writing fifty: adventures everyday and extraordinary
“…and I don’t need to see your pants.”Thus runs the unusual—and, to me, quite brilliant—strapline on a poster for a friend’s shiatsu practice.* For those of us with what Clive James has called ‘the right set of personal inadequacies’ (or rather, who feel we have them), the thought of physio, massage, or any other kind of body treatment is often tainted by the prospect of Having To Reveal Our Body To Someone Else. (more…)
Some are frustrating and tiresome; some irritate and enervate; others simply feel as if they’ll never come to an end. You’re singing a piece which isn’t to your taste and, as you listen to another part (it’s always another part, of course, never the sopranos) sing their line over and over and STILL make the same mistake, you look at your watch and realise there are still 57 long minutes left to go till tea time (and the word has gone round that it’s not even chocolate squares tonight, only oat crunches). The church heating’s set either (more…)
So: we walked the 25ish miles from Frome to Bath, stopping to swim, eat and pour water at various points along the way.Sounds like a kicking weekend, huh? But this turned out to be one of those experiences where time seems to expand to accommodate all the stuff its brings. I think of this as herniated time—time which bulges sideways and intrudes into eternity, or timelessness, or both (if they’re not the same).* All this to be obtained merely by putting one foot in front of the other.
The morning’s walk on day one took us across fields, past poplar-copses (we stopped to listen to the wind in the leaves) (more…)
There must be some kind of equation for packing.If N=number of things you’d like to take, C the number of things you feel you can carry, and P what you can actually fit in your pack, the initial relationship between N, C and P can be assumed to be something like N>C≥P. After that it gets a bit confusing; but the net result is definitely F, which is what you say when you pick it up for the fifteenth time that day and your shoulders are very, very angry.
I was off to Somerset for a two-day water pilgrimage from the Holy Well at Frome to Aquae Sulis, the springs which feed the baths in, well, Bath. (more…)
A few days before my birthday I was checking out the times for Adult Swimming (less interesting than it sounds!) at the leisure centre and found myself scrolling past a timetable entry which said ‘50+ swim’.Then scrolling back again. Bloody hell, I thought, this time next week I can go to that. I could feel the flesh starting to dangle (more) from my upper arms even as I looked. (more…)