Half-Way

Half way. That’s the truth of it. Half way, if I’m lucky and the second half is anything near as fortuitous as the first. A time for some reflection. A time for some thanks. A time, also, to howl with the wind at the stupidity of fear and loss and failing courage. Perhaps time to put a flag on the hill for whatever comes next. Something against which to measure the second half. Is that what this is? Perhaps. Or maybe just a message in a bottle. 

A fact about me: in a shade more than 30 minutes I can swim 40 laps of the 25m pool at the Virgin Active gym at which I have been a member for 2 years and visited fewer than 20 times. Each time I complete the 40, it feels like quite an achievement, what with all the heart failure bullshit and definitive desk-jockey dad-bod - let’s face it, I’m no athlete. There is a feeling though, when you start swimming, that each lap accumulates so slowly. When you finish the second, ten feels an age away. And slowly, the numbers grow, and then you finally  get to 20. But from half way, they just fall away - 25, 30, 35… and before you can blink, you’re there. Done. 

Well, I’m at the turn of the 20th lap - 42 years old. Statistically, half way. I expect the second half to leave me gasping as it whizzes past with go faster stripes gleaming (I think go faster stripes is one of my favourite phrases to really taste both the ambition and futility of us people in our quest against time and irrelevance). 

I expect when I sit to reflect on the second half, it will seem as though no time has gone by at all. 

Which brings us to this story… This reckoning.