Health

At my age, and discounting mobility, I have say I’m blessed with extremely good health.

Please note the qualifier ‘at my age’. 

I have a karate associate in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Eiko Hanshi Renzie Hanham. with whom I went to school. We shared a number of courses over the years and sat next to each other in Mr Mouat’s bookkeeping classes. Everyone liked Arthur Mouat, he was a benign if somewhat ineffective presence, and we have subsequently agreed we didn’t learn much about bookkeeping, but I did have the pleasure of watching Renzie draw the most magnificent illustrations of judoka in action. I fancied myself as a bit of an artist, but I simply wasn’t in the same league as Renzie. Alongside fangirling the artist, I was invited to take up judo – Renzie was already in the national team – an offer I didn’t take up.

More fool me.                                                      

I liked Hanshi Renzie a lot and respected the fact that he was a magnificent artist and a brilliant judoka. Apparently, he thought I was really cool – I wasn’t – but I had no idea of this at the time. I thought he was cool too, a fact he laughingly denies.

The point of this is, we met up again when in our late 60s and had some nice chats. We agreed that we were lucky we both still had pretty good health apart from, as he said, ‘the bits that don’t work anymore.’

I can confirm that now, over a decade later, that list of bits that don’t work is ever growing.

Still happy and well but moving much more slowly.