Off the treadmill...

You know that treadmill, the one that you always want to get off when you are on it? Well, once you are off you realise that maybe it wasn’t such a treadmill after all and once it has stopped you wonder what are you going to replace it with?

Yes, deep thoughts (joke) occupy my mind a lot recently. Ever since I realised that my old treadmill was actually a stroll in the park. Enough of that though.

I dreamt I was in an Escher drawing last night, constantly climbing impossibly horizoned staircases to nowhere, climbing up only to find I was climbing down or sideways. I awoke in a sweat thinking of treadmills. It got me thinking – just why did the treadmill have such negative connotations?

I expect that most people associate treadmills with those walking machines in gyms. They’ve always seemed pretty pointless to me. Why not just go for a walk if you fancy a little exercise? Of course treadmills have been around much longer than man’s need to wear over-tight shorts and a sweatband. Ancient treadmills were used to move water from one level to another, step after step in a massive hamster cage contraption. Then in the nineteenth century farmers started using animal driven treadmills – dogs, horses, sometimes oxen – to grind corn or churn butter.

But it was the English who put the negative into treadmill. You could always trust the Victorians to make a potentially good thing into something to punish the poor and ungodly with. In 1817 the prison treadmill was invented in London. Its purpose was to “reform offenders”, making them work the ‘evil’ out of their systems. The prison treadmills really caught on and were introduced to America where, in New York prisons, offenders stepped-after-stepped on the mill for twelve hours a day grinding corn and rye for the whisky making industry.

Then in a complete turnaround of purpose, the early 1900’s saw the treadmill become a pleasurable way to keep fit and no self-respecting gentleman would be seen without a treadmill in his apartment. No longer the need to go out in the foggy streets to take your evening constitutional, you could even smoke your cigar and drink a glass or two of the whisky made from grain ground in the state penitentiaries whilst partaking of your exercise.

It’s funny how things seem to intermesh and cross over in a seemingly purposeless way. Grinding grain for whisky destined to be drunk on a treadmill, punishment to self-imposed punishment through exercise - and then in a historical full circle animals were once again put on the treadmill. With a revolution in pet care in the forties and fifties you could buy a treadmill for your dog mail order. No longer the need to leave the comfort of your armchair when Fido needed a walk, simply stick him on the treadmill and watch his tail wag as he padded away to nowhere.

Off the treadmill or nowhere?

Perhaps that’s it.
Perhaps we are all on the treadmill to nowhere.

I dreamt I was in an Escher drawing last night, constantly climbing impossibly horizoned staircases to nowhere.