Ulysses on Deck.

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

“Ulysses on deck!” Sturdy Xenophanes bellowed, white foam breaking over the red prow of the vessel.

“A fine morning.” Ulysses spoke, the words denying the lowering cloud and stiff gusts coming in off the port bow of the ship. “How are the men?”

“In a fine fettle, with the smell of home on the breeze. They’re chomping at the bit, sir.”

“Three knots and our course is fine.” Talaimenes was the helmsman, reporting at a glance from his chieftain. “The fog is now much thinner.”

Sucking in a deep breath of fresh, cool air, Ulysses marveled once again at how the vessel rode the hard chop just as competently as the day she was launched. A brazen shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and made the sea sparkle and shimmer like tiny golden dancers in torchlight. Pulling his cloak in tighter, he nodded in satisfaction.

“So many years gone.” He was philosophical. “We have earned a rest—and our keep for the days of our lives.”

“Tell them.” The eyes of Xenophanes shone with some inner joy, a kind of sweet pain that no one could share in mere words these days, not after all they had seen and done. Ulysses regarded the familiar figure of his friend with a slight frown and then his visage cleared.

“Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?” He strode to the front of the poop deck and put his hand on the shoulder of the time-keeper. “I want to talk to them. Hold her steady, give them a moment to rest.”

“Halt! Raise oars! Steady! One…two…three…” Chromis was a steady soldier and a masterful sailor.

Looking back at the helmsman, Chromis gave a nod.

“All stop, sir.”

“Thank you.” He took a moment, to clear his mind and purge his lungs of old air.

Ulusses faced the rowers from the poop deck. Expectant faces looked up in anticipation and respect. Men once young and innocent were somehow different now, a little wiser and a little sadder. A little older now. A moment of grief passed over him, for there were too many missing faces.

Flinching from the cold spray, the wind strong on his neck, Ulysses stood there and tried to memorize the look of every single one of them. He would never forget this moment for as long as he lived.

“Men. I cannot tell you what an honour it has been. I am proud to call you my friends. It also humbles me. We have seen our brothers throw their lives down for us, and we have done it for them. No commander could ever ask more of his men than I have asked from you. And you have given your all. No soldier can give more for his country than you have done. I am grateful for my life, and your service. I thank you for coming and am deeply relieved that so many of you will be going home.”

Tears rolled down Xenophanes’ cheeks and some of the others as well.

Equally at home in the palace and the camp, loved by his people and feared by his enemies, his words were magic. Ulysses was master of every stratagem. But that didn’t explain the love. He was a fierce and cunning soldier. Ulysses had led them to victory, and every one of them waited breathlessly.

The silence was profound, even over the waves and the wind. He studied their faces, each of them, one by one.

“Sarpedon, the bold! Let no man ever say that a Greek was a coward, or a traitor, or lacked honour. Tlepelemos! Let no man say that Greeks do not do justice to their fellow man. Enyo! Let no man say that a Greek does not have gratitude, or give thanks and credit where it is due. Briseis! Let no man say that a Greek cannot be trusted or will not keep his word. Petrus, the noble Petrus! Let no man say that Greeks are not loving husbands, good fathers and honest men. Xenophanes, whose eloquence has graced this voyage with wit and wisdom. And you, Pollux, whose love knows no boundaries…and you, Antenor, let no man say that Greeks do not stand by each other’s side when the time has come. Gentlemen, I wish I could tell you what a privilege it has been to serve with you. Mere words fail me in this time of need. I honour you all, and I thank you for your friendship.”

For a long moment, there was silence. Then all the rowers stood up and shouted the name of Ulysses, as the ship began to drift, and then there was only one more thing left unsaid.

Holding up a hand and waiting for quiet again, Ulysses spoke with finality.

“Back to your oars, my friends. It is time to go home.”

The shouting and the thumping of oar handles went on for some time. He was inclined to overlook it, just this once.

Smiling the length of the ship, he nodded at Xenophanes. Then he turned and watched for the green hills of home, as the wine-dark sea broke time and again over the prow, and the waves smashed against the sparkling wet bow.

***

“So what do you think, Xenophanes?” The sardonic Frigattenkapitan Gerhard von Bluecher was the neutral observer from the Imperial German Navy.

According to his own account, he was just there from the future to get a little experience before going on to some obscure diplomatic post.

“He’ll head straight to the bar, just you watch.” Xenophanes was his usual morose self, but then it was his job to pay off the crew and Ulysses was holding back thirty percent for provisions, repairs, breakage, sales from the slops chest, and withholdings from future advances.

This was a kind of usurious interest against loans in advance, taken from the men’s own pay.

“Hmn. That’s why he pays you the big money, eh, my friend?” Von Bluecher was joking.

“Yes. I’ll skewer him under a pseudonym, of course.”

Xenophanes kidded himself that he was a playwright and a poet.

“Of course.”

That was the trouble with the ancient Greeks. While their pens were indeed mightier than their swords, their biggest problem was that the bastards simply couldn’t be trusted to keep a contract. That mutual distrust would be crucial in the times that lay ahead for folk of whatever era, now that all of humankind past and present was threatened by the time-travelling Eridanae.

It would come back to haunt them, or he wasn’t a shrewd judge of character, both individual and national. These people couldn’t hold a candle to a true German.

A German would rather die than break his word or become a hypocrite.



***

The Process of Writing a Novel.

(Niels Noordhoek, Wiki.)

“Bang-bang, three shots rang out, a woman screamed and her guts fell out, and there on the floor, with his asshole tore, lay terrible Dan McGrew…” – my old man.

Writing a novel is a process. It doesn’t all happen at once, like you just add water and stir.

My twelfth novel is up to 26,000 words out of a projected 60,000+.

So what do we have so far?

We have a murder, a woman screaming, we have an initial crime scene investigation, we have interviews with those closest to the victim. In other words, we have Inspector Gilles Maintenon of the Surete, and the trusty, broad-shouldered Detective-Sergeant Andre Levain, along with some new people, doing their jobs. They’re gathering evidence and investigating the murder of Muriel Ducharme, a rich old lady with four sons of disparate characters, tempers, and prior histories. Also, her beautiful niece Sophie was staying with her at the time. She had a cook and a couple of servants and according to all accounts not an enemy in the world, in fact you’d have a hard time finding anyone with a bad thing to say about her.

As any good cop will tell you, prior history is the best indicator of future behaviour.

(In other words, Louis seems pretty likely to finish this story? – ed.)

Something like that, — ed.

(My number one heckler, ladies and gentlemen.)

While the first chapter seems pretty long on description, at this point in the process, (there’s that word again,) I’m laying in sufficient groundwork to support a desired ending. That means that there is a fair degree of going back and forth in a manuscript of about 65 pages so far, with no chapter titles for reference, just trying to find some person and throwing in a necessary bit of ‘groundwork.’

This can included clues, something they said, saw, or noticed, something about their previous experiences—I just discovered one of my characters studied economics in London, U.K. for example, and at some point you will lose track. Even more interesting, in a series, information in one book can support some plot point in another book. For example, Maintenon was a widower in a previous book. In this book, he’s still a widower, or I would have to account for why he isn’t. Simple, really. Also, guys in a previous book can’t refer to events in a subsequent book—it’s a paradox because it hasn’t happened in their world yet.

(“Fuck, he’ll work in Schrodinger’s Cat before he’s done.” –ed.)

(Hey, — ed., Shrodinger’s Cat walks into a bar. And doesn’t.)

(And don’t be giving away plot points, either, ya son of a bitch.)

Approximately 30,000 words would be halfway to a complete first draft. Now is a very good time to go right back to page one and just start reading the story, keeping a good pen and some blank paper beside the keyboard.

Bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, I already know who committed the crime, how it was done, why it was done, why it was done in such and such a way. I know these people intimately, because I created them and breathed life into them and then they started to act like real people…perfectly normal, rational, everyday people with hopes and dreams and desires of their own. Right?

***

If I end up cutting a book, it’s like I wasted time in the writing of that material. Why not write just exactly what I need in order to get from Point A to Point B, and nothing more? Why not skip what some lady’s dress looked like, or what the wallpaper in the parlor looks like. I can add that in during the re-reading and re-writing process. The structure is only important right up to the point when the book is finished. After that no one cares, least of all I, because it is invisible to the reader.

They just got sucked into the story and can’t wait to see how it all turns out.

At that point it is no longer structure. It becomes full, complete, and a coherent whole. Each stated fact or event in the book contributes to the ‘truthiness’ of the outcomes in the book.

If it rings true to life, if people can see it happening inside their heads, then it has become a work of art, whether an author chooses or not, (and it could be a girl, too,) to express it in those terms is their own decision. (Or hers.)

Prior history is the best indicator of future behavior. Anyway, the books are all free for a little while longer.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/louis-bertrand-shalako

If you're still with me, thanks for reading my story.

Crime Scene: an excerpt from a Work In Progress.

A crime scene.

Dawn was breaking over the eastern horizon as the city came to life. Paris buzzed with the morning traffic. There were shouts, and horns, and bells, and the roar of bus exhausts.

One window, the one farthest from her bed, was open. Cheerful yellow chintz curtains bellied and luffed like sails on a ship at sea. Birds chirped and sang as they only do at a certain special time of the year, when they are just back from Africa or Spain and are in a rush to claim a home and begin another brood.

Muriel Ducharme steadied herself before attempting to dress. The room was chill after removing her night-dress, as she splashed water on her face from the bowl and ewer on the dresser top.

The clock on the wall read six-thirty-two a.m. It meant nothing to her, only that another day had begun. The habits of a lifetime were impossible to break. The doctor had once suggested she could take it easy and sleep in, if only on a Saturday. Trying it more than once, she had found it impossible and had spoken almost sharply to the doctor about such nonsensical ideas.

When she got really tired or had one of her dizzy spells, she would sit in a chair and doze lightly for a few minutes, or perhaps half an hour at most. Their snickers and indulgent remarks meant nothing to her. They treated her like a little old lady, and perhaps that was just. That much she could accept. She could still hear people speaking in the background. The maids and the cook had gotten used to it. They didn’t make a fuss or take much notice, although they might be a little careful of what they said. This was a good thing, for the help could be a mite too talkative at times. It wasn’t that she didn’t care for them all on some human level, but they must know their places or they would soon get out of hand. It wasn’t like she could ever really be intimate friends with them, although the environment a real house created was and should be intimate and friendly for all concerned.

She dried herself thoroughly, used to the chill of dawn after all these years of a morning routine that hardly varied. Changing into clean underwear, sturdy if plain, choosing which housedress to wear this fine Monday, noting the cheerful sounds outside of the set of three windows which admitted light and air to her boudoir, her mind was ahead on the tasks of the day.

They’d gone without coal much of the time in the War, and no one died or froze to death. They just put on another blanket or two and wore sweaters and coats if necessary. A smile crossed her face at some of the memories. It was in the nature of seventy-seven year-old ladies that their minds jumped about a bit, but she didn’t mind that at all. It made life interesting. That was important at her age. She had done without a lot of things, as had they all, which made her present fortune all the more bearable. As someone had once said, the only thing worse than getting old was not getting old. The best revenge lay in living a good life.

They were certainly lucky to have such a good house to live in and food to eat and beds to sleep in. They would never lack for anything, and yet people could be so selfish, so stupid.

She must phone someone somewhere and lay in the fish for Friday, for last week it had been atrocious. That fish came from Monsieur Normand’s. Normally she sent Eloise out for it on Wednesdays, however they would have to find another place. Not after the way Monsieur Normand’s assistant spoke to her. He was altogether too flippant for her liking. She buttoned her dress firmly all the way to the top and also habitually, found a loop of clean elastic ribbon to hold her grey hair in the severe bun she had affected since her husband’s passing almost thirty-four years ago. The dress, a faded royal blue one today, hung almost to the floor, leaving only the fronts of her feet exposed. It was almost a reflex to take up her rosary and put it around her neck.

She stood in front of the mirror, over which was a crucifix. Bowing her head, she said the first prayer of the day. It would not be the last. The world was very wicked, or perhaps it was just some of the people in it, and one couldn’t be too careful when it came to one’s soul. It was a sign of humility to pray, and to pray barefoot had always seemed the best way. It was different in church of course, all those feet with all those warts and funguses—sometime the floor was quite filthy, even her old eyes couldn’t help but notice, but this was her home and no one kept a cleaner one as far as she knew. It made her feel good about the day ahead.

She sat on the Louis Quatorze chair, the left one of a pair beside a small writing desk she never used, and found her stockings as laid out the night before by Sophie, her dearly beloved grand-niece. She was such a beautiful child and grateful to help out around the house, which made up in part her free room and board. Not that Muriel begrudged the girl, she was just at an age and what girl wouldn’t want to see Paris? And perhaps make a suitable match, if one could be found. At sixteen and a half, her raven-headed charge was a bit young for such thoughts but that was the way it was these days, all these newspapers and radio shows, and the posters in the metro all full of sex and glamour.

How would it all end? No one could really say, and so she prayed for everything to work out…

Black, knee-high silk stockings, as she could afford it, came next, and then the plain, brown flat-heeled, sensible shoes. Although this pair had seen better days she wasn’t going out so they would do. It was just her, Sophie, the cook and the housemaids today.

Her heart brightened at the thought of beginning spring cleaning, although it mustn’t interfere with the normal cleaning routine. She would speak to the girls about it and let them decide.

If Olivier dropped around near lunchtime as was his wont, if he was in the neighbourhood, her youngest son would hardly notice her shoes. That was one thing for certain.

Muriel stuffed her handkerchief up into her left sleeve and pulled the curtains back to ensure the windows were fully open. The middle one had always been stiff in the guides and she must be careful not to put a crick in her back or her neck, in spite of that she leaned into it and gave it a good heave. Up it went with a groan. It was early summer now and the rooms up on this floor could get quite stuffy as the house faced south onto the street. Big front windows admitted glaring sunlight, and in fact it was better in high summer, when the sun was more directly overhead.

The whole place could use a good airing as it had been damp lately and the towels for one thing were taking forever to dry. A person should be able to use a towel more than once, without it starting to smell, she thought.

She never could stand closed curtains, especially on such a lovely street as hers. The constant throng of traffic brought life and entertainment of a kind, right into her sitting room, where she could knit and listen to the radio or the gramophone, keeping a sharp eye over her world.

Snapping off the light, for electricity was very dear or so it seemed to one who had grown up without it, she left her bedroom door all the way open and headed for the salle de bain to complete her morning toilette.

Muriel had her morning tinkle, flushed the toilet and washed her face and hands with hot water and soap. The pipes gurgled faintly behind the walls as she snapped off the light and carefully closed the door.

They rarely had visitors up here, but proprieties would be observed, besides, it kept any suggestion of a rank smell out of the hallway and the rest of the upstairs.

As was her custom, she turned right for the servant’s stairs instead of left for the more formal main stairs. Her first stop was always the kitchen. She would stoke up the boiler, as she always said, and put the kettle on for when Therese arrived.

Pausing at the head of the stairs, she studied herself in the oval hanging mirror placed there on the wall for just such a purpose. Thoughtful, pale blue eyes with a hint of warmth and humor had always surprised her when she saw them. Her spectacles were smudged, she could see it in the mirror in the glow of the small wall-sconce. It was the most frustrating thing, but they were almost impossible to keep clean with crabbed fingers and the small tremors in the hands. The girls really couldn’t be trusted with such a job.

Is that really me? She had always wondered, but the eyes were the windows into the soul, or so the poets always said.

She had looked better, but it would have to do.

Gripping the handrail firmly, with her head carefully tipped down and her glasses firmly on, with the light in the stairwell snapped on, the grand old lady began making her way down the dark and narrow boards of the staircase.

***

Wheezing slightly, her temperature feeling slightly elevated as was her heart-beat, she came to the bottom step where she paused. The hall light was just inside the doorjamb as light spilled out into the front of the kitchen. Finding it, she turned it off as she stepped out into the room. The switch for this room was to the right, on the wall. She fumbled in the dark for it as the kitchen was at the back of the house and the dim light of pre-dawn wasn’t making much of an impression.

The silence of the morning was special somehow, also the fact that it would be a sunny day. They said it might go up to thirty degrees later in the afternoon.

An unseen hand hit the switch on the far end of the room and she gasped, hand clutching at her rosary beads. She stopped where she was and awkwardly turned, peering to see who it was. It was much too early for the cook.

“Oh!” Her eyes bulged in shock and belatedly, real fear.

“No!”

The first shot hit her high in the chest, going through her hand with its pathetic beads, and she spun to the left as she fell.

“Oh! Oh, mon Dieu.” She lay on the bottom of the stairs as footsteps approached, sounding cold and distant, echoing in her head which made whoosh-whooshing noises. “Hail Mary, full of grace…”

Her lips were moving as the second shot hit her in the back, with the angle and the convulsive shock, for this was a strong old lady, still with plenty of light left in her, and it flung her half onto her back again. She stared up in dumb shock, unable to comprehend, let alone believe what was happening to her. The pain came then, and with it, the reality of what was happening to her.

“Why? Why?”

There was no answer given.

“The Lord is with thee…”

The sound came of a pistol cocking.

“Why?” She gaped, blood pouring out of her open mouth, eyes glazed with the pain.

There was no answer. One final shot to the head made all such questions superfluous. The impact smashed her head back onto the stairs to stare sightlessly up at the kitchen light fixture, albeit the lights were quickly turned off again, and the footsteps rapidly faded on the stairs of the rear exit.

A long and narrow alleyway, home to old carts, broken glass, dustbins, and the occasional outcropping of tree or brush, led all the way the length of the block.

Half an hour or so later, the cook arrived, finding the door unlocked and with broken glass from a single small pane set up high scattered both inside and outside of the threshold. At the sight that greeted her eyes, she gave a single great gasping sob. Throwing aside her packages, she put her hands over her mouth, staring with eyes bugging out, and then she ran out into the alley.

She screamed, once, twice, and then again. Crying and sobbing and with her lungs heaving, she ran down the two flights of steps and out of the small back courtyard and around to the next house. She pounded on the rear door, repeating over and over again that she needed to use the telephone.



End of excerpt.

The usual disclaimer.

This is a first draft. The story may be subject to minor changes and possibly some cutting. But this is basically how I work. And the copy as it is seems pretty clean. My spelling is good and the grammar seems all right.

Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery, the first in the series, is presently free on Kobo as well as other fine online retailers.

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Redemption-Inspector-Gilles-Maintenon-mystery/book-kS23AvtcCESx-DhwNBJg9A/page1.html

Simenon's House.

(Flamenc. Wiki.)

The house pictured is where Georges Simenon, the great Belgian writer of detective fiction was born. It’s 34 Leopold St. It’s in some shit little town in Belgium. The housing is fairly typical of big cities all over Europe, and you can find similarities with buildings even in North America and in the former European empires in Southeast Asia. A murder has to happen somewhere, right? One place is as good as another.


While it is by no means necessary to have a floor plan, which some mysteries do, it’s interesting just to learn by looking. It’s what a proper detective would do.

How do the residents get into the private apartments above? These homes were all built separately, yet the norm appears to be an unobtrusive door at sidewalk level on the left side of the building. The business entrance is much more prominent. In my hometown of Sarnia, Ontario, in Canada, there are similar buildings uptown, admittedly only three or four stories tall. There are definitely stylistic differences, but in art form follows function.

But what they do have in common is a business on the ground, and private apartments up above, with separate doors for each.

Any reader of mystery novels can see that the layout, how people came and went from a murder scene, whether it was the victim, or the killer, witnesses, it all has a bearing on the outcome of the event, the case, and the book. How many people live there and who else has access?

Looking at this picture, it’s impossible to say if there is an alley behind it or not. For the purposes of fiction, let’s say there is. Where did it lead to? Can patrons of the shops on the first floor use the alley? One would think not. Delivery men, possibly…the reader sees where I am going. We can learn much by the layout of the place and yet all we really know is that someone was murdered there. As a writer, we have to start someplace, and in a murder mystery, to begin at the beginning is to present the reader with a nice, luscious, tasty victim, i.e. a corpse.

What prevents people from wandering in off the street? How do people get to the second level, which also appears to be a place of business?

Presumably the private apartments, which start on the third floor in this building, have some kind of locked door on a landing at the top of the third flight of stairs. There is the need for some kind of research, if only to visualize the simple movements, and to learn what is possible and what is not. Just as an afterthought, the houses may have had fire escapes, over the roofs. I haven’t decided yet. I’ll throw it in if I need it!

I don’t know for sure, but it is possible, or possibly there might be an external staircase on the back of the building.

Watching House Hunters International a few years ago, they did a show where they looked at apartments in Paris. It was the dream of a lifetime for the people involved. Imagine: to live in Paris.

It was amazing to learn that a half a million U.S. dollars inside the city limits of Paris, would buy four or five very small and oddly-shaped rooms, stacked up vertically inside a narrow building on a street with no parking for miles and cobbles right up to the doorsills. The bathroom was little bigger than a broom closet, and the stairs were more like the kind you would find on a schooner from the 1840s. They were narrow and steep. The stove was eleven inches wide…you get the idea.

This puts the houses in this picture into their proper perspective. Assuming one private owner, there is some prosperity in the picture. My present novel takes place in 1929, the year of the Great Depression, which affected France a bit later than some other countries.

Other than that, I don’t want to give too much away.

Swimming.



Swimming gives wonderful intangible rewards.



Swimming is a wonderful low-impact workout for the entire body.

In all honesty, I’m not much of a swimmer. The important thing is that I like it. That alone qualifies me to try and motivate others to get out and have a bash for all the right reasons.

You’ll soon see what I mean.

As a non-swimmer who took lessons for years, there is some real satisfaction, a kind of intangible reward involved.

A little over halfway to my goal, there is a feeling where the arms begin to burn, and yet I feel strong, I’m managing my breathing, I can see the shore going by at a pretty good clip, and I know that I can do this…

This afternoon when I arrived it was lightly spitting rain.

There are those who say you can’t go swimming when it’s raining because you might get wet.

Ignore those people, for surely they are misogymnasts or something. Some kind of gymnast, anyway.

I swam yesterday, using a combination of strokes, without touching bottom. I went about ninety metres the first time and about seventy metres the second time. I would describe myself as a non-swimmer for that alone—after that I need a rest. Otherwise I’m plummeting to the bottom, my sordid failures and lurid mediocrities flashing before my eyes like a blue light special at K-Mart before they closed her down.

Okay, so today, I did eighty metres three times. I swim to the next groyne (that’s a real word by the way) starting more or less where my shoes are. I go out until I’m in about four feet of water. When I swim, I do a modified dog paddle, with a two-footed kick, very slow but also very large—I make a thump like a ship’s propeller when I kick. I keep my head up so I can see where I’m going. My arms are under me, not out to the sides, and I sort of scoop backwards, both hands at once, just like a beaver or muskrat. When I just can’t do it any longer, I might roll over on my back. I don’t do a classic back stroke, it’s too hard. I burn out too quick. I might scull along with my feet trailing, and I have a couple of odd little strokes for that. It’s not a question of speed, but of using what reserves I do have as efficiently as possible.

I can do a proper face-down crawl, but synchronizing the breathing has always been beyond my ability. A crawl with the head up is faster, but I burn out quicker and then have to rest anyway. But I can do a crawl for maybe thirty metres. An excellent upper body workout involves doing a heads-up crawl with legs trailing. If you’re not kicking efficiently to begin with, this is surprisingly efficient and almost as fast. I can do a side-stroke on my left side, but the right side isn’t anywhere near as good.

In order to save my life, in water of relatively warm temperature, the odds are I could swim a lot farther than eighty metres. Draining everything I had, (and taking my time, and not panicking) I might be able to go the full 240 metres, grab a dock or a rope or most likely crawl ashore. I might survive, right?

Now, if I was lost and traveling across country, I wouldn’t try to swim even a thirty or forty-metre wide river or swamp. It’s too chancy, and you’re going to want to preserve your clothes. You might be carrying a few things to begin with. If you go upstream a ways and can’t find a ford, you might want to swim for it. A strong swimmer pushing a raft or float can survive a fairly long time if the water isn’t too cold. The raft allows you to keep your clothes and shoes dry.

In my opinion, and at least in my own case, that sort of stuff is strictly last resort.

Swimming is low-impact. Unlike throwing a ball, which might tend to pull and yank on tendons, or running, which tends to pound and punish the knees and ankles of joggers, there is a lower risk of serious joint and ligament injuries. I’m a tall, skinny guy, and without football drills or weight lifting, my neck’s not that strong. I have a long, skinny neck, some back injuries and at my age, every so often the knees, the elbows, the neck bother me.

Even walking waist deep in water is good exercise, although doctor-prescribed hydrotherapy usually takes place in a heated pool. Cold water is good for reducing pain and inflammation.

(That’s why you put ice on a sprain.)

Right now, my neck feels like it had a good workout, as did my arms and shoulders. Swimming is an excellent aerobic exercise. There is some sensation in my lower back, but I am far better off to work that lower back, in a reasonable manner. This pays off in winter, when I’m a lot more sedentary. My knees bother me a lot more in winter, possibly due to the cold, but in winter I’m not cycling or swimming either. You fall out of shape pretty rapidly. That’s just a fact.

Walking on a nature trail for a kilometre or maybe a little more, once or twice a month, doesn’t hurt me any either, although it does cause some pain in the hips. In terms of riding the bike, (which I’m actually pretty good at) my longest trip this year was about thirty kilometres. That’s not bad for a fifty-four year old guy with long-standing back problems. (And he smokes, too. – ed.)

I used to take pain pills, prescribed by a doctor. I still had pain, often a lot of it. So what I did was to stop taking the pills—and stop doing stupid things like trying to go back to work as a drywall guy, or a roofer, or doing something really hard like high-pressure water-blasting, on twelve-hour shifts, on call and on shut-downs.

All I was doing was punishing myself and not getting anywhere. I failed at all of them jobs!

I guess you could say I retired early, and now I do whatever the hell I want. It doesn’t pay much but I have my freedom.

You got to like that, ladies and gentlemen.