I Am Going To Die Today

“This is a really stupid idea” I’m thinking, as I leave my wife and child in our hotel room to take part in some friendly football with some developers half my age this evening in beautiful Split, Croatia.

Let’s count the ways this is stupid.

• I’m 50
• I’ve been a type 1 diabetic for 42 years
• I’m overweight.
• I’m about to have my heart checked for irregularities
• I have not played football in a decade
• I cannot control myself when I play and tend to push my body beyond its fragile limits
• I stopped playing because of multiple football-related injuries, including, but not limited to bilateral grade 3 cartilage damage to my knees requiring surgery; bilateral shoulder impingement a requiring 18 months of physiotherapy; Gilmore hernia, untreated because the op is not available on the NHS, which after a football match makes it almost impossible for me to walk for a couple of days; plantar fasciitis in both heels and oh, blindness caused by balls striking my face and causing retinal bleeding because of diabetic retinopathy creating fragile vessels
• I’m terribly out of shape
• And I have no kit, so will play in my jeans

But I heard of some football being played and I thought I’d check it out. As I walk towards the field, I count the stupid and think one lucid thought.

I am going to die today.

And I realise then that I am going to die anyway and that if I ever let fear stop me from living my life to the fullest, I might as well be dead.

So I played. And I loved it. I played some good passes. I did some good defending. I pulled off a neat backheel pass. And I set up a great goal, for my opponents.

As I walk back to my hotel, gasping for air, heart racing, knees in agony, I think two things:

“Charles Cecil is bloody good at football and he’s no spring chicken” and

“I’m alive. I’m more alive than when I started. God this is good!”