crawlers

Yesterday was a quiet Sunday. I wrote and baked bread and stole away for a pint at my local while the bread cooled. I sat at the end of the bar and made some scribbles in a notebook, outlining a chapter with some details, happy with the flow of it. There were arrows and bullet points and even something verging on a diagram. It's the 'history' chapter of the book. Since it isn't a fiction, I feel more comfortable doing all this laying out of things. It wouldn't do for me to put the Battle of Dunkirk (very different from the evacuation) before the Albigensian Crusades in a fit of writing fervour, as the former took place nearly 400 years after the latter. 

While scribbling notes and sipping a pint, an army of neck-tied student pub-crawlers invaded the quiet confines of the local. I think it was a rowing team, but if so there were too many coxes. They were loud and drank Fosters and every time I thought that must be all of them, more arrived. Soon the bar was packed, and they just seemed to get louder. One or two gave a couple of locals a bit of lip, and for a split second it looked like it would get a bit messy at the other end of the bar. I just kept scribbling.

They left faster than they arrived, off to annoy some other folks enjoying a quiet Sunday pint. The echo of the door shutting behind them was followed by a loud 'What a bunch of cocks' from on of the guys at the other end of the bar. I shut my notebook and nursed the very end of my pint, remembering that it wasn't all that long ago that I was like that. Bursting into bars, thinking I owned the place. Possessing no volume control and the firm belief that everything I uttered was important.

I always drank better beer, of course, but still. 

And now I'm the quiet, grumpy one at the bar, trying to ignore them, cursing their invasion of my little corner of the world. And they don't give a shit.

Which is fine. When I was their age, I didn't give a shit either.

 

something broken

I wrote this over a month ago. I forgot about it and it just sat there, digitally speaking. So here it is. 

So the microphone on my phone died the day before yesterday. There was no cataclysmic event to signal its passing, just a phone call from a friend who couldn't hear what I was saying. At first I suspected one of the periodic bouts of terrible signal my flat suffers. But then the second call came and went with yet another person screaming "What?!" and "I can't hear you!!" followed by a small explosion of expletives cursing their phone, my phone, the networks and technology in general. I hung up and did much the same. Folks claiming we have replaced god with technology may be on to something - we curse both virulently when we feel they fail us.

My love-hate relationship with technology is such that I hate that I love it. There's a side of me that wishes I had only a landline, never had a Facebook account and thought the biro to be the only writing tool I would ever need. It's not a sense that technology is evil, it isn't, it's just a discomfort with my reliance on it.

And there's no more painful reminder of that reliance than a microphone dying. Or a hard drive failing. The things for which there are no real means of prevention, only measures to make the inevitable less painful.

So on the only day of snow this year, I jumped in the car and drove to Aberdeen and the quietest Apple store I've ever visited. The young genius checked my phone and then took it into the back room, no doubt checking to make sure that I hadn't dropped it in the toilet after hitting it with a sledgehammer. I hadn't, and so he gave me a shiny new iPhone (not a new new iPhone, sadly) and with an update and a login, I had my phone back, minus 2 texts I'd received between my last backup and my replacement. Fairly painless, and I enjoyed driving past the snow-blanketed fields of Angus and Aberdeenshire.

On a run about eight weeks ago, I sprained my right ankle in a fall so bad that the elderly couple I had been attempting to pass heard the crunch of tendons and ligaments as I collapsed. Only in the last week have I been able to run again, and it's been tough going. The weeks intervening, the recovery weeks, drove me slowly crazy with immobility and, most importantly, the sense that my body had failed me. Failed attempts to run again saw me barely able to make it around the block.

Rehabbing included stretching, ice packs and swearing profusely. Then there were the aches and pains that came from elsewhere, because of my limp. Injury begat injury.

I curse my reliance on technology and simultaneously fear its failure. I complain, whine and grumble about an app crashing or a corrupted file. But when I'm the damaged hardware, that's a different story. It throws it all into sharp relief. I'd rather drive to the Apple Store than Ninewells every time. 

muscle memory

This is always a sore time of year for me. Once, longer ago than I really like to consider, I played shinty for the University of St Andrews.

Shinty, for those who don't know (probably most people), is a sport played mostly in the Highlands and on the Islands of Scotland. It's a stick and ball game, frequently described as field hockey without rules. It does have rules, but not very many. If you get hurt, and lots of people do, it's generally considered to be your own fault. The pitches are huge. Camans (shinty sticks) are made of wood and are wedge shaped at the business end. Shinty balls make a pleasing whistling noise when you hit them hard. It's thought to be a progenitor of both golf and ice hockey.  

I didn't play very well, but I made up for it by drinking hectolitres of beer on their behalf. That's one of the joys of sport in higher education - lack of athletic ability is easily forgiven for drinking prowess.

I'm fitter than I was then. I drink less and smoke zero. Depending on how happy my legs and joints are, I run 28-35 miles a week. And so, the first weekend of May, I look forward to playing in the annual old boys match and sixes tournament in St Andrews. Sixes shinty is much like rugby 7s for five-a-side football, except for that it's 6 players on each team.

It serves as a reunion, a general booze up, and an opportunity to play a huge amount of fun, dangerous, sport. There's also a large number of middle aged men doing a lot of 'back in my day' grumbling, which is always good for a laugh, if you're into that sort of thing. Most folks aren't. 

What it also serves as, is a reminder of just how much the years and the mileage take their toll. By the end of the two days, my joints, bones and muscles shrieked in symphonic discord. Any part of my body left untouched by the sport was amply shattered by the colossal hangover. This year was tamer than some. There were no fights and nobody set their rental car on fire. But it left its mark nonetheless.

And so, battered by attempts to recapture the remains of my youth, this week has been spent in pursuit of my future. Job-hunting and book-writing have already polished away most of the memories of pain, discomfort and aches. I know I had them, but I don't really feel them anymore. Writing about them now seems dishonest; memories that actually linger to touch are those of fondness for old friends, the unmatchable deliciousness of the first pint after a day's sport and the hope that it's not a whole year before we all meet up again.

If it is a year, though, no doubt I'll dive right in with both the shinty and the beer, the joy of reunion blocking out entirely the memories of aches and realisation of age. My muscle memory is short, and quite selective. It's quite happy to forget the pain.

maintenance and giant magnets

Today I posted my watch to the manufacturer for a service. It's a nice watch, a present from my folks for my 30th birthday, and it bothers me when it's not working. I like the weight of it on my wrist, but not enough to wear it when it can't tell me the time. And so I dispatched it in the hopes it will be back soon, good as new.

Soon my camera will need the same. The pre-sets have gone funny and as such I can only shoot in manual mode. I should have sent it off ages ago, but I hate not having it around, especially if I'm going somewhere. It's like leaving the house without a pen or a notebook. Should something happen, I would only have my memory to record it.

As I type this on my iPad, my laptop scans a hard drive for erased and damaged photos, about 500 gigs worth. It's a slow process, the scan, that leads to another slow process, the recovery. Once they're both complete comes the re-organising, which is also slow but more rewarding than the first two as it's something I actually do myself. I don't send anything away and I need not cross my fingers and hope that the software doesn't crash 48 hours and halfway through the scan (which has happened three times now). That level of control and self-determination is somewhat comforting.

Tomorrow I drive up north to a small hospital for an MRI. Just before New Years, I sensed a small itch on my back, just below my right shoulder. As of now, about 40-50% of the right side of my body is either numb or has that odd tingly-ness that comes just before pins and needles. The progression has been slow and consistent whilst my dry neurologist's theories have ranged from benign to rather scary. My blood tests came back negative for viruses and vitamin deficiencies, so I'm hoping the MRI reveals something, just not something rather scary.

I'm also hoping there are no shards of ferrous metal embedded in my body that I am unaware of, nor that I have a hitherto unrealised problem with claustrophobia; lying in a giant magnet for an hour can aggravate both those things.

And so, like my tools and toys, I need some manner of maintenance. I just wish that going in for a service was as easy for me as it is for them.

shire horses

The field on the left used to hold horses. Driving by on my way to Naughton, I slowed and glanced and smiled when I saw them. Sometimes, on the way back (when the field was on the right), I'd pull over and stand by the fence and they would wander over, hoping I had a snack for them. Their breath heavy, they'd mumble and mutter their horsey chat and nuzzle and batter my shoulders, hoping I would draw from my pocket a sugar cube, a polo mint, or a carrot. I never remembered to bring a snack, and as I got back into my car they no doubt wondered why I bothered to visit at all. I thought they were Clydesdales; they were certainly some manner of shire horse. Long manes hid their eyes and shaggy hair adorned their dinner platter-sized feet.

A few years ago I drove by and the shire horses were gone. As time passed the field on the left filled with trailers and now there is a small hamlet of shoeboxes on breeze blocks. It's a stark contrast to the surrounding countryside, especially when compared to the previous residents. This development lacks a deft touch. The land still looks like a building site and seems a tumour amongst the surrounding scenery.

Passing last month I noticed the next plot colonised as well. More trailers, more breeze blocks, more mud and more detritus strewn across raw earth instead of grass. Walls and an entrance gate far more grand than what they guard had been erected.

I could turn this into a metaphor about the passage of time; a resentful missive on how progress is a mixed blessing. I could draw contrasts of my own hopes and dreams and the stark realities they bump up against. How life is so rarely what we imagine it should be, and regardless of what's in our heart, the world moves on whether we like it or not. Those things are all true. The connections are all there in my head. But in the midst of all that is sadness. My heart sinks a bit when I drive by the field on the left now. Shoeboxes stood on breeze blocks are a poor replacement for horses stood on shaggy feet.

ice packs and jimmy buffett lyrics

It's sunny today, in spite of the big rain clouds. There's an occasional shower, but it doesn't last. The breeze is a mere wheeze compared to the gales that have hit of late.

With these things in mind, I stretched out this afternoon and went for a run. Town seemed reasonably quiet. There was the odd dog-walker on East Sands and a bit of traffic here and there, but not all that many folks. I was able to cross the Old Course without yielding to a drive from the first hole or a final whack to the eighteenth. My pace felt good and the sun felt better as I ran behind the dunes, along the grass down to the end of West Sands. I passed some folks with tricycles attached to sails folding their kit onto the back of a trailer. I imagined the mildness of the breeze annoyed them as much as it pleased me. They were young, brightly attired and wearing scarlet safety helmets.

By the time I reached the last flag on the beach and turned back towards home my mind set itself on my writing, turning over issues of prose and plot as my legs retraced my steps. It's one of the few times I can ponder my words while listening to lyrics by someone else. In this case it was the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and Blink 182: good running tunes. Turning from the entrance to the beach to follow the Bruce Embankment, my mind had drifted to nothing in particular. The blue of the sea, the brightness of the sky, the enormity of the odd rain cloud. I dodged the odd pedestrian and wheezed a 'thank you' or 'cheers' if they took evasive action.

And then I got to the car park and something at the bottom of my calf popped. I ran with a limp for a few more steps and it got worse, so I stopped. I stretched it out as best I could for about a minute. I jogged lightly for another few steps and it seemed better. Everything else felt brilliant - runner's high, six and a bit miles in, muscles, lungs, all of it good. I stretched again. I could see the restaurant I used to work at, my old boss, my old colleagues and a wine rep I knew sitting at the window, right along my route (which, at that point, was all uphill).

I ran again, waved at my audience as I puffed out my chest and tried to look somewhat fitter than I am. At the top of the hill I walked for another fifty yards before once again attempting a light trot. That was the last straw. I don't run with a phone; if I did, I would have phoned someone.

I hobbled the last two-thirds of a mile home, petrified that I'd torn the most notorious of tendons. My only consolation was that there wasn't any pain to speak of, just the threat of it. I also took grim comfort in the thought that if I had torn my tendon, even hobbling would have been too much.

Now there's an ice pack under my calf and achilles, I'm staring out the window at the glorious afternoon and Jimmy Buffett's 'Growing Older But Not Up' is running through my head:

Crack went my leg, 
like the shell of an egg, 
someone call a decent physician

...

Though my mind is quite flexible,
These brittle bones don't bend.

It wasn't a crack at least, it was a pop.