Do you ever wake up at 3am, for no apparent reason? We’ll I did last night and I lay there desperately saying to myself – don’t think about work, don’t think about work…and of course I did. After much wrangling over the things I had forgotten to do and a mental peep into the ‘really difficult’ pile, I decided there were two main things in my life – Family & Health (when I first wrote that sentence I put health before family, but I decided they come first).

I gave up playing rugby for my local team, Fullerians, three seasons ago. I’d like to say the main reasons was to spend more time with my family, but in reality it was because I realised it wasn’t just that people were running faster than they used to, it was that I was slowing down. I’m built more for comfort than speed anyway, but now I was getting caught too easily. Getting caught in rugby means that someone is about to slam you very hard either into someone else, or on to the rather unforgiving turf – where you will be trampled on by the pursuing herd. There is a great A&E at Watford and I owe my personal gratitude to them all. At times they told me something was broken at others that I was a wimp. Sunday mornings were about recovery and recovery became delayed until Thursday – only to start all over again on Saturday! Now I’m realising that all the training – ok that did get less over the years – was the very thing that was allowing me to not think too hard about what I ate and the occasional social drink –ok that did get more over the years - but at least I gave up smoking a decade ago. Now I have to think about it more and have to take regular exercise, cut down on the cakes and watch the alcohol intake. If you want to spend quality time with your family, and keep out of hospital, you should do the same.