Good intentions
THE problem started with my annual visit to the GP practice for the nurse to measure my blood pressure, check my pulse, and reprove me for my sedentary lifestyle.
As I stood barefoot on the scales, she looked up at me with an air of weary disappointment. For the first time in my life, I had passed the maximum recommended weight for a man of my age and height. (I had only exceeded it by two pounds, but it felt to me as though I had committed a criminal offence.) I assured her that I would be ruthless in shedding that weight before we next met. We discussed the options and formulated a strategy: no snacks between meals, a sensible bedtime, and some light but regular exercise.
At three o’clock in the morning, I woke abruptly from a nightmare in which I was being rolled, barrel-like, down a hill by my frolicking godchildren. Good grief, Subconscious, it’s only two pounds! It’s not as if I am wicked King Eglon, who was so fat that, when the Israelite Ehud stabbed him, the dagger went in past the handle and disappeared. Be fair! But, wicked or not, that was the point at which I knew action was called for.
I made a plan that, at ten every night, I would go out for a short jog before having a quick shower, saying my prayers, and tumbling into bed. I made a respectable start to the new routine. But the problem was that I enjoyed the shower, prayers, and sleep massively more than the running; so I revised the rule. I would go for a run at ten every evening unless I wasn’t feeling very well.
I sustained that for a couple of weeks, but resistance was growing. So, I devised a new scheme: I would run daily unless I wasn’t feeling well, or it was raining. I managed that for about a month, but aversion kept increasing. The current arrangement is that I exercise every night unless I’m not feeling well, or it’s raining — or it’s dark.
No smoke without ire
THE irony is that, for all my life until my retirement, I had paid a reasonable amount of attention to staying healthy. I walked to the train station every weekday, effortlessly exceeding the recommended 7000 steps. Admittedly, I am two jeans sizes bigger than I was as a teenager, and I’m not proud of that. But I have never smoked; so I can kiss someone on the cheek without their grimacing. I am a happy medium — in virtue, fitness, and trousers.
In fact, not only have I never smoked: I have never even tried a cigarette. The very whiff of one dismays me. I live in a second-floor flat, and I have a new neighbour who is a smoker. Outside the back entrance of the block, there is a row of bollards, and, several times a day, he sits on one to enjoy a vape and catch up with messages on his phone. The bollard is immediately below my bathroom; so, in summer, the fumes curl up through the open window and fill the room with a repellent smell.
My bathroom has an overflow pipe that, in an emergency, will enable water to escape from the lavatory, pass through the wall, and tumble to the ground below. I have often thought how awkward it would be if water was gushing from that overflow pipe when someone walked out of the back door towards the car park. Hm. . .
So I took the lid off the cistern. I pushed the ballcock as low into the tank as it would go. I heard the water begin to cascade. There was a mighty yelp from eight metres below me, and the sound of footsteps scampering away. I was unobserved: it was a perfect crime.
That night, in my prayers, I had to confess to my first act of anti-social behaviour in 18 years of living in that block of flats. I think it may be the thin end of the wedge.
Missing in action
OF ALL the healthy recommendations that I have been given, the one that I am finding most congenial is to get a substantial amount of sleep. I read that, in the 21st century, children are getting, on average, two hours less sleep per night than their great-grandparents did at the same age. I can’t help wondering whether what they are gaining in stimulation they are losing in joy.
A name that was once significant but has been long forgotten is that of David Rice Atchison. He was a North American politician whose life more or less spanned the 19th century. James Polk was President of the United States for four years, and stood down from office at noon on Sunday 4 March 1849. His successor, Zachary Taylor, was an extremely pious Christian who refused to be sworn in on a Sunday; so he did not begin his presidency until the following day.
Under normal circumstances, the Vice-President would have held the office for the intervening period, but George Dallas had resigned the previous week. So, for one day only, the presidency was held by Atchison, the most senior senator. The reason that his name has not entered the history books is that he was so exhausted from making arrangements for the inauguration that he arrived home in the early hours of the morning, went to bed, and slept through his entire day in office.
Heavenly rest
IT IS difficult to warm towards Senator Atchison, because he was a pro-slavery activist and a barbaric Confederate soldier. But one thing in his defence is that he didn’t speak of his dormant day as a wasted opportunity, but, rather, as the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances.
I am very taken with the idea that, instead of treating sleep as a negative but necessary activity, it could become one of life’s priorities, and the rest of the day would be built around it.
I am aware, though, that sleep does not always get a good review in the Bible. Noah gets so drunk that in his sleep he doesn’t realise that he has no clothes on. Samson is so comatose after his night with Delilah that he is captured by the Philistines. Eutychus is so bored listening to a sermon that he drops off, both into sleep and out of an upstairs window. But, in the middle of a restless night, it is David Rice Atchison that I envy, not all those people in the Bible woken up by angels who tell them to spring into action.
Piece of cake
A PARISHIONER invited me for a cup of tea, and I was delighted to accept. She had made a sponge cake and presented me with a slice so huge that it could have served as a chock for a Lancaster bomber.
My loyalties were divided between my instinctive politeness and my promises to the practice nurse. I knew that I ought to tell my hostess about the need to lose two pounds, and the decision to renounce sweet treats — and the jogging, and the naughtiness, and the sleep. But where would I even start?
Obviously, I started with the thin end of the wedge.
Peter Graystone is a Reader at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Carshalton Beeches, in Southwark diocese.
