Downshifting or Lifeshifting

My life couldn't be much different to what it was four or five weeks ago.

Robert Twigger, who I worked and played with in Tokyo, is now a successful adventurer and writer. He wrote Big Snake which was shown on Channel 4 in the UK a few years ago but his first successful venture into the world of writing came with Angry White Pyjamas (An Oxford Poet Trains with the Tokyo Riot Police). This book won the Somerset Maugham Prize and was later voted by Waterstones as the best Sports Book of the last 25 years. Robert is a lifeshifter and has written about this in his blog as well.

Some may think that what I am doing now is dropping out or downshifting which I may very well be doing. If, however, what I am in fact doing is giving more time to what I like doing and less time to what I do not like, then I am lifeshifting. I believe though to qualify in Robert Twigger's definition of the term, I need to be earning a living at it. I do not agree. I think if you can afford to spend more time doing what makes you happy, then you are lifeshifting whether you are earning more or less money than you were before. Certainly in my case, money is not important - it is not money nor possessions I seek but time and space which I have always considered the greatest luxuries. I have these now in abundance but a lot of the time I miss things. I think about the life I had. I think about my kids a lot, I think about my family and I think about my friends. I think about my dad and I think about Tim and Alan.

Today, I went to an indoor beach with swimming pools, jet baths, a massage waterfall, saunas and steam rooms. I was picked up by a lovely family whom I had dinner with last weekend - my first Finnish family experience. This is a universe away from my recent life in Ramsgate.

While at the pool, I saw some big people, particularly big women. I thought of Mike who, before I had left England, had told me I could look forward to the warm embraces of the local Finnish lasses. I said I wasn't going to Finland for that reason. I was going so that I could get away or as Robert had written to me, to "put some space between you and your present problems". Mike teasingly told me I would probably be surrounded by Burgermeister daughter-types - he's not wrong I thought. And I had thought this before now. There is a particular clan of Romani women in this area who are very large-hipped and who wear tent-like velvet skirts down to the ground; to assist them in shoplifting some say. Although, of course, they don't all shoplift.

Surrounded by all these big women at the pool, something Sandra had told me in Japan sprang to mind. Sandra was Maori and Scottish and was married to Ed who was originally from Western Samao. A massive bloke of about 150 kilos of mostly muscle, he was gruff and until you understood his humour, worrying. Sandra had played number eight for the All Blacks (ladies of course) and her hips came up to my chest. When, one day, we asked her if she wanted to join us at the pool with the kids, she said she couldn't do that. "Just my leeeg on its own is bigger than most of those skinny little Japanese ladies. If they saw me in my swimsuit, they would have a heart attack."

She would be all right here I thought.