It's not the mileage it's the years

Yesterday I wrote a bit about my experience on Friday night with the TAGS swimming group, and sort of suggested that there was no down side.   Now of course that can never be true, after all ever silver lining has cloud, and the down side made itself clear on Saturday morning.

As Friday had been a bit rushed I didn't eat until I got home after the swimming, by then it must have been not far off eleven at night, with a quick supper and a glass of wine after all that exercise it was inevitable that I should fall asleep on the sofa, wake up at around one in the morning, before actually getting to bed.   Then waking up on Saturday morning feeling stiff with muscles I had forgotten I still had aching.   If Saturday had been a nice quite day pottering around at home this would have been fine and I could have basked in a self-righteous glow.   As it was I had a full and physically arduous day’s work planed, one pear tree and a sycamore to cut down and a bay and a yew to prune.

By the end of the day’s work I felt every one of my years, which is more or less where I came in with yesterday’s post, the reason why I keep thinking about my age is that I was so pleased on Friday evening to be the eldest there, all too often I find myself in situations where not only don’t I raise the average age but quite often I am either around the average or even one of the younger ones.   At over 55 this just isn't right!

One of the many things I like about playing with the LGSO is that I am very much one of the old ones.   Not only is the general standard of musicianship really high there are a lot of quite young players, in my section the second oldest thing is my trombone.   I think the other three players are all in their twenties, a mark both my trombone and I passed many years ago.   It is good for me to be with these younger guys, they keep me on my toes, and in touch with things I might otherwise miss out on, I like to think that it’s good for them to have a least one foggie around as well.

We will be playing our next concert on Sunday at our usual venue of St. Sepulchre’s without Aldgate, we will be playing a great selection of great music, Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave, Brahms’s Second Symphony and the Elgar Cello Concerto played by the very talented, very young and obscenely good looking Jamal Aliyev.