Behind the Scenes of a Football Resurrection: facing up to the Gorge of Eternal Peril

This week, we’re exploring what goes on before a book even begins to take shape; and in this case, what’s leading to the sequel of Confessions of an Ageing Football Player, out some time later this year. The story so far… I’ve been prescribed a course of pills and some time on a football pitch…

My blood pressure was normal (for me), my hopes higher than normal (for me) and the astroturf pitches beckoned. What could possibly go wrong? Well, pretty much everything.

Before being let loose on the astroturf pitches, we were to be rounded up like Flopsy, Mopsy and Bobtail and subjected to various measurements and assessments.  “How old are you?” asked by our coach, Jessica, was the first question to fend off. Much was made of a couple of members’ ages.  “Look at Frank!” said Flopsy, “He’s the oldest here at 62!”   “Nevermind Frank – look at Fred, he’s 64, he’s the oldest now!” countered Mopsy.   Cue much appreciative muttering and banter.  I find out later that footie ‘banter’ is in a class all of its own but before that awakening, I’m nudged to give an answer to the age question. Without wanting to be too obtuse, the question “How old are you?” Isn’t that straightforward and I’m always reminded of my grandmother, Bubs, responses to that question.

“One day I feel 50; another day I feel 60 and today I feel 70,” she’d say without letting on whether feeling 70 was a problem or not.  And she’d finish off with a flourish:  ‘What age do you want me to be, dear?”  which struck me as a perfectly decent response to this particular Starter-for-10 question.  

I’ve recently come across the concept of the bio-age.  This is a figure the  computer in our local gym generates for you after you have experienced  various tests on their e-gym contraptions:  pieces of kit which push and pull you, alter the weight you’re pushing or pulling against, stretch you in ways you thought impossible and generally make your life temporarily miserable.  The better news is that after these humiliations the computer generates your “Bio-Age” for you.  It works out how old your upper body is (compared of course with the ‘normal’ population, how old your lower body is (ditto) and how old your metabolism is (ditto ditto).  It then averages out these numbers (of course) and comes up with your “Bio-Age” – which in my case, and of immense importance this evening at the ManvSFat weigh in – is… well, that’s my business right now.

This is a particular pleasing sensation given it bears little relation to my actual ‘Bio-Age’ if you were to find out my date of birth.  “But hey,” as Bubs might have said, “what age do you want me to be?” In the face of all the gathering footie banter, I decided not to answer Jessica’s question with another question but offered her one version of my Bio-Age which she was happy to accept, nodding in approval and noticeably impressed.  Tapping it into her I-Pad, she asked “and what is your weight?”  She asked this in a way which reminded me of the Monty Python film, Holy Grail, where the Bridge Keeper over the Gorge of Eternal Peril asks King Arthur “And what… is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?” 

Having navigated the problematic question of my age, I had suddenly turned the corner and was facing my own Gorge of Eternal Peril questions: that of my weight.  I have to dig up and channel my inner King Arthur before I can answer her. The room seemed to go quiet although it probably didn’t.  One overweight bunny in the background muttered about the difference between mass and weight (see what I mean about footie banter?) and another in the corner argued whether it mattered if the weighing machine was on a hard floor or on a carpet.  It then turned into a debate about whether your weight depended on where you were in the room, where we were in relation to the equator and whether we were due a full moon or not. I took a deep breath and lied.  

“Are you sure?” She quizzed me in a way which suggested she didn’t quite believe me.  I nodded confidently.  “Exactly?”  I nodded more vigorously this time. “OK, well, we do weigh ins every week, so you can start tonight over there.” She pointed to a queue of elderly bunnies queuing in front of of an innocous piece of flatbed kit on the floor which was connected by a length of cable to another innocent piece of machinery which another bevy of bunnies was gather around.  Cottontail stood on the platform, Thumper called out ‘One hundred and Eighty!” as if he were at a darts match and the bevy cheered as one. “Over there,” Jessica reminded me, somewhat unnecessarily I thought, pointing to the biggest question of the night.

“OK, thanks.” I stepped tentatively onto the weighing contraption, not daring to look down into the Gorge of Eternal Peril and held my breath, waiting for Thumper to call out the answer.