Skip to main content

Eau de Chlorine...

Is my new favourite scent.  Swimming has for a long time been something more than a simply pleasure.  It is a sanity saver.  When I swim, I need for nothing.  I feel free.  I have nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be.  I can just swim.  I am fortunate in that I have taught myself a pretty efficiency technique which means that, for the most part, swimming is easy.  I can, and often do, swim with my eyes closed.  When swimming in a lane, I rarely need to see ahead of me, and my position in the water tends to mean that my eyes are downward facing, to the bottom of the pool.  It depends how busy it is of course but peak conditions mean I have the lane to myself and can swim ‘blind’ to my heart’s content, feeling my way through the water and counting my strokes – an average of 9 in a 25m pool, or 3 breaths. 

Next weekend however, the smell of chlorine will be absent, as I plunge into the Thames at Docklands.  I’m excited by the prospect of my open water debut, in my wetsuit.  I’m more excited by the prospect of raising much needed money for two very important charities – Breast Cancer Care and Marie Curie.     

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/riding-against-cancer


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Table. Apple. Penny.

Whilst there were several places I might have been that morning, I wouldn't have been anywhere else.  The practitioner from the Memory Service arrived promptly.  I liked her instantly.    Mum was nervous.  I think I was a little, too.  It's been a difficult year.   "It's Friday, it's the fourteenth of December and I'm at home..."   No problems there.  CAMCOG, or the Cambridge Cognitive Examination is a thorough assessment tool used to assess the extent of extent of dementia, and to assess the level of cognitive impairment.  The standardised  measure assesses orientation, language, memory, praxis, attention, abstract thinking, perception and calculation.    "Table.  Apple.  Penny."   Three everyday items that were introduced at one point, and then referred to again later on.  Again, Mum was able to recall each.      I am reminded that the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Glass half full? Glass half empty? Or perhaps the glass is broken

I am, constitutionally, a glass half empty gal.  I will always first acknowledge what I don't have, what I have lost, and what it is that I am seeking.  I tend to overlook my strengths, concentrating only on those bits of me that are underdeveloped or weak.  I refer to myself as a realist, but in doing so compliment myself and insult those who genuinely are simply realistic.  My modus operandi is to identify what's not working and acknowledge this before seeing more clearly what functions perfectly well.  This has its place: I edit others' written work pretty well.  My fastidious attention to detail serves me, and the author.  Accuracy counts, for me and I have an excellent memory.  I can remember a great many of my sessions with clients verbatim.  Even this asset is something I can, and do, diminish the true value of, by concentrating on 'I should have said...' or 'why didn't....  occur to me during the session?' Earlier this we...
Post a Comment
Read more

Joan Miro: Emotional Art

"Painting and poetry are like love; an exchange of blood, a passionate embrace, without restraint, without defence.  The picture is born of an overflow of emotions and feelings." Miro, The Farm 'La Masia' (1921-22) I learnt a great deal about Miro on a recent visit to the Tate.  I learnt a great deal about a lot more too. Miro wanted to discover the sources of human feeling.  He described his method of creating poetry by way of painting, using a vocabulary of signs and symbols, metaphors and dream images to express definite themes he believed to be fundamental to human existence.  The exhibition displays his sense of humor and lively wit.  His chief concern was a social one; he wanted to get close to the great masses of humanity, and he was convinced that art can only truly appeal when it resonates with roots of lived experience.  "Wherever you are, you find the sun, a blade of grass, the spirals of the dragonfly.  Courage cons...
Post a Comment
Read more