..big smiles from some picturesque extremity of Victoria.
So, we walking dilettantes have a much to be modest about, but despite the take-up being less painful than the first time, (I didn’t get the stiff calves for instance – not that you can discern actual calves on my stick legs), I still find walking for fitness a tedious effort.
The main problem is boredom. I would be very happy to not be ‘in the moment’ with every step and although there are consecutive minutes when I’m mentally preoccupied with say a piece of music, more often than not it gets stuck on one nagging phrase and I find myself consciously having to re-engage with every slogging, boring footstep just to stop myself from going crazy.
Perhaps this is something that I’ll eventually overcome and I might even start looking for new challenges as I get fitter, but prior experience tells me that’s probably not going to be the case.
For instance, when I was at secondary school I thought it would be prudent to do a little jogging around my home suburb of Cashmere Hills to build up some fitness for rugby, just in case the rumour that I was being considered for a position in the colts had legs. I found the jogging so tedious that I was relieved when I attended only the one practice session with the colts and could cease my fruitless forays up hill and down dale. (Incidentally, I seem to remember not bringing my footy socks home to be washed for an entire season, which turned out to be hint of things to come in my early flatting experiences).
The next jogging-for-the-sake-of-it era that comes to mind was when the first version of Ariel was in WA going through its famous death convulsions between train rides across the Nullarbor. In that case my jogging was a clear metaphor for my wanting to run away from the problem, except of course, I had to come back.
Anyway, historically-speaking I plainly don’t have the right stuff for persevering with fitness routines, which doesn’t bode well for the current bout.
Maybe I should look at dancing instead. Maria and I saw a dance snippet last night on the telly and Maria expressed an admiration for the foxtrot. I said that I had once learned to foxtrot, but perhaps because she sensed an imminent anecdote she changed the subject.
The anecdote in question might have gone something like this: It was back in my prep’ school days and I had a bit of a crush on Sally Williamson, who lived not far from me on Cashmere Hills. There was one term where the Cathedral Grammar School lads signed up to learn to dance with similarly inclined St Margaret’s girls supervised by the formidable Miss Thomas. At this particular lesson I’d managed to partner up with pretty Sally for the foxtrot and was lurking with intent at the far end of the room.
The music suddenly stopped in one of those classic needle-being-ripped-from-the record moments. Miss Thomas’ stentorian tones were obviously directed at me and Sally. ‘I’m not as green as I’m cabbage-looking looking, you know. Everybody without exception will circulate the room!’
My romantic ambitions thwarted, I lost interest in learning to dance.
More recently I did take up Karate for a couple of years, but my knees gave way (I had a couple of arthroscopies to trim torn cartilage) and I was my own worst enemy and injured myself every second week. Bill kept it up longer and got to brown belt status but in the end his body started to let him down and he had to let it go.
Maybe I should try taking up table tennis again. Richard and I used to enjoy playing table tennis when we were kids..
Actually, the rigors of life on the road are enough to keep anyone fit. Setting up and taking down the equipment with a three hour work-out in between is all I really need – and no accompanying boredom.

Writing about the tedium of walking brought to mind the Te Deum, (Te Deum laudamus, to give it its full Latin title, rendered in English as ‘Thee, O God, we praise’, versions of which I sang as a chorister with the Christ Church Cathedral Choir. (Yes - most people call it Christchurch, but both the Cathedral itself and the Cathedral Grammar School persist with the original double barrelled version).
Anyway, I seem to remember the choir singing/intoning the Thomas Tallis version of the Te Deum. Tallis was an English composer of the 16th century and a favourite of Fozzy’s (Charles Foster Brown the choirmaster and organist) and I seem to remember his output being in the style of Plainsong or Plainchant. Whether it was Tallis I'm not sure, but there was some notation we got that was certainly Plainsong-style, having only four lines to the staff and a system of note shapes called neumes, (which Fozzy would’ve told us but which I wouldn’t have remembered had I not consulted Wikipedia).
The point I was going to make is that Plainsong can be very tedious listening if you’re not in the mood and I’d hate to get a refrain stuck in my brain when going for a walk in the Valley Reserve - the tedium of the Te Deum.
A final word on the Te Deum is by way of a cautionary tale that I also gleaned from Wikipedia. There was a 17th century French composer in the court of Louis XIV called Jean-Baptiste Lully. Lully was a bit of a lad (the king was disgusted with ‘his dissolute life and homosexual encounters’) and he was in and out of favour with the Court as a result, but he rather bizarrely ‘died from gangrene, having struck his foot with his long conducting staff during a performance of his Te Deum..’
I suppose you could take an eye out with the modern baton but I think Lully’s misadventure probably changed conductors’ preferences in the design of the baton forever.

* That is Maria and me.