It’s interesting as you get older you start to become more aware of your bodies fallibility. This isn’t something I’ve just started to notice but certainly something that is becoming a far more accepted part of my existence. We have the obvious times such as the body taking longer to recover after exercise. I do some cross fit once a week with a friend and I think I may have hurt my back a little tonight. Being a tall lad a bad back is nothing new and I worry about what it’ll be like if I’m still going in thirty years. I hurt it about five years ago trimming grapes in France and it took years to recover. Clearly it’s still a vulnerable issue. My knees grind and my shoulders feel sore regularly. I suspect part of this relates to something I’m doing wrong in my diet but equally I’m just not a young man anymore. Don’t get me wrong I’m not old but as I said I’m starting to really be aware of my bodies fallibility.
I am attempting to paint the front of someones house at the moment. I don’t trust the ladders without another person holding it and I was going to go up in a basket on the front of a forklift but we just discovered the forks don’t go wide enough. In the past without a doubt I would have just said “fuck it” and gone up anyway, everything would have been fine and the job would have been done. Now I’m aware that with the forks not securely holding it in place if I go too far to one side it could easily topple, if you include the ridiculous wind we have presently the lack of stability becomes even more of an issue.
I’ve rarely had accidents in my life, never broken a bone and usually just taken the reckless choice. While I have had a few close calls, it is unclear what it is that has led me to learn to be a little more sensible. It is not common sense as I suspect that is still lacking. Perhaps being aware of other peoples accidents as we get older allows us to become more sensible and potentially boring as a result. Let’s see what happens but I hope next time I go downhill mountain biking or something fun and dangerous I’m still more interested in the excitement factor and going really fast. It’s such a shame when people lose that zest for the wilder side of life. Maybe I need a little bit of an adventure to remind myself of my more youthful ways. Hibernating through the winter by the sea may not always be good for us after all. It can be the more extreme things in life which remind us it’s all real and we’re still alive. A little bit of adrenaline in my old age can go a long way. I did always want to learn how to paraglide. I wonder, maybe it’s time to dig around a little in that old box of fantasies.
Observations and Misunderstandings 