“I was coerced into a rubber straitjacket”

ONE advantage of middle age is that by the time you’ve reached it, you’ve learnt to differentiate between those activities you feel obliged to enjoy and those you actually find pleasurable.

You’re also less suggestible; five years ago, for example, my sister persuaded me that I’d love hobi-catting (no, me neither at the time). While she enthused — no thrill quite like it, such a rush etc — I felt a queasiness expand in my solar plexus that after a few seconds, registered as a kind of visceral thud. I ignored it and did as I was told. I was coerced into a rubber straitjacket, strapped into a harness and dangled off a pole over the side of a hobi-cat — a small unstable sea vessel that I, (on the pole), was supposed to stabilise. My sister sat on the deck whooping while I was smacked about by freezing black sea for 40 minutes.

I’m finely tuned now, to solar plexus thudding but even without it, something you enjoy doing is easy to spot. You want to do it. You don’t need anyone to point out what the benefits of doing it (no thrill quite like it etc) might be.