraps of writing, but this incarceration is the ideal time to ‘get a move on’ and put something more substantial down on paper.

     And then there is the Catalan.  I have convinced myself that it is unlikely that my class in Catalan will start up again before September and therefore I have done nothing to compensate for time lost or in the process of being lost.  This is not a logical attitude and Toni’s casual question, “How much Catalan have you done?” yesterday was a needful prod.  I have done something, but not enough to register: you can hardly count passing glances at work completed as actual study!  This would be the perfect time to do the graft that I find so hard with languages except my own!

     And the lino printing.  Apart from the fact that none of Toni’s family knows what I am talking about when I witter on about lino printing, I did, fifty (sic.) years ago find reasonable satisfaction in cutting and printing and I do now have the material to get going again.  And I will.  And furthermore I will post a reproduction of what I produce to show that I have done more than merely write about actions!  I can see that what I am doing here is what I do in my notebook, that is, write little notes to myself to get action rather than words.  We shall see whether it works.

I have now been for my second ‘walklet’ and feel smug and superior – which is good going for a total so far of twenty odd minutes of slow walking, but, following the Rees motto, “Anything is better than nothing.”

To our horror, our noisy reconstructing neighbours returned to the worksite (or the house adjoined to us) and did a few exploratory thumps on wall, ceiling or floor just to let us know that enforced isolation can be made even worse by inconsiderate hammer wielders! 

Unshaven and un-swum

 

It takes time to realize that some things that you usually do, do not necessarily have to be done.

I won’t list the little things that we do that only have the power of frequency or habit to recommend them, but if you think about your day there will be all sorts of actions and ‘rituals’ that you do that could be scrapped at a moment’s notice and your life would be better.  Or at least different.

These thoughts (if they can be dignified with that appellation) have been prompted by the fact that we came back from Terrassa after a family celebration quite late.  As we get up at 6 am (sic) any lateness to bed is penalized by the rapidly approaching morning!  So we were both tired today and the ride to work was more than usually taciturn.  But, we got there in time, indeed with enough time to spare for Toni to have an early morning coffee to give him the necessary caffeine fix to get through to the breakfast break.

As I stuttered by way past the series of red lights in Cornella on my way home, a thought struck me.  I didn’t have to go to work.  And (traitorous thought) I didn’t have to have my swim.  Now, not swimming (in spite of the fact that I enjoy the activity) is something that I constantly had to deal with on my way back from school at the end of the day when I was working.  I had an (expensive) membership of the David Lloyd Centre and that august institution had not only a fair sized indoor pool, but also a far more bracing outdoor one. 

But, at the end of the day I was tired and disinclined to swim.  I would spend the distance from school to home debating with myself about whether I really wanted to go for a swim, because, after all, I had had a swim in the morning, or would I rather have a proper cup of tea at home.  This debate would go on until I found myself (somehow) in the car park of the David Lloyd Centre.  And I would go and have a swim.

Now that I am retired, I find that I am made of sterner stuff.  The dictum, “You are tired, go to bed” seemed to me to have the authority of sacred law.  So, in spite of the fact that the swimming pool is directly on my return route, I veered away from the entrance and came home and went back to bed.  And I feel better for it!

I will not laze around too much, after all I have the liquid accusation of a communal swimming pool just outside the back garden gate to urge me to take my accustomed exercise, even if it is a little later than usual.

And then there is the indulgence of being unshaven.  In the (early) morning I just have a cursory wash and brush my teeth (not so cursorily) because I have a shower and a shave after my swim.  Which in my case I have not had.  So it is now a question of which comes first?  The cup of tea, the swim, or ablutions.

What obviously came first was this piece of writing which is something that characterises my approach to life: if in doubt, write.  So having written, I think I will have a swim, then a shower and shave and then a lingering cup of tea on the terrace on the third floor - and an introduction to the rest of the day!