What exactly it was that possessed me
to embark on a run still escapes me. Maybe it’s the stomach that is
shrinking at a frustratingly slow rate even after 860km’s in the
saddle. To add to the stupidity, I was running with Jim, a fitness
freak of nature who casually decided to run up a mountain in Addis,
and I wasn’t fully recovered from a bout of some sickness that
started as a throat irritation before proceeding to all but shut down
the sinuses before landing me with a phlegm-ridden cough. My chest
was tight and nose running faster than my legs when I turned into the
driveway of our mountain retreat, adding to which I had a good dual
stitch going on and my calf was one optimistic movement away from
cramping. Unfortunately, the latter duo couldn’t be blamed on the
illness, rather from the naivety that led me to believe that a week
of playing cricket during the day and drinking at night would somehow
have a positive effect on my fitness levels. At least life amongst
Eastern Cape farmers offered the consolation that I wasn’t the only
one to be misled in such a fashion.
Breathing heavily, I stumbled into the
lounge only to find a little yoga session on the go, spearheaded by
an outrageously flexible Roby, whose every move was being attempted,
all less successfully, by Tom, Matt, Daddy and Roby’s boyfriend,
Michael. Near the end of their session of breathing and stretching in
relative silence, Tom was showing how inflexible he had become since
his knee injury while I noted to myself that the gap between his
fingers and toes in full stretch was half that of mine when I -
at-most annually - did the identical stretch.
Foolishly – it seems it was my day to
play the village idiot – I sat down next to Tom attempting to
replicate his stretch. I failed dismally. By this time the rest of
the yoga class had retired from their session for a good chuckle,
leaving Daddy behind with the enormous challenge of trying to get my
fingers closer to my toes than to my knees. Considering he spent
Friday through Sunday teaching drama and music to disabled children
in a nearby town, I can only imagine Daddy thought the challenge an
easy one in comparison. How wrong he was.
Within the first minutes of my debut
Yoga class – something I had avoided at all costs after being put
to shame a few years back in a Taebo class full of Kenton pensioners
who could kick their feet up twice the height I managed – I
gathered that breathing had an integral part to play in what I always
considered a series of stretching exercises designed for earth-loving
hippies. With my inability to achieve any notable breathing through
my ailing nose, the impetus on breathing was all but lost on me.
Add to the fact that I was breathing
like a Kudu shot in the neck – not by me, I’m a horrible shot –
that I am not supple by any stretch of the imagination and any
spectator has a show on their hands worthy of a circus in the days
when it was still OK to parade blue-painted midgets around with
Christmas hats and diapers. I can’t cross my legs – my knees are
so high when I try that they act as a chin rest -, I can’t touch my
toes unless my knees are bent at 90 degrees and when I was told to
lie down with the back of my hands against the floor, my fingers
curled up like a 90 year old with severe arthritis – think cricket
umpire, Billy Bowden signalling a six. Maybe the fact that I was
English speaking in my Afrikaans pre-primary wasn’t the only reason
I was picked on.
While Daddy was talking in quiet, calm
tones as I struggled to keep my eyes closed amongst the odd snigger
here and there, my mind raced and gladly accepted the hypothesis that
the reason my disgraceful lack of athletic ability that saw me
running neck-to-neck alongside the 1st team props in the
100 metre trials in matric – we were all doing it as a joke
although the hilarity wore off a bit when I heard my groin snap –
despite my mother being awarded honours for her feats on the
athletics track was simply because I had not unlocked the potential
of my rusty old muscles on an eternal sabbatical. Wishful thinking.
Daddy muttered a number of things to me
in an attempt to relax my body and mind, one of which was: “Think
about what you’re going to do today”. Despite my struggles to
synchronize my breathing in the hope that it might ease the pins and
needles developing along my calf it wasn’t difficult to fit in the
probable program for the day. Our days in the retreat have already
become a blur of relaxation achieved through reading, writing and
delving in a bit of Canasta and Scrabble with the last hours of the
evening, after the days supply of solar power and the generators fuel
has run out, spent staring into the blue and orange flickering flames
keeping us warm on the patio of our forest hideout.
