THE TREADMILL OF LIFE: Age shall not weary me?

Four about four decades from my early 20s I did no active exercise: no walking, no jogging, no sports, no gym . . .

Actually I think I had a brief encounter with the gym but it turned out we were incompatible.

That said, with three kids in the first years, a decade of teaching which keeps you on your toes and feet, a lot of international travel and lecturing at university (two hours of walking around, flinging your arms about and making music interesting and entertaining) was probably exercise in its own way.

However in recent years – maybe when I hit my late 60s – things changed.

(This is your chance to get smug if you've wasted all those hours working out.)

I'd always had small breathing issues – whooping cough as a child which irreparable damaged the small capillaries in my lungs is what I was told – but it became worse.

I would get quite breathless.

I'm sure three bouts of Covid – all different, what I like to call the local version, Scandinavian remix and the English reissue – as well as the debilitating RSV all felled me.

With the last bout of Covid picked up in England, I would have short and severe headaches – like an aneurysm which lasted about 90 seconds -- if I coughed or sneezed. I was doing a lot of both in that three months traveling around England and Scotland.

That meant when I came back home I was checked out: lungs, blood pressure, CT scans, brain scan . . .

In the last few years I have been to the hospitals and doctors more than in the previous many decades.

Everyone has been caring and professional and finally – after many tests – a scan revealed a couple of swellings around the aortic artery.

Surgery!

I was in a good place for it because – the breathing problems prompted me – I had taken going to the gym three days a week and walking briskly for 1200 metres (a mile in old money) as well as some other exercises. I also listened to the bloody awful music they pumped out to make you pump up.

So I was in very good and optimistic state when we went to Romania, Scotland and England for a month over Christmas/New Year 2024-25.

Unfortunately something happened and the breathing wasn't as expected and I wheezed my way around, couldn't walk great distances (or even a few hundred metres) and so I was feeling back to square one.

Then in London we picked up norovirus and that pushed me into the negative numbers.

We came back home and both of us were stricken with something, no doubt caught on crowded long haul flights.

The gym was beyond my grasp, the couch a welcome respite from having to have a shower. I got lazy but couldn't do much.

And that is when the medical tests were taken up a notch or two and . . . surgery.

I've had it – got a stent in – but the recovery was much slower than expected.

However I'm back at the gym cautiously building up my mile or so on the treadmill (not quite at the speed of last year but getting there).

And for the most – aside from small discomforts I am feeling very good, and optimistic.

I might be good for a few more years yet.

When I reflect on my life in terms of health I guess I was very lucky: all those years of not doing exercise were full and lively and enjoyable, so take that gym bunnies.

But these recent years – fortunately I'm so semi-retired that I'm available for appointments whenever they schedule them – really have been strange.

I know why that is – it's called getting old -- but I refuse to accept it.

However I can't say I wasn't warned.

I remember catching up with the wonderful musician Bill Sevesi at a music awards night. Bill – 92 at the time – was being honoured for a lifetime of music making and being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

He was frail but typically overflowing with laughter.

We chatted for a little while and just as I was turning to go he – who was gone from us seven months later – gripped my arm fiercely and said with urgency, “Graham. Don't get old!”

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These entries are of little consequence to anyone other than me Graham Reid, the author of this site, and maybe my family, researchers and those with too much time on their hands.

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