The joys and pains of older cats

As you may have noticed from this blog, I have a couple of cats. On 1 April 2006, my next-door-but-one neighbour's cat had a litter of four kittens, three girls and a boy, father(s) unknown - there were a few feral tom-cats around to choose from. Their dark, semi-long-haired sisters quickly found a home, and I was due to take the tortoiseshell-and-white girl, but was persuaded also to take her grey-brown tabby-and-white brother.

Even at eight weeks, they were tiny, sitting neatly in the palm of a hand, but already had distinct characters. The girl was curious and more confident than her snarly, scared brother, but they both hid under furniture for the first couple of days in their new home. Eventually, boy-cat had to be held and stroked into submission, realising that this place with its food and people prepared to love and fuss him was okay.

They grew quickly, exploring their surroundings and becoming more confident, exploring the farm buildings, sprawling in the sunshine on the pond jetty, walking down into the fields closer to the farm buildings and hanging out on the veg patch and in the polytunnel. We decided not to leave Greebo as a full tomcat, but it didn't stop him spray-marking his territory and fighting visiting tomcats. And Xena had to be spayed too, so that said visiting toms didn't result in a litter of kittens, They were both avid hunters and had to learn (with the help of my oldest hen, Flossie) not to go for birds. Greebo was the stronger hunter, taking down rats, young rabbits (he frequently brought in half for later) and on a couple of occasions batting bats out of the air and leaving a dead weasel. He had a powerful bite; when the willows were planted, I kept finding small ovals of the weed suppressant membrane, where he bit through it to catch a squeaky (mouse or vole, usually), and jumped around to twist and tear the plastic-wrapped rodent from its hiding place. Xena specialised in mice and voles once having one of each between mouthfuls of commercial catfood, resulting in five breakfasts one morning. Both learned the command 'Take it OUTSIDE!' when they brought in a live one.

The years pass so quickly. When we moved to Pembrokeshire, they were 9 years old, already 'senior' cats and starting to slow down. They were disgusted at the size of the garden and the lack of polytunnel to lounge in. The first year we were here, they could get onto the compost bins, onto the back fence and down into the field behind, but it quickly became too difficult, even for Xena, who used to take a running jump up onto a six foot wall. Greebo's old injuries to his back legs have come back to haunt him as arthritis. They've increasingly become picky about their food and treats. Despite my telling him off, Greebo strops his claws on the stairs, wrecking the carpet.

Then Xena became ill a couple of years ago, firstly with hyperthyroid, then also with cat asthma. She is good about taking her thyroid medicine, licking it from its syringe, but has never been good with taking tablets, so her steroids have to be hidden in a treat, and she still occasionally refuses and spits half-dissolved bits of tablet all over the place. And being around to give her medication twice a day is a tie. Back on the farm I started a bed-time ritual of grooming and giving treats, which allowed me to check them over for wounds, thorns and so on, so giving medication was added to that, and an extra morning session added.

And then there are the vet bills, which are draining my savings. Let's not go there. As 'senior' cats back in 2015, and having just moved house, I couldn't afford insurance for both of them. Now they are 16 and classed as 'geriatric', with existing conditions, it's not even worth the discussion.

Xena went through a phase of bouts of cystitis, and started to have a habit of weeing where she felt like it. This has now become a regular thing, and she also booby-traps the front door with a nightly poop. And of course, Greebo thinks if she can, so can he.

So whilst my favourite thing is just hanging out with the pair of them, giving and receiving cuddles, grooming them and giving treats, playing games and conversing in a sort of human-cat patois, my most disliked thing is the morning clean up, first thing on the list every day. I've become more efficient at doing it, but it's so tiresome coming down to the morning peepoomageddon and just trying to destink the house!

But they are mine, my warrior princess and her big softy of a brother, my fur-babies, and I am theirs, heart and soul. A slave to them, perhaps, but the joys of them being around, playing, purring, head bumping, talking, asking for and receiving strokes and scratches, occasionally grooming me, my constant companions, those joys make it all worthwhile.

I love them. It's all for love.

Versus Arthritis March Knitting Challenge 2022

Versus Arthritis (which used to be Arthritis UK), like other charities, has frequent fundraising challenges. Last year I noticed a knitting challenge but was too busy trying to tackle the jungle garden. Since my hands started showing clear evidence of osteoarthritis a few years ago, I find it increasingly easy to overdo things, just as it is when it comes to the effects of physical activities on my feet and knees. So when I saw something on Facebook about a March Knitting Challenge 2022, I wondered what the terms were for the challenge. I've shied away from walking challenges, because I know that the 'walk a mile every day for a month' type of challenge would leave me immobilised and in excruciating pain within a week.

I was relieved to see that the challenge wasn't prescriptive; there were no requirements as to what was knitted (or even crocheted), how many items, or hours - all that was left up to the person doing it, your own personal challenge.

Sitting in the living room, I could see half a dozen knitting and crochet projects without turning my head, works in progress (WIPs), hibernating while I summon the inspiration and energy to pick them back up again. Winter normally sets off my urge to craft, but it didn't happen this winter. A pair of socks which I started while waiting for my Covid booster in December had reached a point of working the toe of the first sock over Christmas, and I'd forgotten how, and became distracted by something else while I was looking for my notes. I think it was using the same yarn for some visible mending on a wrecked jumper, another UnFinished Object (UFO) slung on the side table, looking at me accusingly.

I decided to look around and in my craft notes book to see what I had lined up (don't even look at the wishlist that is the Ravelry queue, it's over a thousand items long, but it really is more for inspiration than to complete all those projects. I could easily find a dozen projects and knew that was the tip of the iceberg. A ball of blue Aran yarn with a cable needle stuck in it has stopped me closing that drawer on the coffee table for months, since I frogged it, having found that the technical editing in my glossy knitting book had utterly failed and that even the errors and omissions corrections I found online had errors and omissions themselves! All the WIPs just add to the clutter and the feelings of guilt and stress I get from seeing them drain my motivation further. But woe betide if I put a project away - out of sight is truly out of mind. And I remembered I had actually done that, packed a couple  of projects neatly and safely away when I moved house in 2015 and hadn't seen them since.

I decided that by joining the challenge, I could raise funds while holding myself to account by getting knitting again. I would try to knit a bit every day and complete at least one project while progressing several others, just to move things along. And then perhaps that progress would help reduce some of the anxiety which has been eating away at me for the past couple of years.

I joined the challenge and found the Facebook group, where knitters were already excitedly sharing what they were knitting or planning to knit. And to my grateful relief, some of my friends decided they would sponsor me. 

So now I've no excuse. I just hope I can keep up the momentum and turn some WIPs into FOs.

Nostalgia or small-minded ignorance?

Facebook continues to provoke me, often to rage and thought, simultaneously and in equal measure. In this instance, it was a list titled 'Eating in the 50s', 24 comments which say more about the person(s) who put the list together than a historically accurate account of eating in the 1950s.

Admittedly, I'm a decade too young to remember it first hand, but what struck me most about the list is the narrow minded attitude; very white, English, middle-class, privileged and right-wing. Decidedly middle class, the types who sneer at the poverty of the working classes, aspiring to mix with those higher up the social ladder whilst maintaining a limited world view. It might have been created by someone who still holds these views, sharing them as some sort of nostalgia while poking fun at other nationalities. Or perhaps it was written by someone younger, to provoke an immediate 'Okay, Boomer' response? Or something to point out how much choice we have now in what we eat, but with a sarcastic tone? Either way, every time I read the list, I bristled a bit more. So, excuse the rant, so early in the new year, but I have to get something off my chest, and if not here, then where?

Let's have a look at them:

'Water came out of a tap. If someone had suggested bottling it and charging more than petrol for it, they would have become a laughing stock!' Water, mineral or otherwise, was being bottled at holy wells and springs across the UK since 1621, and was being sold at a premium as part of local, often rural economies in the 19th century, long before most people knew about petrol, and the people involved were not 'laughing stocks'.

Furthermore, even in the 1950s, water did not come out of a household tap for everyone. There were still people in slum housing who were using standpipes, and those in more rural districts who were still not on mains water and used a pump or well.  What's different now is that spring or mineral water is often sold by the litre or more in plastic bottles, production in smaller glass bottles is more costly, and potable water is widely available from kitchen taps.

'Crisps were plain; the only choice we had was whether to put the salt on or not.' Ah, the enduring thing for binary, all-or-nothing choices! The little blue bags of salt meant you could decide how much salt you wanted on your crisps, if any. So they didn't come in other flavours yet, you could still drop a pickled egg in the bag, if that took your fancy? Or is that too working-class for you?

'Healthy food consisted of anything edible'; 'Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days and was regarded as being white gold. Cubed sugar was regarded as posh.' Of course sugar was regarded with joy, it only came off the ration in 1953. Rationing severely restricted the availability and quantity of food available in Britain for most people, and unavailability of some items became worse after the war. Meat and any other foods which were still restricted came off-ration in 1954.

'Fish didn't have fingers.' There was a reference to fish fingers dating to 1900, though they started to appear more after WWII. However, fish cakes, as a way to use up leftover fish and cold potatoes, were a thing since the 19th century and much more likely to be made by thrifty housewives or sold at the fish and chip shop.

'A takeaway was a mathematical problem'. No, it was called subtraction then, just as now, except then, you did it in your head or on paper, not with a calculator. Of course, food-to-go was available, just limited by how to wrap the food. Fish and chips or pie and chips were traditional, and could be wrapped in newspaper. Cornish Pasties had their own wrapping of pastry.

'People who didn't peel potatoes were regarded as lazy.' Really? Potatoes then weren't washed by suppliers, they came covered in soil, which helped them not to go green or mouldy quite as quickly as they seem to these days when washed and packaged in transparent plastic. Potatoes baked in their jackets were another street food, although of course eating on the street was viewed as a low-class thing to do.

A working-class equivalent of take-out was eating at a food stall, where you could (for example) get a very good hot pork pie, mushy peas and mint sauce in Bradford's Rawson Market to keep the wind out, in a bowl and eaten at the stall.

'Brown bread was something only poor people ate.' Brown bread was widely available and eaten, but after WWII, there was something of a backlash, a demand for soft, white bread after the gritty, hard, wholemeal 'national loaf'. It's not the only example on the list of something perceived as being eaten only by the poor.

'Pasta was not eaten'; 'A pizza was something to do with a leaning tower'; 'Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking'. Pasta, and pizza, were of course eaten, but largely made at home by Italian immigrant families, not available to the wider public unless they could afford to eat out at an Italian restaurant. Most food was home cooked, few could afford to eat at a restaurant except on a very special occasion. Most vegetable oil was used for making margarine, so of course lard, suet, bacon fat, margarine and butter were more readily available.

'Rice was only eaten as a milk pudding.' Short grain rice was grown and used in Europe since medieval times, and came to England (for the rich) in the Tudor period, traditionally as a pudding (with ingredients such as beef broth), because given the above, you wouldn't care about any foreign muck like risotto, would you?

'Curry was a  surname'; 'Indian restaurants were only found in India.' Curry was then and is still a colonial European name for various spicy dishes from the Indian subcontinent and beyond. Curry and rice had become popular specialities in some restaurants around London's Piccadilly by the late 1700s. The first Indian restaurant was a coffee house, in Mayfair, London in 1810. The popularity for all things Indian took a knock after the 1857 revolt, but Queen Victoria's fascination for India revived interest and there were a handful of restaurants in London. The arrival of Bangladeshi immigrants in the 1970s brought a surge of 'curry houses', often open very late to catch those suffering from the munchies when the pubs closed (been there, done that. If the place had a number of locals from the Indian subcontinent also enjoying some food, you knew it was going to be all right. The first time I went to an 'Indian Restaurant' where there were tablecloths and cutlery and only white British customers was a bit of a culture shock, I was so used to tearing off a bit of chapatti and eating with my fingers!)

'Kebab was not even a word, never mind a food.' Spit or skewer-roasted food is nothing new, even in England. The word 'kebab' has been used in England since the late 17th Century. The food may only have been popularised here since the 1970s, but the word existed, and so did the food. 

'None of us had ever heard of yoghurt; surprisingly, muesli was readily available, it was called cattle feed'.  Cattle were grass fed, not fed muesli or anything like, and I wonder what the Swiss would make of this idea. Although neither you nor the people around you had heard of yogurt, I'm sure even in England, there were those who had, and perhaps even made it!

'Seaweed was not a recognised food'. Not in your small world, maybe, but Laverbread (from the seaweed Porphyria) has long been a food in Wales.

'Prunes were medicinal'. I've always liked prunes. Brandy was often described as 'medicinal' too. Of course, the French  recognised the benefits of prunes and brandy (as well as many other fine foods) a long time ago, well before Béchamp and his 'food is medicine' and Terrain Theory, so much derided by Pasteur and his Germ Theory. Guess what, boys, you were both partly right. Another instance of black and white thinking. Alors, plus ça change, plus c'est  la même chose. 

'Eating raw fish was called poverty not sushi'. You're just displaying your ignorance now. Raw fish isn't sushi, it's sashimi, in Japan, but other countries have their equivalents. I'm sure the Great British upper classes enjoyed the occasional Gravad Lax. So where did this idea that eating raw fish implied poverty come from?

'Cooking outside was called camping'. And wasn't it fun, enjoyed by hordes of girl guides and boy scouts. Oh, you mean, barbecues were still only a thing in the USA, like burger bars?

'A big mac was what we wore when it was raining'. Yes, but you were probably aware of Wimpy burger bars opening from 1954, even if you felt it beneath you to visit one.

'Tea was made in a teapot using leaves and never green.' I'm sure there were people who made herb teas, just as now, and black tea can still be made with tea leaves in a pot, if you so choose. This is one where I can't work out if it's really a complaint about the availability of tea bags and green tea, or not. 

'And the things that we never ever had on our table in the 50s and 60s: elbows or phones!' Come off it, most houses in the 1950s didn't have phones, and even in the 1960s, they were limited to a front room or hallway within reach of the GPO socket into which their lead was wired! At the time, the discussion was about whether newspapers and books should be allowed at the table. Okay, so seeing a group of people scrolling on their phones while eating rather than interacting with each other might annoy you. If they are in your home, impose your own rules, otherwise mind your own business and stop making judgements! 

Finished whining about how things aren't like the good old days yet? That was then, this is now, things have changed, and largely for the better (exceptions include the extinction of the hot pie and peas stall, and of Rawson Market itself, as was).

My need to comment on this probably says a lot about me, not least that the writer's apparent pride in their own, small experience, and their scorn and derision of the poor and anything foreign, was more than I could stand.

Back in 2001, the then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook made a great speech (which you can read here) arguing that the idea of a homogenous white, Anglo-Saxon British identity wasn't and isn't true, nor was/is the idea that, due to immigration and multi-culturalism, British identity was under siege and in terminal decline. Then, chicken tikka masala had recently been voted the favourite national dish, and Robin Cook upheld this as a 'perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences', because the masala sauce reflected the British liking for meat to be served in gravy. It's a rather British-centric view; my thought was that it's a perfect illustration of the way that immigrants in Britain find food a good way to integrate into and adapt to British life.

He summed up with: 'Tolerance is important, but it is not enough. We should celebrate the enormous contribution of the many communities in Britain to strengthening our economy, to supporting our public services, and to enriching our culture and cuisine. And we should recognise that its diversity is part of the reason why Britain is a great place to live.'

The popularity of other cultures' foods has increased in the past 20 years, with an ever-wider choice available from restaurants, take-aways, supermarkets and food fairs.

Sadly, at the same time, the clamp-downs on immigration, the Windrush scandal and (sorry) Brexit have all shown that far from decreasing, there is still a racism or xenophobia driven by a perception of a homogenous, white, Christian/protestant British identity and idea of a 'sovereign nation' under threat from other cultures. 

The real takeaway from that list has to be a renewed awareness of changes which aren't improvements. Unseasonal, unsustainable foods, litter from takeaways, single-use plastics, too much sugar, salt, palm oil, highly processed foods and a pervasive, racist worldview of which the British should be extremely ashamed.

Enjoy your food and drink, be thankful of the diversity we enjoy, make the best choices you can in terms of health, packaging, food miles and sustainability, and recognise that we all need to eat, drink and have somewhere we can call home.

Couch to 5K Walking; hit and miss

In theory, this should be week 20, but the walking has been a little hit and miss.

I hit my aim of doing a mile by midsummer, early. For my first walk in week 4, I had a nice evening and set off down the Brunel Trail with a spring in my step. After a while, I realised I hadn't set a timer and thought I should really stop and go back. The return trip felt progressively harder, and I was glad to collapse in a heap on the sofa and look at what I'd achieved, which was just a smidge over a mile!

The next day, my knees hurt, so I decided to take a rest day from walking, but had to go shopping. When I got out of the car, my left knee gave way. I limped my way around the supermarket, using the trolley as a walker. Once home, I found my left knee gave way every so often, and only managed a little garden work and one other walk that week. 

In the following few weeks, I did another couple of walks which were a little over a mile, and got to the point where I was really enjoying walking, taking my rainbow umbrella with me to ward off the drizzle.

Unfortunately, there is a physical backlash. It's as if I only have energy for walking or doing housework and gardening, but not both. After walks of a mile or more (and some walks of less than a mile) my body aches, especially my knees and feet. I had planned to walk 5 days, rest 2 days each week, but it was progressively harder to do more than one walk a week. It started affecting my motivation to go for a walk.

Then I banged my little toe one night, trying not to stand on one of the cats in the dark. There was a nasty crunch and when I examined my toe, I found it was straighter, but bleeding into the nail bed. It was so bruised and painful, I erred on the safe side in case I had broken it and kept off my feet as much as I could for a week.

While I was resting my toe, I thought about how to help my motivation to walk and realised that just launching myself out of my front door, walking just for the time and distance, was not enough. I want to get to 5 km/3 miles so that from there, I can walk further, not so that I can finish some charity walk in an hour or so. I love Pembrokeshire for its wildlife, history and landscapes; that's what I want to explore, on foot. With my foot up on the couch, I got out maps and did a little list of places I wanted to go. 

Once the toe felt better, off I went again, deciding not to press the distance, but to include some hills.  had a lovely couple of walks in Milford, on the steep streets down to Castle Pill and around The Rath.

Then the skin on the side of my left foot split, leaving it very raw and sore. (I get a type of eczema called pompholyx, where the skin comes up in little itchy, burning blisters, which merge into bigger blisters, which then dry out into flaky plates of skin. Then after a couple of weeks, the cycle starts again.  I get it on my hands too. No real cause or cure. Sorry, probably too much information, but it's a damned nuisance.)

It took the best part of a week to heal, and despite care and moisturiser, it split again on my next walk, though not as badly. 

I've just had a very busy couple of weeks, where walking has been low on the agenda, partly to conserve energy. I planned a walk at the start of this week, but had to give it a miss because it was absolutely pouring with rain. And going into autumn with more unsettled weather, this is increasingly going to be the case. I was rather hoping for some lovely autumn sunshine to walk in. As the nights are drawing in, I'll have to walk earlier.

I've nearly 30 walks on the list, not including a few I've already done (such as down to Castle Pill). Most are longer than I can manage at the moment. The longest walk so far has been about a mile and three quarters. I'm looking forward to more exploratory walks, but it may be some time before I hit the 5K target.

Yards and Gardens

 I was baffled to see a large front lawn surrounded by flowering shrubs described as a 'front yard' in an American magazine article. This space was larger than most British gardens. We Brits would call it a garden, so why was it being described as a 'yard'? I've also seen lawned or rough areas around and at the back of the house described by Americans as 'yards'. 

Yards, to my mind, are generally paved, utilitarian areas. They may be small, like the yards at the back of Victorian terraced houses, space for a washing line, perhaps with a privy shed and a coal shed,  or just access to the privy and coal hole, a few strides between the back door and the gate to the back lane.  Or larger, like a farmyard, livery yard, scrapyard or builders' yard.

Intrigued, I asked an American friend to explain their use of yard and garden. It seems a 'yard', in addition to a paved, utilitarian space, is an outside space attached to a property, which isn't being deliberately designed and used as a growing space. Okay, there might be a stretch of lawn surrounded by shrubs, but it's whatever, nothing special. The grass gets cut and the shrubs pruned and mulched, the leaves raked up, but there's no thought of design, no intent beyond a tidy bit of kerb-appeal. It may be a space to play catch, have barbecues, sit in the sun, but it isn't being actively 'gardened'. To count as a garden, the same space would have design and intent behind it, from which plants to grow and how they work together, to landscaping of paths and levels, or a space designed for growing fruit and vegetables. If you happen to have a few citrus and olive trees in your Californian 'garden', it may nevertheless be a 'yard'.

So many people here in the UK, especially in houses built from the 1960s on, have a small, private, outside space - a 'garden'. Often described in estate agents' details as an 'easily-maintained garden', which they think is a positive, but is not attractive to someone who really wants to garden. There is an almost cultural imperative to have a lawn, which one feeds and seeds to make it grow, then cuts to keep the growth down, keeping it free of 'weeds' by using a broad leaf herbicide, keeping any shrubs around it free of pests by using a pesticide. Controlling the space is what makes it a 'garden' here in the UK. So if it's an outside patch with a patio, a shed and a patchy stretch of grass with a trampoline and swing, it's a garden in the UK, but a yard in the USA.

I can see the point here; this differentiation of yard and garden makes sense and is growing on me (sorry, couldn't resist the pun!). I would not often (if ever?) say this, but this is an example of American English usage that I would like to see introduced here in the UK.

A new plan for Couch to 5K Walking

My Couch to 5K walking plan last year bit the dust after a patchy several weeks, when increasing knee pain coincided with lockdown. I did a few walks which went unrecorded in Strava because I forgot to press the start button (facepalm). A few more were rather inaccurate because of interference with the phone's GPS (high buildings, bridges, having the phone in a pocket, can apparently all interfere). I trudged through hail showers trying to convince myself that this was good, while the cold increased my pain levels. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Stop whining, JFDI, don't be so lazy, where's your self-discipline? There's nothing special about you, stop making excuses, try harder! etc. A friend commented that I might have some internalised ableism. I had to look it up and found she was right - I'm generally happy to accommodate others' disabilities and differences, but struggle to do the same for myself. It's the way I was brought up; to strive, work hard, be strong and independent (and with all the above thrown at me when I fell short of expectations). Although the judgemental comments could be reworded to be more encouraging, (my ballet and dance teachers never used that sort of language!) I don't see anything wrong with that, except that it goes hand-in-hand with being hard on yourself. I still find it impossible to find the line between enough and too much, to navigate a fair path and forgive myself when I fail.

I also lost my dance mojo (still haven't really found that, although I do find myself boogying slightly to supermarket music). I transferred my energies to gardening, which remains a battle with brambles, pendulous sedge and bindweed, but it now feels as though I am making progress. I can't control the weather, but I can take a pickaxe to those roots and I feel the stronger for it!

This year, with lockdown easing, and friends posting beautiful photos and stories of miles walked in the sunshine, I started to feel totally pathetic about my inability to comfortably walk even a mile. See? Ableist! Others who struggle to walk a mile have my sympathy and understanding, but I can't accept that I can't walk a mile, or three, or five. It's time to dust off the plan and get out there again. The bonus is that at the moment, my knee pain is not as bad as it was when I was doing this last year; it feels as though the gardening work has improved things.

However much I tell myself not to overdo things, it seems I don't notice while I'm gardening/walking/ dancing until I've overdone it. I blame those endorphins. I had a lovely day in the garden a week ago and couldn't move the following day. As soon as it eased off the day after, I did only a little more and spent the next two days in agony. Also, while I want to walk, I need to leave enough energy to garden or whatever else in the day. I need a new plan.

Last year's plan involved starting with 15 minutes a day, increasing to 20 minutes in week 2, walking for five days and having two rest days in a week. That was too much and it didn't help that I got totally carried away one day when I was feeling good and did 2 kilometres (1.25 miles) in 45 minutes. Oops. I also turned a blind eye to the comment that this was for beginners 'without significant health complaints'.

I've looked around for walking plans this year, and find that most are for people who are aiming to walk 5K for charity, and need to train (that is, push themselves), with 10 week plans involving daily walks, interval training (changing the pace), a speed of 3 mph or faster and significant step-ups after week 4 or 6. Obviously, a generic training plan takes no account of how you are personally on a daily basis.

So, here are some self-imposed rules:

• Aim for 5 walks/2 rests a week, weather allowing, starting with 10 minute walks
• Walk for time, not for distance
• Walk at an easy pace, no interval training. The easy pace should get faster as you get fitter.
• Walk mindfully, think about your posture and gait, take in details of your surroundings.
• Review progress every 4 weeks
• Stay at or go down a level if it starts to feel too much, add in a little more if it feels too easy.

My first 4 weeks look like this:

• Week 1: 5 x 10 mins
• Week 2: 3 x 10 mins, 2 x 15 mins
• Week 3: 2 x 10 mins, 3 x 15 mins
• Week 4: 1 x 10 mins, 4 x 15 mins
• Review: is 5 x 15 minutes in week 5 okay?

This pattern has me walking 5 x 30 minutes in week 13 (that's 3 months) which feels like quite a time commitment. From there, I envisage staying at that with a day's longer walk each week and see how I am doing. I would like to be able to walk a mile (approx. 1.6K) by midsummer, (I used to be able to walk at 3 mph quite comfortably).

I announced my intention on my Facebook timeline late last night and found such an outpouring of support from my friends this morning, I feel loved. 💖

Time to get my walking shoes on!

How many steps a day?

After a couple of months of largely rainy weather, local beaches busy with tourists (good for those local businesses reliant on tourism, but the Covid-19 pandemic has brought a new wariness of strangers), my dance mojo still absent and all attempts to get the garden under control and more productive having been thwarted by the excessive numbers of slugs and snails (and rain), by mid-August I had to admit to myself that I was in something of a slough of despond and apathy. 

I noticed some stasis dermatitis on my lower shins, a sign that the circulation in my legs could be better. Realising I needed to take action, I wanted something which would buzz me to move every so often, without having to set alarms, as I can get hyperfocused and end up sitting at my computer for hours. I finally cracked and got myself a fitness tracker watch. 

Not that I am very interested in step counting. The suggested 10000 steps a day is supposed to be roughly equivalent to five miles. However, I can no longer comfortably walk a mile, so I would have to scale back considerably when setting myself a motivational target number of steps. 

In the end, I chose a Fitbit Inspire HR, on offer because an upgraded version was about to go on sale. I didn't need anything very flashy, not being into sports and gym. The HR is the ability to measure heart rate, so I could look at cardio and sleep, and it would give me a little buzz at ten to the hour during the day to prompt me to complete at least 250 steps.

I settled on a target of 3000 steps a day initially, and found that my baseline was around 2000, 2500 on a good day. Gradually I found the number I did creeping up, but my 'crash' days, when my knees really hurt, and I feel tired and generally achy and low on energy, are obvious; I struggle to make 1000 steps on those days.

I saw a few complaints in reviews that there weren't enough instructions on how to use it, and that it was difficult to navigate, not intuitive. I found it easy to set up, and with a certain amount of 'poke it and see what it does', I found my way around quite enough to be going on with. I didn't feel the need to know everything about how it worked, because I was happy not using all the functionality (it can also allow you to record food and water intake, give message notifications and probably more besides, but if it's not going to make tea and cook a meal for me, I don't really care).

I found that if I walk slowly and smoothly with no arm-swinging, the tracker has a problem realising I'm walking and doesn't record steps. The upside of that is that if I do some seated exercise with arm swinging as I step, it still records them as steps. Not that it recognises the steps as part of 'seated exercise'; it's very walk/run/cycle/swim/aerobics focused. I did some dance on the beach when lockdown lifted a bit, and it finally concluded I was swimming. Obviously dance isn't 'sporty' enough.

The sleep function is a bit flaky, sometimes giving a nice graph of light, deep and REM sleep and wakefulness (although you get an error message informing you that the database didn't allow that sleep to be logged. Er, what?), other times just giving some basic measurements. I read from the help/forum that a lot of people have found this, and no one has found a way to resolve it. Fitbit's answer was to subscribe to the app and/or buy the latest watch, which is no help at all. I notice it is sensitive to 'wakefulness', as brief stretching a knee to relieve pain or sleepily stroking a cat means I am awake, however briefly. It usually recognises when I fall asleep again after I get up in the night for a quick trip to the bathroom, but sometimes, it doesn't. I start the 'sleep now' when I decide to turn off the light and sleep, but it sometimes doesn't record my sleep from that time. To get sleep details, it needs to be longer than three hours (I think it's three). I was watching a thriller on TV, very absorbed, and found that the watch had recorded me as being asleep. Despite the excitement, my heart rate didn't increase. She's not moving, must be asleep? I haven't seen a murder/crime programme yet where Forensics download the fitness tracker data to narrow time of death, but it surely can't be long now. 

Recording active minutes is another issue. If you aren't doing anything it can automatically recognise as exercise, it relies on heart rate being up in the cardio zone consistently for ten minutes. I quickly found I could work in the garden until I felt wobbly and light-headed from the effort, but it wasn't recognised as exercise or active minutes, and if I was working in one place, taking occasional rather than continuous steps, not recording steps either. FYI Fitbit, pickaxing bramble and sedge roots really is effort. Maybe I should experiment with recording it as aerobics or something.

it's been three months since I started wearing it. I still cannot conceive of managing 5000, let alone 10000 steps a day and I've found it easy to be so focused on what I'm doing that the hourly 'shift yer bum' buzz goes unnoticed too. It will be interesting to see if continued use changes anything.