Off to a good start!

Last Wednesday (10th September) I put the question: swim membership – will I or won’t I? If you guessed yes, then you know me well. Yesterday I walked to the leisure centre and signed up. The plan is to swim at least 4 times a week coupled with a healthy diet to achieve a target weight-loss of 30 lbs over 15 weeks. (Christmas is 14 weeks away). I got off to a good start this morning, waking up when the alarm went off at 6 am, cycling there, swimming 20 lengths and cycling home again before 7.40 am. Hands and ears were cold on the way there but lovely and warm on the way home, suggesting the swimming got the blood pumping round.

Came home and indulged in 2 bowls of cereals and a cooked breakfast – which isn’t exactly representative of the way I mean to go on, diet wise! Now the sun is shining and it looks a lovely day out there so I’m probably headed over the allotment once I’ve finished here.

PS

Over the allotment I harvested yet more courgettes, a cabbage, French beans, purple sprouting broccoli and some blackberries. Whilst I was in the fruit cage, the robin came as close as he could get, about a foot to eighteen inches away separated by the netting and fixed me with a look that seemed to say, “That’s not fair – I can’t get in there!”

Chrome

Had an appointment with Dr Y (the psychiatrist currently responsible for my treatment) today. He has referred me for psychotherapy and asked if I’d heard from the Consultant Psychotherapist yet. Nope – still waiting.

I took along the DVLA’s letter refusing to renew my driving licence and showed it to him. Dr Y encouraged me to re-apply. He will support my application. Came home and got onto that straight away.

Today I’ve been thinking about agents for change. There was a TV programme recently where an archaeologist was talking about the Iron Age and demonstrated a method of extracting metal ore, smelting it in a clay pot and casting it. The final piece was flawed and he went on to say that the techniques used by Iron Age man were vastly superior to anything he had managed. He couldn’t replicate the quality of their work. It set me thinking about the early days of apprenticeships – how knowledge and experience were passed on in the days before reading and writing were commonplace. Later another interesting snippet caught my eye from an advert for Dyson vacuum cleaners where it was demonstrated that a typical vacuum cleaner with a fixed four-wheel system was ok if you want to move the hoover backwards and forwards, but was rubbish at cornering. Dyson had stepped back and looked at the design and innovated a new design feature using a ball to carry the cleaning head. His ball design permits greater manoeuvrability.

I thought about this and the paradoxical needs – when you first enter a field of endeavour it seems to make sense to explore what’s already known, perhaps to serve an apprenticeship to an established master in that field – but then it takes energy/intention to step back and review that knowledge, spot an area ripe for improvement and be an agent for change. It seems to me there is evidence of us having moved on as a race, in that whereas in the past it was perceived that knowledge = power, and men working at the forefront of their field often cloaked their work in secrecy, there is more openness these days. As George Bernard Shaw said, “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." It’s great to hear of examples of collaboration, for example Google acknowledge open source programming projects have contributed much to the development of their new web browser, Chrome. Have you tried it yet, by the way? I’m struggling to find my way around the new-look Facebook so I haven’t risked switching browsers, tempting though it sounds.

New Term - No Go

My regular dance partner and I started learning dancing at Adult Ed in September 2006. After a year the teacher decided he’d had enough of the bureaucracy and form-filling that infects the Adult Education system these days and defected with his students to start up the Dance club from a community hall which we were attending until August this year. Much as we enjoyed the Monday night sessions and the social connections we’d made there, we didn’t feel we were making much progress with the dancing, hence our recent decision to sample other classes. Tonight was the first session in the Ballroom and Latin-American Dancing Improvers’ course at the local Adult Education Institute on which we were enrolled. Late in the day I received an apologetic text from my dance partner saying he was stuck at work and wasn’t going to be able to make it back for the start.

I arrived in time to watch the end of the Beginners’ class. It was fully subscribed and appeared to be very enjoyable, judging from the students' faces and the buzz of excited chatter. Different story for the Improvers’ class – there were only four of us enrolled, making the course financially unviable, and of the four enrolled, only two of us were there. The teacher explained that the policy is to run the first class anyway in the hope that more students might turn up to enrol on the night, but in the absence of sufficient interest, the rest of the course would be cancelled. We could either join the beginners or get a refund. The other prospective student, a man, opted not to stay for the lesson. That left me and the teacher, who proceeded to give me a private lesson in Rumba. It felt a little awkward, just her and me. She was a good head and shoulders taller than me, wearing a sleeveless vest despite the chilly evening. Her skin felt as cold as marble beneath my hand. After she had taught me one figure (the fan), I called a halt to the private lesson so that she could go home and warm up. I went to reception to claim the refund and wait for my dance partner who had been racing back to try and make it before the end of class. We talked things through and decided to continue with the Monday nights at the place where we’ve been enjoying the Thursday night classes.

Isn't it ironic

With (daughter) Vicky visiting for the weekend, we went up to Battersea Park, London, for the Battersea Dogs’ Home Annual Reunion. Watched a Dog Handlers’ display team putting their dogs through their paces over an agility course including burning hoops, the commentator explaining that it’s important to treat dogs like dogs, not like humans. The next event was the Dogs’ Fancy Dress competition.

(One of the winning entries, handler dressed as a flower, dog as a bee)

After lunch we moved on to Waterloo where Vicky had heard there was an exhibition of street art (including Banksy) under the arches. Much of the graffiti had been defaced … by graffiti.

Identity Crisis?

I was up early and over the allotment before 9 am this morning to make the most of the dry weather. Dug up the last of the potatoes – three ‘Golden Wonder’ plants – a disappointing 12 ozs total from the 3 plants. Did some weeding, the juvenile robin making me jump with surprise when it darted between my legs to pick a tasty morsel unearthed by the fork. Harvested some more beans, beetroot, courgettes and carrots. One of the carrots looked to be having an identity crisis – in amongst the row of carrots, it had the normal carrot foliage but the root looked more like a parsnip (in the middle in the photo, between the orange carrot and the parsnip in the foreground). I showed it to Patrick (one of the 'old-timers') and his reaction was gratifyingly enthusiastic, comparing it to his own carrots and parsnips and saying he’d never seen anything like it. Encouraged by this satisfactory response, when Paul arrived on the neighbouring plot I showed it to him. “Oh yes, a white carrot. I’ve seen that before” he said dismissively, then realised this wasn't the desired response and apologised for bursting my bubble.

Ok, I knew white carrots existed, I’ve seen them in the seed catalogues, but not having knowingly sown any white carrot seeds, it was a surprise.

Rain in the afternoon gave me the excuse not to do any more over the allotment today. Instead I sat at the computer and responded to an email from someone I knew when I was at school, the connection facilitated by friendsreunited.com. I looked through some old photos and scanned a couple in to accompany the email. It was a pleasant way to while away a rainy afternoon.

Dancing

Forsaking our first Ballroom/Latin-American dance teacher, my regular dance partner and I have been going along to different classes recently, sampling different teaching styles. The Thursday night teacher, whilst the youngest, has an excellent style which definitely facilitates the learning process. Taking the man’s part, she first demonstrates the steps with one of the dance school’s numerous competent young female dancers as her partner. We all adopt the starting position and then she calls out each step as we move in formation to her calm voice. Her pragmatic approach seems entirely free of ego or the showing off that seems to infect some of the other teaching styles we’ve encountered. Besides that, she’s pretty with a delightful figure and very easy on the ear, qualities my dance partner hasn’t failed to notice!

We’ve also been along to the complementary class on Monday night, in theory learning the same routines set for the month (a Samba and a Waltz for September), but in practice slightly different. The Monday night teacher, a man, is closer to my age and puts his focus more on technique than on the routine. He demonstrates the routine then simply counts the beat, expecting the class to remember the step to perform to each beat (and for the most part, they seem to be able to memorise the routines quickly, something I’m having difficulty with so far). This Monday his regular co-teacher wasn’t there and he was partnered by a young lady (late teens?) we haven’t seen before. He demonstrated the forward/backward pelvis movement he wanted us to practice in the Samba routine, showing how his head stayed at the same height and the movement was accommodated through his hips tilting as he changed weight. Then he broke in on his own commentary to encourage us to watch his partner, saying how beautifully she accomplished what he wanted us to achieve. You could see the surprise and pleasure glowing behind her modest acknowledgment of his high praise. It was sweet.