Four things I am grateful for
From 2021
Moving house
In February, I moved into a flat by myself. Bar a few short stints, I have always shared living spaces. This was the first time in my own private space long term. No sharing more waiting to take a shower! My own kitchen!! I felt a healthy level of loneliness for the first few weeks. Thick snow started to fall the day after my first night at the flat, and in a few days, there was a cold white blanket everywhere you looked.
On my first night at the flat, I watched Bladerunner 2048 and drank rum and coke with thick slices of orange and plenty of ice. When I drink alone, I tend to make potent drinks. The first drink makes me warm and tipsy, and I am flat drunk by the third.
That film’s aesthetic was perfect; the aloneness in a futuristic metropolis resonated in me. My new home is opposite a busy city road, traffic lights and a neon green petrol station open 24 hours.
In May, we were getting some warm sunshine, and I remember one morning in the garden. I’d cold-brewed coffee for the first time ever, and I took it outside and took my first sips in the May sunshine. Coffee that has been steeped for 24 hours has a richer flavour. And I was pleasantly surprised by the coldness too. It’s so tasty.
The Conifers
Patches of snow hung around for a long time. There were rogue patches of it all over flat Norfolk for weeks after, nestled in the pockets of tree burls or in a shady bunker of hedgerows. The area at the hospital where I worked was called Conifers. Early one morning at the start of April, there was none of this snow left, and Spring had begun, as it does.
This hospital was built in 1828, mainly out of red bricks. You could divide the grounds roughly down the middle, cleft by a 30-degree incline of hedgerows. On the lower half is the housing for all the patients. Support services like admin, HR, and maintenance live on the top side. Looking at the place from the outside, one might assume the old buildings encase some sort of clinical hubbub. But it’s not the case. Within some buildings, areas have been shut off and are used for storage. They are dark within and have jarringly different things next to each other. There was a machine in one room that was some kind of scanner. Surely not an X-ray? I thought better of plugging it in. Right next to it was a treadmill, which seemed to work just fine. A few rooms down, there was a disconnected bathtub. In one particularly eerie room filled with office telephone handsets was a dusty picture of a woman in her early fifties. Jill from IT. Three summers ago, she went looking for some extra network cabling. But she never did make it back.
At the start of April, there was hardly anyone on-site on the top side of the hospital. Adding to the sense of isolation, the fauna had had a growth spurt making it unkempt. The conifer trees are the tallest thing here; grey squirrels traverse between them and the ground seamlessly. The gulls own the rooftops, shitting white onto red. The crows bully and get what they want on the ground. But the smaller winged critters have something all to themselves to ferry their business. They zip between secret nodes, like signal crackles on invisible wires. A warm breeze would suddenly gust and comb the tall grass, causing it to uniformly bend in the exact same direction. The abandoned-red-bricked complex and empty granite car parks have been here a while, but they are out-stayed visitors now in the constant ebb. The place belonged to Spring.
High reps of burpees
In May, I realised something I have known intellectually for years; exercise is positive for both mind and body. I could feel the difference training in the morning had later on in the same day. By telling myself it’s best to train for the things straight ahead of me, it’s easier to do it when I inevitably don’t feel like it.
Rarely does one thing come along that can reliably and positively affect so broadly. It was a no brainer; exercise would become a staple part of my life. And now it is. I don’t need too much willpower to keep doing it because I’ve built a habit and bought a bunch of stuff that gets used and lives piled in a corner of my living room.
Sorry, I don’t mean to show off, but I do a mixture of stuff, primarily calisthenic; pull-ups, skipping and burpees. Burpees are the best. One burpee is easy. After five, the heart dials up the blood pressure as the demand for oxygenated blood increases. Even 30 consecutive burpees are damnable to the uninitiated. Burpees are great because only a small area is needed.
Workouts are supposed to be uncomfortable. Challenging but realistic exercising has taught me things about my mind that reading never could. Particularly; how I feel and habitually respond to discomfort or stress.
The next time I am working out, these words will ring in my ear.
The seaside, on the dunes camping
Around about the same time I’d started doing calisthenic training at home, I went camping at the seaside for a day. I went to this place that I’d heard people talk about but had never actually been to. I set up camp on the elevated dunes on the flattest patch I could find, then laid out the picnic blanket too that I’d bought for the trip. Amongst my luggage was, naturally, premixed rum and coke. I’d even brought some ice and slices of lime to go with it. I spent the first couple of hours drinking it and finishing a historical fiction book about the battle of Thermopylae. The one they made a film about called 300 which holds the world record for the most six-pack abdominal muscles on screen at the same time.
In The Gates of Fire, a small alliance of Greek forces are defending against the advance of the ridiculously gargantuan forces of the Persian empire into Greece. Among the different attacks they had to foil were arrows. The discharge of a single one causes a high pitched whistle as it conveys its murderous payload that’s capable of tearing flesh and shattering the bone underneath. When the arrow sails past your head by just a few inches, the whistle turns into a discombobulating shriek. These arrows come in volleys of many thousands, but not a single steel warhead finds its mortal mark, only an enveloping bronze canopy that shields the warriors underneath; the Spartans.
On the sea’s horizon out in front of me, are a few haulage vessels sitting flush to the horizon. They look like tiny models or toys because they’re so far away.
I set my alarm to get up for the sunrise. It was another hot, sunny day.
