My right elbow has been giving me hell for some time now. Hurts when I
extend my arm, hurts when I bend it. Hurts when I clench a fist. The
general rule I've always applied to karate is turn up and just do what
you can, even if things are sore or aren't working; if you can walk,
there's no excuse not to be there.
However, Hels gave me a real "You've got to rest it, and you've got to
go see somebody about it, and although you're going to ignore me anyway,
you'll only have yourself to blame when you do yourself a permanent
injury and can't sail all winter" lecture a couple of weeks ago.
Got to last Tuesday, and at 5pm took a couple of ibuprofen ahead of the
7pm session, then got home and still in some hurt finally capitulated,
and decided to take the night off just to see if it improved if I rested it.
Obviously still went sailing Sunday. But there have to be some lines
drawn in this life.
Still in some discomfort today. Can't bear much of any weight on the
arm. Need to decide on karate tonight. In some flux of indecision,
knowing what I should do and knowing what I wanted to do, I did my usual
trick and flipped a coin; "heads I go, tails I stay home"
It came up tails. My usual rule with flipping a coin is not to simply
follow the dictates of chance, but to see how strongly I react to
whatever such binary chance decides, and then that tells me how strongly
I feel about something and whether or not to ignore the coin and go do
it anyway.
I was pretty gutted with the tails decision. According to the rules that
meant that I should have gone anyway. But instead, I broke the rules and
flipped the coin again.
Tails.
Now I'm really stuck with what to do. Moreso because I've broken my system.
The coin is mocking me, or would if it could. However, to borrow and
corrupt the undoubted wisdom of another, I refuse to be mocked by
something that is unable to mock me back. The coin is insentient, and so
is chance.
Therefore I think I only mock myself.
No racing this coming Sunday. Most likely heading over to Swansea with
Dad to look at a Westerly Centaur he's got his eye on. My main task will
be to try and curb his enthusiasm so that he doesn't just buy it
outright. Mind you, that was my primary responsibility when we drove
down to Chichestster some half a decade ago or more to look at a
Drascombe Lugger some bloke was selling.
It's not a weekend totally bereft of sailing however. I've got the
afternoon off work on Friday. There's a guy that is thinking of buying a
Lugger and so Dad's offered to take him out in Ondine, I think the guys
at Churchouse put him onto us because they're hoping he'll commission a
new one off them. All fine by me, any excuse to get out on the water.
Must try not to sell Ondine to him however.
Back in the run-up to our hosting the Olympics in 2012, the Mint put a
number of 50p pieces into circulation with the "tails" side of the coin
stamped with one of a number of selected events, sailing being one of
them. Every sailing one she came across, and they weren't that common,
Nik kept hold of and gave to me.
I thought that was uncommonly sweet of her.
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