Walk smarter, not quicker

 DON'T ASK HOW LONG IT'LL TAKE, JUST IF...?

Two days ago I became a proper OAP.  Yesterday I walked more than ten miles.  Today I ache.  Spot the obvious connections.

Once again I have signed up to do the Kiltwalk charity event in September.  My first, in 2018, my sole aim was to get to the end.  For the next I wanted to be quicker, and did the fourteen and a bit miles in three hours thirty three minutes.  Frustratingly close to three and a half hours, so that was to be my aim in 2020, if the same course was in use.  But we know what happened next.  And again in '21.  So here I am, trying again.  The route has yet to be announced, but I know one thing.  I won't be doing it in three and a half hours.

Three years older, complete with the subtle physical modifications that gradual decrepitude  brings.  A clear thickening around the middle.  Two bouts of the oh-so-fashionable covid virus, leaving me with (my GP suggests) a few breathing problems from long covid.  I have finally entered the world of daily meds, for a mild heart condition.  And the dodgy left knee gets ever dodgier.  Intimations of mortality

But the optimistic part of my brain still goes "you've done it before, you can do it again".  While the inner realist reflect on all those changes, and wonders...

I haven't tried on the kilt for a long time. Will it still fit, comfortably enough to wear for so many hours?  I can always get another kilt though. I can't get another body, so I'll have to make the best of the one I've got.

I've now put nine walks behind me, from less than five miles, up to yesterday's first effort at passing the ten mark.  I've learned that I have to pace myself - as the one attempt to push on at something like my old speed resulted in me feeling like shit for all of the day after!  Yesterday's ten and a bit felt comfortable enough.  But took over three hours.  A pace that would take me over the four hour mark on the day.  

It's not as if it matters.  If anyone is going to sponsor me I'm sure they'll not make it conditional on my pushing myself to the point of exhaustion, or covering the distance in a certain time.  The most important thing is to collect some money for Advocard, my chosen charity once more.  And this year, for the first time, I won't be alone in my kilted effort, with at least one other and possibly more joining in.  But there's still this stupid pride thing that us humans do.  And knowing that the one thing about getting old is not actually wanting to feel like you're getting old.  I just wish that optimistic wee voice I mentioned within would learn to shut up.

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Who are we?

 

WHO?  WHAT?  

In the Olympics we parade in the opening ceremony as United Kingdom, but compete as Team GB.  In most international sports we play as four separate countries.  One of those four is sometimes on it's own, so Northern Irelnd compete as such in football, and sometimes as part of the national team of a neighbouring state, with ireland playing as a complete nation, including the occupied territory.   That same sport also sees us compete as part of a British Isles Team, while in golf we can play as part of Europe.  Meanwhile the stories about the English media describing Andy Murray as Britsh when he's won, and Scottish when he's lost, are not entirely apocryphal. 

If a UK newsreader mentions "the largest city in the North East" we all know that they mean Newcastle.  A Scottish newsreader is referring to Aberdeen.  In one of the four countries the culture is for people to unconsciously use the words England/English and Britain/British as synonyms.  But never in the others, where there is no confusion, unconscious or otherwise.  When I go outside the UK people often ask if I'm English, but immediately know the difference when I say Scottish.  I hardly ever recall ever being asked if I was British.  

The UK is a unitary state in constitutional terms, but disunited in the real world.  It has an ongoing identity crisis, a deep confusion about what it is and who we are.  And this isn't a recent development.

I started going to Murrayfield to watch Scotland play in the late 60s.  When it was England's turn to come here they were always accompanied by tubby, oldish man (well oldish to me at the time) in a 'John Bull' outfit, complete with union flag waistcoat.  Even at twelve years old I knew that was simply wrong.  He couldn't be supporting what that flag represented, because that wasn't who was playing.  So why was he so confused?

I lived for thirty five years in England.  How many times was I told about how well/badly England were doing in the Olympics?  Or Britain in the football World Cup?  More than you might think, or than even the people saying it might think, for they were completely unaware of the implications of what they were saying.  Even when it was pointed out to them, some still couldn't grasp the difference (including my first wife, which might be one of the reasons why she's not my wife any more...).   

UK has a deeply confused identity.  Life would be a lot simpler if we put it out of it's misery, and let everyone be who they really are.  End the union.