Ann Barrowclough reflects on New Year resolutions, both pleasurable and daunting.
Aqua-Jogging round the big dive pool at Moana Pool, I wondered what fellow joggers who weren't engaged in fascinating conversations two abreast, requiring us others to swerve past, were thinking.
When one woman hailed a newly arrived gentleman, telling all within earshot that she'd only been twice since New Year it made me congratulate myself that I had in fact been twice in the past two days, had renewed my subscription and arranged to go regularly with a swimmer friend three times a week.
This is in keeping with No 1 of my New Year's resolutions: build up strength, fitness and energy, while acknowledging that 2014 and 2015 had been write-offs resolution-wise due to ill health, first my husband's, then mine.
With my husband's admission to long-term hospital care, I have developed some new skills: going to the movies on my own without feeling an utter social cripple and removing most lids off jars.
I still lack the ability to replace washers and fuses, start a petrol mower without flooding it or back caravans and trailers.
These skills "I picked up in the army'' (i.e. compulsory military training) are not to be scorned by us girls.
A good man has his uses.
To implement resolution one, others come into play: be more social and outgoing i.e. join a walking group, go back to playing tennis (after 20-plus years - a big challenge), join fitness group and get back into biking and skiing.
An owl and egg situation arises; be social to get fit or get fit to be social?
Take a more active part in groups I belong to shouldn't be too hard: go to Amnesty meetings, U3A lectures, University Club lunches, Historical Society, Folk Club, Cancer Society, instead of finding cowardly excuses such as "don't want to go on my own''.
This includes go to more plays, concerts, and art gallery and museum visits.
Other resolutions include: take up some voluntary work.
I nearly joined Supergrans but having had a long-term social work career, would I still have the patience?
Probably not, but maybe one could help with reading recovery or settling Syrian refugees?
Then there's the sort out categories: sort out the basement, get rid of clutter: redundant clothes, books, linen, DVDs, kitchen stuff.
Then there's hobbies: do more writing, take more photos, keep up the garden, but who's here to appreciate these when the one person who encouraged one is no longer around?
Keep fit and healthy.
Well, thanks to the immense skills of the wonderful team who work or worked in that tired old building, DPH and up the hill at Amity Health Centre, the test series score is now patient number ABY 2869 six Big C nil.
We know Big C will probably win in the end, but hopefully not for another 20 or 30 years, by which time there'll be a cure, match over.
Thank you a thousand times, team.
As I leaned against the spa-pool wall overlooking swimmers in the wave pool, a powerful hot jet massaging my front and hopefully not stretching my togs too much, I came to the biggest resolution of all: to deal with difficult events likely to come up this year with fortitude and equanimity, a sub-category of which should be to use more plain English.
For those who missed out learning Latin at school, dealing with the probable loss of someone one has known since the age of 17 and with whom one has spent more than half one's life, with strength and a balanced mind when one will want to scream and yell and jump off a cliff, will not be easy, hence all the endorphin-releasing physical activities - great mood lifters.
If one day in the early hours you notice someone with tears streaming down their face vigorously bashing tennis balls against that great community volley board in the back of Fresh Choice car park, you will know who it is and why.
Hopefully, you didn't see them streaming down my face in the spa pool this morning.
● Ann Barrowclough, the founder of City Heights Childcare, is a Dunedin resident.
