Cyclokairos

Autumn arrived. Storm Babet brought rain, and what was lane, and what was brook, the water cared not. A nudge to remind that nature ultimately holds the upper hand.

Weather for riding the black bike, its Honjo mudguards and wide tyres perfect for mazy motions across wet, debris strewn byways.

Back home an article on longevity caught my eye. The usual advice on diet and exercise ignored, the list read “Order, tranquillity, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people”. I tick some of those boxes. Working in a school and commuting there on busy roads, tranquil sticks out as one that can be a struggle; and I’m getting better at no worries, no regrets. My hobbies of gardening and cycling bring me into contact with nature – vibrant autumnal tones of the present affirm life.

And when cycling and gardening are no longer possible, will that contact with nature still be there? My dad was a boy of the land; he grew up on a small-holding, gardened all his life, but in the debilitated state of his final months, confined to a room, confined to a bed, contact with nature was lost. To just look at it no longer interested him. Devastated by the loss of no longer being active in it, he shut nature off. So what does ultimately remain at the end from that list? Perhaps good connection with family and friends is the one that really matters? I wrote this down some years, forgetting to note the author:

“Well, what Tony should have been thinking, I guess, and what we all should be thinking – although we can’t live that way – is that life is really short. And there are good times in it and there are bad times in it. And that we don’t know why we’re here, but we do know that 20 miles up it’s freezing cold, it’s a freezing cold universe, but here we have this thing called love, which is our only defence, really, against all that cold, and that it’s a very brief interval and that, when it’s over, I think you’re probably always blindsided by it.”