Just over a year ago I wrote this piece, “33 months of 5-a-side”, reporting that I had continued to play football at least once a month for nearly three years. For a while, in the spring of 2022, I was playing twice a week. By last summer I was only playing once a month. As I wrote in that earlier piece: “The games have become symbolic rather than frequent. They’re not really keeping me fit.”

In the spring and summer of 2022 games were sometimes cancelled for lack of players. I recruited a few people, including the father of a girl who was at primary school with my daughter. He worked for the Foreign Office and he and his family had been living abroad for a few years but had now returned. Since last summer he has been in charge of organizing the Friday games. Communication is via WhatsApp rather than email, and games are very rarely cancelled.

I have told him that the games have become entirely symbolic for me, once a month and no more. He has, essentially, taken my place, playing on Wednesday and Friday every week. My recruitment policy paid off. I have managed to keep my streak going, 45 consecutive months of 5-a-side football (or similar), stretching back to late 2021. I was unable to play on the first two Fridays of this month, but this morning I replied within a minute of receiving the usual Monday message, “Please let me know if you can play this Friday …” Assuming I make it through this Friday’s kickabout, it will be my 46th consecutive month.

I use the word “symbolic” a lot, to describe things that we now do less frequently than we used to. My son still goes to the youth club that I wrote about in this piece, “The Tuesday Minicab Service”. I see that it was posted in December 2021, the same month that I started playing football again regularly. For a while in 2022, while I was playing football on Wednesdays and Fridays, he was at the youth club on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That was most of our evenings taken up. Over the last year or more he has only been going once a month. At some point (probably tomorrow) he will make his symbolic monthly visit to the club. He always enjoys it. They have a pool table and table football among other entertainments. In the past they would often cook substantial meals, but that hasn’t happened since March.

Over the last year I have spent many hours completing quiz challenges on JetPunk, a site I first wrote about here in 2022. For a while, especially during the winter, I was completing 20-30 quizzes a day, climbing through the various Levels that are available to subscribers. I am currently on Level 75 of 98. Only 0.23 of 1% of users have reached this Level but my progress has slowed down dramatically. I will not be getting close to Level 98 anytime soon. Most days I only complete a single, symbolic quiz, to keep my streak going.

“Streak” was a “Word of the week” last December. Here, for the record, is how my current streaks are progressing, even though in some cases I only keep them going for symbolic reasons:

Wordle: 793 Days
Connections: 64 Days
JetPunk: Quizzes: 304 Days
Months when I have played football: 45
Repertoire (Months when I have played previously untried songs in public): 22