My continuing story! 16 4 23 (20 hits) 25 2 15

When I met the first girl in my life I felt serious about she wasn't the first to catch my eye for some months earlier I had been dating another girl, J, I had met through my work a very nice girl...

But the circumstances were radically different with the one I met at work we did things together like taking trips out to the countryside on my James 197 motor cycle she my pillion passenger when we would visit places like Malham Cove a famous beauty spot maybe a 30-40 mile drive, say 40 to 50 km away in the Yorkshire Dales, whilst the one I became serious about, M, I met on holiday in a foreign land who spoke a foreign language etc., etc., etc., and began to get to know through first being together on holiday and then by visiting dance halls: the exotic versus the common place though the latter I don't wish to mean in any way a derogative sense but someone I had known some years already with whom I had but little difficulty communicating in my own language so only common in these restrictive senses, both young ladies equally pretty... 

When I think about these two candidates for my affections now with the passage of all the years in-between I have to think my choices said more about the type of person I was who perhaps needed someone of an exotic disposition in order to get me to break with my bachelorhood outlook on life... It was also noteworthy the fact that M whom I met in Scandinavia after a relatively short time after meeting and dating her would quickly become this person living in another country as I had to return to mine to continue my studies.

It was against this background that what eventually became “my continuing story” came into being when of an evening I began to take ever longer evening walks in an attempt to marshal my thoughts and make some kind of sense from all the comings and goings on in my life as a whole…

Over a period of years I came to the understanding that an evening walk, by definition almost devoid of hassle, allows one to think things through and attach priorities for action on the more important aspects of one’s life, and quite apart from anything else ensures one remains physically active…

The practice I write about today then dates back to when I was 20 and it is a practice that has been with me more than 50 years already. In-between times I have had my share of health problems like in my mid-twenties I suffered from Sciatica a problem which dogged me for intermittently maybe 10 years. Looking back now I would ascribe a large part of the latter problem to be associated with smoking full strength cigarettes without at first the use of tipped cigarettes but somehow I managed to retain my nightly constitutional walk so in a sense ill-health didn’t get the better of me…

And later when aged 62 I had my big event to my heart I thanked my lucky stars that although I had blockages to some of the main coronary arteries to a level of 90%, I think that but for my regular exercising and continuing story the event may have carried me clean away..?

I have had cause to be reminded about these considerations in the past few weeks when one of my three brothers-in-law has come down with crippling pains to his back which upon examination his doctor ascribed to an almost total lack of muscles surrounding his spine in his lower regions and which K-J readily admits to its being his own fault because he would never chose physical exercise in preference to the use of his car even for the 200 metre journey to collect his daily newspapers, and being a farmer spent the biggest part of his active life behind the wheel of his tractor…

Have a good day everyone as I hope you too have a life-saver of a continuing story?

        
The good fortune attached to having a continuing story..? 16 4 23
During the last 3 years my continuing story has continued by virtue of setting the new target of walking 10 000 steps a day on average since September 2022 in two work- or walk-outs per day, morning and late aftenoon, and including 100 metres of ascent, from minor hill-walks in conjunction with my daily dips in the sea: when the release of endorphins particularly at this time of year with 0 degC (32 degF) in the water, ensure that so long as one is able the practices will continue...This is not so much a boast as a hope that I shall for a time be able to push myself with a view to continuing my hobby of climbing hills in the summer months in the arctic regions of Finland and Norway, now when I no longer feel confident with a compromised immune system, to fly any longer to the shores of the UK, since Covid 19 struck in 2020...when you get to where I get to sit think about what benefits might accrue but better still don't wait for your old age to inititate the practice...