On How to Read Better | Saturday 6 December 2025

_{Perfect crackling on this belly pork which came with a mushroom and tarragon sauce. Far too much for me, the leftover pork, soft and succulent, came home for sandwiches. From The New Inn at Minster-in-Thanet. Minster was originally a port in the Wantsum Channel on the Isle of Thanet until the channel silted up in the 16th century.}

Field Notes
Some kind of time warp happened this week as I surfaced on Saturday trying to remember what had happened during the week. Thursday 4 December, ostensibly my last working day, was always ambitious. I ploughed through what I could and then went back for days afterwards biting off chunks until the last task was done. I was angry and wired through the weekend, but eventually it was all finished and I was released.

Saturday 6 December 2025
Monkton s/rise: 7:43am

I watched a youtube video and it transpires that being a better reader is like everything else: it's about practice. Strangely, I hadn't thought about it like that although over the past ten years or so I have gradually built my skills in saving, knitting and activity.

Activity is a really good example: I lost much of my stamina and balance through being out of action for a long period last winter. When I started again, prompted by the NHS Active10 app and a conversation with a friend about breaking up a day's activity into ten minute walks, I could barely walk for, it turned out, fourteen minutes continuously.

I plugged away, learning about rest days the hard way, re-starting Pilates, finding some specific exercises to re-build my gammy hip and balance. A week or two ago I set off for the shops at a cracking pace, I had to go fast as the light was fading and I needed to be back in the house before it was dark. On the way there I was reaching close to four miles an hour, and still registering "brisk" minutes on ...

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... the app on the way back loaded with shopping, the return journey taking 28 minutes, against 20 minutes on the outward leg.

That change has taken place over about three and a half months and 129 days of activity. It's been uneven, some days I have traipsed miles carrying a backpack and pulling a suitcase, other days I've only been able to do joint mobilisations, stretches and balance exercises (and sometimes not the balance activities).

But I'm reminded by something that James Smith said about losing weight: if you have a small calorie deficit it's difficult to see day by day the changes that are taking place. As he was talking he was tearing toilet tissue off a roll, one piece at a time and illustrating that a small action doesn't look much but over time you have nothing on the roll and a pile of paper on the floor. He had a good use for the paper, though, I won't spoil the ending.

I remember starting, though, four months ago and how difficult it was, feeling wobbly as I went down the garden path, ...

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... dodging twigs and leaves and then working out whether I wanted to do the uphill bit first or walk the other way along the main road first.

I struggled and was embarrassed at arriving home, puffing and ready for a sit-down and a cup of tea before I could think of doing anything else. The disruption of recovering a Pilates practice on a back that was welded into computer pose, flaring up and raging at the prospect of two days gentle stretching and rotating.

It seems that I couldn't take it for granted that I would easily slip back into walking for thirty minutes everyday, thinking nothing of skipping to the shop to pick up something I had forgotten on top.

Gradually, though, after learning the importance and necessity of rest days, it came back, I was able to walk, striding confidently, and carrying a load sometimes quite long distances. Little by little my stretching and curling and rotating became more graceful and I began to enjoy again the sensation of moving through space.

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Wayback in the summer, the week before I started activity again, I began a hearthealthy eating challenge, so today 136 days of high fibre, high protein eating. This was much easier as I am a skilled eater, but it took time to settle into a routine that worked for me.

I like saying the days as they build up and noticing how long it's been. I'm aware that recovering alcoholics have a similar practice for how long they've maintained sobriety and I can see the value in that.

So now I'm moving into the stage where most of the day is my own, no longer held in thrall to the computer and online meetings and I can arrange my time as I wish, As I discard each task and commitment from the old days, I'm starting to build new practices for the future.

Reading is one of them. I grew up reading, my favourite pastime, immersed from cover to cover for hours at a time. A favourite pleasure was reading a book over several days when there was nothing else that I must be doing. I can still read, I have done it only recently, taking a book or a newspaper and, sometimes ...

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... to my surprise, reading and engaging for several hours.

It seems I must re-learn this skill much as I rebuilt my activity and using many of the same techniques: start small so you can be consistent. Aim to start and then focus on twenty or thirty minutes, maybe two or three times a week. I realise that it is the same as everything else: focus on the inputs and the outputs will arrive.

I discovered last week Hive's Creative Work Hour that takes place at 3:00pm UK time. One day I stumbled in, pleased to have found the access. Then on Friday when I was tired and had a tedious job to complete, I used it as the setting for getting stuff done.

There's a short Cuppa Joe session beforehand and then a practice hour afterwards, so a flexible resource you can dip into as it suits your needs. The timing is good for me, at least in the winter when it is dark by four and I have had the best of the day outside in the light.

And this, this me starting to practice writing five pages rather than three.

Field Notes
I think this is probably the penultimate post in this series tracing the long arc through a transition that had already taken years to build. Here, I was valiantly and blindly looking to future changes all the while struggling with feelings of intense rage and unconscionable fatigue from waking at 4am for so many days. I've decided to make a collection of the posts called Etymology of Change.

References
How to Read Better - Jared Henderson
Why No One Notices Their Own Weight Loss - James Smith
Rings of Saturn - W G Sebald
Creative Work Hour: Co-Working for Hive Discord Invite
Creative Work Hour: Co-Working for Hive Hive account

Previous posts in this series
On the Future is Already Here - Monday 1 December 2025
On False Starts and Fragments - Tuesday 28 October - Monday 10 November 2025
On Tea at the Tate Modern - Monday 17 November 2025
On Loss, Grief and Origin Stories - Monday 20 October 2025
On Pens, Diaries, Mrs Dalloway and Oliver Cromwell - Friday 10 October 2025
On Rain before the Code - Friday 3 October 2025
On Transitions - Friday 26 September 2025
On Bringing New Audiences - Saturday 20 September 2025
On Liminal Spaces - Saturday 13 September 2025