Yesterday I went to a book launch. The book is about how to keep fit after – let us say – 50 plus. Now lots of books have been written about the subject, about healthy living and healthy eating habits. Exercise, fresh food, fruit, vegetables, we all know about this. The author, unknown, must have realised that he needed something special to get this book noticed. So, clever devil, he contacted an ex top sportsman, a celebrity, now a physiotherapist, and asked him to be his co-author. So far so good. There are pictures in the book of the two of them cycling together, in the same sports outfit. Well, cycling... posing on their sports bikes, looking slim, healthy and active. As if this was not enough, it was decided to present the book to the best known ex-footballer in Holland, and perhaps even in Europe. Thus they were sure attention would be drawn to this book.
The launch was indeed quite a happening, in the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam, with many elderly ex-top sportsmen present, as well as some younger gold winning medallists. It was fun to see them, even if they had to be pointed out to me as sports is not my field of interest. The place was crowded, we had drinks – fruit juice pressed in situ – coffee and tea, and a lunch with healthy wraps and sandwiches. Each of us was given a free copy of the book. It is a glossy and sturdy book, the lay-out very well done, with a big photo of the well-known co-author on the cover. On the back the same co-author with the actual author, the picture with the bikes. It was very difficult to take any pictures during the presentation of the book, as the press was blocking our view. There were so many reporters, sports columnists of newspapers both local and national, and even a representative of a TV station, that it seemed we were at the Edison award or something similar and dealing with film stars. We were of course dealing with VIPs and sharing a room with celebrities.
When I watched the TV programme in the evening, only the two famous ex-sportsmen were interviewed, the co-author and the footballer. The real author was totally ignored, not mentioned, not shown. So the book will sell. That made me think of Art. When a painting is beautiful, it only has value if it was painted by a famous artist, even if the experts at first could not decide if it was the real thing, which means actually done by the famous painter, or a fake. Even if this fake is just as intriguing and beautiful. But it is worth nothing if the artist is a nonentity. This has always been puzzling to me. Beauty is beauty, no matter who created that piece of art or that painting. If any of us would paint a Campbell soup tin or something similar, it would just go unnoticed as we are not called Andy Warhol. Perhaps a poor example, but you may get my point. So this book will draw attention and be appreciated and bought because of the fame of the co-author, presented as the real author who has cleverly downgraded himself to being a ghost writer. And the co-author has authority, as he is both a sportsman and a physiotherapist. The real author has no claim to such expertise.
The book brings us nothing we did not know already. The only difference is that its approach is personal. The author talks about how he took his 80 year old father on a sightseeing trip to Rome and how his father's legs no longer could support him after an hour or so in the Vatican Museum. How his father changed his lifestyle once home, changed his eating habits, enrolled for fitness classes twice a week and lost a lot of weight. So on the next trip to Paris he could easily negotiate the steps - 270 steps in all – to the Sacré Coeur without suffering a cardiac arrest. It is a workbook as well, with blank and ruled pages to note one's personal progress, ambitions, weight, etc.
Now eating habits and exercise – in moderation - , I agree with all that. But why would one spend one's retirement years wasting two hours a week in a sports school? Not to mention the time needed to get there and back, to shower and change. Why sweat away on machines when it may be so nice just to go for a walk? It is suggested that our health is in our own hands, and if we do not work out we lose it. So we can only blame ourselves for ill health, sickness, even cancer. It reminds me of some faith healers. They claim that if only we have faith and pray, we won't get sick and will be healed. And if we are not healed, that is lack of faith. Statements which I think are very controversial. We all die, even people who embrace life and do anything to keep alive. Fitness seems to be the new religion in a very secular world. Why go to fitness classes if one's blood pressure is fine, when there are no traces of diabetes and no cholesterol problems? And what if people rather spend their spare time going to see an exhibition? Play a musical instrument? Sing in a choir? The latter a very good work-out for lungs and heart.
The irony too was that the father who was the pivotal point of the book, was present, and had regained the weight he had lost. He was not filmed, I must add. And that the co-author had had a brain infarct, and the ex footballer a bypass. Which proves to me that top sport is unhealthy – or at least not necessarily healthy - and that a healthy lifestyle is not about an expensive season ticket to a sports school. I hope I am right. Time will tell.
The sun is out today and I think a work-out preparing my garden for winter will do me more good than sweating away inside on a machine, self inflicted torture which I would have to pay for as well.
Sport schools should have sponsored this book. In a time of recession, it might do them some good.
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