A survival guide, and more, for 50-somethings
Just eight days of not drinking reset my life and thinking
I WAS GOING TO WRITE about having a month off alcohol but, in the end, I only managed eight days.
Eight days! Most of us have had longer holidays than that, so it wasn’t exactly a life-altering change, was it?
Perhaps I’ll call it a holiday from drinking, instead? A sobriety mini-break?
Continue reading “My Sobriety Mini-Break”Why should we exercise? Because we want to, or because we’re told to?
WHEN I SET OFF on my last run, I got an instant reminder of why I exercise.
I’d been feeling stressed but, once I’d gone a hundred metres, I just couldn’t hold the tensions in any more.
The work my arms and legs were doing forced my lungs to take in deep, long, breaths – instead of the jittery little swallows of air I’d been subsisting on all day.
Once I gave in, and stopped fighting to control my breathing, I felt my worries float away.
I felt free – but am I, really?
Continue reading “Working (out) for The Man”We’ve been at home, oscillating between hope and fear, for a year. But we still don’t know if the world will emerge from Covid-19 a better place.
THERE’S A GUY I KNOW, once sort of a friend, who then grew really to dislike me.
It wasn’t as if I loved him, either: he was a call-a-spade-a-spade sort of person, and could be blunt and insensitive. But it still hurt me when – abruptly – he decided that I was a wrong ’un.
A few years ago, I heard that the same bloke had suffered a serious – and surprising – bout of depression. Word had it that he’d been signed off work for weeks after telling his doctor: “I just can’t get out of bed.”
Having suffered with the condition for much of my life, I’d never have wished depression upon him, however much we disliked one another.
But, at the same time, I wanted him to learn something from it.
Now he knew what depression was like, maybe he’d be a bit humbler? Perhaps a little more understanding about what people like me went through?
In other words, I hoped he’d come out of his dark place somehow better.
But it never happened: this bloke recovered, he went back to work and normal life, and the next time I bumped into him, he was spectacularly hurtful and rude. In other words, just the same boorish prick he’d always been.
So why am I telling this story? Because, when I think about the post-Covid world, I worry that it’ll be like my former friend after his ordeal: just the same…
Continue reading “One Year, One Place, Two Minds”I’m increasingly risk-averse these days – is it just another sign of ageing?
THERE’S STILL A LITTLE bit of snow lying around here, left over from the flurry at the weekend.
Today, I was thinking about going to the shops on my bike, but I didn’t fancy it: I was a bit worried about hitting a frozen patch, and tumbling off.
I haven’t been running for a while, either – partly because of the still-icy pavements and the possibility of a slip, followed by yet another muscle tear or strain.
And while I was thinking all this, I asked myself: “When did you become such an old man? What happened to all that testosterone?”
Continue reading “You Are Now Entering A Testosterone Free Zone”It’s the shortest day today, which always means there’s light after the darkness
THERE’S BEEN a lorra lorra gnashing and wailing in the UK this week, after the Government did yet another U-turn and cancelled Christmas.
Faced with a highly infectious new coronavirus strain in London and the south east of England, Prime Minister Boris Johnson banned Christmas travel to and from the capital – and restricted festive visiting nationwide to December 25.
While no-one is arguing much with the need for stricter measures, pretty much everybody thinks the timing of Johnson’s announcement stinks.
Just days earlier, he had said it would be “inhuman” to deny Brits a proper Christmas after nine months of worry, sacrifice and hardship.
Yet the announcement did precisely that, coming just as millions were putting presents under the tree for relatives who now won’t be able to open them – and buying Christmas treats that now can’t be shared with loved ones.
Continue reading “They Can Cancel Our Christmas, But They Can’t Stop The Solstice!”It’s time to recognise that there might be more Covid-19 symptoms than we think
When Matt Hancock returned to work after recovering from Covid-19, he told the BBC about the “Incredibly painful throat” that had been one of his main symptoms.
“It was like having glass in (there),” said the Health Secretary.
But when I got a sore throat just over a week ago, I didn’t immediately think: Coronavirus.
I thought it was just a passing thing, possibly hay fever. It was fine the next day, but then came back much worse – accompanied now by an aching in my limbs that reached to my fingertips.
I tried to watch telly with the family, but I was grumpy, and my wife ended up sending me to bed.
And, just in case, she told me to sleep in the top room on my own.
Continue reading “So, Have I Got Coronavirus, Or Not?”Things can change – and yes, walls can come tumbling down!
THERE IS, literally, something in the air at the moment.
It may just be coincidence but, when I switched on the radio this morning, they were playing Walls Come Tumbling Down.
Remember that? Paul Weller’s rabble rouser from 1985, the zenith of Thatcherism, when he tried bravely to convince us that things didn’t have to be this way.
“You don’t have to take this crap,” Weller sang, adding: “Are you gonna try and make this work, or spend your days down in the dirt?
Well, we all know how that went…. two years later, Maggie got voted in again, and then John Major succeeded her. It wasn’t until 1997 that we got another progressive government.
Today, of course, there’s yet another Tory just been installed at Number 10, and still no end in sight to their dominance of UK politics.
And yet… the sense that things can change is perhaps more tangible these days than at any time since the 1940s.
What’s made the difference is, in a word: Coronavirus.
Continue reading “How Coronavirus Can Lead To A Better World”It’s Mental Health Awareness Week, so I’ll be honest: I’ve had it up to here with this m************ lockdown
“ARE YOU OK? Are you all well?”
Have you noticed that, since the start of lockdown, people are asking questions like that and sounding as if they actually mean them, for once?
It’s one of the nicer aspects of being in the middle of a global pandemic – a sense that the person asking actually cares how you are, and isn’t just doing it out of politeness.
I reckon this comes from a tacit acceptance that we’re all vulnerable at the moment – so it’s all right to admit to a certain weakness.
Which is not the worst way to be in Mental Health Awareness Week.
But even now, when someone asks if I’m OK, I’m not laying my entire soul on the line.
I might say something guardedly revealing of certain susceptibilities – and then slap back on the stiff upper lip and add: “Of course we’re coping better than expected.”
So it’s not exactly full disclosure – but this is: today I feel pretty fucking far from OK.
Continue reading “I’m Pretty Fucking Far From OK”It’s all very well clapping them every Thursday night, but why not thank key workers properly when the Coronavirus storm blows over?
AT THE END of World War One, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George promised to build 500,000 new homes as a reward for the sacrifices ordinary people had made.
Only 200,000 of them were completed, but for many of those lucky enough to move into a new home, it was their first experience of electricity, running water, bathrooms, indoor toilets and gardens.
By 1939, more than a million council houses had been built across the UK, and in 1948 – three years after victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two – the Government again thanked people for their fortitude with the creation of the National Health Service (applause!).
The Coronavirus pandemic is perhaps the greatest challenge to face this country – and the world – since the 1940s, with ordinary people likes nurses, care home workers and bus drivers again at the forefront of the fight.
When all of this has blown over – and we look at ways of saying ‘Thank You’ to our key workers – we could do worse than building them somewhere decent to live again.
Continue reading “Who’s Up For Homes Fit For Heroes II?”
BACK WHEN the Coronavirus was just getting warmed up, I woke for a few days in a row with some worrying symptoms.
My throat was tender, my body was hot and sore, and I had a blinding headache.
I started to tell my wife, already imagining being isolated in the top room.
I pictured myself sweating and moaning on the lumpy sofa bed, constant bloody Netflix, meals left outside on trays…
Which was when I remembered the five beers I’d had the night before and realised that I didn’t have Coronavirus: it was just a hangover.
“You’ve got the Beer-o-Virus,” my Better Half declared.
Continue reading “How I Gave My Kids The Beer-o-Virus”
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