Memories of a loyal friend

I have a tendency to not really open up to people. I'll keep stuff to myself, avoid letting people actually getting to know me. In the off chance that I tell one person something, just to nullify that, I'll tell everyone. In my own mind at least it limits how deeply connected we are. It stops me starting to care. In a strange way I take a silly pride in this. I wear a certain outward stoicism, or an even more disconnected outward enthusiasm that I just don't feel. Work is always an example of this. I have a pretty good telephone manner but it's all just the same repeated conversations with the same standard responses and reciprocal conversations thrown in. I'm not really there a lot of the time. It always surprises me then when something actually gets to me. The big stuff not so much, but the little things. I started going to the gym with Eoin (Eoin has not died, on rereading it sounds this way) many years ago. I think it was the summer after we left Salesians. We met Donna, Ruth and Jacqui in the hall as we were wandering in. Ruth was painting. The picture is still there. Soon after we began regularly working out I started skipping. I couldn't do it very well. The rope was a little long and people didn't roll it up properly. I persevered, I finally got one minute uninterrupted. Then five. Now it's just one of those things, I don't think when I do it. I was forced to think and remember when Dublin Airport Security took my skipping rope. What the fuck could I do with a skipping rope? The clumsy fucks missed the two bottles of shampoo I had in my bag. Training has become a large part of my life, it's part of how I define myself. Since I started the methodologies that I have used have changed and been refined and changed again. I have eventually come to this point. For this entire journey I had my skipping rope. A perfect blue rope, of the Henry Cooper model. Made by the good people at Taurus. The handles were smooth with sweat and hand grease. Far from disgusted this felt like home. The loss I feel isn't epic and it isn't something I'll whisper on my deathbed but I have lost my favourite piece of workout kit and now I have to break in a new one. Farewell my friend, you're helping Angels improve muscle tone and coordination with relatively low impact workouts now. Via Con Dios