November 11th Getting on your Wicks
It’s only in the last few days that I’ve tuned in to Joe Wicks. Exercise divorced from playing a game has never appealed to me and even when I belonged to a gym, it was only bearable if I could listen to Radio 4 on my iPod. I generally found excuses to shorten the session so I could get into the sauna. The exercise regime was really a prelude to a good long hot shower or decadent sweat, ultimately an undeserved reward.
The Joe Wicks session is about right for me, not too much bending, no troublesome getting down onto the floor and then back up again. As he so irritatingly points out, it’s for everyone “7 to 70” as if it’s inconceivable that anyone should be over 70. Another way he could improve the session would be, as well as the squats, lifting the knees and punching, he could insert some ‘t’s into his monologue, that way I might be more encouraged to “ge’ a swea’ on.” However a good morning dose of endorphins and dopamine prevents crotchetiness – or at least postpones it until later.
Staying fit and alive generally seems to be a good idea, even if only to protect the NHS, which seems to be my age-group’s main mission in life. A worthy one, might I add. It’s now being reinforced by marshalling us into the vaccination queue behind the over 80+s and those working or residing in care-homes. Wouldn’t it be nice to think the strategy of preserving us oldies is because our age and wisdom is considered worth preserving? Anyway, by doing my exercises I am intending to preserve my own personal age and wisdom for society’s enrichment. It hasn’t yet extended to dragging the cycling machine out of its dark and abandoned corner – I might need to install a sauna first.
It’s the existential dilemma I’ve often considered – whether to choose to be old or to risk making a spectacle of myself by staying young. Yesterday I saw the young girl, across the road jumping and clicking her heels in the air. I reflected that last time I tried that I succeeded, but I can’t remember how long ago that was. I could go outside and try it now, possibly risking a rupture and several broken limbs, but I must protect the NHS. Or I could go out clubbing in my gardening trousers, with their stylish rips in the knees or pretend to enjoy that dreadful asinine music that pounds out of little pimped up Corsas careering up and down the Common. I’m beginning to sound like my father – I remember the dismissive declaration back in the early 60s, “No one will have heard of Elvis Presley in five years time.” One option is to avoid obsolescence by remaining engaged, wise and sharing experience, but that is very tiring.
Some people choose to quietly decompose on the settee and enter that ante-chamber to Hell, watching ‘Pointless’. Like Hell it’s infinitely repeating, on every time I turn on the TV to gain some comparative cheer by watching the News or some Scandinavian drama about sado-masochistic serial killers. ‘Pointless’, ‘Celebrity Pointless’ and its opposite, ‘Nondescript Pointless’. Anyway I can never answer the questions.
So another sunless day of this lockdown is nearly over. This morning Deirdre and I both looked at the sky in different directions and simultaneously she said, “The sky is clearing,” and I said, “It looks like rain.” I was right. Possibly we’ve had too much death, too many “intimations of mortality” with Remembrance and our personal loss of three good friends in the last three days.
So I’ll be prompted by Dylan Thomas’s exquisite ‘Do not Go Gentle Into that Good Night’. “Old age should burn and rave.” For now I’ll refuse to be old and continue to rave. As a piece of product placement from now into a future well beyond now I’m putting into the garage this Fisher Price School, bought for our daughters over 40 years ago, played with by their children and to be discovered by and fascinate their own children – our great grandchildren. It’s a little gesture of hope and investment in the future.