Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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Living in history
Always keen to envisage life in a different era and experience stepping back in time I relish moments spent in areas such as Spitalfields, London, an area that is now best known for its Sunday market but was once the Jewish quarter, centre of cloth trade and named after a Hospital and Priory known as St. Mary's Spital, founded in 1197. The streets are still lined with old weavers' houses built in the 1700s, complete with their shutters, where some gas lamps in the street still exist and the only clue to being in the twentieth century are the bollards to prevent parking on pavements.
A glance higher than eye level and you'll be struck by the glistening glass towers of modern offices of financial institutions in the City, but casting one's eye around at normal viewing height it's a different world. Some shops make it their business to retain as much character as possible from the by-gone ages, and the houses are as though they would have been two hundred years ago, with Regency doors and windows, and dark basements below the pavement gratings. There are not many cars and in my mind I hear the rattle of steel wheels and horses hooves on mud and cobbles.
Same place; same buildings; different era. We turned a corner to find a tourist group following the trail Jack the Ripper. Apparently he killed a woman in the narrow lane we're now standing. We hurry out into the sunshine.
They lived their lives of romance, business, dealings and intrigue, of poverty and wealth just as we do. I thought of myself as a historic person viewed through the eyes of a 24th century person in the future. Anonymous we are, but they may savour the lives that people once lived in 2008. "How strange it must have been to rely on telephones and petrol for cars.
Suddenly I feel very temporary, very mortal and irrelevant. What am I doing? Why am I here? I conclude the bottom line is to be as healthy as can be, to enjoy my life and contribute something worthwhile for the enjoyment and health of others. We may only be temporarily here, but we may as well make the most of it. Indeed every moment counts.
:-)
