The old days when a person could reckon on a good long convalescent period after an operation have long gone by the board. The method used these days is to get you up and active almost before the blood has stopped dripping.
Mind you, this is nothing new. Women who work in the paddy fields have always given birth to their offspring on location, and carried on turning out the daily quota of rice with the one hand whilst smacking the new-born's rump with the other.
This is positive thinking, for the longer we don't use any part of the body, the more chance of it becoming permanently redundant. Jogging is a direct result of this result line of thought, but it is not intended to be an exercise to keep perfect our aging muscles, but to stop them disappearing down Memory Lane, never to return again.
Some people I have seen jogging have obviously reached the point years ago and are only on one sure thing. A heart attack, cos the only muscles they've got left are those that push their eyes out like organ-stops. The rest is flab and bones which they cultivated when they took to winding up their watches in front of an open window for their daily exercise.
When I was in my teens I used to go swimming in the Serps early in the morning before going to work. Summer and winter. During the winter, diving in the water was like a cross between getting a belt between the shoulder blades from Mohammed Ali and having a fakir's bed shoved up your swimming trunks. Made you gasp for breath while all your skin tried to climb round your neck to get away from the icy depths.
Now most of the chaps who regularly swam there were elderly men who looked as though they would have been better occupied supping a cup of hot tea in bed while they scanned the obituary column in the paper to see if their name was there.
The point is that it never affected these blokes cos they'd always done it. Never had stopped using their muscles and their resistance to cold water. Whereas I have, and if I tried it now it'd be curtains.
Use of the brain is just the same as the use of the muscles. If you don't use the old loaf, eventually you just can't.
Especially the section which acts as a memory bank. Retention of facts and figures has to be practiced just like weight-lifting. Of course there are things that the brain never forgets. Like the date of the Battle of Hastings and the word that springs to mind when a military band strikes up Colonel Bogey. But this is like the minute bit of gristle on your arm which is all that is left where a bicep used to be, if you ain't used it for a long time.
Mind you, it isn't disastrous if the memory don't work like a computer. These people who can remember everything they've ever read aren't always better off for it.
Remember the bloke who got the title of Brain of Britain when winning the final of "Mastermind"? He could remember everything he'd ever read but a fat lot of good it was to him when it came to earning some bread. He was unemployed.
The only fund-raising project he could conjure up was to offer himself as a stud to any lady who wanted a child with a super-IQ. A bit dodgy really, as although he probably got some work alright, there was always a chance that he could be sued if the end product didn't meet the Trades Description Act.
For all that, it's nice to be able to call on your memory when it's needed, and it can play tricks if not kept up to scratch as I found out one day at Heathrow.
We'd been seeing off our son and family after they'd been over here on holiday from Canada, and were strolling through the lounge in Terminal Three, when we passed a unit of the Old Bill, who gave me a very queer look. So much so, that I looked back after a few more steps and he was still giving me this eye.
Then slowly, but very purposefully he walked towards us. My first reaction was to run for it. I seem to have a well developed guilt complex as I always feel that I must have cheated should I ever complete a game of patience, even if I ain't.
This feeling of being guilty even when I haven't done anything must have come from childhood when we played football in the street. I was nearly always posted as lookout at the end of the road, and at the first sight of a police helmet had to yell "Copper" to enable the teams to bolt for it. Football in the street was frowned upon the law in those days, and a constant vendetta was waged between the Fuzz, who were determined to stop it, and the hordes of herbs who had nowhere else to play.
After hollering "Copper", I invariably ran for it, although I hadn't been playing anyway. Thus the urge to scarper when Nick Nick approached.
He said "I had a feeling I knew you when I saw you, but I couldn't remember nicking you so couldn't place you for a moment". I searched through the memory bank but no go. Bit awkward, you don't like to tell a man that he could be the invisible man as far as your recollection goes. He could have been the bloke who let me off with a caution for speeding along Greenford Road, and wouldn't take it kindly if I didn't remember a friendly gesture and the face that went with it.
"You don't remember me" said he. "Do you?"
"Course I do" I said "Just for a minute I couldn't, er, sort of, er, think of where".
"You don't, do you?" he insisted.
I said no I didn't.
There's a saying that a starving man's stomach shrinks through disuse, so be warned, as I hate to think of what happens to the bloke who has been celibate for a long time.
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