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Happy New Year!

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Remember the joyful naivete with which we greeted 2020?  For me, fresh from a breakup, it was going to be the BEST YEAR EVER!  It started with a sunrise run in the Cairngorms.  I made a list of my goals on my whiteboard (get one!) and all the adventures I was committing to having. Then Covid-19, and lockdown happened.  I don’t believe there is a single person who hasn’t been impacted by the new world.  I’m one of those who’s full time job vanished during the pandemic.  And a lot of those goals on my board seemed impossible. So I launched Merry May, with a strategy for finding joy in simple things – stars, kingfishers, sunshine.  In classic 2020 fashion, our lives continued to present challenges.  But that list, pinned to my door, gave me a system for finding moments of levity.  The plan failed.  But it wasn’t a failure. This week, I learned that September 1 st has a reputation as a sort of second rate January 1 st .  The first calendar day of Autumn, kids back at school.  Season
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You Are Not a Beautiful and Unique Snowflake

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In December I was having a conversation.  We hadn't met before and we were making small talk.  The chat turned to leisure pursuits, and I mentioned that I enjoyed swimming in the sea.  Then I sat back, expecting to be revered as a sort of viking crossed with a killer whale.  "Oh, wild swimming?" She asked. "That's cool - my gran does that in Brighton" You could actually hear the peg or two that I had been set down tinkling to the floor.  Peggily. I've had much the same experience making public my illness.  What seemed huge, monstrous and, dare I say it, heroically overcome thus far, has not exactly ignited the fires of those around me.  I've run the gamut of "My auntie/mum/gran has that" and even "yeah, my cat had it but it died soon after". So I started to draft questions.  Mostly but not exclusively unrelated to cats. Firstly, how common is this?  I don't know anything about it other than a doctor called me up after 18.00 on
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So THAT'S Why I'm Lazy....

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I've got to say it came as rather a surprise.  I assumed that stuff hurting was just what happened as you got older.  Since my mid-teens I've been doing sports that have been a bit hard on the old body, and then from University onwards, more so. The roll call of sports just seemed destined for old age carnage: whitewater kayaking.  Rafting.  Climbing.  Slamming the mountain bike into things.  Trail running.  Ultra trail running.  Oh - triathlon looks good!  Ironman.  Beyond iron man, extreme iron man.  Celtman .  Double Brutal .  Cross country mountain bike racing.  Ultra matrathons.  Judo.  Karate.  Boxing.  Cage fighting.  Swimming.  Sea swimming. As time past I got better and better, fitter and faster.  I peaked, and then gradually slumped down until my lower back made moving fast something I thought twice about.  My first ten minutes of most days are hobbled around like I'm on stilts, my Achilles tendons tightened to crossbow torque. That's just what happens when yo
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