It has long been plain to my husband Stephen and myself that we have a lot of strange ideas from the norm. Some are minor and some are getting on toward major. When Steve’s mother was still alive, we arranged the house with her in mind, considering that she had problems enough with being very nearly bedbound for quite a long time. Actually, she didn’t do too badly at all considering that she was a full-blown rule breaker and had been for much of her life. It was amazing that she lived to be ninety-four years old in the end, it was totally remarkable for anybody, let alone a woman who had a regular friendship with alcohol all her adult life, never did any exercise and had eaten whatever she liked. She was a party girl to the last. Long before her last years, when her range of movement became limited to the being wheeled into bathroom in a wheelchair, Stephen and I had moved out of our rooms upstairs so that she could have our bedroom as a sitting room, rather than have all visitors having to sit at her bedside.
We achieved that by turning the living room into a bedsitter for ourselves bringing our bed downstairs along with the office desk. We also changed the dining room furniture bringing in a smaller daintier arrangement with a smaller marble top French table and chairs and moving the dining area into the bay window because what was the dining end of the room was now filled with our quite big bed and beside cabinets. We bought two comfy armchairs to spend TV time relaxing in. In brief we had turned the house into two flats more or less and everybody was happy.
After mother died everybody thought that we would move everything around again but we did not because we were perfectly happy with our living arrangements. It was much like a quit nice hotel room with a lounge area. Nothing changed much until lockdown when we quite often set up our training bikes on our turbo trainers in front the TV for a long training session or watching winter sports that we both love so much. Our attitude had slid to a point where if we were not allowed to have visitors. What was the point in keeping up appearances at the cost of our own strange little foibles?
So, it would not surprise anybody to know that with the final arrival of the much-delayed Olympic Games from Tokyo, we might have other plans again! Stephen and I are both huge fans of the Olympics and so this morning when I turned to Steve and said “Why don’t we set up the turbo bikes in here in front of the big tele for the duration of the games so that we can at least still get some training in and watch the Games at the same time”, there was not a moment’s hesitation on my husband’s part? This morning we watched the 234-kilometre Road Race sweating buckets along with all our favourite bike riders, shouting at them and finally applauding at the finish and the presentations.
It really wasn’t that much of an effort. Two bikes on the turbo’s stand between my desk and our easi-boy recliners. The circular marble top table is a little crowded into the front window but we are both happy with the Olympic movement. Just to allow readers of this page to raise their eyebrows just a dot higher; there were already two other bikes in the room, they are our best bikes that we have been riding out on in readiness for the day when at last we can race again. We have been despairing in that area but who knows, the tide may some day soon sweep us up and away to start line somewhere.
