From automatic action to mindful control

This is a familiar notion in terms of acquiring any new skill. As an example, I'll take learning to drive a car.

You start from the position of unconscious incompetence. You don't even know what it is that you don't know. As it begins to dawn on you just how much you need to understand – movements you must coordinate, mental checklists to master, traffic signs, and the rules of the road you must remember – you move to conscious incompetence. 

Now you are beginning to be aware of how much there is to learn, you start putting the theory into practice. In time, you move towards conscious competence. You're aware of depressing the clutch each time before shifting gear; you're aware of all the actions needed to negotiate a roundabout – brakes, shift down, mirror, indicate; looking left and right. 

Your first driving lessons are stressful. The brain is fatigued; fear overcomes you as you realise that you're in control of a tonne or more of steel, glass and rubber, moving with deadly kinetic potential at thirty metres per second. 

But with time, with practice, the process of driving a car becomes easier and easier. Now you have acquired unconscious competence. You no longer have to think about what you're doing – you just do it. Everything falls into place. You take your test, and you pass it. Sometimes it takes several attempts; no matter – you have become a driver. And you're not unique in this. 

Billions of other human beings have acquired this skill too. It has become automatic. We've all experienced that moment when, lost in your own train of thoughts, you suddenly realise you have covered many miles without having any conscious awareness of the actual road, landmarks passed, especially if it's a well-known route. 

So – my point is this. Is unconscious competence enough? 

It's in this state of mind that most road accidents occur. Bear this in mind – 3,700 people died in road accidents around the world yesterday. Half of them will have been pedestrians or cyclists. Nearly all accidents, fatal or those resulting in injury, will have happened with the participants in a state of unawareness.

Setting off for a walk, or a drive, or a motorbike ride, or a train journey, I utter a small prayer for my safe return, coupled to an expression of conscious gratitude for having got through another day, for my health, for my luck. 

And here's the thing. Is the very act of being aware of the need to consciously look out for myself physical mindfulness – sharpening my observation, my forethought and anticipation, taking care – or is there a metaphysical element involved as well? A guardian angel looking out for me? The same spiritual entity that provides me with intuition, that aligns my flow with that of the Cosmos?

Quidquid agis, prudenter agas, et respice finem. 

Meditation means consciously disassociating the mind from matter. Mindfulness is engaging with the physical realm in a state of high awareness. 

This time last year:
Keep on keeping on

This time two years ago:
Time and Consciousness

This time three years ago:
Altered states - higher planes

This time eight years ago:
Warsaw-Radom line modernisation - Czachówek

This time 14 years ago:
Climbing Mogielica

Entropy and stress

You buy something new. It's shiny and perfect and owning it gives you a satisfying glow of pleasure. Be it a new car, some kitchenware or some clothing, the acquisition of new material possessions gives you a sense of pride, a sugar-rush of happiness. A trip to the mall, coming home with shopping bags of new stuff, the thrill of new things. Doesn't that feel good?

But after a while, your new toy will begin to tarnish. Stuff ages. Stuff breaks. You lose that sense of its preciousness; it's getting rusty, it's wearing through, it no longer works as well as it once did when it was new. 

This, dear reader, is entropy – the second law of thermodynamics – and the only way in which we know in which direction of time's arrow runs. Things move from order to disorder, to randomness, to chaos. Nothing old and broken will spontaneously return to its new state. 

No matter how careful you are with your new car, some oaf is always out there to scratch it in the supermarket car park. Yes, you can take care not to avoid undue wear and tear on your possessions, and then you become the custodian of things. As a custodian of things, you get stressed as entropy gets the better of them. Keeping an old car running needs extraordinary dedication. For some folk, it's what they want from life, it defines them. I'd argue that as a society, having a direct connection with the past in the form of old furniture, vintage clothes, mediaeval architecture and so on is extremely important, and I salute people engaged in keeping the ravages of entropy away from things that should be preserved for future generations.

But for the vast majority of the stuff that surrounds us, its ultimate fate will be landfill – or in an optimal world – recycling. Stuff should be looked after, yes; it should last as long as we can make it last. Ultimately though, we need to find a balance between obsessively caring for our stuff and mindlessly abusing it so that it ceases to be fit for purpose far too soon.

The answer – own less, buy less.

The fewer material possessions we have, the less stress we get from worrying about them when they scratch or tarnish or tear or break. We kid ourselves that we need something when actually we don't; we are sold stuff we don't really need, and when that stuff we didn't really need starts playing up or breaking down, we feel stress – consciously or subconsciously. Stressors are bad for our health; we need them out of our lives. Think before you buy. That's one more thing you don't need to worry about breaking down.

[Talking of things breaking, yesterday my 2016 Huawei phone finally packed up. For the past 15 months, I've been using it (minus SIM card) only to measure my activity with its health-tracker app, so that I could compare like for like with my medium-to-high intensity walking in previous years. Now without it, I've been finally forced to deploy the health tracker app in my 2023 Samsung phone. Wow! It's so much better. More functions, voice notification each kilometre, telling me time and number of paces – I wish I'd been using it sooner.]

This time eight years ago:
I am environmentally illiberal

This time ten years ago:
Thoughts on brewing and investing

This time 11 years ago:
Cruisers and low-riders - cycle fashion

This time 14 years ago:
Gone is the threat of Państwo Smoleńskie

This time 16 years ago:
Bike ride to Święty Krzyż

Britain changes course

Up for much of the night to watch the results of the 2024 UK general election. I went to sleep at quarter past two, woke up at half past four, then a nap between quarter past eight to wake at quarter to ten. Just over four hours of sleep then. But what a night.

This election can be characterised as the electorate punishing the Conservative government after 14 years in power; an anti-Tory rather than a pro-Labour vote. Sir Kier Starmer's Labour party won broadly rather than deeply. Its vote-share went up by a mere 1.6% from its pathetic 2019 performance under Corbyn, whilst the Tory vote-share plunged by 19.9% compared to 2019.

This was the biggest Conservative loss of all time ever – the worst result in the party's 190-year history, losing 250 seats, including many ministers. The Tories were mangled from every direction, losing seats to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, a process made easier by Reform splitting the right-wing vote.

The Liberal Democrats made their biggest gains ever, up from just eight seats to 71, the best Liberal result since 1926 on a vote-share of 13%. As a demonstration of how the UK's first-past-the-post voting system works, consider this: Reform won a 15% vote-share which yielded it only five seats, whilst the Green Party won four seats – but on a 7% vote share. The LibDems and Greens showed the importance on focusing on key battlegrounds, whilst Reform, by standing candidates in all constituencies, were clearly intending to damage the Tories as badly as possible rather than seriously attempting to win all those seats.

Turnout was low at 60% (down from 68% in 2019); opinion polls had for so long been predicting a massive Labour win (and massive Tory defeat) that many people might have felt little inclination to vote. Having said that, Labour's low vote-share can also be attributed to tactical voting. In many constituencies where Labour had little chance against the Tories, Labour voters cast their votes for the Lib Dems, and in constituencies where the Lib Dems had little chance against the Tories, Lib Dem voters cast their votes for Labour. This worked well for both Labour and the Lib Dems.

Scotland* decidedly turned its back on the Scottish National Party. Labour now have a massive chunk of Scottish MPs. The SNP was left with a mere nine of the 47 Westminster seats it had in the previous parliament. Wales is now without any Tory MPs, while in Northern Ireland Sinn Féin has become the largest party, not because it won more seats (it still has seven), but because the Democratic Unionist Party lost three and now only has five. This suggests that nationalist pressure in Scotland or Northern Ireland won't be a big worry for Sir Kier Starmer's government.

* Counting is still in progress in a remote Scottish constituency so the final result may change.

Wither the Tories?

If the Conservatives want to return to power, the party needs to move back towards the centre rather than towards the right. Extreme left-wingers Michael Foot (in 1984) and Jeremy Corbyn (in 2019) only served to turned moderate voters off Labour, extending its period in opposition. So analogously, if the Tories decide to turn further right in an attempt to scrape votes from Reform, they will only stay away from power longer. The stage is now set for a battle to decide whether the Tories want to return to centre-right moderation or veer in the direction of the extreme right. The shake-out of Tory MPs mean that the economic libertarian wing (Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng, Jacob Rees-Mogg) are gone, helping the out-and-out migrant-bashing populists.

Below: the moment that Labour secured its 326th seat, thereby securing its parliamentary majority with  three seats swinging to Labour. Sir Kier Starmer is only the third Labour prime minister to have been elected to office in my lifetime – Harold Wilson in 1964 and Tony Blair in 1997 being the other two (neither James Callaghan nor Gordon Brown became PM by winning a general election).

The opinion polls overestimated the size of Labour's majority. Here are the last five surveys published before election day (final score: Lab 412, Con 121, LibDem 71). Just look at how wildly out the Survation poll of 2 July was! The IPSOS exit poll was far closer (Lab 410, Con 131, LibDem 63)

Don't mention the 'B' word

Asked by the Guardian whether he could see any circumstances where the UK rejoined the single market or customs union within his lifetime, Starmer said: “No. I don’t think that that is going to happen. I’ve been really clear about not rejoining the EU, the single market or the customs union – or [allowing a] return to freedom of movement.”

Those words were like a kick in the teeth to me. Had I read them a week earlier, I would not have cast my postal vote for Labour – for me, the UK's rejoining  the EU is my number one political priority when it comes to UK-Polish relations. I want a strong UK and a strong Poland in a strong EU. Preferably not one dominated by the Franco-German axis.

So – the new government has a massive task ahead. Without a return to frictionless trade with the world's richest trading bloc on its very doorstep, it's hard to see how the UK economy can grow enough to deliver the public services that Labour have promised the electorate. Also, worth bearing in mind that the Tories still have a working majority in the House of Lords.

This time last year:
Lawn to meadow, meadow to forest

This time four years ago:
Town and country in summer

This time five years ago:
Across the Pilica to Strzyżyna

This time six years ago:

West Ealing to Castlebar Park – waiting for Crossrail

This time seven years ago:
Trump flies into Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Making Poland's railways safer

This time 17 years ago:
Lublin and the Road

Assessing the passage of time while asleep

In a normal night, I'll wake up once, maybe twice, for a wee. My bedroom is almost light-tight as I have roller blinds over the window, but I can sense the daylight though the opaque glass on my bedroom and kitchen door. Now, in high summer, it starts getting light soon after 4am, and so between 11pm and 4am, I have no clue as to what the time is should I wake between these hours. 

In the days when I'd keep a daily dream diary, I would notice that the quality and vividness of my dreams would become sharper throughout the night, with the best dreams in the morning. The ones I noted down upon waking up in the night would be less memorable than the ones captured around 7am, my normal time for rising.

But the question of guessing the time as I wake in the middle of the night got me thinking about my ability to assess the passage of time while asleep. So what I've started doing is this: I wake up in the night, and before getting out of bed, I guess what the time is. I base this on what had been going on in the dream prior to waking; what the narrative had involved, how many twists to the plot as it were. Having made my guess, I check on my phone. Sometimes I'm way out – last night, for example, as I woke up and estimated that the time is 01:30;  when I looked, I was surprised to see that it was already 02:55. Sometimes, I'm closer. Once or twice I've been right to within five minutes. 

If I were to come up with a rule of thumb here, I'd say the more memorable the dream, the better I can gauge the passage of time. While space distorts wildly in dreams (Poland morphing into the England, for example), time seems to pass at the same pace as in waking life. Having said that, I've had dreams where an anomalous logic loop occurs – the dream's narrative 'knows' information that logically could not have been known to me earlier (this dream is particularly fascinating).

So – question – can I improve the accuracy of my assessment of time's passing while I'm in the sleep state? I shall start logging this nightly in an n = 1 experiment, and I would be interested to see how readers get on with this!

When we are asleep, do our circadian clocks switch off? I am reminded of a story from the 1980s, when at the CBI National Conference in Glasgow. A colleague, well-known for his lunchtime drinking, returned to his hotel room for a nap. He woke with a start and looked at his watch – it was almost nine! Still dark outside (Scotland in November), so too late for a hotel breakfast – he dashed to the conference centre so as not to miss the opening speech of the second day, and arrived to find the venue closed, no one there. It was indeed nine o'clock – but the previous evening. Alcohol switches off certain brain functions when a drinker's fast asleep, including having a measure of the passage of time.

At this time of the year, waking up in daylight is no problem. An early start (for example, to catch the train to Gdynia last Friday) holds no terrors for me. No alarm clock – just leaving the roller blinds open so as to be woken naturally as the sun rises. But winter – no. I refuse to do early starts once sunrise is later than 6am.

Final point, mentioned to me by my brother a few weeks ago: "Hypnagogia – the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep, also defined as the waning state of consciousness during the onset of sleep. If you have trouble dropping off to sleep, don't do this, but I have become adept at noticing myself sliding into hypnagogia – having awareness of the moment. I welcome it, though insomniacs might find the very act of noticing its onset snaps them back to wakefulness, again and again.

UPDATE 18 July:

My training is getting results.

Guess          Actual

00:00           23:54

02:00           02:02

05:15           05:09

I'm getting better and better at this! Just a little bit of practice...

This time last year:
Summertime dreamland

This time three years ago:
Getting our heads around UFOs

This time six years ago:
Bristol-fashioned

This time seven years ago:
The imminent closure of Marks & Spencer in Warsaw

This time 12 years ago:
Along mirror'd canyons

This time 13 years ago:
Mad about Marmite 

This time 14 years ago:
Komorowski wins second round of Presidential elections?

This time 15 years ago:
A beautiful summer dusk in Jeziorki

This time 15 years ago:
Classic cars, London and Warsaw

TriCity miscellany

Little more than a fishing village before it became Poland's access to the Baltic in the inter-war years, Gdynia was filling up with modernist architecture by the time Germany invaded. Below: public-sector building currently hosting the local tourist-information office on the ground floor and social security offices above.

Below: angular modernist apartment building on the corner of ulica Armii Krajowej and plac Grunwaldzki, nearer the beaches.

Below: modernist apartment building, on the corner of ul. 10 lutego and ul. 3 maja.

On from Gdynia to Gdańsk by train. Below: passing through Gdańsk Oliwa station. The original waiting room today serves as a bistro – hot food and drink available on the platform. Opened in 1870 and refurbished in 2014, leaving many original features such as the tiling and the wooden platform roof, the station is served by InterCity trains from Warsaw. As such, it is well located for the beach (just over 2.5km, served by trams to Jelitkowo).

In Gdańsk for the sights. Below: the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre, formerly the old town hall. Designed by Antonis van Obberghen as the Spanish Armada was sailing to England (1588). The Flemish architect was also responsible for Gdański's Old Armoury (now the Fine Arts Academy, as seen in this post), and the extension of Toruń's Gothic town hall.

Below: ulica Piwna (lit. 'Beery Street'), looking north. The holiday season is already in full swing.

Below: the Court of the Millers' Guild. Visible behind it to the left is the Great Mill of Gdańsk, dating back to the 14th century.

Below: a slice of northern Europe. I reiterate the words of Jonathan Meades – Europe's real divide is not east-west; it is north-south. Gdańsk has more in common with Amsterdam, Hamburg and Helsinki than with Varna, Constanta or Split. 

Left: the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of the largest brick-built churches in the world. Interestingly, the church hosted both Lutheran and Catholic services for decades before becoming entirely Lutheran in 1572 – and reverting to Catholicism in 1945.

Below: seen outside a Gdańsk shop a Nefryt TV set, manufactured in the mid-1960s by Warszawskie Zakłady Telewizyjne. Its insides are filled with toys representing children's TV shows of that era. We see, for example, Bolek i Lolek, Koziołek Matołek, Reksio and Tytus.

This time last year:
Footpath between Widok and Chynów station is opened

This time two years ago:
Summertime, and the living is lazy

This time three years ago:
Thoughts occasioned by the picking of fruit

This time five years ago:
First half of 2019 - health in numbers

This time six years ago:
Key Performance Indicators - health - first half 2018

This time seven years ago:
Three and half years of health and fitness data

This time eight years ago:
First half of 2016 health & fitness in numbers

This time nine years ago:
Venus, Jupiter – auspices

This time ten years ago:
Down the line from York

This time 11 years ago:
Cider – at last available in Poland

This time 12 years ago:
Despondency on Puławska

This time 13 years ago:
Stalking the stork

This time 15 years ago:
Late-June lightning

Tadeusz Lesisz – the exhibition

It's quite something to see the name of one's father-in-law in large letters on the front of a national museum! To Gdynia on a family trip for the opening of an exhibition dedicated to the life and times of Tadeusz Lesisz, naval officer and architect. The exhibition will be on for six months, right up to the end of this year, taking in the 15th anniversary of his death. [My obituary of Tadeusz Lesisz is here.]

Left: Aleksander Gosk, deputy director of the Polish Naval Museum in Gdynia, making the opening speech at the event. Mr Gosk made the point that Tadeusz Lesisz was a real-life Private Ryan, in that all three of his brothers were killed during the war. Below: my wife Barbara, Tadeusz's younger daughter, takes guests around the exhibition; to her right are pre-war photographs of Tadeusz's brothers, Edward, Edmund and Feliks. Two were murdered by the Soviets at Katyń, one was murdered by the Nazis. Edmund's Virtuti Militari (Poland's highest military decoration), is on display, which he was posthumously awarded for leading the only Polish attack into the territory of the Third Reich during the September 1939 campaign.
 

Below: Barbara in front of a post-war photo of her father, by then Lieutenant-Commander, and a map with the main campaigns in which he took part, and his medals. He was the artillery officer on board the ORP Dragon during the Normandy campaign, shelling German gun emplacements on the shore, before it was sunk by a German manned torpedo. During the heroic defence of Cowes on the Isle of Wight on 4-5 May 1942, the fierce anti-aircraft fire from the ORP Błyskawica that he directed kept the town and its docks from suffering as badly as might have been feared. He was also artillery officer on the Blyskawica during the Allied landings in North Africa, Operation Torch, where the the ship was hit by a German bomb, resulted in many killed and wounded. 

The exhibition covers the early years of Tadeusz Lesisz (born 10 February 1918), the youngest of 13 (and nine surviving) children of Franciszek and Wiktoria Lesisz. He entered the Polish cadet corp and by the outbreak of WW2 was a cadet officer in the Polish Navy, assigned to the ORP Burza, which along with other Polish naval units was attached to the Royal Navy, alongside which the Polish sailors fought, from the beginning of the war to its end. By 1941, he was the artillery officer on the ORP Błyskawica.

Left: another emotional moment; the ensign from the ORP Błyskawica which draped Tadeusz Lesisz's coffin at his funeral service. His grandson Edmund looks on. He would have been proud of the work his daughter has put into keeping his memory alive – in Poland, as well as on the Isle of Wight, and with the Atlantic and Arctic convoys.

Below: the ORP Błyskawica. The museum laid on a special friends-and-families tour for those who had attended the opening of the exhibition, the highlight of which was visiting the ship's upper superstructure, including the bridge and the gunnery control centre.

Below: the gunnery control centre, with Admiralty Fire Control Clock to the left. It was from here that Tadeusz Lesisz would command the ship's guns.

Below: on the bridge, Moni poses by the ship's wheel.

As we stepped off the Błyskawica, the most intense deluge opened up; it was only 400 metres to our hotel but we got soaked to the skin. Given that I travel light and had no change of clothes, I had to blast myself with the hotel-room hair dryer to be in a state to attend the dinner that took place in the restaurant above the museum.

The exhibition is beautifully and clearly laid out (outstanding design and execution), and though I've dwelt on Tadeusz Lesisz's wartime service, it also shows his post-war work as an architect in England, reproducing some of his designs for schools, hospitals and churches across the North-West. The exhibition also stresses his engagement with the Polish community in the UK, ex-combatants' associations, and his support for the Solidarity movement in Poland, especially after martial law. An exhibition of this kind shows the lives of the people behind institutions such as the Polish navy, and the wealth of materials from his life that have been brought back to Poland, serving to show this heritage, is the credit of his daughter Barbara, who has put in so much time and effort to make this important exhibition a reality.

If, dear reader, you happen to be in Gdynia this summer or autumn, I commend a visit to the Polish Naval Museum and the ORP Błyskawica.

This time five years ago:
Jakubowizna in high summer

This time six years ago:
Warsaw's Raffles Hotel opens

This time nine years ago:
The ballad of Heniek and Ziutek

This time 10 years ago:
Yorkshire's yellow bicycles

This time 15 years ago:
Horse-drawn in the Tatras

This time 16 years ago:
Rain, wind and fire

This time 17 years ago:
The Road beckons

A new path to Krężel

Early this morning I had the following dream: I was walking through a dark forest, between Chynów and Piekut at night. Through the trees I see a bright light near ground level. I approach it. It's clearly not a beam from a focused source, but a glowing orb -– brilliantly white light. It is about a metre and half in diameter and hovering just above the ground, bobbing slightly... I get closer, though I am mindful of the electromagnetic radiation associated with these objects. I'm about 30 metres away when suddenly it just whooshes off vertically upwards through the trees and into the night sky. I'm left there wondering what it could have been, when I hear two men approaching from the right. Soldiers, American soldiers. In uniform. They speak to me in friendly voices, introducing themselves as being from the Cognitive Resources Unit... The dream fades...

It's not yet 5am, but broad daylight outside. I open the roller blinds, make a coffee, catch up with the news on the BBC World Service. A large tuna sandwich and I'm off – at least to see in daylight the very spot I had just dreamt about. I head for Dąbrowa Duża and Gaj Żelechowski, passing between the two villages, aiming for the unasphalted track between Chynów and Piekut. After about an hour of walking, I get to the place in my dream. And right there, I find a new path, one I'd never taken before, indeed, one I hadn't even noticed before. I decide to take it in the hope that it will continue south reaching Krężel, from where I can catch a train home.

Below: sylvian bliss. It's good to be in the forest shade; around 8am and its already uncomfortably hot in the direct sun, even wearing just one layer. Caution: ticks. 

Below: "When you come to a fork in the road – take it!" (Y. Berra). One path will get me to Krężel station in time for the next train. The other one will lead me away from the station and result in a wasted hour waiting for the next train...

Below: a moment of satisfaction – my navigation skills through the forest have not let me down. I will make it in time with about six or seven minutes in hand.

Below: I board the train back to Chynów, my ticket purchased on my Koleje Mazowiekie app for 2.73zl (54p). Having started at Warka, three stops back down the line, the train's still empty. It will be chock-full of commuters by the time it gets to Jeziorki.

I alight from the train one stop along in Chynów, where a fair crowd of commuters is waiting. Twelve minutes later I'm home, in good time for the working day, having racked up 13,000 paces in under two hours. At home, I take off my trousers and check my legs for ticks, as I do after forest walks. And indeed, there's one, marching up my left thigh; caught it before it could drill into my skin and inject bacteria-laden saliva into my bloodstream.

This time last year:
Mutineers march on Moscow

This time five years ago:
Lifelong brand ambassador
[as if to prove the point, I wore these boots on my walk today.]

This time seven years ago:
How much for locally grown strawberries?

This time eight years ago:
Zamość - the beautiful, must-visit town of Poland's east

This time nine years ago:
Voting closes in citizens' participatory budget 

This time ten years ago:
Beginning of the end of PO [Civic Platform]

This time 11 years ago:
Where's the beef? Fillet steak in Warsaw

This time 12 years ago:
W-wa Zachodnia spruced up for the football, W-wa Stadion reopened

This time 14 years ago:
Literature and biology

This time 16 years ago:
Old Nysa van spotted in Grabów

This time 17 years ago:
The oats in the neighbouring field rise high

Mindfulness, exercise, diet and health

A few weeks ago, my brother sent me a link to a book by Ellen Langer, Mindful Body. I hadn't heard of Prof Langer, but I was familiar with some of her research, in particular the Philadelphia chambermaids experiment. In this, 84 hotel employees were divided into two groups; one was told that a day's work – cleaning 16 rooms, making 16 beds, lifting, pushing, carrying – was the equivalent of an intense daily workout in a gym. The other group, the control, carried on normally without this information. The researchers measured the maids' body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, blood pressure, weight and body mass index. "All of these indicators matched the maids' perceived amount of exercise, rather than their actual amount of exercise." Once the women mindset had accepted that they were actually exercising intensely, "there was a decrease in their weight, waist-to-hip ratio, and a 10% drop in blood pressure."

I've now watched several interviews and podcasts with Prof Langer from over the years, and it confirms what I've long believed; that mind and body are one, and the mind has the power to heal or accelerate healing. As I've written here before, if you believe in the power of belief, you can heal yourself to a far greater degree than modern medical science would give credit for. Healthcare professionals and the pharmaceutical industry would have you believe in them more than any flaky woo-woo pre-scientific witchdoctorism.

Earlier this month, the UK lost a great broadcaster, Dr Michael Mosley, presenter of Just One Thing. He died, apparently of heat-stroke, while out walking on a Greek island. His BBC Radio 4 programmes focused on one thing that can improve your health outcome if introduced into your daily habits – be it glugging olive oil, reading a poem aloud, Nordic walking, holding the plank, or high-intensity interval training, to name but a few. 

The plank episode gave me cause for reflection. If holding the plank for two minutes a day reduces your blood pressure, then holding it for six and half minutes a day should be even better, right? Or is it just the belief that holding the plank reduces blood pressure reduce blood pressure – or are both factors at play here?

Tracking exercises (something I've been doing daily since 1 January 2014) also works. I am motivated to 'beat last year' – the only person I'm competing against is the younger (65-year-old) version of me. Looking across the seven sets of exercises, the walking –  and indeed the fruit-&-veg and alcohol consumption, I've improved in every metric compared to the first half of 2023.

An old family joke was my mother's book Think Yourself Slimmer – which she interpreted as an alternative to cutting out cakes and biscuits from her diet or doing the most meagre of exercises. Yet there might have been something there; her belief in the power of the mind over body might have contributed to her reaching the age of 88, despite a total lack of exercise or inability to resist sweet and starchy foodstuffs.

Meanwhile, my father exhibited the two key features of mindfulness throughout his life – instinctively. Number one – he observed. He was, to use Prof Langer's term, noticing. He would notice things around him, all the time. Number two – he was curious, he was ever keen to learn (one of the last words he ever wrote, found on a Post-It note by his bed, was 'quantum supremacy'.) 

Back to Prof Langer. Listening to her is like having my personal theories, built up over decades, confirmed by high authority. "YES!" I feel like shouting out. "YOU ARE SO RIGHT!" She defines 'mindfulness' not as meditation, but as being aware of being aware. Mindfulness is not about detaching yourself from reality, but about being in the moment, observant, perceptive, attentive. 

As I said, I've watched several interviews with Prof Langer. She's a well-practiced public speaker, and gets her points across in a way that are easy to absorb. Of all of these, I'd say this is the best; here she is being interviewed by Steve 'Freakonomics' Levitt. Highly recommended!

And yet I intuit that there's even more than Prof Langer says. Being consciously grateful for your good health is part of the cycle. And this leads to the spiritual dimension. Because if you are grateful, you must be expressing gratitude towards someone or something. Mindfulness includes never taking your blessings for granted, never allowing yourself to become complacend. And quantum luck? The idea that you can will an outcome by collapsing some wave function or other? That you can avoid misfortune by precluding the possibility? It's not just about expecting the unexpected, but precluding the unconsidered mishap by considering it. A timeline collapses. The very verge of magical thinking – physical effect without physical cause. Not something mainstream medical science is keen on.

This time last year:
Blasted!

This time six years ago:
My new used laptop
[Six years on, it's still fine albeit without a battery; I can no longer source a new one. But it works fine when connected to the mains.]

This time nine years ago:
Face to face with Mr Hare

This time 11 years ago:
Central Warsaw vistas

This time 12 years ago:
Future of urban motoring?
[Sadly not. It proved to be V8-powered two-tonne SUVs for dragging lazy lard-arses into town]

This time 14 years ago:
On foot to Limanowa

This time 16 years ago:
Crumbling neo-classicism in Grabów

This time 17 years ago:
Bike ride into deepest Mazovia