Braidwood radio and four other artistic pursuits
I’ve been filling in for someone on Braidwood Radio https://braidwoodradio.com.au
on Tuesday afternoons (Rod and Penny on ‘Bunkum Faves and Raves’, 3.00 to 4.30 on current affairs, ancient history and the arts – an eclectic but entertaining mix). What with researching for that and continuing with the Argentine tango plus collage plus a new writing group, it’s been a while since my last blog. As well as all this and trying to keep au fait with contemporary literature, a couple of friends and I are reading the six short-listed Miles Franklin award novels. See https://lithub.com/here-is-the-2023-miles-franklin-award-shortlist/
We don’t talk about them until everyone has read them all and then we meet for an animated discussion about them and which one we think should have won. It’s fun. Nearly every activity I do these days is fun but there are too many of them! And still too many books to read realistically in the time available.
I flip through one, a recent gift, Lune by Kate Reid, a large, expensive coffee-table book with an irresistible-looking iridescent croissant on its luxurious, puffily-padded cover.
It was while trapped in Heinrich Böll’s cottage on Achill Island last December (iced in, but with the day before’s Saturday Irish Times and Guardian to read) that I first came upon rave reviews in both newspapers of this book Lune by a young Melbourne woman with an unusual story.
Now I long to follow the author’s extremely detailed instructions and bake some of the 64 delectable creations inside, but because of the aforementioned creative pursuits I’m reluctant to spend the time – many of these recipes take literal days! And besides, I live in a place some call ‘Breadwood’ where it would indeed be profligate to use my time that way when I can buy surely almost as good pastries at one of the six bakeries within walking distance, (with five of the six excellent quality).
As it is, I eat too many of those fine pastry-cooks’ carbohydrate offerings. And so I am led to the well-meant but unfortunate event of the other morning, which taught me a lesson that I want to share with you, dear reader.
My Near-Death Experience while Attempting To Save Time
Thinking about death in the abstract, ideally one would want either a peaceful slide into another world or a heroic, brave one, perhaps a noble sacrifice of one’s life for some higher good. What we would not want is a death that was futile and idiotic. Imagine the relatives and friends at the funeral of their loved one having to explain: ‘He choked on a pea.’
After my departure from this life I wouldn’t want my relatives to be left more embarrassed and annoyed than sad.
Actually an Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon interviewed on Radio National once observed that that whole area is badly designed and it’s far too easy for humans to choke on their food. Sadly, in my case, what must take most of the blame is not a faultily evolved ear, nose and throat area, but my own idiocy.
Because of my greed for the fabulous cakes and carbs close to my home, I try to make up for it by mostly doing what Steven N. Gundry and Dave Asprey, proponents of the keto low carb diet, advise. I do try, but living in Breadwood makes that hard.
The first three days are the hardest
In Unlocking the Keto Code Steven N. Gundry (2022) recommends something that health and weight-loss guru Dave Aspry (e.g., in his Smarter Not Harder, 2023) also swears by: end your daily shower with a one-minute cold shower. Our mornings in this Braidwood winter have been minus one lately and sometimes it’s colder than that. But the one minute cold shower will invigorate one’s mitochondria, help us withstand low temperatures and promote weight loss. I’ve been trying it.
The first three days are the hardest. After that, to some extent it became less hideous. Gundry writes that the face and chest are the most important bits to hold under the chilly water. So I only do those, turning off the hot tap and awaiting the kick of the sole cold one. Even so, never has one minute seemed so long.
I thought I’d be efficient and while away the seeming-eternity of this Purgatorial minute by doing something else at the same time.
Another thing I try to squeeze somewhere into my 24 hours are yoga face exercises. I got them from an old book but such exercises are all over the internet on sites such as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17KgzVklTmo (Sorry about that. The URL-shortening site, Bitly, I can’t get to work any more without paying money so my readers will just have to put up with unwieldy URLs)
So on the fateful – almost fatal – morning I turned off the hot tap and stood waiting for the cold to start its long, chilling one-minute pounding on my face and chest. In the weird-looking but necessary way to diminish lines around the mouth etcetera I began to open my mouth in various bizarre directions. At first it was okay.
Then about twenty-five seconds along this interminable minute, I must have breathed in some of that icy water the wrong way. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe!
My oxygen intake was restricted to a tiny fraction of what I needed. There was no air to even cough or splutter or cry for help. I was wheezing. I was dying. And worse, dying while making a strange, panicked gasping noise! My whole body blushed at the embarrassment of being found naked, wet and dead. And no doubt with an unflattering expression on my face.
Bereft and sad
An untimely, mysterious death. People asking how it had happened that, in the midst of a healthy life (okay, an older but still robustly healthy life), Penny Hanley had apparently drowned in the shower. I could picture my lovely boyfriend bereft, my friends and family sad.
Snapping off the cold tap I desperately tried to persuade more air into my starving lungs. Like a crazed emu I frantically stalked around the bedroom with fingers pressed on my sternum. Then as I grabbed my towel I noticed a microscopically small amount more air being admitted into my lungs. Gratefully pressing the towel on my frozen chest I sat on the bed, shaken but recovering, a gentle wave of relief rinsing my soul.
My whole cold being was brimming with the firm resolve to be mindful of every single thing from then on. The moral of this cautionary tale, dear reader, is do not multi-task – do one thing at a time.
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