..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.