Here I am after finishing Couch To 5k

It is nine months since my heart attack. Surviving something like that leaves you in a contradictory state. Here’s an example of what I mean by this. I hardly ever think about my heart attack, and yet I think about it all the time.

I try not to talk about it anymore. That heart attack happened to me and most people don’t need to hear about it now. Enough sweat has been squeezed from that sponge.

I might have died, and that is enough to know. We’re not here for ever, but that’s hardly a spoiler. A brush with mortality is a useful jolt of perspective. As the song puts it, Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think). It’s always later than you think, something we don’t like to think about.

Savouring life can be about the big things, but mostly it’s the quotidian, the everyday (such as stubbornly finding complicated words to usurp simple ones).

Here are good things. A long relationship, family and friends. Three grown-up children and one blossoming grandchild. Having a couple of pints in a local bar. Or a Friday night whisky at home. Making bread, sitting down to write. Cycling and playing the guitar.

And reading, there is and always has been reading. My present book is the new Jackson Brodie novel by Kate Atkinson. Like many people who write a bit or even a lot, I have great admiration for Atkinson. Second best to being her is to read her novels.

How glad I am still to be around to read that book.

Loved ones still ask how I am, and the only answer is I am fine. Doing what I did before, or as much as is possible or sensible.

Define ‘sensible’, please. Well, I drink and eat much as before, although with modifications. Exercise is taken as before, although with modifications. Life is lived as before, although with modifications.

I was sensible before I had a heart attack and look where it got me. Now I am sensible again, only a little more so.

There are limits. I will never join my wife in willingly entering a cold pond in the name of health and exercise. Cold water swimming is not recommended for a heart that has stuttered.

What a relief to have an excuse not to dip in freezing water, not that I would have gone anyway. Besides in our circle it’s mostly the women who go; they love that cold water and are welcome to it.

Something I have taken up again is running, to go along with the low-level squash and retired persons’ badminton.

Some months ago I asked the physio at the cardiology gym if running again was possible or even a good idea. She had a look in her eyes, a flicker of recognition: ah, one of those, a runner who just had a heart attack and wants to run again.

Her advice was sensible, if not exactly welcome: do Couch to 5k.

This is a programme devised by the NHS and the BBC to get people active. If you used to run half marathons, you might turn your nose up at that suggestion. Isn’t that for people who can’t even run three yards down the street?

Well, yes, it is, and it’s brilliant. For unfit people who want to run. And for runners who’ve had a heart attack.

There’s an app, there’s always an app nowadays. You begin by walking, interrupted with light jogging.

Over nine weeks you go from shuffle-walk-jog to running three miles. I used to run much further than that, but the achievement of running three miles – and three times in the final week – made me giddier than all those long runs in the past.

Laura, a friend in your ear

You can chose your guide for these runs. I went with Laura, the original voice of Couch To 5k. She is the perfect motivational mate, lovely and encouraging, jollying you along through your headphones with each step. You can go with celebrity voices, but honestly Laura is all you need.

As a ‘graduate’ runner, I have moved on and now Jo Whiley is the voice in my ear. Famous, but no Laura.

It strikes me that we could all do with a Laura in our lives. A friendly voice in the ear to guide you along. To offer encouragement and praise.

To make you write that book or even to get you outside and in the garden sometimes. To remind you to put your phone down or to stop scattering crumbs on the sofa. And not to drink that extra glass of red wine.

Ah, I may have one of those already.

I’ve learnt a lot from my heart attack, and I’ve learnt nothing at all. Mostly just that it’s glorious still to be around.