Age doesn't come alone, Andy Murray, I've got aches and pains, too

It’s sad, but fair enough that our national treasure considers it time to retire. He’s only 37, which is young in life-span terms, but athletes’ bodies age in dog years.

All that wear and tear, leaping around, bending, whacking and twisting. Your joints only have a certain amount of mileage, before they start to creak, and act as if they’re haunted.

Murray has had hip surgery, and a recent operation to deal with a cyst on his spine. Even young tennis champ Emma Raducanu has undergone wrist surgery and she’s only 21.

Britain's Andy Murray arrives to train ahead of the 2024 Wimbledon Championships at The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, southwest London, on June 30, 2024. (Photo by GLYN KIRK/AFP via Getty Images)

By the time you’re 40, most sportspeople have wound up.

Although, there are always outliers, like Mark Cavendish, who has impressively just won his 35th stage of the Tour de France, aged 39. This could be his last hurrah, too.

After all, as someone’s granny might say, age doesn’t come by itself. I’d say you’re alright until 35-ish, then injuries begin to linger. You retain unwanted souvenirs from various stages of your life.

I can’t remember the last time I got an ache that quickly vanished with a bit of rest. I fantasise about pulling my whole skeleton out, giving the hinges a thorough oil with WD40, scrubbing and bleaching the bones until they’re pearly white, and lotioning up the muscles, before popping this internal scaffolding back in again.

My husband’s granny was a proper Scottish stoic, who lived until she was 94. She had a friend – at least ten years younger – who complained a lot about her various niggles. For that reason, his granny nicknamed her My Leg, because that’s all she wanted to talk about.

So, let me indulge myself, by cataloguing my war wounds. For one day only, I want to be like My Leg.

This non-athlete has plenty to complain about and I think I’m pretty average for my age on that front.

Ironically, whenever I heave my fitness leggings on, my left thumb joint will lock and hurt. I have to wiggle it around, until the ligaments unknot and tug it back into place.

Then there’s the big toe joint that I think might be harbouring the first stirrings of arthritis. It was stubbed during an over-enthusiastic yoga downward dog and has never been right since.

Sometimes it throbs or goes completely numb.

Going en pointe is now out of the question. My career at Scottish Ballet was over before it even began, and I so wanted to do a Mavis Cruet-esque version of the sugar plum fairy.

There’s my gammy knee. I blame the fact that I usually sit cross-legged, as well as the Kate-Moss-endorsed Y2K trend of ballet flats.

My late mother-in-law, who was a physiotherapist, told me that my chickens would come home to roost, when I used to traipse around town while wearing these pancake-soled shoes. She said that I should choose something with a sensible heel instead, to mitigate the concrete’s impact on the joints.

Indeed, she was absolutely right, as now I’ve inherited a dozen bantams.

And, even worse, ballet flats are back in fashion. I’m dodging the trend this time round and I implore the youth of today, wear sensible footwear.

I suppose that joint’s health wasn’t helped when I tripped over a small and errant toddler, and my patella hit pavement concrete with a whip-cracking sound.

Now, my knee has been slightly wonky for nearly 15 years. It doesn’t like going down stairs or long walks. It’s moody as heck. Sometimes it won’t hurt for months, but then the pain comes back, like an unlucky penny.

I’ve done physio, which mainly seemed to involve prescribed exercises to strengthen the quads, including that clamshell Pilates exercise, when you lift and lower your upper bent leg, while lying on your side.

I was doing this move on a mat at the gym once and a huddle of teenage boys stared and laughed at me. “Look at her,” they said, while one of them imitated my dog-peeing-on-a-lamppost pose.

“I CAN HEAR, YOU KNOW!” I shouted, and they scattered.

Then there’s my crippling sciatica. I had a terrible phase of this, and I think it was related to my posture while riding my bike. When I stopped commuting, the pain gradually went away. Occasionally, it resurfaces, to remind me that it’s not gone forever, just hibernating.

I can blame my winged right shoulder and mild scoliosis on the paper round I had as a teenager. All those heavy bags of the Edinburgh Evening News and the Herald & Post that I’d drag round the city streets.

I suppose it’s apt that I became a journalist. Now, my other shoulder freezes all the time, thanks to my T-rex working posture. The delivering and the writing have done me in.

I don’t bother going to the doctor. At this point in my life, I have a whole list of minor ailments that aren’t worth bothering the GP about. It’s wear and tear, they’ll say, and give me the usual memento mori of a speech about not being 25 any longer. Yeah, yeah, I know.

Anyway, this venting session has been all the therapy I need.

It seems that I’m definitely not a stoic. Instead, I’m a My Leg sort of person. And My Toe, My Shoulders and My Knee.