Reformer Pilates, My Phone, and Irish Resistance
02-08 June 2025
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Hello!
June has been so rainy here, bruh. We better not have finished our Scottish summer in May (it wouldn’t be the first time.) Good news for me though is my hayfever has been very minimal - I think my hacks are working!
This week, I pushed my comfort zone with a new exercise class, realised what it is that I like so much about my phone, and watched a movie that showed me how my school history books have been definitely been censored.
Happy reading!
Now That I Think About It
My algorithm is the technological equivalent to Sylvia Plath’s fig tree. Whenever I pick up my phone, I see examples of lives I’ll never live, people I’ll never meet, and ideas I could never articulate myself.
People say their lives were better before the internet, but not mine. My life became more expansive, more exciting, when I realised I could click a button and join a world where everything and everyone exists. Just this week I learnt: how to make soap from scratch, the reason why there’s not a road that runs all the way from North America into South America (the terrifying Darién Gap ), and the best way to cook teriyaki salmon. Sure there are horrors beyond my comprehension, but there are many more joys.
I can understand the lure of virtual reality for this reason, especially once our lives become more environmentally stressful. Yet, I’m starting to mourn the life I could be living, and the world I could be paying attention to, if I wasn’t on my phone. I have written before about the perils of social media, which only seem to be increasing, but more and more I can’t help but think, what am a I sacrificing by spending hours living in another world? This is the true lesson of the fig tree metaphor - each step down one path in your life comes at the expense of all the other paths you could possible take.
In the end it has to be about balance. Social media can teach me so much, yet I need to take that knowledge and give it back, pass it on, engage, connect. I could never be a real technological hater, but if I don’t put my phone down sometimes, I might end up something worse - a bit of a loser.
Reformer Pilates
The new trend in celebrity fitness classes has reached the North East of Scotland. Pilates, on a sliding board called a reformer, that uses springs to create tension to tone and strengthen your whole body. I ventured to a posh part of town to see what all the fuss was about.
If I’m being really honest, the main reason I wanted to go was to mess about on the board. I like my fitness classes to have an aspect to them that distracts me from the actual exercise that I’m doing. It also looked like it might be quite relaxing and meditative, akin to doing smooth and slow yoga movements.
First impressions started mixed as I was fleeced out of £15 grippy socks. No, these aren’t to help you if you have a breakdown, but instead support you when you’re doing movements that involve your feet so you don’t slip. At the beginner level this is minimal, but they were nice socks at least.
The class went through a number of exercises involving abs, glutes, and arms using the board and straps to create reps by sliding forward and backwards. My favourite was the end where we got to put our feet in the straps and do leg circles, it felt really fun and freeing. It did end being smooth and meditative too, not feeling too crazy at the time, but resulted in my body aching for days. The teacher was great and the music was fun too. My grippy socks and I will be back.
Art Corner
‘heavy is the head that spoils the movie’ - shakespeare
🎥The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006, Ken Loach)
I did get lost in Cillian Murphy’s eyes a lot in this but apart from that I learned a heap about the Irish resistance during the 1920s. For example, did you know a lot of the Black and Tans who were fighting in Ireland came straight out of places like the Somme of WW1? Horrible. There’s plenty of other interesting and important slices of British / Irish history in this that left me shocked at how this part of history was left out of the British education system.
Weekly Stats
Times that grief was a gift: 3
Piña coladas: 0 , getting caught in the rain: 1
Spiders I saved from certain death: 6
Mixed nuts consumed: thousands (top three: pecans, pistachios, brazils)
Empty notebooks: 40
Sweet peas: growing👍🌿
Next week on the rickleverse
I’m on the verge of something and it could be big, or it could take a little longer. Tune in next time to see!
Lots of love,
Rachael
