Covid has made me a boulder woman - Janet Christie
Baking bread, condensing 40 years’ worth of photographs into 10 albums, swapping a job that had become sitting in a bedroom staring at a screen eight hours a day for a job in the local pub with real live people - I understand, there are only so many times you can look at that little picture ad of revolutionary ways to remove earwax without suffering the boak - lockdown saw me doing none of these.
But my family and friends did, fighting back against furlough, redundancy and a virtual life lived only online by getting creative and going rogue.
While I added neither kneading nor knitting nor knife-throwing to my skill set, I did give things up.
Smoking, that was a biggie. I still walk past the cigar shop and take big sniffs of the heavenly fragrance of Havana which conjures up men in smart tuxes manspreading in leather chairs while nursing a malt, but resist the temptation to stick my head through the hatch and ask for some shag (Sorry, I’m only repeating what it says on the sign.)
I also gave up dawdling and started walking faster, breaking into a run when it was cold. Simultaneously I gave up ploughing through books and listened instead on earbuds while I jogged, leaving behind guilt about listening being ‘cheating’, and apart from the irritating dominance of RP voices who adopt a Dick Van Dyke mockney intonation when a working class person speaks - what a relief to hear Andrew O’Hagan reading his marvellous Mayflies - it’s been a breezy stroll.
It seems no matter how hard you try to stick in your rut, other people’s enthusiasms are as infectious as The Vid and there are no excuses anymore. Face it, you’re not heading to the tropics to swim with whale sharks any time soon. You’re available.
First it was salsa in the park, joining Middle and Eldest Child and their crew at a lesson because they were short a dancer, and I’m short. Arriba!
Then bouldering. Me, bouldering, my previous experience amounting to watching The Flintstones. But I went again. And again.
Clinging to a wall, I only have head room for staying on and not breaking my ankles. Time flies, nails break (who needs them) and I discover muscles I’ve never used. And if these days I’m dreaming of triceps rather than The Tropics, I’m happy. Because the only way is up.
