I read with interest that a visiting US psychologist says that exercise is for donkeys and people treat themselves like Jackasses when they go running.
His view is that we should go back to basics and learn to move properly, freeing ourselves from poor walking, breathing and sports habits, We treat ourselves like a piece of meat, he says.
Well, a guarded hear, hear, to that.
I was thinking about it as my heap of meat lay on the couch taking one of my back-to-basics rest periods which occur frequently and in a way which could be written down as a kind of sporting activity.
It combines tranquillity and a slackening of the muscles (if they were slackened any more they’d droop all over my body like old bootlaces).
It also involves a certain disinclination to hurl my body into activities which could have a detrimental effect on my being. Thus I am in a state of complete quietude, utterly unmotivated and regrettably described by misunderstanding people, breathing heavily and unhealthy, as bone laziness.
Two people were talking about me as I lay there and it was obvious that they had the wrong slants on just about everything including the unnecessary ambulation to which so many of us are hounded, such as the superfluous walking to the garden tool shed!
“He is,” said She Whose Voice Was Instantly Recognisable, “a heap of meat true enough, he is also anti-exercise although I must admit he is beautifully coordinated for repose fleshy fold within fold like a concertina.”
“Indeed, mother,” said the daughter of SWVWIR, “we may be looking at the ultimate in immobility, the last call on the way to a complete cessation of any harmful activity, in fact the beautiful and even poetical stillness of the born bludger.”
“See” said SWVWIR “that, apart from the faint inhalation and exhalation which is his only concession to movement that enormous figure has achieved the stillness one finds in a frozen lake, or in some great gibber motionless in time on an inland plain.”
“Indeed,” said the daughter, “and he gibbers very little. Yet one must not deny the fact that, here in our own home, on our own couch we have this body awareness, this miracle of the motionless, this excommunication from exercise, partitioned from press ups, the epitome of the incredible hulk grounded forever in the suburban dreamtime.”
“Should we,” said SWVWIR, “tiptoe away and leave him or should we admit the poor stressful world to see relaxation in the ultimate form? Ring up few professors. Bring Neil Kerley, Hooksey, the marathon runners, the downhill skiers. And while you’re about it bring our friends. We could do with a few relaxing and muscle mending laughs.”
“Can he ever be roused?” asked the daughter. “Will we find him bear 10 years hence a sleeping beauty in slobbering somnolency?”
She had her answer. Her mother stepped forward, placed muscular lips to my ear and bawled “SUPPER.”
I was at the table in a split second.
There are times to sleep and times to stir.
Take it from bodily-aware and muscularly limited old me.
Max Fatchen