The Running Man on a Bicycle

I was dragged out of my running routine by the head-cold that dictates that every step I take is accompanied by a bass drum between the ears. I anticipated problems with breathing as I prepared to run, but not with percussion. I could not return to the weights, as a recent snot-fuelled attempt had me sounding like a hedgehog trapped beneath the shed, so I went for the exercise bike. However, by the time I had decided to lug it from its current resting place – in the arctic garage, between the deep freeze and the tumble dryer – the bass drum in my head had been accompanied by a hi-hat in each ear and any attempt at forward perambulation exceeding the speed of a geriatric sloth resulted in some kind of trans-cranial military tattoo. Imagine – if you can – Cozy Powell’s ‘Dance with the Devil*’ slowed down and piped directly into the cerebral cortex**.

Another dose of synchronicity: the lateness of the hour can no longer be relied upon to bring on the night – days are getting longer although, alas, no warmer – and there, just behind the exercise bike, I spotted my actual bike bike. It seemed a whole lot more sensible to haul myself aboard that. So, I wheeled it out, donned my helmet*** and rode away into the distance****.

I am incredibly fortunate to live in a place that means that I can be on quiet country roads within minutes of leaving my door. Often I do not see another vehicle for miles around – although, when I do it is almost always a small hatchback (formerly mother’s and noisily driven to tears by the change of operator) piloted by someone who is clearly unfamiliar with the function of two of the three pedals, and for whom steering appears to be a pointless frivolity. These cars, on any other day unused to the rev counter turning above vertical, are usually wheezing worse than me. It is, though, because of this narrow country lane/automotive nutcase juxtaposition that cycling proceeds without a soundtrack and I am forced to contemplate the voices inside my head. I fear that, especially in view of cold-constrained faculties, even the slightest diminution of my otic acumen could leave me vulnerable to ending my days as a grotesquely articulated hood ornament.

Cycle runs take me further afield – it is virtually impossible to stay upright on a bike travelling at my running pace – which does affect my ‘baggage’. When I run, I feel that all I need to carry is some means of contacting the nearest paramedic; as a cyclist I am forced to consider the possibility of mechanical as well as physical breakdown. I carry my little repair kit with me: ready to mend a puncture with the best of them – although not to any great advantage, I must admit, as I do not have a pump. Back in the day, all bicycles had a pump attached to the frame and, like the strange squeaking noise from the back wheel, it accompanied you wherever you went. In those days, I recall, the tyre could be inflated with little more than an angel’s fart; now, with tyre pressures three times greater than the car, it requires either biceps like Arnold Schwarzenegger or an electric generator. When I head out for a trip on my cycle, my wife sits in the car with the engine running and the back seats down.

As my cold starts to lift, I will return to running, as I do not feel that cycling exercises me fully*****. By next week I anticipate being back on my trainer-clad feet when cycling will return to the roster of recreational activities and running will, once again, become my king of pain.

*If age precludes you from doing so, you can at least view the original here.
**I have absolutely no idea of what that is.
***This is worn at my wife’s insistence. There is an interesting psychology attached to bicycle helmets as, for some reason, motorists give you much more room when you are not wearing one.
****A very liberal use of the word ‘distance’ as I suspect that I seldom move beyond one that makes me invisible from an upstairs window of my house.
*****Naïve supposition that the worse I feel afterwards, the more ‘good’ the exercise has done me.

N.B. today I have fully surrendered to the vagaries of old-age and pressure-washed the bins!

My original ‘running’ blog ‘Couch to 5k’ can be found here.
Last week’s ‘Running Man on Being Antisocial’ is here.

The Running Man on Being Antisocial

An excess of alcohol and chocolate over the Easter break – please don’t ask me to define ‘excess’: suffice to say that my grandkids are wondering where the eggs have gone and my wife is sure that we had another bottle of gin somewhere – and the return of sub-arctic air have combined to make my first couple of post-holy week treks even more miserable than usual. I drag myself to the door, thrust it open and shrivel away, like a plastic bag near a radiator, at the first blast of wind-borne sleet. Who in their right mind would go out in that – particularly dressed like this? The issue of my running attire presses on me once again after, what I assume must be a recently reconvened, post-covid running group, passed my house yesterday, all neatly ironed, in unstained hi-viz, unwrinkled running tights and not a hairband out of place. They were chatting happily, smiling some of them, and not a single one gasping for breath. They looked as if they had all been waiting for months for this moment: whilst you and I battled house-bound neuroses, they collected lycra. There was a distinct lack of the secondhand about them.

I am reluctant to spend heavily on running gear because I am still unconvinced that I won’t just decide one day that running really is not for me. (Interestingly, it really is not for me, I have decided, although I don’t know what to do about it now.) The course and distance of my thrice-weekly lopes varies enormously, depending on how many other runners I have to avoid along the way. I hate crossing paths with them, as I am so conscious of looking like a convict who has gone on the run without his asthma inhaler; I will not run in front of them because I dread them catching and passing me; I will not run behind them because I fear that passing motorists may think that we’re together and that I just can’t keep up. I would love someone to offer me an explanation as to why, when I stumble into the wake of another runner, I always appear to be running comfortably faster than them, until the very point at which I move up to their shoulder, when I suffer the kind of coughing fit that tells me that I should have followed my first instinct and gone the other way, even if it meant trying to get past the elderly lady on the mobility scooter with the Chihuahua on a ten-foot lead. I cannot run at ‘school time’: whilst I am much too long in the tooth to allow myself to be bullied by gangs of school kids, I am none-the-less haunted by the fear of silent laughter.

Most of my runs take place mid-morning or mid-afternoon, when the rest of the world is either in school, at work or on a Zoom call, in order to minimise my detours, but I continue to zig-zag my way around the empty paths and byways avoiding any kind of interaction the best I can. It’s not that I’m antisocial, it’s just that I’m… Actually, it probably is that I’m antisocial – although if they had a club, I certainly wouldn’t join it.

(First edit red biro, second edit green felt-tip, third edit black Sharpie – a particularly bleak moment – final edit a cross-shredder and a return to what I started with.)

If you want to join the beginning of this run, you can find ‘Couch to 5k’ here.
Last week’s ‘Running Man’ post ‘…on the Time to Run’ is here.
The next ‘Running Man…’ episode ‘…on a Bicycle’ is here.

The Running Man on the Time to Run

The actual ‘running part’ of my day takes about forty minutes; the rest of the run takes considerably longer. Firstly, I have to convince myself that I am actually going to do it. This involves first going through all of the reasons why I should not do it: a definite twinge in the middle toe; a parcel delivery expected any time in the next few days; the possibility that it might rain; the possibility that it might not rain; a recently discovered re-run of the Phil Silvers Show on some obscure channel that I may never find again, and the necessity to gauge the current bladder status. It all takes time.

Eventually, decision made, I start to get ready: take a drink; empty bladder; bind up knees; don running tights, vest, shorts, ‘T’ shirt. Empty bladder. Put on running shoes – always double-bowed. Empty bladder. Pop in Bluetooth headphones, grumble on for ten minutes (approx) whilst sorting out ‘connection error’ and set up GPS tracking. Empty bladder. Open door in order to assess need for hat and gloves. Put on hat and gloves in certain knowledge that I will regret it within five minutes. Exit, closing door behind me. Open door. Empty bladder. Exit again. The routine is pretty much invariable, as is the realisation that despite the knowledge that it is all habit, I will regret not visiting the loo one last time at precisely the same time as I begin to regret the woolly head-covering.

I’m told that there is a close link between the pressing need for micturition and running. Why? Well, nobody’s ever told me that. I suppose it is the same link as that which lurks behind the curtain coming up at the theatre or the first chord booming around the concert venue. However recently I last went for a wee, it was always just too long ago. Some years ago, some friends and I went to a concert in a small, ‘intimate’ venue which meant that, for most of the evening, the artist* could see the audience. When the mid-session interval came around, one of my friends who was clearly almost as desperate for ‘the gents’ as he was to escape ridicule, leapt over two tiers of seats and ran down the corridor shouting, ‘Emergency. Emergency. Coming through!’ The already assembled ‘toilet queue’ parted like The Red Sea at the behest of Moses and deferentially let him through. Back then, I collapsed into the kind of laughter that sends well-meaning souls rushing for the defibrillator. Today I feel his pain.

On my eventual return from running I generally have a decision to make over whether it is worth retracing my steps in order to find the glove I have somehow contrived to drop at some point along my journey. Generally I decide that I will find it dangling from somebody’s hedge when I repeat the journey in a couple of days time, so I leave it where it is and, pausing for nothing more than twenty minutes to remove the triple-knot from my trainer laces where the double-bow used to be, head straight to the shower before the flies have the chance to settle. Thus the forty minutes of exercise generally eats about an hour and a half from my day – which is the perfect reason not to run if I’ve only got an hour in which to do it.

*Roy Harper, whose song ‘When An Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease’ is one of my ‘funeral songs’. This may, or may not be relevant.

Today’s episode was brought to you by a break from procrastination and a red Wilco ballpoint pen.
Today’s top running tune was ‘There’s No Way Out Of Here’ by David Gilmour.
Today’s Thought for the Day: If Einstein was correct, a stitch in time would require a very big bobbin indeed.

You can join me at the start of my Running Odyssey here, at ‘Couch to 5k’ or
You can join me in last week’s ‘Running Man’ post, ‘…on Stopping’ here.
The next Running Man post ‘…on Being Antisocial’ is here.

The Writer’s Circle #11 – Ulysses

“…You cannot deny that it’s a masterpiece.”
“I can and I do. It is impenetrable, pretentious claptrap. The only people that ever claim to have enjoyed it are those who have never actually tried to read it.”
It had been several weeks since James Joyce’s opus had last been the topic of debate at the Writer’s Circle, but once again Frankie found himself at odds with Penny – whose poet’s heart had been stirred by the lyricism even though, truth be told, she understood barely a word of it, and Deidre – who had read it on holiday in ‘The Lakes’ once a year for as long as she could remember, on one memorable occasion making it as far as the first couple of pages of chapter seven.
“It’s a wonder to me,” continued Frankie, “that he could drink so heavily whilst obviously having his head so firmly up his own arse.” Like Deidre, Frankie had also attempted to read the book annually for decades, although never with the expectation of finishing it. It was just something he did. Like walking on glass, it was only possible to find satisfaction when it was over. Frankie was always happy when he’d finished it. ‘Finished’ as in given up, that is – definitely not as in getting anywhere near the end of the bloody thing. He had no intention of ever making it to the end. It was like any other method of self-flagellation: you had to know when to stop.

For Penny it had been a literary rite of passage, a trial of intellect, and she had made it all the way through from start to finish – although, as Frankie was often at pains to point out, it would have made just as much sense if she’d read it from finish to start – and she loved it. She bathed in the sound of it, the rhythm of it, the feel of it without any sense of knowing what on earth was going on. And having achieved the feat she, sensibly, made no attempt to ever repeat it. She realised that the sheer incomprehensibility of it would start to irk with a second reading. If reading 1 had left her fulfilled although mystified, she felt sure that reading 2 would leave her feeling somehow inadequate – and she didn’t need a book to do that to her. Unlike Frankie, who knew condescending twaddle when he saw it, she still believed that the meaning was there, waiting for her to find it, one day. Although, as it was a timeless masterpiece, she decided that there was no hurry.

Louise Child, cast her eyes to the smoke-yellowed ceiling; she liked Penny, but tonight she wanted to strangle her. The writer of Modern Thrillers and one of the most obviously ‘educated’ members of the circle, seldom took part in these conversations, but today’s topic had roused something in her: a ghost from the past. She was haunted by the memory of her High School English tutor, an unlovely and unloved man, who had coerced her into reading both ‘Ulysses’ and ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ because it would be good for her. “They’re not on the curriculum, Sir,” she had whined, but he was insistent: he knew that Louise was going to ‘be something’ and, a man of great vanity, despite his penchant for tweedy suits and bushy sideburns, he wanted to be the man that she eventually credited with her awakening.
“It will help your development as a reader,” he’d assured her. “It will open your mind.” He was wrong. It had merely bored her out of it. She had decided to go on to study ‘English Novels’ simply because even a lifetime of ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ was preferable to ever having to consider Joyce again. She wanted everyone to know what she thought of the blessed thing so, she seized a moment of silence and leapt headlong into it.
“Ulysses is a pantomime,” she declared with uncharacteristic conviction. “A fairy tale. It’s a charade. It means nothing. It was simply a means of getting people prepared for what was to follow: throwing words at the page and seeing what stuck. It’s a child’s pasta collage dressed up as fine art. It is Brian Sewell discussing roadkill, simply because the badger was struck by Damien Hirst. It’s being too vain to care what people really think, only what they say they think…” She stopped, suddenly aware that she was centre of attention. It was not a position she chose to occupy.

Penny sensed her discomfort, but she also felt affronted by the strength of her opinions, so she abandoned any attempt to intervene. As usual, she regretted her decision almost immediately, but felt, none-the-less, completely constrained by it. To everyone’s surprise, including his own, it was Billy who first leapt to Louise’s defence. “I’ve never read it,” he said. “But I know exactly what she means. It’s like being expected to like Shakespeare, but you can’t, because you know it’s nonsense. Some brilliant one-liners, a few clever epigrams and what? There is no plot. Go and see it in the theatre and you get the director’s plot: you get what he or she thinks Shakespeare was banging on about, but try and work it out for yourself, just from the text and, be honest, your guess is as good as anybody else’s. What’s the point in buying a book if you’ve got to make the plot up yourself? Well, that’s what I think anyway…”
He looked around the Circle and, for once, he did not sense the hostility his contributions usually managed to engender. Even Phil managed a slight nod in his direction.
“And it’s just so bloody long,” said Frankie. “Like War & Peace.”
“Have you ever read War & Peace?” asked Phil.
“No I haven’t, it’s too bloody long.” Laughter filled the room. It happened from time to time and it always annoyed Deidre, who would really have quite liked a world without it.
“Are you seriously suggesting that all long novels are bad?”
“Not necessarily,” answered Frankie. “Although I would rather like you to name me a good one.”
“What about Middlemarch?”
“Have you read it?”
“Well I…”
“No, I thought not. Watched the TV series I expect.”
“You could count the ‘Lord of the Rings’ as a single book,” ventured Billy.
“Indeed you could,” admitted Frankie. “It is, after all, profoundly dull without the benefit of CGI.”
Deidre glanced at her watch and decided it was probably time to call an end to the evening’s meeting. “I think, Mr Collins, that you are probably being deliberately obtuse. Perhaps we should call it a day and bid one another farewell for now, before anyone can be offended.”
The Circle began, haphazardly, to rise and disband.
“Ah,” said Frankie, a triumphant grin spreading from ear to ear. “‘Think you’re escaping and run into yourself.’”
“I have no idea what you mean by that,” sighed Deidre.
“Nor do I,” said Frankie. “It’s codswallop.”
“He’s right,” offered Louise as she struggled her arm into the sleeve of her overcoat “and, as we are leaving, I would also ask you all to remember, ‘Longest way round is the shortest way home.” She smiled at Frankie, who beamed back at her. “Pure codswallop…”

This [Ulysses] is obviously the wave of the future, I’m glad I’m dying of tuberculosis. Katherine Mansfield

‘The Writer’s Circle #1 – Penny’s Poem’ is here.
‘The Writer’s Circle #10 – Phil’s Baby’ is here.
The Writer’s Circle #12 – Seriously Unfunny’ is here.

The Running Man on Stopping

I thought that I might stop the running diary: it has a very patchy readership – although that, in itself, is not unusual. Day by day, post by post, the (lack of) quality within my blog remains more or less constant, yet the readership goes up and down in a manner that I just cannot fathom. There have been occasions when I have published a post only because I have nothing else. It has often been a toss-up as to whether to go for ‘no post’ or something I feel to be substandard. I always go for ‘substandard’ – it’s been many years since I have felt comfortable in falling back on ‘My homework is in the dog’ – so I use what I have got, and therein lies my problem. The posts that I do not believe to be good enough often get lots of reads and lots of likes and I am always left wondering why? Perhaps I should write badly all the time. (Oh come on now. That’s below the belt!) Nobody who writes is ever fully content with what they have written, but I have from time to time published a post that I have been largely happy with and often, those are the posts that go down the toilet quickest. I clearly do not write for me.

Not being my own audience is my biggest problem.

I have realised that the more I ‘polish’ a post, the less it is liked. I use my own voice most of the time now and that seems to work the best. (I wonder what I sound like to you? I can hear me. I sound like a camp history teacher. Is that how you hear me? Hearing myself on audio or video playback makes me cringe and laugh at the same time – unfortunately, normally in the wrong order. It’s hard to know what you sound like to other people, isn’t it? It’s like colour. We both know that grass is green, but do we both see the same colour? Is my green red and your green blue? My brother is colour-blind and I really struggle to understand it. If he really can’t tell the difference between blue and green, why doesn’t he keep falling off cliffs?) I wrote a series of ten-minute monologues a little while ago about a fictional village which were perfect for podcast so, to see how they sounded, I recorded a couple. Oh dear. Imagine Alan Bennett’s more monotone sister. I cannot believe the sound that comes out of my mouth. It’s the aural equivalent of watching wallpaper being stripped. It’s like chillies in honey – whatever you are looking for, it is all there, just definitely not like you want it.

I know, also, that with blogging there is a knack to getting the title right. Asking questions is apparently a sure way to get readers. My whole life is a question. I do not need readers, I need answers. Perhaps if I just add a question mark to the end of each title my readership might go up (it can’t go down). There must be a way of fashioning Categories and Tags to pull people in. I should learn it, but… I enjoy the writing. I would like to have more readers – my wife finds it hard to understand why I devote so much time to writing this drivel for the weekly consumption of ten regular readers and four hundred algorithms. It’s just what I do. It is what keeps me sane. Wibble.

This morning I received bad news upon bad news and then I went for a run. I realised that running is now also what I do to keep myself sane. This running diary should, by my own ‘rules’ stop with the end of ‘Lockdown’, and I fear that it might, like Only Fools and Horses, perhaps run on just a little too long if I’m not careful. For now, as I continue to run even as Lockdown measures begin to ease (no turning back – you heard Boris say so) the running diary will continue, but it will have less to do with running than what is rattling around inside my head as I run, and when that little voice ceases prattling on, then the diary won’t be all that stops…

Today’s thought of the day: Colin’s First Rule of Decorating – the brush you need is always the brush you don’t have.

The Return of the Running Track of the Day: Jimmy Hendrix – Red House.

My first sad trundle into running started with ‘Couch to 5k’ – here.
Last week’s running farago ‘The Running Man On the Go’ is here.

The Running Man on the Go

Gradually, I have started to run a little further. Metre by metre I eke out my runs. I have no intention of joining James in attempting to run a half marathon – whatever the time-scale. I am quite close enough to the grave already. Nor do I have any intention of ever taking part in any kind of organised run. I run a little, and I know how boring I can be about it. Imagine an hour spent with people that run a lot. Or possibly two hours in my case. Also, the thought of the toilet arrangements haunts me. I’m ok when I’m at home and close to a lavatory that I am familiar with at the start and at the end of a run, but just imagine travelling any distance before a run and then joining a queue to use the portaloo! I am no stranger to the portaloo. I have queued for many hours to gain access to these reverse Tardis of hell. Nothing inside is anything like as big as it should be. It’s impossible to be inside one without touching something. Whichever way you turn, something pokes you in the back. Can you ever be fully sure that the lock is on? Who could possibly wee in those circumstances? Well, not me. Usually I wait for what I imagine is a reasonable amount of time: enough to have a (theoretical) wee, but not long enough to give the impression that I have had to deal with even more pressing problems involving – gulp – sitting down in there, before I wash my hands and leave – walking straight to the back of a different queue and hoping for better luck next time. I am not good with public amenities.

Imagine having to use one (and I most surely would) before setting off for a run. I would almost certainly have to loiter at the back of the field at the start so that I could nip back to the loos after everybody had gone (and there is little worse in this world than being the last person to use a portaloo). As my chances of subsequently catching anybody would then be very slim indeed, it would turn into a wholly ignominious run for me; lurching over the finishing line long after the last of the Zimmers, such self-esteem as I could muster trailing behind me like a two-legged dog. It’s really not an option.

So, what I am trying to do is to slowly lengthen my runs up to 10k. I don’t know if I will see it through. I don’t really know why I have decided to do it. Another little challenge I suppose. Having attained some kind of comfort over the last six months with my thrice-weekly 5k (occasionally 6k if I’m feeling good or there are chores to be done) it would be very easy to settle into that routine. I think I need to unsettle myself a little. I will push it on. 10k is a far-off target that I would like to reach over the summer, in the balmy evenings. It is quite a long way. At the pace that I run, it will take quite a long time to get there and I know what that means, but I live in the countryside; wherever I go it will take me past trees and hedges. You don’t have to be a contortionist to wee behind a hedge, and I’ve never had to queue for a tree…

The previous episode of the Running Man Saga ‘… On The Path’ is here.
The next episode of the Running Man Shenanigans ‘…on Stopping’ is here.
The very first time I ventured out to begin the ‘Couch to 5k’ nonsense is here.

The Writer’s Circle #9 – The New Chapter

Elizabeth Walton knew that time spent in regret and recrimination was always wasted. It achieved nothing positive. It merely deepened disillusionment – and bitterness was so ageing. She had been lucky enough to spend twenty years of her life with the man that she loved, and she was grateful for that. It had been a happy marriage; not blissful, but normally happy. There had been times when she wished him dead and times when he had wished the same for her, but there had also been times when she felt truly contented – and those were the times that she chose to remember. She remembered the day he had died – had been killed – of course, but not with any detail. She remembered it as one remembers a taste or a smell. The loss was a sensation to which there was no detail. It was emptiness. It is not possible to recall emptiness, only to experience it, and emptiness is what she experienced, day after day until one morning, several months after he husband’s death, Elizabeth awoke with the realisation that she had experienced quite enough of it and so she packed it carefully away – she had to know that it was still there if ever she needed it – and closed the cover on it, like a precious flower pressed between the pages of a favourite book, never forgotten, but seldom recalled.

Joining the Writer’s circle was the first conscious move that Elizabeth had made towards opening a new chapter in her life; she felt it apposite. She had seen the leaflet in the library and, despite never having written a word in her life, she went along at the first opportunity, because she knew that if she left it to the second, it would never come. In the event, it had been a very easy introduction. A local history writer – a professor from the local university with a bad wig and, from the look of it, only one good shirt – had agreed to read them a short section from his new book, so apart from introducing herself briefly she had little to do for the first hour. When the professor had finished his reading to polite applause on the hour mark, Deidre had suggested that it would be a convenient time to take ‘tea’ and everybody went down into the bar below. She noticed that most of the group drank happily together whilst two men – whom she later got to know as Billy and Terry – tended to hang around the fringes, unwilling or unable to properly join in. It didn’t take her long to realise that backs bridled whenever they came close enough to join in the conversation. She also was aware of the smartly dressed man with the boxer’s brow who stood alone, occasionally shooting his cuffs, and constantly looking over his shoulder. She felt that he did not belong. Fortunately she retained sufficient intuition not to approach him – although she was intrigued by the bulge on his ankle.

She’d had two gins – the first of which was bought by a man who introduced himself as Phil and said that he was pleased to see ‘new blood’ in the group. The second she bought for herself and had to finish somewhat hurriedly when Phil told her that they were not allowed to take the drinks upstairs with them when they returned to the Circle. Thus it was that, when she was asked to better introduce herself to the group, she did so fully and, briefly, tearfully. She was a little ashamed of herself but, if she was honest, it felt liberating to be able to unburden herself in such a way in front of strangers – like taking her bra off in a restaurant. (It was only the once, you understand, and she’d put her blouse back on before she came out of the ladies. She’d only done it to see if her husband would notice. He didn’t, but the waiter who found the bra under her chair did.) Anyway, it was done; there was no way of turning back. In her mind she had decided that it didn’t matter because she would never return here, but then everybody had been so nice about it, not condescending, just nice. Phil and Frankie had made her laugh, Penny had offered her a tissue and Louise had passed her a little mirror saying, ‘You might like to take a little glance in there,’ which was very nice of her because nobody likes snot trails do they?

Anyway, long story short and all of that, the rest of the session really became just a little bit of a chat, mostly about books: they asked what kind of books she read, which authors she enjoyed, all the kinds of things that she’d anticipated and rehearsed and then Deidre asked her what kind of books she wrote. Elizabeth had been prepared to obfuscate a little on this point – not really wanting to own up to getting little further than a shopping list – but the question was so direct and the manner in which it was asked allowed so little room for equivocation that Elizabeth panicked. She closed her eyes and visualised the library shelves. “Family saga,” she said. “Oh good,” said Deidre, “We haven’t got one of those,” and the die was cast. It seemed to satisfy everyone. Well, almost everyone.
“What are you working on at the moment?” asked Penny.
“Well…” she looked at Penny and smiled. Penny seemed very nice really and Elizabeth was sure that she would grow to like her, if she could just get over the current urge to strangle her.
“Maybe you could read for us sometime.”
“That would be nice,” said Elizabeth, painfully aware that ‘nice’ was a word she was going to have to try and eradicate from her vocabulary if she stood any chance of perpetuating the fiction of herself as an author that she was in the process of creating. “It’s all a little bit fragmented at the moment, but I’m sure in a week or two…”
“That would be lovely,” said Penny, genuinely pleased. “To hear something new. Lovely.”
“Well, I’m really not sure how good it will be,” said Elizabeth, realising that if she was to come back again she would, almost certainly have to write something – and that was the second positive thing she did since opening the new chapter…

‘The Writer’s Circle #1 – Penny’s Poem’ is here.
‘The Writer’s Circle #8 – Ovinaphobia’ is here.
‘The Writer’s Circle #10 – Phil’s Baby’ is here.

The Running Man on the Path

I would choose, if it was safe, to run on the roads rather than the paths. The paths around here are very much the second choice for running. For a start they would appear never to have recovered from being bombed in the war: it would be uncharitable to call the craters that litter them ‘potholes’ – I think ‘fox-holes’ would be more appropriate: they are wide enough to defy hurdling and deep enough to conceal ancient Japanese soldiers who still do not know that the war is over. Dodging them pretty much doubles the distance of a run. Then, where there are no potholes, there are drives. For some reason this village specialises in driveways that merge with the road via something with sides that appear to have fallen off a rift valley. Those that do not treat you to an up and down of about six feet over a car’s width, indulge you, instead, in a headlong dive either into the road or somebody’s garden, as the whim takes them. After a ‘path run’ my knees feel like they have just done ten minutes on a bouncy castle with my grandkids – the most strenuous exercise known to man. And finally, of course, the paths have dog walkers…

I know, I know, I have been here before, but really! What is it all about? Normally if I am running in the road, providing I stick to the gutter – that’s quite enough of that, thank you – approaching cars ease out a little to give me room. I always acknowledge them. Everyone is happy. If I am on the path and have to pass anyone – a novelty for someone who runs at a speed somewhat short of walking pace – I move into the road if I can, or cross to the other side. None of this is possible when the rain means that the road is as slippery as a greased eel. I stick to the path and gauge my speed, the best I can, to pass walkers at a convenient point, causing both of us the minimum inconvenience and allowing the maximum distance. Now, I am a walker too. I do realise that walkers do not want a shagged-out senior citizen panting all over them at close quarters. It’s easily sorted. We all move a little and everyone is happy. Normally pleasantries are exchanged and the world carries on turning. Unless the walkers are attached by a leash to a dog, in which case the path becomes a kingdom to be defended. None shall pass. A laird whose territory extends exactly to the end of the pooch’s lead.

Most of what passes for rational thought when I am running, is expended on where I should be in order to cause the minimum inconvenience to other path and road users: on plotting a path that keeps everybody as safe as possible and, if possible, avoids the necessity for a trip to A&E with my leg in a makeshift splint, cunningly fashioned from pieces of the larchlap fence I have just crashed through. A walker, on seeing a runner approaching, will normally move to one side, the runner to the other and it is very easy to manufacture a point of crossing that coincides with a driveway. Two metres is an easy distance to gauge: imagine falling over; would you crack your head on the path or on the other person’s toe-cap? A walker with a dog, however, will glare and stop, with great deliberation, between driveways before moving to the very centre of the path, giving you the simple choice: go ‘dog-side’ and risk a trip through somebody’s hedge, or go ‘idiot-side’ and risk a high-wire act along the kerb whilst they glare at you and defy you to breathe their air. With the road out of bounds, the ‘full stop’ is the only way out, whilst they walk by at their leisure, snorting gently from the nose. I was actually asked today whether I was ‘allowed to be doing that’. ‘Lockdown,’ apparently, ‘is not over yet.’ I was about four hundred yards from home. I did not recognise my interrogators – who were even more ancient than me – but I’m guessing they were probably not from the village, that they drove here to walk the pooch – doubtless because they have run out of places to dump their plastic wrapped bundles of faeces closer to home.

I could have stopped to argue, but, to be quite frank, it’s such a battle to gain momentum that, once I’ve got it, I don’t want to let it go. I could have said something caustic en passant, but I’m not certain that my breathing was up to it; I could have given them a withering look, but I fear they may have thought I was having a stroke, so I settled for a cheery ‘And a good morning to you too.’ They didn’t see the irony. I must be slipping.

The whole running saga started here with ‘Couch to 5k’
Last week’s bulletin ‘The Running Man on Reasons to be Cheerful’ is here.
The next Running Man bulletin ‘…On the Go’ is here.

The ‘Mistake’ Rack (part two)

The main thing about the ‘mistake’ rack is that albums do not make their way onto it over a period of time: they do not move there because I have grown bored of them over the years, or because I seldom play them any more – I have many, many CD’s and some of them get played very rarely, but when they do, I still love them. ‘Mistake’ rack albums are different. They are destined to be there. Back in the days of Andy’s Records they would have had appropriate labels on them: ‘This album may not be anything like as good as you think it is going to be.’ Sometimes I have been given them, sometimes I have bought them on the strength of one great track, sometimes I was just looking for something new. However they came into my possession, I just knew that we were not meant for one another. I am not saying that they are, necessarily, bad albums – just that, all in all, they would have been better not to have been made…

So, having paused only for fortification in a glass of 40% proof, I continue my trawl through ‘The Shelf with No Name’. Next in line, and the most recent album on the shelf is ‘Amulet’ by Circa Survive (2017). I was led to this partly by a brilliant Roger Dean-esque cover, which is every bit as good as Alisha’s Attic (part one) is bad. The album is very polished, but so soulless that not even the devil would want it. This is a band that very badly wants to be Rush, but sadly seldom gets past amble, playing the kind of music you would expect to hear piped into the toilets at a prog-rock convention. It came off the shelf only very briefly. It is back there now.

If you can imagine cutting and pasting little bits from every great rock album by every great rock act into a single album and still ending up with something interminably boring, well, that brings me onto the next album on the shelf, because that is exactly what Thirty Seconds to Mars managed to do with ‘A Beautiful Lie’ (2005). It is an album that is far, far less than the sum of its parts. Waiting for one track to end, knowing that there is another one to follow is actually painful: not so much a question of where one tracks ends and the next one starts as why they bothered? It is like throwing every fruit you have ever liked into a liquidizer and switching it on only to end up with a brown, tasteless sludge. Every little bit of this album detracts from every other bit. The album sold by the bucket-load (the bucket, in my opinion, is where it should have stayed) and won plaudits galore as well as awards, which just shows what I know. Like deliberately banging your head on the wall, the only fun to be had from this album is when it stops. Back on the shelf.

Next in line is The Flaming Lips ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ (2002), an album that I really feel I should like, but I’ve tried and I can’t. It doesn’t help that the melody from track one (Fight Test) is lifted straight from Cat Steven’s ‘Father to Son’. It bothers me. I have checked the cover to see whether it is credited, but it is one of those bloody awful booklets that is either designed to confound all attempts at reading it, or very shoddily printed. The cover is littered with critical praise and five star reviews, yet the record is nothing like as good as it thinks it is. This is the class swot. This is the album that stands in front of the class and says, ‘Look at me’. This is the record that your parents point out is so much better than you. I don’t know who Yoshimi is, but I’m pretty sure I’d like to flick him/her with a wet towel. I played this CD all the way through to give it the chance to change my mind. It didn’t. Back on the shelf.

Kula Shaker’s ‘K’ definitely has moments, notably in the singles (a common theme) ‘Hey Dude’, ‘Govinda’ and ‘Tattva’, but the rest of it sounds uncomfortably like a bunch of middle class public school boys who want to be The Stone Roses. It’s ok for a little while, but then… actually, it’s not ok for a little while. It’s dispiritingly tedious. The overall sound is of a band whose independent financial means ensured that the music didn’t really matter. It’s a bit of an ‘in-joke’. On the ladder of aptitude, they are many, many rungs above me, but, if I’m honest, that’s nothing like enough and, sadly, I can still hear them. Rather than a ‘Curate’s Egg’, this is an Easter egg of an album: cool cover, plenty of glitter, but, ultimately, hollow. It’s back on the shelf.

Finally, we come to an album that it kills me to see there: Iggy and the Stooges ‘Raw Power’. I know, I know, please let me explain. I am a life-long Bowie fan. This album was released in 1973, having been rescued from the record company bins and cleaned up by Bowie at the mixing desk*. Along with The Sex Pistol’s ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ it is the very best of punk. Over the years I have played the grooves off the vinyl twice and so eventually decided to buy the re-issued CD, which was re-mixed by Bruce Dickinson and Iggy himself, who did not like the buffed-up edges on Bowie’s mix. Fair enough, except in re-mixing, they merely seem to have returned it to the kind of sound that nearly blocked its release in the first place. It sounds as though the whole thing is being played through a child’s megaphone with a sock in it. They have maxed out everything available to them. They have borrowed an amp from Spinal Tap and turned it up to 12. Everything is buried in a fuzzy, messy growl of tinny electrical noise that drives me mad. There is rough, and there is rough. I love this album, but the CD has gone on the shelf because every time I think about playing it, I just go downstairs instead and play the worn-out vinyl. Age has made that a little fuzzy too, but I remember how it used to sound before Iggy tried to force it through a tin box filled with horse-hair and feedback and so, as long as I still have the old vinyl, the CD stays on the shelf with all of its friends…

Once again, I must point out that the opinions expressed above are all etc etc etc. Before you are tempted to be upset by anything I might say, just remember how worthless my opinion is. If you feel that you can give me the key to unlock the joy in any of these albums (or indeed those by The Levellers, ARZ or Ben Harper that I never quite got round to mentioning) I would be delighted to hear from you.

*Whilst transposing these two posts onto WordPress (yes, I do still write with a pen on paper) I played Bowie’s three great career-rescuing productions of the 70’s: Lou Reed’s ‘Viscous’, Iggy’s ‘The Idiot’ and Mott the Hoople’s ‘All The Young Dudes’ and the world became a better place. Now, where did I put those glittery flares?…

The Mistake Rack (part one) is here.

The Running Man on Reasons to be Cheerful

OK, I am willing to concede that ‘cheerful’ may not always be my default setting, but today’s run has found me with a certain (if slightly demented) smile on my face. (I’m sure that you’ve got the drift by now that the day of writing is not necessarily the day of publishing – I am nowhere near that organised – so, if meteorological references do not match up with what you are seeing through your window today, I apologise. I have posted a nice photo at the top to help you with your ‘visualisation processes’. In truth, this disconnection may be even more profound today, because I am actually writing this down tomorrow, as it were, for reasons that may – or may not – become clearer as we go along). Today (that being yesterday as I write and possibly even last week by the time you read it) I ran in beautiful Spring sunshine*. The white carpet of snowdrops that glisten along the hedgerows has been supplemented by yellow and violet crocuses (croci?) aconytes, narcissi and daffodils; the sky is blue and cloudless and the sun is warm on my back. Even the sight (site?) of an abandoned TV, three-quarters of somebody’s old kitchen and a three-legged dining room chair in the ditch at the side of the road only impacts on my mood transiently. Spring has sprung and I am in high spirits. I have discovered that I am capable of running and being happy at the same time.

Breathing is, sadly, a bit of an issue: the trees are pumping out pollen like their future depends upon it (which, of course, it does) and most of it is making its way up my snout. I have tissues in both pockets and both hands and I cannot even smell the giant heap of steaming manure that has materialised in the field alongside the newly built houses – although I’m pretty sure that the ‘new to the countryside’ owners can (nobody ever fully appraises you of the fact that for large chunks of the year, all that rural England smells of is Cow Parsley and shit) – but I am not dispirited. It is Spring and I am enjoying my run – even when the grinning ‘Community Ambulance’ driver forces me off the road and through something brown and sticky. (I’m hoping it’s mud. I will find out soon enough when I get home and my wife – who has the olfactory acuity of a bloodhound – gets a whiff of it**.) I ran further than I have before and I ran quicker. I am a man reborn. This heightened mood could last until the very last pickings of brambles in the autumn, or until the very next ministerial broadcast on Covid – you can probably guess which is the most likely.

Which brings me on to the evening (and the reason why today is actually yesterday) and the local Covid vaccination station. Yesterday we were Astra Zeneca’d (I’m not coming over all Royal Family there, we were both vaccinated). It has cheered me up even further. It was brilliantly organised and everyone was so cheerful and helpful (Thank you NHS) even when the internet failed – the site is in the middle of nowhere – and we had to sit for twenty minutes whilst many uniformed people wandered around looking perplexed. I presume that the confusion means that it hadn’t happened before: it was waiting for me. Well, I don’t care. It can bugger off. I’m happy***.

We visited four ‘chip shops’ on the way home as we decided we deserved a treat. The first two were closed. The third refused to put anything new in the friers because they were about to close and didn’t want to waste chips – the fact that we were there to buy them did not, somehow, compute – would we like a pie? The fourth was open and proudly displayed the fact that it was under new ownership. It was truly awful. The best thing about it was the satisfying ‘thunk’ it made as it hit the bin. I had ice cream with golden syrup and cream instead. (Oh come on – try it. You’ll never look back.) A good day that ended far too late to write about – particularly as it was time to get back up to speed with ‘Line of Duty’.

Reasons to be cheerful? Today (Tomorrow/yesterday, who knows?) there are plenty. Don’t worry; it’s unlikely to last…

*A note from the future: today it is cold and murky. Everything is shrouded in a thick blanket of fog. As is usual in this country, Spring has both sprung and disappeared with an alarming synchronicity. Somehow we have skipped onto Autumn, which means that another bout of Winter is almost certainly bound to arrive, shrivelling spring blooms and freezing the blossom from the trees, with the consequence that when Spring finally arrives again, all that the sleepy little bees will find with which to make honey will be KFC wrappers, somebody’s discarded dining arrangements and a strangely besieged helleborous.
**A further note from the future: it wasn’t mud.
***Yet another note from the future: we both had a headache the following morning, but nothing worse than that. Still happy.

The whole sorry tale of my attempts to run stated here with ‘Couch to 5k’
The previous instalment or the Running Man diaries, ‘The Running Man on Plodding On’ is here.
The next Running Man ‘...On the Path’ is here.