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A Whole Lotta Love

Oscar Foulkes May 15, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

It all started when I wanted to use the title of one of my favourite Rock songs as the name for a yearling filly. I thought she’d be good, so I wanted her to be appropriately named. However, before I proceeded, I thought I should check the lyrics, to see whether this name might come with inappropriate connotations. 

The sound of Whole Lotta Love is Led Zeppelin at the top of their genre. It’s an absolute banger of a track (although in this context “bang” is perhaps an unfortunate reference). The song’s lyric, sung by Robert Plant, “I’m going to give you every inch of my love”, is not an attempt to give love a unit of measurement. It’s clear what love means in this context. 

I immediately shelved the idea of calling my filly Whole Lotta Love.

Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines, released 44 years later, pairs similar suggestions with a catchy tune and a NSFW music video. His lyrics just don’t bother to use the word “love”.

It’s a particular male fantasy of women with passive, suppressed or unspoken desires being fulfilled thanks to the physical attentions of a man. In this illusion, a woman is incomplete without being at the receiving end of a virile phallus.

Society does a crappy job when it comes positive depictions of sexuality and desire, so it’s not a surprise that the spokesmen – literally – are men (see above). Media attention is given to men with aberrant behaviour, like Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and others. Positive role models are the guys who quietly go about living good lives. No-one is going to write about them, and nor would they want to be written about. Plus, advertising has still not let go of the dictum, “sex sells”.

I had been sitting with this version of Whole Lotta Love for some time when my friend, Piet Viljoen, introduced me to a version sung by Tori Amos in 1992. She takes an anthem of male conquest and makes it her own. She is at once vulnerable, sensuous and assertive, perched on the corner of the piano stool as she turns to deliver the song to the audience.

In the genre of hold-my-beer, she takes ownership of the song, demonstrating that the women’s version can have equal power. It should be said that she makes use of just one instrument, rather than an entire rock band. She metaphorically grabs hold of the mic, giving a woman’s voice to the expression of desire. She does a ‘right back at you’ with the male-written lyrics (although without the use of “every inch of my love”).

Tina Turner was another woman to bring her own interpretation to Whole Lotta Love. Ironically with her abusive ex-husband Ike, she released a funk version that oozes sensuality.

Of course, Whole Lotta Love drew heavily on Willie Dixon’s You Need Love. Following legal action, the royalties are now shared. By comparison, Dixon’s version comes across as a piece of musical courtship, perhaps because of its blues treatment that is so wholesome you could almost smell the plate of fried chicken.

For a “right back at ya”, along with a resounding “hell, yeah!” we turn to the Highwomen’s If She Ever Leaves Me. Described by co-writer, Jason Isbell, as the first gay Country song, the lyrics depict the cowboy version of the male protagonist in Whole Lotta Love or Blurred Lines. He is described as “dancing her home in your mind”. The thing is that “she likes perfume”.

The object of his desire is not off-limits because of her suppressed or unspoken desires, but because masculine is not what she wants. It’s a proper reversal.

By their very existence, the Highwomen make a powerful statement, which they reinforce with their lyrically clever Redesigning Women.

Decades later, Robert Plant collaborated with country singer Alison Krauss on a couple of albums many degrees mellower than his Led Zeppelin years. The songs – some of them anyway – talk of loss and regret. It’s not an unexpected place for a duo of 70-year-old man and middle-aged woman to end up.

Another legendary British rock musician, Mark Knopfler, also collaborated with a country singer, the similarly legendary Emmylou Harris. In the track This is Us, they are looking through a photo album that records key moments in their relationship, together singing the chorus, “You and me and our memories, this is us.” There is warmth, poignancy and togetherness.

For all the lust and desire that may characterise match-ups earlier in life, perhaps the kind of love we need when we are old is that kind of gentle companionship, a height we can only reach when the foundations are built on decades of mutual respect and shared life. We grow together, perhaps a little like the way trees do, in a process called inosculation. Parts of trees – even from different species – literally fuse together as if they’ve been grafted.

Inosculation derives from the Latin, osculare, meaning “to kiss”. This is appropriate, seeing as a kiss is generally the first step to forming a bond. For the most part, it’s a moment of purity, the meeting of equals.

It’s a shame that our depictions of the love (or its proxies) that may follow the first kiss are so one-sided. Until, of course, we’ve been together so long that none of that matters anymore. That’s a whole lotta love worth having.

Mountains to climb

Oscar Foulkes April 16, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but by accident I ended up making a kind-of resolution.

I was going to write a post about the new training plan I’ve put in place this year. In the past, I’ve written extensively about my Cape Epic journey. I also took readers on my hypertension self-medication. In that sense, writing about the cycling I’m doing would not be unusual.

I started typing, but I was bored after the first paragraph. And if I was bored, I couldn’t imagine anyone reading with delight. So, I left the idea for a few weeks.

However, a set of events can hold multiple stories, depending upon how deep we dive, or the perspectives we hold.

I reached the first Sunday in January and realised that I had achieved 2000m in elevation gained in three rides. Something got the arithmetic cogs going in my brain, leading to the thought that maybe I could do 10 000m per month. All this coincided with Strava’s release of the previous year’s data. I saw that my total for 2024 was 67 000m of elevation gain. My retired friend, who rides a lot, came in at 104 000m, suggesting that 2000m per week would be more realistic than 10 000m per month.

With one quarter, plus two weeks, of the year completed, my elevation gain so far in 2025 is approximately 50% of the total for all of 2024. I am 2500m ahead of target, which leaves me with bit of a buffer should I have to take time out for illness or horribly adverse weather.

As a basic, rule of thumb, approach to training without a coach it’s not a bad one. High intensity intervals can be incorporated, as well as easy recovery rides. Most importantly, I’m feeling great on it.

So, what is the story outside the achievement of a higher level of fitness?

In my chosen occupation as a racehorse breeder (some would say passion project rather than occupation), almost every step involves chance and uncertainty. What percentage of my broodmares will conceive? How many will carry their foals to full term? Will they be born with everything in the right place? Will they grow up to be athletes? What will the crop’s split be between colts and fillies (colts are more valuable)?

The time lag between the making of mating decisions and the sale of yearlings is approximately three years, which requires more than a crystal ball. I have no idea whether the decisions I make now will still be good ones in three years’ time.

Assuming I get the yearlings to auction in one piece, I have very little control over the selling price achieved. That’s just the way auctions work. Yes, if one gets lucky, two determined bidders can push a price way beyond expectation, but that has not been my experience for some years.

What I’m getting at, is that I have an element of control over day-to-day management of the stud. However, when it comes to the big and important things that can happen (i.e. how much income I will get, and whether the horses will be any good on the racecourse) these are largely outside my control.

I think you can spot the attraction of setting myself a target of what I’m going to do on the bike every week. It’s 100% under my control. In terms of time commitment, it’s between seven and eight hours per week, spread over four rides. The longest day out could get up to three hours. Regardless of adverse weather or conflicting social commitments, I’ve gone out and climbed the metres.

Apart from the exercise of control, I have a weekly sense of achievement. When it comes to the horses I breed, the highs resulting from wins are extraordinary, but their occurrence is both irregular and unpredictable.

It’s not as if I wasn’t already getting out several times per week, but there were no measurables linked to the effort. No fixed parameters other than riding three or four times per week. No requirement to reach some target.

Having a measured target changes the picture.

Improved fitness has a linkage with my management of hypertension, so I have daily empirical guardrails.

There is another angle. Living with a constant simmer of uncertainty is so much more manageable if one can achieve a Zen or Stoic state. A long bike ride takes the body to a special place, both as a result of the endurance and the rhythmic pedalling.

Riding up and over mountains is a reminder that the goal is reached by keeping the cranks turning; by staying the course. Pain is temporary.

The final takeaway is that commitment to daily/weekly measurable and achievable actions is the best we can do when it comes to New Year’s resolutions (assuming one does that kind of thing, of course!).

The Right Trousers

Oscar Foulkes November 1, 2024 Uncategorized No comments

Our children have been saved from the types of clothing choices that were imposed on us by our parents. If anything, the roles are now reversed, in that our kids impose their choices on us. They are brand conscious in ways we never were, or for which we never had the opportunity.

If a hoodie was bought for us, it would have been because our parents deemed this to be an article of clothing we needed. Conversely, I’ve lost track of the number of premium-priced hoodies we’ve bought for our children because the brands were desired.

In truth, I can’t recall hoodies being a clothing option in the 70s, certainly not in South Africa.

I grew up with home-knitted jerseys made up of whatever wool happened to be in the house, wearing jeans bought in a size that allowed for growth. They were purchased, taken in, and then let out as growth required. Inevitably, the old hems would leave faded lines on the legs of the jeans, much like the growth rings on a tree. If the limit of ‘letting out’ had been reached, the jeans could be worn for a while with legs finishing comically high above the ankles.

Completing the ensemble would have been a home haircut (and it’s not as if my mother worked in a Vidal Sassoon salon). Somehow, we survived.

Fast fashion is not my thing. It should be no surprise that Uniqlo is my favourite ‘brand’, selected not because of the label, but because of the utility and comfort that comes at the price. Uniqlo is a brand in the sense of a delivered experience rather than the flaunting of a label.

Around 25 years ago I went through a period of wearing R.M. Williams trousers. Technically, given that I still wear one of them, the period has not yet come to an end. The others, literally, got worn to death, but this pair of brown moleskin jeans is still going strong something like a quarter of a century later.

They have shaped themselves to my body in ways that stretch fabric never could. Every time I pull them on, I marvel at their longevity; at the value of making things to last. Yes, they are faded, but they carry the signs of wear with pride (if clothing could have pride, of course).

Conceptually, my long-wearing R.M. Williams jeans aren’t greatly different to the taken-in and let-out jeans of my childhood, but at least they don’t have successive hemlines across the legs between ankle and knee.

At the time I bought these jeans, my daughter was watching Wallace & Gromit movies. In theory, these could have been made with similar animation technology as Pixar’s Toy Story, which came out at a similar time. Instead, Wallace & Gromit makes use of old-school stop motion, with the characters made of Plasticine, and it’s all the better for it. In fact, the creator, Nick Park, said: “Gromit was born out of clay, really. If he’d been designed by computer, I’d never have arrived at him.”

Don’t be fooled by the cutesy origin story. Actual labour – thousands of hours of it – goes into the making of these movies.

All of it is a piece of multi-dimensional genius, and that’s not just the 3-D of the characters. Take a look at the train chase in The Wrong Trousers, which has all the tension and excitement of a filmed action movie. I have to remind myself that it was shot in stop motion.

There are easy (or easier) ways of making animated movies. Similarly, clothing can be made to standards of much lower durability.

I don’t recall the cost of that first visit to R.M. Williams some 25 years ago, but I do remember it being what felt like an eyewatering amount at the time. However, it’s turned out to be a good value purchase.

We owe it to our future selves to continue supporting businesses that make things of enduring quality, even if our current selves baulk at the higher initial cost.

Changing the Road I’m On

Oscar Foulkes October 10, 2024 Blood Pressure Interventions No comments

I started posting weekly reports on my blood pressure project largely to keep a record of the process. By making it public, I was also making myself accountable for any actions that may have seemed difficult in advance.

I should mention that the anticipation is almost always worse than actually doing the thing. Giving up coffee turned out to be a breeze. Being teetotal for half the week wasn’t an issue. Going out for a ride in the rain made me feel like a hero for taking on the elements. Interval sessions remain a boring prospect, but I never fail to feel great having done a set of ‘four by four’.

After 13 weekly summaries, the reports were turning into something that I couldn’t imagine being worth adding to the tally of words published on the internet. There seemed to be a whole lot of sameness, including explanations when I didn’t get close to BP targets. Post-match press conferences of losing teams spring to mind (but without the entertainment value). I’d far rather have been consistently, and without excuses, reporting progress. Hence the pause in reports.

Over the past three weeks since the last post, I carried on doing the work. I just didn’t broadcast it. The bottom line is that I’ve had incidences of sore throat, general out-of-kilter state, and one very social weekend, which have almost certainly contributed to my BP being elevated some of this time. To be fair, it’s been lower than before I started this project, but it’s been in hypertensive territory more often than is ideal.

This lack of consistency is somewhat like the golf I used to play. I was capable of parring most holes, but there was just not enough consistency with which I played each hole. Instead, on a good round I’d play to my 18 handicap. This may average at one-over per hole, but in practice could involve a few blow-outs.

Over the past four months I’ve had an occasional sense of progress – ladders – but there have also been blow-outs, those sneaky snakes that took me back a bunch of moves. Given the wide range of factors that affect BP, snakes seem to be in greater abundance than ladders.

Given this lack of consistency, I capitulated to the mainstream medical view that medication is necessary. Consequently, I made an appointment with my GP, expecting to stop at the pharmacy on my home to pick up my first prescription.

Instead, the measurement he did during the consultation had my BP under the threshold. Having had a look at the data I’ve collected, he suggested that we hold off on medication for now (his name should be Dr Murphy!).

I’ve seen some shocking golf shots end up contributing to surprisingly good outcomes. Similarly, the process I’ve gone through with this project has not been entirely straightforward. However, I’ve reached a place that’s better than where I started.

For now, my daily and weekly actions remain in place, with a follow-up assessment early next year. I remain open minded to the introduction of medication, should that be deemed necessary.

If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now
It’s just a spring clean for the May queen
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on

A Social Week

Oscar Foulkes September 24, 2024 Blood Pressure Interventions No comments

Jeremiah was a bullfrog
Was a good friend of mine
I never understood a single word he said
But I helped him a-drink his wine
And he always had some mighty fine wine

After taking a Mulligan at the end of week 12, week 13 finally delivered the kinds of results I was hoping for. On four days – three of them consecutive – I recorded readings in the 130s over 80s.

If this form continued, week 14 was shaping up to be a good one. The problem was that I had four social nights lined up. It was a bit like getting a storm warning. You know there’s tempestuous weather headed your way and you prepare as best you can.

In my case, I could have drunk water instead of wine. The alternative, sticking with the storm metaphor, was to see how well the roof repairs would hold.

As things played out, I sipped slowly, but there’s no hiding away from getting to bed at midnight when your body clock is going to wake you at some point between 5.00 and 6.00 (and that’s not factoring in the disturbed sleep that often follows a ‘social’ night).

All things, considered, the outcome wasn’t terrible, and certainly better than it would have been when I started this exercise.

Week 14 went one better than the previous week, with five days in the 130s over 80s (four of them consecutive).

For the first time, my diastolic reading was below 90 throughout the week. Some things seem to be working.

The next challenge is to get below 130/80 (and to do it without living the life of a monk).

The Week in Numbers

Sunday (post social)
BP: 156/88 (144/82)
Bike: 90 mins, mostly zones 2 and 3 with a small dose of zone 4

Monday
BP: 134/78

Tuesday
BP: 137/82
Bike: 62 mins in zone 2

Wednesday
BP: 139/85 (125/77)

Thursday (post social)
BP: 136/82
Bike: 63 mins (evenly spread between zones 2, 3 & 4)

Friday (post social)
BP: 144/83

Saturday (post social)
BP: 137/68
Bike: nil

Reason to Believe

Oscar Foulkes September 15, 2024 Blood Pressure Interventions No comments

Struck me kinda funny
Seemed kinda funny sir to me
Still at the end of every hard day
People find some reason to believe

Taking a Mulligan, in other words, a ‘do-over’ or free shot, can be a wonderful thing. Of course, this requires that the next stroke sail straight and true a long way down the fairway. It keeps the fun in a morning of recreational golf.

Of course, there’s not a lot that’s more frustrating than taking a Mulligan and hoicking the follow up shot into the bushes.

With that in mind, I am very happy to have used a Mulligan at the end of week 12. This was supposed to be the end of my experiment, but I just could not bear to leave the experiment so deep in the weeds.

I have become accustomed to getting one reading a week of 130s over 80s, within sight of the benchmark. Occasionally, I’ve had two days in a week.

That range was hit four times this week – on three consecutive days, and then again on Friday. To truly stretch the metaphor, this was the opposite of hoicking the follow-up into the bushes.

The do-over split the fairway in half.

I have no idea of the sleep-depriving or stress-inducing surprises that life could throw at me next week, but there was enough in this week to keep me on the programme.

Mulligans are a special kind of luxury that weren’t an option in the types of lives around which Springsteen built so many of his powerful lyrics. The extra week I added – my Mulligan – is giving me “reason to believe”, to borrow from The Boss.

The pills can wait a bit longer.

The Week in Numbers

Sunday (post social)
BP: 153/86
Bike: 97 mins, mostly zones 2 and 3

Monday
BP: 132/82

Tuesday
BP: 136/81
Bike: 67 mins in zone 2

Wednesday
BP: 132/78

Thursday
BP: 146/87
Bike: 47 mins (evenly spread between zones 2, 3 & 4)

Friday
BP: 137/85

Saturday 
BP: 153/87
Bike: 2:12 on trail (25% in zone 2, 37% in zone 3, 34% in zone 4, 2% in zone 5).

Out of kilter

Oscar Foulkes September 8, 2024 Blood Pressure Interventions No comments

Over the past 12 weeks, I’ve built up a general sense of interventions, actions or behaviours that move my blood pressure up or down. Last week’s readings seemed to confirm that I was on the right track, with two days in the 130s over 80s, including the lowest measurements of this project.

I really thought I was set up to close out the 12-week experiment with an even better set of numbers, do another 24-hour evaluation, and then proceed without medication.

Instead, life happened.

I was called for a foaling on Sunday night, which meant that Monday’s reading was most certainly sleep-affected. I woke up at 3:20 on Tuesday, for no reason, and couldn’t get back to sleep again. I managed to sleep until 4:20 on Wednesday. All of this was on the back of sober evening activities that were monk-like.

I started a headache on Wednesday evening that didn’t dissipate until Saturday. Years ago, I could get a few of these per year. Now it’s one every couple of years. I know from a one-day headache I had early in this experiment that the BP associated with a headache is 160 over 100.

In short, my body was out of kilter all week, which is a striking contrast with the way it was humming along perfectly on Friday last week (record low day of BP). My brain was also purring along on Friday, flowing with creativity and productivity.

I’ve previously mentioned the amount of YouTube clickbait around BP. I’m sure that some of the advice pitched as “the one thing” makes some difference, probably as part of an holistic approach. There is one thing, though, that definitely works. After roughly five minutes of longish breaths in through nose, with gentle exhale through mouth, BP will temporarily drop significantly. On Friday this week, one session of breathing got it down to 132 over 73 during the afternoon, with the day having started at 159 over 95.

My hope/expectation was that I would have more than two days this week in the vicinity of 130s over 80s. Perhaps, in the context of where I’ve come from, the numbers were better than expected, but they still don’t earn me a pass from my GP.

I’m going to take a Mulligan, a do-over, call it what you will. It’s just too depressing to end in Nowheresville.

The Week in Numbers

Sunday (post social)
BP: 154/81
Bike: Two hours, mostly zones 2 and 3

Monday
BP: 138/85

Tuesday
BP: 141/83
Bike: 65 mins in zone 2

Wednesday
BP: 143/85

Thursday
BP: 145/91
Bike: 4 x 4 (four efforts, lasting at least four minutes, at 90% of max HR)

Friday
BP: 159/95

Saturday 
BP: 153/92 (143/83)
Bike: 97 minutes on trail, mostly zones 2 and 3.

Banking Monday and Friday

Oscar Foulkes September 1, 2024 Blood Pressure Interventions No comments

There are times I wish I could instantly access a bibliography, which would take me back to the original reference of something I recall reading. In this case, it relates to sleep quality, the summary of which is that hospital doctors on call, who are getting just a few hours of sleep, have extremely poor sleep quality. Of course, the duration of the sleep is a big contributor, but the kicker is that they know that they could be woken at any time.

On the other hand, there is a benefit to knowing when you must wake up if sleep time is limited.

I suspect that I read this in the Gospel According to Peter (Outlive by Peter Attia), but I can’t find my copy in the house, and I also cannot recall lending it to anyone. Perhaps I need a lending list before I need a bibliography.

Sleep quality of this nature was top of mind on Tuesday and Wednesday, when my BP readings were depressingly high considering the trend that I thought was in progress. On both Monday and Tuesday nights I was sure I’d be called to assist with mares foaling. I didn’t sleep at all well.

I also didn’t sleep well on Wednesday night, but that could have been more about me getting over excited about having wine for the first night this week. I had a lovely evening, but in the process probably had just one glass too much, and again didn’t sleep well.

By this point I was ready to toss the entire project. It seemed that whether I had any wine or not, I had sub-optimal sleep and higher BP readings. I should mention that it’s highly unusual for me to have two bad nights in a row. Also, my sleep pattern is that I fall asleep within a couple of minutes of my head hitting the pillow. Once or twice a week, I may wake up at some point between 1:30 and 3:30, but I always fall asleep again. Having two nights in a row was not the norm.

Of course, the one element that had been missing from my week was the Tuesday bike ride, which I missed because it was so horrendously cold, wet and windy. Even if I’d had my best winter riding gear with me, it’s possible I wouldn’t have headed out.

Back in Cape Town on Wednesday, I jumped on my bike but was no more than 15 minutes out when a mechanical failure required me to turn around. You can imagine how desperate I was by Thursday, for normal service to resume.

Thursday’s ride was the perfect opportunity to tick off the August challenge of my social mountain biking group. This involved an all-out effort for 35 minutes, bookended by warm-up and cool-down.

I had a few glasses of red wine with dinner on Thursday night, slept extremely well, and produced the lowest BP reading of this project on Friday morning. Monday’s numbers were also close to threshold, which gives some cause for positivity.

Saturday’s numbers were also slightly elevated, reflecting less-than-perfect sleep on Friday night.

On a few days this week I took a second reading in the 45 minutes to an hour after waking, following quiet time on couch getting the day started. In every case, these BP numbers were lower, which I find interesting.

There’s one week to go. If I’d been asked on Tuesday or Wednesday, I would have said I’m taking the pills. Now I’m not so sure.

The Week in Numbers

Sunday (post social)
BP: 151/89 (146/84)
Bike (rain day): One hour, mostly zone 2, with seven mins in zone 4

Monday
BP: 137/80

Tuesday
BP: 146/87
Bike: nil

Wednesday
BP: 150/93
Bike: 29 mins

Thursday
BP: 152/92
Bike: One hour on trail, of which 34 mins in zone 4

Friday
BP: 139/82 (131/79)

Saturday 
BP: 146/89 (140/85)
Bike: 90 minutes on trail, range of zones, with 18 mins in zone 4.

Normal service resumes

Oscar Foulkes August 25, 2024 Blood Pressure Interventions No comments

Many memes were birthed during the Covid years; drinking wine out of coffee mugs while on Zoom calls, the generation home-schooled by daytime drinkers, the infamous EBITDA-C, and many more. We clearly were a bored, unstimulated bunch while locked up in our houses for those months.

The practice of reporting important financial information while adjusting for the impact of Covid has come to mind while I’ve been trying to get on top of this “thynge” (read last week’s report for clarification on my use of this word). The adjustment that I have made over weekends, mentally at least, is for ‘social’.

By social I mean a late-ish night with a group of people, involving the consumption of more than a glass or two of wine. Not bottles, mind you, but enough to have an impact on sleep quality as well as leaving a slight residue the following day (I’m thinking that I may start using that phrase as a euphemism for feeling hungover).

This was the first week since I took a week off due to having a cold, that my exercise has returned to normal, even if I had to dodge rainy weather to do that. It seems as if this is reflecting in generally lower numbers, even on post-social days.

The daily BP reading is taken first thing after waking. What I’ve done on a few days is to take another reading about half an hour later, once I’ve had my cocoa drink and been on the couch with my laptop getting the day going. Interestingly, the second reading has been significantly lower on each occasion (in brackets alongside).

With two weeks left of this experiment/project, the numbers must do the talking. I don’t know if I’ll get below the threshold, but the variability in the numbers has seen some daily readings getting within sight of the target.

The Week in Numbers

Sunday (post social)
BP: 151/91
Bike: 90 mins, mostly zone 2

Monday
BP: 140/87

Tuesday
BP: 142/84
Bike: 4 x 4 (four efforts, each lasting four minutes, at 90% of max HR)

Wednesday
BP: 139/86

Thursday
BP: 150/93 (142/83)
Bike: 90 minutes on trail, of which 29 mins in zone 4

Friday
BP: 134/83

Saturday (post social)
BP: 150/89 (140/82)
Bike: 80 minutes on trail, range of zones, with a burn in zone 4.

Still curious

Oscar Foulkes August 18, 2024 Blood Pressure Interventions No comments

Landmarks, by Robert Macfarlane, left the kind of impression on me that I’m flippantly tempted to compare with some kind of large-scale geographical feature. He uses language so beautifully that his sentences seem to be able to inhabit space as tangible objects. Of course, the thesis of the entire work is that the loss of words to describe particular features in the natural world is contributing to our diminished relationship with it. Language is a multi-layered contributor to the importance of the work, so it’s entirely appropriate that a writer of Macfarlane’s ilk has written this book.

Embedded in the book is a vast glossary of words that provide much richer descriptions than simply saying “stream” or “cloud” or “rain”.  

The book also contains one of the most important paragraphs I’ve ever read:

“I relish the etymology of our word thing – that sturdy term of designation, that robust everyday indicator of the empirical – whereby in Old English thynge does not only designate a material object, but can also denote ‘a narrative not fully known’, or indicate ‘the unknowability of larger chains of events’.”

“I don’t know” is a phrase I have grown to love, thanks to Piet Viljoen, especially when applied to important things that are supposedly in our field of expertise.

For me, there is a big tie-up between these.

It is in the general context of “thing” that I’m wondering if blood pressure isn’t some kind of vague proxy for the state of my nervous system, or at least of my general wellbeing.

While some of the symptoms are still lingering a little, I have shaken off last week’s cold. Consequently, my daily BP readings are lower, with some kind of ‘new normal’ forming around the 140-ish over 80-ish level. I can link the outliers to deficient sleep (either quality or quantity), which resulted from either physical disturbance (i.e. dogs wanting to be let out during the night), or immoderate consumption of red wine. In other words, factors that impact on the body’s ability to use sleep to restore the effective working of our nervous system

Weather got in the way of Saturday’s cycling, but exercise should get back to normal next week.

The bottom line is that I have a greater degree of certainty around some factors that will cause my BP to spike, but I’m still feeling my way to the changes (if they exist) that will get it low. And keep it there.

An example from a different part of the wellbeing ‘landscape’. Every couple of months, I experience growing tightness in my glutes and general hip area. If I don’t do exercises that will release this tension, I’ll end up with a headache that can last a few days. Taking analgesics will remove the headache, but if I’d taken care of my body in the first place, there wouldn’t have been any need for pills.

Attempting to self-correct myself to lower BP is partially informed by this, as well as the measurable observation that there is a certain amount of variability in daily readings. The implication is that “the unknowability of larger chains of events” is somehow at play in these pathways.

I remain curious.

Current interventions:
– no coffee (replaced with cocoa drink, made with lightly alkalised cocoa)
– moderate (mostly) wine consumption from Wednesday to Saturday only
– health and weather permitting, cycling four times per week, with the inclusion of high intensity intervals
– strength training once per week
– aiming to breath mostly through nose

The Week in Numbers

Sunday
BP: 160/100
Bike: 80 mins, mostly zone 2

Monday
BP: 140/86

Tuesday
BP: 151/87
Bike: One hour, mostly zone 2/3 with a burst in zone 4

Wednesday
BP: 143/84

Thursday
BP: 148/90
Bike: One hour, of which 28 mins in zone 4

Friday
BP: 148/88

Saturday
BP: 148/88
Bike: nil