As disaster after disaster hits Scotland, I’ve found an amazing way to calm down

Kevan would like to stress that, despite his initial attempt at dressing for yoga making him look bit odd, hes in no way jealous of the two men above (Picture: John Devlin)

Seeing as it’s Saturday I feel compelled to share with the group moments of sheer bliss that I have experienced this week.

The reason for being what can only be described as ‘Zen as f***’ is the regular yoga classes I have been attending at my local gym.

Now, when I say yoga I don’t mean the poseur version beloved of Meghan Paltrow and those flexible blokes in the kilts who should probably be arrested for exposing themselves. Jealous much? Nothing hot or sweaty going on here – move along please.

No dear reader, I’m talking about the all-together more relaxed Hatha version of the pursuit that involves some gentle stretching then a lovely nap at the end. Comfort blanket optional.

This is ideal exercise for the middle-aged man with dodgy knees, who fancies himself as a big cheese in the care home 30 years from now.

The kind of guy who hasn’t stretched for decades and perhaps played a bit of football where the warm-up consisted of firing shots into the hapless goalkeeper until the ball went over the big fence. Sound familiar?

They should have yoga on the NHS and in fact they probably do. I stumbled on it having previously tried various classes at various gyms over the years in a bid to lose weight and stave off early death.

Yoga ‘age-proofing’ the over-60s

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These have included: BodyPump, which is a mixture of squatting with weights combined with mechanical engineering, and Body Combat, where you try to kill an imaginery opponent while Tartan Techno plays in the background and an instructor who appears to be on MDMA (I’m more worried if he wasn’t) screams at you. It was all a bit stressful.

But after a few classes I’ve settled into the old yoga to the point where I now nod at fellow yogis who carry their mats under their arms with an air of cool, reminiscent of 60s revolutionaries walking around with the latest Dylan album.

Not for us the ridiculously overpriced Lululemon brand with its range of clothing beloved of hipsters and Instagram influencers everywhere. No siree, much as I like Lulu and that song she did with Take That in particular, I wouldn’t buy her yoga gear, not when it costs around 100 bucks for a hoodie. That would make anyone want to SHOUT!

(What? It’s got nothing to do with Lulu? ... oh, OK, my mistake.)

Now, admittedly my first attempt at buying suitable yoga apparel was to go awry when I came home with an extra large pair of light grey, elasticated jogging bottoms, from the ‘Sex Offender at Nike Range’.

However, one strong talking-to from my wife and a couple of police descriptions later, I managed to find a more modern take on the classic joggers look and was allowed to leave the house.

The class I go to offers alternatives to the more difficult moves and the nice teacher comes round and inserts a plastic block under your knees if your struggling, which I always am.

The post-yoga buzz and sense of wellbeing extends all the way to the nearby Dobbies Garden Centre where I gently browse the bakery section before picking up a couple of Rocky Roads and/or an Empire Biscuit to celebrate the overwhelming sense of achievement an hour of gentle stretching brings.

It slowly wears off over the remainder of the weekend and is gone for good by the time I reach Scotland’s great unfinished masterpiece – The Queensferry Crossing after work on a Monday night.

The 9.30pm rush-hour traffic jam and the sight of upwards of 100 men working on the ‘snagging’ two years after the bridge opened never fails to get my tether up.

Cars and lorries are backed up while – and get this – there’s another perfectly useable crossing called the Forth Road Bridge lying empty a couple of hundred yards away.

Why don’t they let some cars – the black, white and silver ones perhaps – use that at night during the ‘snagging’ operation? Nope, there’s bound to be some reason why that’s ‘impossible’.

This always gets me thinking about previous ‘flagship’ building projects in Scotland and begs the question, “why does everything we touch turn to s****?”

Just this week there’s been talk of the new £150 million Sick Kids hosser in Edinburgh having to be “ripped down” due to a dodgy drainage system.

The new hospital was due to open in 2012 and has now been indefinitely postponed. Shock.

This comes on top of the news that NHS Lothian has been paying around £1.4m a month for the empty hospital to developers under the 25-year private finance deal agreed for the new building. That should keep the builders in Greggs sausage rolls for a while.

But I do feel a tiny bit sorry for the likes of Health Secretary Jeane Freeman and her predecessor (here’s to you) Shona Robison as they have an almost impossible job of trying to firefight the myriad of disasters that appear to befall our hospital buildings.

This kind of omnishambles goes way back. The Scottish Parliament Building – or Tarzan’s hoose as Sir Billy Connolly once called it – opened three years late at ten times the price in 2004.

That set the ball rolling for the Edinburgh Tram Project with various politicians and cooncillors now having developed a taste for the Art of the ‘terrible’ Deal. After vandalising the whole of Leith Walk, that little beauty came in five years late costing a mere £776 million. The inevitable public inquiry that follows these disasters has become such a common occurrence, it should be factored in at the outset.

Edinburgh in particular has resembled a building site for nigh on 20 years now and I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t roadworks outside the Playhouse.

But forget all of that – deep breaths, and slowly sink back into the mat and let the air flow gently into your joints. Enjoy your weekend folks.

Namaste.

As disaster after disaster hits Scotland, I’ve found an amazing way to calm down – Kevan Christie