I Am Not Trying To Get Anywhere
Anadi and I are sitting working in the Corfu Mare hotel bar; we are drinking coffee (me) and tea (Anadi) and eating cake!
This is the second time I have been here today; this morning I journeyed through torrential rain to Nikoll’s yoga class. My driving in Greece, feels a little random still; I stayed in the fast lane the whole way, because it was all left turns to reach here. It felt easier to drive in the fast lane in this foreign land, than to have to navigate changing lanes! I sped along keeping up with the traffic... This is one of the lessons I remember my driving teacher Mr Collins teaching me all those years ago…
‘Keep up, keep up – keep up with the traffic…'
I was a crazy driver back then; I had learnt to drive at eleven years old. I had pestered and pestered my mother to let me drive our mini up and down our drive. I also used to persistently ask her to take me to an old disused laundry, which was a large area of concrete, where I had more scope for zooming about…
On the afternoon of my seventeenth birthday I arrived from sixth form college to my coach Tim’s home to go running. We customarily used to drive to run on either Hankley Common or ‘The Flasheses’ or Frensham ponds. As it was my birthday and my provisional license was burning a hole in my pocket, Tim let me drive us; me and him, his wife Mal and Spike, another young runner, to Frensham ponds, where we had chosen to run that day…
The Rushmore straight, a long stretch of road, was too tempting for me, and at last free on the open road, I put my foot down and reached 90 mph…
I passed my test as soon as possible after that and I was off… Four weeks after test day I was travelling at fast speeds on wet roads. I had been training in the gym and I had stayed chatted and laughed for too long after my session was completed. I had a strict self imposed regime with my running training, and revising for my A levels... I was behind schedule, so to ‘catch up’ I was tearing along…
I didn’t die that day and I didn’t kill anyone else, only my car and a hedge were 'write offs'...
I lost control around a bend, and to avoid an oncoming car that was stopped and indicating to turn left, I had over corrected. I remember the seat belt pressing against my chest, just avoiding an oak tree and the car eventually coming to rest in the middle of a thick hedge.
To this day I remember the look of dread and then relief on the face of the man who I had avoided crashing into, as he picked his way through the hedge to find me; and then his kindness and calmness in the face of the disarray, and the understandably cross hedge owners…
Nearly forty year on I am still driving to and from exercise classes in the rain; the patterns and routines that we exist in are often the same. I recognize me, the enthusiastic seventeen year old; she is stilll alive and well... I am a more conscious driver now, less mad; more aware, not trying to ‘get there’... But I am still that young woman who loved to train, to chat to laugh and to connect. Who loved life and people and running and believed anything was possible. But maybe now I am more conscious, less mad, more aware and I am not trying to get anywhere anymore…
Yoga with Nikoll was a delight; even after just two of her classes and more practice from me in between, my body has opened up and is more aligned; my right knee, that has hurt a bit since I was in Bangkok; a strange ‘bedroom injury’ where I moved funnily getting up of the bed and has niggled a bit since, has completely disappeared.
I am reminded of the value of movements that are not so natural for a runner; and how delighted my body is to open to them, to discover them again and to sink into the spaces where I am holding and resisting.
Tonight she is holding a Kundalini yoga class which I am going to attend, and so for today I am a twice a day yoga person.
Nikoll has just been chatting with Anadi and I and I affirmed that I will be back in April to join her classes; as she rose to leave us, she encouraged me between now and then to…
Practice Julia Practice
Namaste