Talking to friend Valerio about how clumsy I am, I said — without making a conscious effort at choosing my words — that if I don’t exercise mindfulness while taking the stairs,
“when going up I will stumble,
and
when going down I will tumble.”
Valerio was talking about having found a way to fit more tasks into his ever-busy day. He said he’d come up with reading work-related material on his tablet while out on his post-prandial constitutional. Apart from my concern that he might walk into a lamp post, I also felt that reading while walking would slow down his speed, thus negating the exercise element. He said the walking was done in a place with lots of room around (wide path, grassy areas on both sides) — he was presumably addressing the lamp post concern. Trying to bring his focus back to the speed factor for the walk to be effective enough as exercise, I said,
“I’m talking about the pace,
I’m not talking about the space.”
I’d offered to cast my eyes over an ex-colleague’s application for a traineeship at the EU. When it arrived, I messaged her, saying,
“Just nipping out to grab some grub.”
(London, 2021)
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