The Hazards of Health

            It was the Nottingham marathon the other day. It’s a bit of a stretch to say that it entered into my life in any great way, seeing as I am quite definitively not one of those people possessed with an ability or desire to run great distances, but it did lend me a few moments of confusion as the runners passed near my house. I was sat with a cup of tea and a book (that most sacred of combinations), when I heard a kind of distant drumming, accompanied by the occasional scream. Then came more yelling, and the drumming got louder, and louder. My mind is quite easily confused when I’m not concentrating, and it is most vulnerable to such attacks of bewilderment when it’s preoccupied by a good story (such as The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which I’m currently reading), so when such cacophonous sounds as these entered my awareness, you can probably imagine my reaction. Depending on how well you know me/how much of my blog you’ve trawled through, you may have picked up on the fact that my brain doesn’t always make the most logical of leaps (see, for example, radioactive super-power-inducing spider bites), so I did not think ‘marathon’, but ‘Balrog!’ (Please, please tell me I don’t have to direct you to The Lord of the Rings to find out what a Balrog is, or why drumming and screaming would make me think of one.)

            Anyway, the tenuous link I am making from this, is that once I had realised that it was the marathon, not the Balrog, the sound of sirens screaming which soon followed, reminded me of one of the reasons why I am no marathon runner: exercise leads to pain. Exercise, it can generally be agreed, is a good thing, to an extent. Now, I am by no means an exercise freak, but I have been prone to restlessness over the last months because, in the shortish periods of time when I haven’t been gallivanting around the country for weddings and such, I have instead been sat in my room filling out some thrilling job applications all day long. For days on end. With not much to show for it. Trust me, it’s not fun. This restlessness has, on various occasions, prompted me into random bouts of exercise. The first time it happened this summer was way back in June, and I got a little bit carried away. I learned the lesson that you shouldn’t abstain from exercise for extended periods of time and then surprise-attack your body with two matches of tennis and an hour’s swimming all in one day. It hurts.

            The pain of this experience was nothing, however, to when I got rather overenthusiastic about horse-riding in the uni Easter holidays (I think) in first year. I started horse-riding when I was six, having been allowed to ride a horse when on a camping holiday in Scotland and consequently fallen in love with it. None of my dad’s apprehension could withstand the force of six-year-old-me constantly haranguing him to ‘Let me ride the ponies! Let me ride the ponies! Let. Me. Ride. The. Ponies!!!’ And so it began and, give or take a few near misses and fairly terrified moments, I rode for twelve years loving every minute of it, and was thoroughly upset about not being able to afford it when I went to uni. I discovered that the place where I had been riding at home must be the world’s cheapest ever riding stables at about £36 for 6 lessons; where I am now, you could pay that for one lesson: sad times.

Anywho, contrary to popular (/ignorant) belief, horse-riding constitutes a full blown work out – you use muscles in pretty much every part of your body, including some which you don’t use for anything else. In a nostalgic moment when I was home for Easter, I booked myself in for a two hour ride at the stables; having not ridden in months and consequently having not used said muscles in months, I was booking myself in for a whole world of pain, and some not insignificant concern for my life.

I began to realise about 5 minutes into this 120 minute experience that my arms, torso, and especially my legs were not as equipped to deal with gripping, directing, and moving with a fairly hefty horse as they had used to be. This became increasingly worrying as the minutes ticked by and I tried to reconcile myself to the idea that I was going to have to spend the rest of my energies on just gripping and moving, and hope that my horse was feeling good-tempered enough to just follow the others. Particularly when we reached the part of the route where we were crossing a pretty busy A-road. Yay potential death scenarios! (If ever I have hoped for the transparency of my sarcasm even without an audible tone of voice, it is now.)

As you have probably gathered, I did make it through this rather gruelling experience, even if my dismount at the end of the ride was more of an exhausted flop onto the ground than an elegant, controlled motion. I survived. Unfortunately, I hadn’t anticipated the staggering-wheezing-near-death, so I then had to cycle home, which as you can probably imagine was as miraculous in its success as the miracle of my technical non-death. I think when I actually did get home, I literally just lay on the floor in the hallway for a good little while. The floor became my good friend. My situation became even more farcical when I remembered that I had arranged to go for a walk with one of my friends that afternoon. I think we literally walked for about fifteen minutes (if that) before I casually suggested we sit on a random log on the side of the path. She helpfully pointed out that we hadn’t been walking for very long, had we? And of course figured out that I couldn’t actually walk any further. She didn’t laugh too much.

            Back to this summer; having revised the issues of inconsistency of exercise, I also learned (well, was forcibly reminded I guess) that when exercising outdoors, one should pay sufficient attention to one’s environment. Whilst I am about as far from being an advocate of the whole tanning thing that society seems to demand, or at least tries to demand from many people so unnecessarily and unnaturally, I do have at least one point on which I envy those whose skin is of a darker shade than mine: sunburn. I have the type of skin which is (well, rather charitably in my case) defended by those who describe it as milky or pale ivory, or whatever complimentary euphemism you’d like to substitute for blinding white. It is also described by me as irritatingly vulnerable. I’m the kind of person who has used factor 65 sunblock. In England. Yep, I’m that kind of cool. Anyway, this ramble on skin tones is really leading to a story about the most entertaining sunburn I’ve ever had, and yep you guessed it, I acquired this prize about a month ago while out exercising!

            Again, I was out playing tennis, though at this point had learned not to cram my month’s worth of tennis and swimming into one week, so didn’t wear myself out. My tennis partner and I even sat around and chatted for about forty minutes in between sets, so there was no possibility of exhaustion-death. However, when I had been applying sunblock that morning, I had for some reason forgotten to cover my face, which meant that the ensuing sun burn was entertaining on two levels. First was the more obvious part where there was a line around my neck where the white ended and the burning red began. Secondly, and this is the part which makes it my favourite sunburn ever, I had glasses marks. Not sunglasses marks – the traditional foe of those attempting a facial tan - but from my everyday glasses which happen to have bits at the sides which are really thick at one end but then taper toward the ear. I had speed stripes. Symmetrical narrowing lines of white on red either side of my face. Fantastic.

            Another of my favourite stories of exercise made more hazardous by the weather came from weather at the other end of the spectrum. This was back in sixth form (I think?) when one of my friends, Tammy, asked me and another of our friends, Jenny, to go jogging with her, because she needed to train for some event she was taking part in (I think it involved mountain climbing?) but she didn’t want to go alone. (Now Tammy gets a special shout out, because she gave me what is one of my favourite comedy-points birthday presents ever a few weeks ago: in response to what I wrote in the ‘Graduate Entry to the University of Life’ post from back then, she got me Edam cheese! Quality.) Anywho, we three went jogging a couple of nights a week for maybe a few months? I can’t remember; unimportant detail.

Now, I think that while some people are built to run, others are just not, and I definitely fall into the latter category. Those who are meant to run have this magical ability to bounce effortlessly along on the balls of their toes, you know, all majestic in their precise, powerful strides. Then you have the people like me, who kind of lollop along, red in the face and sucking air down their lungs and desperately just trying to land one foot in front of the other. This does also set runners of my ability up for a lot more falls than those who actually have control of their legs. Especially when you’re running down a fairly steep hill in the mud of winter. Yay.

You can picture the scene: it was only me and Tammy on that particular night and, unsurprisingly, I’d fallen behind a little and was trying to increase my speed so as to still at least resemble a jogger as I made my way down the hill. This resemblance completely disintegrated as I hit a particularly muddy spot which must have been some kind of water slide in a past life. I squealed as my foot slid underneath me, and Tammy, who thankfully was a fair way ahead, turned to see me surfing down the hill on one foot – apparently I travelled in this rather unconventional way for a few metres at least – until my balance gave out and I landed rather unceremoniously on my derriere. I’m told my facial expression was priceless. To be honest, even I kind of wish it had been caught on camera.

So, what can we conclude from all of this? The lazy bum in me wants to suggest that exercise in all its forms is just asking for trouble when one is as ‘challenged’ as I am (it seems kind of incongruent that lazy bum-me would describe ‘one’ as anything…meh). Nonetheless, both the supposed reasonable side of me and the easily over-excited child in me do suggest that as long as one takes the proper precautions it should be fine (use of the term ‘one’ seems less wrong from the reasonable-me) and that games and running around can be fun and sitting around all day is boring and can we go do stuff now!? (I hope you can work out which me that was.)

Huh; definitely the longest post ever. Blame the Balrog.

See my cunning disguise…

I just got back from my first ever job interview. I think that certainly at least gets me points for effort on the ‘growing up’ thing. It was kind of strange; I sat waiting in the waiting room (as you do) chatting to the receptionist (as you do), and every now and then I’d remember that this was an actual job interview for an actual job which would pay me an actual salary with actual money. Woah.

I don’t know whether it’s just my brain being a little bit backward on this issue, or if it’s normal for the prospect of being paid to be this shocking for a first time employee. Hmmm. This stumbling block for my brain isn’t exactly helping me feel as grown up as I’m supposed to be acting though, which is a little unfortunate, but so far I seem to have been able to fool those who need to be fooled into thinking I’m very mature, sensible, and entirely capable of dealing with positions of responsibility.

            I think the actual interview went ok, though who ever knows really how these things have gone until after they’ve been told. I made a concerted effort to look the part of serious-business-Rachel which, if you know me, is pretty unheard of. I was fully suited and booted (well, skirted, bloused and high-heeled….doesn’t quite have the same ring does it?), and about as far from my norm as it’s possible to be, but I guess there’s a first time for everything. I even managed the entire twenty-five minute walk home in my heels, although I will admit to having walked there in flip flops, which I then proceeded to stash in my bag just before I arrived and substituted them for some more appropriate serious-business-footwear. That got me some odd looks from passers by. I think the comfort of something as familiar as odd looks from passers by may have actually helped calm me down from the point of nervous explosion. Thank you, o bemused passers by.

Well, the next interview is on Wednesday (unless I get called back by Capital One Promotions before then *eek*), so I think I can relax for a few days now before I must resume my cunning disguise….

Just how far can I move a goal post?

            Wooaahh, it’s been a while since I posted. Woops. Life goes on.

            I had another repeat moment of realisation today about just how much easier it is to change the goalposts on ‘growing up’ than to actually go ahead and do it. I’ve been moving goalposts all summer, albeit with reasonably good reason. First was graduation, then my brother’s wedding, then getting back home after visiting my parents, then my 21^st birthday, then moving house, then my friend’s wedding in St. Andrew’s…..and now all of that is past and I don’t have any more potential goalposts to try and pin it on. Which is a little disgruntling to be honest (is disgruntling even a word?).

            But in my defence, most of these goalposts were fairly major, and they all came so close together that as soon as one was over I had to prepare for the next. I’ll take some overwhelmed points if I can get them.

Moving house was an interesting one. Packing and unpacking all your worldly possessions really forces you to actually consider them. I uncovered an impressive amount of random crap which clearly had meaning at some point in my life but is from a time so long past that I actually can’t remember what that meaning was, which is also disgruntling (I’ve decided that it is a word, so now I’m going to use it, whether you like it or not. Besides, MS Word is on my side.). I think my favourite example was a chocolate wrapper which someone had written ‘pixxie destruction!!’ on. I have absolutely no idea what ‘pixxie destruction’ means, why it was written on a fairly unremarkable chocolate wrapper, or even what it could vaguely relate to. I can’t even recognise the handwriting. (If that was written by anyone reading this, please explain!)

Less mysterious, but still full of a lot of random, was my high school yearbook, signed with such awesome random by my school friends. Reading through the messages often made me smile, but also wonder at how some things have so epically changed since then – some friendships blossomed, some pretty much disappeared. Strangely, the thing that freaked me out most was when I tried to read a message that my English teacher had written – his handwriting was notoriously bad, and I couldn’t actually read his name. And I couldn’t remember what it was. This was rather disconcerting considering he taught me for four years, only just over three years ago. It took me at least ten full minutes to remember, and the panic I felt in my momentary amnesia was shocking in its magnitude. It was full blown heart-racing, blood-draining-from-my-face, gouging-my-eyes-out-in-fear-and-dread panic (well, give or take a few eye gouges). Who knew it would freak me out so much not being able to remember details like that? But then who knew my memory was so crap as to forget details like that in only three years?….well actually, that would be most people who know me…

It is a little distressing though, because at the time the idea that you could forget things like that seems about on the same level of likely as, well I don’t know, how about the random acquisition of super powers. Clearly, however, my ability to forget things is higher than I thought, and the things which seem so ingrained in my mind, can be erased from it with relative ease. Hmmm, I wonder how far I can stretch the consequent implications for the random acquisition of super powers from that….if I’m honest (and I’m a little ashamed/proud of myself for this), my first thought on noticing a mysterious red swelling on the back of my right hand a couple of weeks back was, ‘Oooo, that could be a radioactive super-power-inducing spider bite!’. Yeah, I know.

Anyway, I feel like I may have lost the original thread of this post. Oh yeah: the continual moving of goalposts before actually growing up. Ooo, I know – if I make the random acquisition of super powers the next goalpost, then I should be safe from growing up for a good while yet….unless it was a radioactive super-power-inducing spider bite!