Dicky Tummy

F here... Mr T had a dicky tummy last night so he's not interested in dictating a blog post today.  It is a rather subdued Mr T who is currently sleeping off the malaise on my desk.

He'll be OK.  He was purring like a good 'un before I got up to discover the surprise he'd left on my yoga mat.  No harm done, but he was still on the human bed when I got back from cycling which was a clear signal he wasn't feeling on top of the world quite yet..

I thought about blog posts while I was cycling - whether to expand on the 'transitions' post we put out there a couple of days ago, or tell you about the sights around the docks where I cycle to avoid the madness on the streets.  It is madness around the docks early in the mornings too as lorries, disembark from and get loaded onto the early morning ferries that ply the islands.  The lorries however are moving at crawler speed and are easy to anticipate.  There is only one route they can use, a couple of truck parks, cafes for drivers, and lots of places I can escape to if I feel the need.  The ferry port is well supplied with protected pedestrian lanes, dedicated taxi lanes, big parking areas, and some little-used pierheads that can be taken as 'the long way round' to avoid the busier direct routes to and from the port gates. 

One morning I entertained myself on what might be a boring and repetitive bike ride by reciting out loud a running commentary of things I noticed.  Perhaps I should have recorded it.  The port is remarkably green.  There are of course the omni-present oleanders, beginning to flower pink. There are eucalypts (which seem to have escaped the hair-cut that was visited on all the suburban eucalyptus cousins).  There are palm trees and Ficus,  things I can't name, even grass in places. Down by the coastguard building there is a small chapel, white with bright blue roof, inside a locked compound, accessible I guess only to those who work in that building.  There were a small number of people out running, one or two cyclists, both of whom actually looked like they were cycling to work - hard hat on head, lunch box hanging from the handlebars, not a strand of lycra in sight!

There were homeless people (mostly men) camped in the covered (but outdoor) passenger waiting areas; one was cleaning his teeth outside public toilets near the Saronic ferry berths.

I escape the port area through Port Gate 1 and loop back into Lipsamaton Park.  During lockdown this place was heaving with people any time I visited.  City-wide the cafes have reopened and the park is now empty at 0800.  The park cafes have set dozens of tables outdoors. Not a single one is occupied.  Two people have been working there every morning strimming grass, and sweeping up the mess, digging out trees that haven't survived the onslaught of salt-laden sea air, and replacing them with hardier species.  Today they were relieved of the heavy digging part by a small mechanical digger, making the holes to set the new trees in.  Round the corner where the wind has less burn, the leaves on the stems that have survived, suggest they are flowering cherries; two avenues of them that flank the dedicated bike lane.  It will be a spectacular scene when they mature and put on their show.

For the second day in a row I encounter a black clad priest taking his morning constitutional.  There is a small group of three joggers - all male.  Another man is doing a long and involved set of stretching exercises up by a very old stone building.  He's still there and still engaged in stretching when I make my second lap.  And elderly gent is walking, arms bent at the elbow in a manner that is meant to suggest purposeful striding.  He shuffles and I wonder whether he is a man used to being fit all his live and now beset with old age, or a man whose doctor has told him that following a sedentary life his old age will be short and plagued with ill health if he doesn't make an effort to move his body.

Together they put me in mind of a short stint of work I did in Seoul a few years ago.  I was accommodated at the bottom of Seoul's South Mountain (I seem to recall it was called Nam Dae Mun, but when I looked that up it referred me to Seoul's Great South Door).  Anyway the mountain was crowned with a tall viewing tower from whence one could, for a price, take in views over the city.  In the paved plaza at the base of this tower, on any given morning one could find (and I did, because just after dawn each day I would stride energetically up one of the many paths leading up the 'mountain' through carefully curated gardens and 'forest') a group of men of a certain age attending to the health of mind and body.  The scene they presented was at once uplifting and calming.  I could not have been more out of place, but from the second morning they would greet me warmly and I would linger for a while in the intricately painted traditional building that also occupied a small corner of the mountain top before heading back down for a day of more mundanity.

The link will give you an idea of the delight of colour and pattern that one can find in such buildings.

The Korean grandfathers greeting the sun each day could not be imagined in greater contrast than to be placed beside the Greek chap who undertakes his daily calisthenics on the rocky shore across the road here, every day, Summer and Winter, and incites the mirth of the teenagers who arrive with their coffees..  He too greets me when I venture out to swim.  The vision of his exercises neither uplifts nor calms, but does deserve admiration for his devotion and persistence (and the number of days he braves the sea conditions to dog-paddle about on his own).

We are strange people those of us who go out early to take exercise for no reason other than to be moving and revel in the ability to do so.  I have occasionally wondered what might be achieved in this world if all the energy consumed in 'exercise' done for no purpose other than to 'stay fit' could have been expended on something that advanced humanity,  powered green innovation, or simply moved things that currently move about on hydrocarbon calories.

And I will leave you with this 'fact' (probably calculated by taking broad brush numbers and multiplying and dividing a few times to arrive at an over-simplified result) - that it takes about 10 calories of hydrocarbon fuel to produce a single calorie of the food we eat.