The Running Man on What to Remember

The most important thing I have to remember when I run is that I have to think about something – anything – else. Absolutely the worst thing I can do is to think about running. If I do, it takes only a couple of hundred yards before I become conscious of my knees – was that a twinge? Are they getting ready to collapse? – and by the time I reach the top corner my mind has moved onto my breathing – is it laboured? Is that my chest or has somebody just driven past me in a van with no exhaust? – half a kilometre thinking about running and I can feel my heart pounding in my chest like a clog dancer with no sense of rhythm.

Now, I am of an age – my body has been ravaged more often than Moll Flanders – and I see myself as the kind of bike that I used to ride as a youth: held together with string and sticky tape, and I am never certain which part is going to let me down first. It is only if I allow myself to become confident that a wheel falls off. The more I think about it, the closer disaster moves.

My mind tells me that I will not fall to pieces as long as I don’t think about falling to pieces, so I think about something else: how big are Bruce Banner’s pants that he can still wear them after he has become The Hulk? And why are they so tatty? The last time my pants looked like that I was sixteen and had just spent two weeks camping in the Lake District with all my worldly possessions in a plastic carrier bag. I used them for a bonfire on my last night and they burned for three weeks. It is not a good train of thought because it always leads to my current under-trolley arrangements and I become aware of the current direction of travel. Thinking about underwear is never a good idea whilst running and will always lead to discomfort. (And, by the way, as you get older you will begin to realise that shorts with ‘built in support’ are never up to the job*.) Far better to concentrate on the outer attire of other runners: those who have only recently decided to start running and have consequently thrown the cheque book at the local sports outfitters and those who have been running for years and realise that the tatty green number is by far the most comfortable top they have, that nothing chafes quite like an embroidered trade mark. There are those who perpetually run in sunglasses (I have worn sunglasses myself and it is only when the sun disappears that you realise that you have nowhere to put the bloody things) those who wear a cap to fasten down unruly hair and those who wear a cap to disguise the fact that the days of unruly hair are long behind them. Those who, like me, trudge along, elastic dressing on every conceivable joint, carrying the weight of the world on emaciated shoulders, and those who bound along like a youthful Bambi, full of the joys of Spring, unburdened by a care in the world but, I am sure, fully aware of my loathing as they wave a cheery greeting. There are those who acknowledge me and those who fear it might be catching. I think of them all and, before I know it, the run is over and I haven’t even noticed I’ve done it. All I have to work out then is how come I have arrived home such a breathless, sweating wreck…

*No matter how unpalatable, facts are facts: you may not wish to know them, but they are still facts…

The first running diary ‘Couch to 5k’ is here.
The last running diary ‘A Very Hot Business’ is here.
The next running diary ‘On Being Grandad’ is here

Zoo #41 – Prey

Who’d want to be a chick or mouse
Within the darkened reptile house
Where neither rat, nor slug, nor louse
Is born with greater cause to grouse.

Yes, cows and sheep share common fate
But here’s the truth I must relate
That neither beast, when comes the date,
Goes live onto the dinner plate.

There is nothing in this world quite as disturbing as seeing chicks hopping around the terrariums in the reptile house, blithely unaware (I hope) that they are there just for one reason, to be eaten. They are alive only because the snakes will not take dead prey: they need to see it move. Keep still little chicken: don’t twitch little mouse! Sooner or later the snake will sleep. The best thing about going live to the dinner plate is that you might yet have the chance to hop off it.

Bloody Offal

A WHITE-TILED BUTCHERS SHOP WITH GLASS FRONTED COUNTER TO FRONT.

BEHIND THE COUNTER THE BUTCHER IS CHOPPING MEAT. A BELL RINGS AS A CUSTOMER ENTERS THE SHOP AND THE BUTCHER TURNS WITH A ‘TUT’ AND APPROACHES THE COUNTER. HE IS CARRYING A CLEAVER AND HIS WHITE SMOCK IS COVERED IN BLOOD.

BUTCHER: Ah, good morning sir. Can I be of service?

CUSTOMER: Yes. Do you have any hearts?

BUTCHER: Hearts? Just give me a moment and I’ll have a look.

THE BUTCHER SLIDES THE DOOR AT THE BACK OF THE COUNTER AND LIFTS OUT A CLIPBOARD WHICH HE SCANS DOWN WITH A BLOODIED FINGER.

BUTCHER: No, we’re right out of hearts I’m afraid. Not a single heart in the place. Who’s it for?

CUSTOMER: It’s for me.

BUTCHER: (Sharp intake of breath) Do you smoke?

CUSTOMER: No.

BUTCHER: Pity, I’ve got a cracking pair of lungs here. You’re certain it’s a heart you need are you?

CUSTOMER: Well, the doctor said…

BUTCHER: Only I’ve got the possibility of a kidney fairly soon.

CUSTOMER: No, it’s my heart.

BUTCHER: I could do you a nice lower leg.

CUSTOMER: No…

BUTCHER: Spleen?

CUSTOMER: No.

BUTCHER: What about a liver? Got a half-decent liver here. Go for the liver and I reckon we could have you sorted out before… well, before… Are you prone to coma at all?

CUSTOMER: I don’t think so. No, look, I’m sorry, but it’s definitely a heart I need.

BUTCHER: I could put you down on the list I suppose.

CUSTOMER: Could you?

BUTCHER: Of course. Now, how bad is it?

CUSTOMER: Doctor reckons six months.

THE BUTCHER RIPS THE PAPER FROM THE CLIPBOARD, SCREWS IT UP AND THROWS IT AWAY.

BUTCHER: We’ll not bother with the waiting list eh? I tell you what I’ll do; I’ll write your name on this raffle ticket and drop it into the drum with the others.

HE INDICATES A RAFFLE BARREL.

CUSTOMER: You mean it really is a lottery, whether I get a heart or not?

BUTCHER: Good grief, no! You’ve got no chance of getting a heart in six months. It’s a little draw we do. A sort of consolation prize. If we pull your ticket out, you can get your piles done within weeks.

CUSTOMER: I haven’t got piles.

BUTCHER: What are you moaning about then?

CUSTOMER: (Indignant) Look, I’m forty three, I’ve never smoked, I rarely drink, I’ve always kept fit and the doctor’s told me I’m going to be dead within six months if I don’t get a new heart…

THE BUTCHER PUTS HIS HAND ON THE CUSTOMER’S SHOULDER, LEADS FORWARD OVER THE COUNTER AND WHISPERS CONSPIRITORIALLY INTO HIS EAR.

BUTCHER: Look, I shouldn’t be suggesting this, but have you ever considered going private?

CUSTOMER: Will I get a heart if I go private?

BUTCHER: God no, but they will break the news to you in a more sympathetic manner.

CUSTOMER: But I’ll still die?

BUTCHER: The room will be much more comfortable…

CUSTOMER: Is there no hope at all?

BUTCHER: Do you want the truth or a bare-faced lie?

CUSTOMER: I think I’ll go for the lie.

BUTCHER: We’ll have a heart for you for the weekend.

CUSTOMER: Thanks.

CUSTOMER EXITS WHISTLING. BUTCHER RETURNS TO HIS CHOPPING BOARD.

The Writer’s Circle #24 – Redemption (part one)

Since the departure of Dick Hart, Terry Teasdale was perfectly aware that he stood alone as the least liked member of the Circle: not so much its bête noire as its own black dog. It was not a position that he had chosen to inhabit and he had been working slowly, but determinedly to become, if not exactly liked, then at least accepted by the other members. He had not missed a meeting in six months and those around him had slowly grown used to him being there: like a wart on the nose, he was not something with which one necessarily wished to be associated, but the truth was that the more often one looked into the mirror, the less jarring was the realisation that it was there. The transition from excrescence to birthmark was, never-the-less, not without its difficulties. He was trying to change his life – at least the parts of it that others might see. He began to recognise his own sharp corners, and he worked at chipping them away. He had attempted in his own way to soften his image, joining in conversations, being self-effacing, smiling in a way that he was aware did his face no favours. He tried to joke, although with the kind of success that was normally reserved for ‘bottom of the bill’ in an autumn end of the pier review. He wanted to become a bona fide member of the club. He wanted the others to miss him when he was not there. He had even started to write.

Phil’s ‘reverse genre’ game had given him his opportunity. They would all expect him to be inept, writing in a style to which he was not used. That he was not actually used to writing in any style would not occur to anyone. At first he thought that he might be able to ‘borrow’ the prose of others, but he knew it would be spotted: Deidre, Phil, Frankie, Louise, they were all plagiarism Ninjas. They could spot a misappropriated sentence at a thousand paces. He had, at least, the self-awareness to understand that if he chose a battle there he was destined to lose. And he didn’t want a battle. He’d had many. He’d lost them all.

The story he had told them when he had first joined the group had been the truth, but he had couched it in a hard-hearted manner that he believed would be comical. He believed that they would see it as some kind of grotesque ‘Carry On’, but what they saw in it was actually nearer to the truth than he would care to admit. If he had bridges to build, they were bridges that he had himself first burned. In fact, his much vaunted exposé had never made the papers. Any interest in the story he had to tell was lost when those much closer to the editors decided to spill the beans on Devine before Terry had even got his ghost writers into line. Devine’s goose was cooked and Terry had not even had time to put on his toque. It had proved to be a turning point. Terry Tease was no more, Devine had put paid to his career, although not in the way that he had intended. The intense heat of tabloid investigation had burned all of those who were in any way associated with the main target: those deemed to be ‘worth the effort’ were shamed and vilified; Terry was ignored and abandoned. There is no point in harbouring dreams of revenge, when it has already been wreaked by others. In the short time in which he had been a member of the Circle, Terry Tease had to all intents and purposes, ceased to be, and Terry Teasdale was just beginning to re-emerge, a semi-likeable never-was from the sloughed skin of a detestable has-been.

He had no need to work. If nothing else, Terry Tease had provided for his retirement. He was by no means rich, but he had plenty with which to retain his new-found anonymity. The man who used to be the warm-up man for a discredited star was recognised by no-one. The only time he was ever approached in public was by people who knew, but could not quite place, his face. They invariably believed they knew him from school and he was happy to let them. The person they did recognise had gone; he would rather be the person they thought they recognised.

He no longer craved fame or even notoriety; all that he desired was the acceptance of those with whom he now chose to share his life. He had taken his time; he had worked and re-worked his little story. He had honed it into a lean, professional-sounding piece of writing and then slowly, carefully, he had dissembled it; made it less of what he strove to be and more of what he wanted to be: imperfect but meliorated. What he really wanted to be was part of something. Not the Sun, not the Earth, not even the moon: he would be happy to be Pluto (the planet, rather than the Disney dog) even if it was no longer accepted as a full-blown planet – as long as they did nothing to actually kick it out of orbit, he would be happy. So he patiently waited his turn and he was ready to face the Circle, accepting that many of them were not yet ready to hear from him again; hoping that he could soften the reaction when they did. He rose to his feet as the eyes of all assembled fell upon him. He sensed that he might just have seen a fleeting smile of encouragement from Penny, but he couldn’t be sure: if such a thing had crossed her lips, it had done so swiftly and had long since departed. He was, none-the-less buoyed by the fact that nobody looked actively hostile towards him. Antipathy had, in the main, made way for apathy and that, for Terry Teasdale, was progress of a sort. And progress he could work with…

The Writer’s Circle began here with ‘Penny’s Poem’
Terry’s story started here with ‘The New Man’
Last week’s episode ‘Baking Scones‘ is here.
Episode 25 ‘Redemption (part two)’ is here.

Noddy and the Party (A Cautionary Tale)

Once again I have been unable to run this week. I could, of course, have made up the running diary, but I did this instead. I can only apologise…

The word was all around Toytown. The streets were filled with excited chatter. Goldilocks, who had had just about as much as she could take of sleeping in a bed that smelled of bear, not to mention cold, lumpy porridge and the blatantly sexist remarks of Daddy Bear, was back in town and planning a post-lockdown party. Absolutely everyone was invited and not only from Toytown. Winnie the Pooh was coming! Winnie the Pooh, whose legend had spread before him like warm honey on a shag-pile. Winnie the Pooh, who knew more jokes than Noddy. Winnie the Pooh, who could drink Big Ears under the table. Winnie the Pooh, the only bear ever to defeat seventeen paternity suits by having his little thing carefully unpicked by Christopher Robin and stored in a bag until the day after the trial. Yes, Winnie the Pooh was going to be there, it was certainly a party not to be missed.

The Off Licence was completely sold out of cider. “Oh Gawd,” groaned Noddy. “What the hell am I going to do now? Pooh Bear is bound to turn up with a bottle of good stuff. Strongbow I shouldn’t wonder, Blackthorn Dry even. Tell you what, give us a bottle of Irn Bru, I’ll syphon it into an old cider bottle at Big Ears’, no-one will ever know.”

“Stone me,” said Big Ears some time later. “You’d better mark that bottle. I don’t want to end up drinking from it.”
“Don’t blame me,” snapped Noddy. “How was I to know that the Irn Bru would only half fill the cider bottle. I had to top it up somehow.”
“Well I should go and see the doctor in the morning,” replied Big Ears, “because judging from the look of what you’ve just done in there, you could well be pregnant.”
“Ha-bloody-ha!” snapped Noddy. “Get in the car before I set fire to your trousers again.” And so they headed off to the party.

“I really love driving fast,” yelled Noddy, removing pieces of blackbird from his windscreen with the wipers.
“Yeh, great,” said Big Ears, who was inhaling his own socks for kicks.
“Halt!” yelled Mr. Plod, holding out one hand whilst simultaneously checking his speed gun.
“Shit! It’s the fuzz,” exclaimed Noddy.
“I’ve got clean underwear on,” said Big Ears.
“I’m not talking about the rather questionable state of your nether garments, buffoon,” said Noddy. I’m talking about cops and government guidance on unnecessary travel.” And so saying, he accelerated hard, spreading Mr. Plod evenly over half a mile of single carriageway. “That’s the trouble with the Police Force in Toytown,” he said. “They’re stretched to the limit,” and laughed so much at his own joke that he inhaled the entire contents of his nasal cavity.

At Goldilocks’ place the party was already in full swing. Pooh Bear was telling some of the dirtiest stories you are ever likely to hear; Goldilocks was doing her famous party trick with the small squares of paper and a pair of electrically charged knickers, and Simple Simon was behind the settee with the Pie Man, paying off his bill.

Noddy sped on recklessly, along the lane to Goldilocks’ home, disembowelling Harry the Hedgehog who was out for his afternoon stroll. He screeched to halt outside the tidy cottage, scattering grit and hedgehog prickles in all directions. “Come on Big Ears!” he yelled.
“Righto,” laughed Big Ears and fell straight from the car into a little pile that was left by Derek the Dog only moments before.

Noddy was already at the door, ringing the bell.
“Hey Noddy,” said Billy Badger. “Come on in.”
“Hullo,” said Noddy.
“How’s the T.B.?” said Big Ears.
“Hey,” said Noddy, sidling up to Rag Doll. “That’s a very small handbag you’re carrying. I wonder if it’s big enough to hold the keys to my Porsche.”
“God, you’re corny,” she sighed. “Don’t you ever read the women’s pages in the newspaper? Don’t you realise that the modern woman is no longer content to be seen as a sex object? Have you never heard of #MeToo?”
“Sorry?”
“Oh never mind,” said Rag Doll who had an IQ of 180, but still had to wear high heels for work.
“I think I’ll have a drink,” said Noddy.
“Here, take your mask off, have one of my long herbal cigarettes,” offered Billy. ‘They’re legal now, you know… pretty much.’
“Thanks,” said Big Ears, lighting the proffered shag. “Wow!” Big Ears had once tried glue sniffing, but had succeeded only in fusing his acne to the polythene bag, since which he had stuck to much safer pastimes, like bleaching his hair with a blow lamp, travelling on public transport and swimming in the sea at Sizewell.

The evening ground on. The entire Tangerine Dream back catalogue had been exhausted on Spotify, the cider had long since been consumed, the guests were growing tired of pretending to be drunk. The unused condoms had been inflated and sellotaped to the walls, the toilets had been wiped down and somebody was chiselling vomit from the cat.

“Time to go,” said Goldilocks, aware that the bears would be home from the Bridge Club within the hour.

Big ears was one of the last to leave. He waved a fond goodbye to Goldilocks, took a long last draw on Billy Badger’s stogie and stepped straight into the path of Noddy’s speeding car, where his head remained as a grille ornament for several days. Goldilocks turned slowly away. “Isn’t this supposed to be a cautionary tale. Shouldn’t there be a moral to it or something?” she asked.

“Yeh,” said Pooh. “But you know what these Children’s Writers are like these days. Too drunk most of the time to make it to the toilet, let alone write a moral ending…

I have become very tired of the repeated attempts to make the past politically correct. It cannot be so. We cannot change it. I’m really not certain what an apology from a group of politicians who were not even born when the ‘crime’ was committed can even begin to achieve. We can only recognise that things were wrong, and we can’t do that if the past has been erased. We can only control today and plan tomorrow. I just hope we make a much better job of it.

In truth, I’m not certain that Noddy was ever quite so hedonisitic. I don’t think that Enid Blyton (on top of everything else) was a misogynist, but if she’d been a man I think she probably would have given it a go…

In the UK, at the start of Lockdown, ‘kindness’ was what we all espoused. Perhaps love really is all we need. That and the ability to see that everyone has value, that everyone has to be equal, that every voice has the right to be heard and, for God’s Sake, why do we still need to be fighting to make it happen? People are people and we all want the same things: to live in peace, to see our children grow up in safety and to have the opportunity to thrive in a just society. Sounds so easy…

Just be kind…

P.S. If this offends anyone, I am truly sorry. It is deliberately obnoxious. Hyperbole, I think. I would say exaggeration, but I’m not sure.

Zoo #40 – Toucan

Anyone in the zoo can
See the stately toucan.
Anyone in the queue can,
If you join them, you can.

I’m not a kangaroo fan
But what I’d like to do, gran
Is go and ask the zoo man
If we can see the toucan.

I know the cockatoo can
Achieve a proper view ‘nan,
So if he can, then you can,
And if one can, then two can.

I have very little to say about today’s little rhyme. The last few ‘zoo’ poems have become a little serious and over-considered, so I thought it was time to do something that is just silly: how the ‘zoo’ thread actually started. Childish silly nonsense. I should do it more often really.

Suddenly Nothing Happened

“When I awoke today/Suddenly nothing happened…*”

It is difficult to envisage a happenstance that could be of lesser consequence to most of my readers, but today I served** Peter Levy and I mention it only because it highlights the general vacuousness of my day to day existence. This was not only the highlight of my day, but just possibly my month. When I was younger, I imagined a future when people would clamour for the opportunity to meet me: in my twenties I foresaw a time when people would be intrigued by the possibility of one day meeting me; in my thirties I still believed that there might be people out there who would be happy to meet me. These days, I am just pleased when people are simply not too dismayed by the prospect. At least nobody hears my name with feigned indifference – they are too preoccupied with real indifference.

I am like every other blog writer: I give away everything between the lines that I would not dream of disclosing on them. In every post I write, you get a little piece of me, and although it isn’t always where I expected it to be, or even what I expected it to be, it is always there, if you should choose to look for it. I would love to be able to think of a single reason why you would. I’m not certain that forensic psychologists actually exist, but if they do, and if they, in a manner that probably tells you more about them than it does about me, read this blog from beginning to end, I am confident that they will end up knowing more about me than I do. (Actually not as impressive as it sounds, because I am more or less completely in the dark.)

I have been a little under the weather for a few days (as somehow divined by Mr Underfelt) – don’t worry; it’s not that. You can put your PPE away. Whatever virus scanner you have on your laptop, it will find nothing here – but it has made me realise something about myself: I am not as sturdy as I thought I was. A properly determined virus would almost certainly be capable of seeing me off. It has been a revelation: I am not indestructible – even though I am pretty certain that I used to be. (Just so that you are aware, this was not a near-death experience, but actually more of a ‘close by insurance salesman’ experience. A mild, sadly not even debilitating illness: definitely in no way life threatening, just not pleasant and almost certainly infectious…)

Suddenly the fragility of life clashes with the inconsequentiality of it and all bets are off. Anyone present at a dawn of time (logic tells you that there must be more than one, otherwise what caused this one?) would almost certainly bump into somebody else who would predict that two spontaneously occurring atoms could just possibly attempt to occupy the same infinitesimally minute portion of this infinite vacuum at the same time (which then didn’t even exist) following which ‘Kerboom’ would occur. Almost certainly they would have had two-bob each way on the consequences of that. Almost certainly the bookies would have found some way to return the stake and cancel the bet. The whole universe is following a trajectory that is careering between oblivion and oblivion. It started as nothing and it will eventually end as nothing and yet, for some reason, we find it necessary to try and leave a mark on it. I am aware of the futility of it all and yet I really did hope that my own ‘mark in the sand’ might add up to more than being in the same place and time as a BBC Local TV Presenter.

But that’s what marks in the sand are like, isn’t it? One tiny ebb of tide and they’re gone. You think you’ve built the very best sandcastle only to find that it dissolves around your feet. Ah, what the hell, you just build the next one higher…

*”…But in my dreams/I slew the dragon.” Waiting for my Real Life to Begin – (the wonderful) Colin Hay

** No, no, no! Go and wash your mind out with soap. I work in a shop.

N.B. This is, in case he is reading – and if he is not, then why not? – not a comment upon the inestimable Mr Levy in any way. He was utterly charming. Such a shame, I so wanted to not like him…

PS Please don’t ask me: I have no idea what it is all about. Chocolate hopefully…

The Writer’s Circle #23 – Baking Scones

These were the kind of discussion days that Deidre loathed: talking about how you wrote rather than what you wrote – she lost her edge in such conversations. Everybody knew that she was the Circle’s only properly published author, so she could speak about what she wrote with some kind of authority – and she did like authority – but how one goes about the task of writing, the fundamentals of putting words down onto paper, well, no two authors are the same and that meant that everybody else’s opinion became just as valid as her own. Not a situation she relished. “I just think,” she said, “that as long as you have the idea: as long as you know where you are and where you’re going, then everything will fall into place.”
“And when you don’t have the ideas?” asked Phil.
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t be writing,” said Deidre.
“Steve Martin said that Writer’s Block is ‘a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol,’” said Frankie. “It always works for me.”
“Sometimes it’s not even the ideas,” said Phil. “It’s the words. I can spend days just beating myself up over words. Which to use, which to avoid, which words at least sound as if I haven’t had to wring them out of the dictionary with my bare hands?”
“I find that a cup of tea normally hits the button,” said Elizabeth. “It’s not the tea; it’s the making of it, that’s the key. Making the decision that I’m wasting my time just staring at the computer: the thought that at least making tea is achieving something. It’s the routine of it. I leave my desk, I make my tea and I return to my desk with it. If I can’t write then, I just watch cats on YouTube.”
“Sometimes,” said Billy, “It’s a physical pain. Like you have to drag the words out your guts.”
“Have you ever had a proper job?” asked Frankie.
“Sometimes I find it helps to write down a list of what I want to say,” said Penny.
“I always know what I want to say,” said Jane. “It’s just… how do I want to say it.”
“It’s sometimes about finding just the right word,” agreed Penny.
“Especially when it has to rhyme with ‘goldfinch’,” muttered Deidre.
“Sometimes,” said Louise, “I go back to what I wrote the day before and I just write it all out again in the hope that when I reach the end of it I will just keep going.”
“And does that work?” asked Jane.
“No,” said Louise. “If I’m honest. More often than not I read what I wrote the day before and realise what a load of tripe it is. Makes me realise that not being able to write might not be such a bad thing.”
Jeff shuffled a little uncomfortably in his chair aware that he almost certainly had little to contribute, but decided, none-the-less, to join in the conversation. “When I can’t think of what to write, I just write about nothing. I can write about nothing for days.”
“Frankie’s done that for years,” said Phil with a laugh.
“I wish I could argue,” said Frankie. “It’s a gift; like being pitch perfect. Some people never have to wonder whether they’re in tune when they sing. Me, I can write meaningless drivel without even thinking about it. I’m Jeffrey Archer without the bank balance. What about you Tom, what do you do when you can’t write?”
“I’m like Jeff, I think; I just write anyway, to spite it. When I was in… When I first started to write I always had set ideas of what I wanted to say, but it didn’t take long for me to realise how lifeless it all was. Mostly now, when I can’t write, I just read. It’s something I have always had lots of time for.”
“You make it sound like a prison sentence,” said Vanessa, unaware of the fleeting look of unease that flitted across Tom’s features. “Nobody makes us write, any of us. We write because we want to. We write because we think we have something to say. We write because, secretly, we would all very much like to be ‘the next big thing’. All you have to do when you can’t say what you want to say is to find another way of saying it. More often than not, I have too many ideas. I just can’t line them up. They’re like kids: I can’t get them all to sit down at the same time. I can never make them all face in the same direction. If I had just one – I’d pick the best one, of course – it would be no problem. It would follow me around, do whatever I asked of it, but as soon as I have two ideas, they start chatting amongst themselves, playing games, and I can never get them to do what I want them to do. Sometimes my head is buzzing with ideas and the only thing I can do is to find a way of getting rid of most of them. I can’t drink tea – it makes my tongue fur – so I usually drink coffee and that’s the worst thing I can do. I’ve never seen the attraction of water. Why would you deliberately consume something that has absolutely no taste? It would be like going to a Roy Chubby Brown concert on your wedding night. So I bake scones. They’re not good scones; most of the time they’re very bad scones, but the process occupies my mind. You can’t worry about who is going to say what when you’ve got scones in the oven.”
“When I don’t know what to say,” said Terry, “I just employ another ghost writer.”
“Right, well, that’s all very useful I’m sure,” cut in Deidre with an audible sigh. “So, has anybody actually written anything at all to read to us tonight?”

The Writer’s Circle began with ‘Penny’s Poem’ here.
The last episode was ‘The Price of Perceptibility’ is here.
Episode 24 ‘Redemption (part one) is here.

The Running Man on Acute Coryza

Last night, deflated by missing a post and unable, once again, to sleep I happened to stumble across a BBC web page which said that the symptoms associated with the new ‘Delta’ variation of Covid-19 are those of the Common Cold, and it struck me then that, quite frankly, the cold is not quite so common anymore is it?

You know the way things go.

Mask wearing, socially distancing, hand-washing humans, it appears, are not nearly as susceptible to colds as in the past. I know exactly where I got my last cold from: from the same place as all grandparents catch their colds. Grandchilden: the ultimate Super-spreaders. No evil power ever has to devise a missile with which to deliver the agents of biological warfare; just load up a grandchild. When they’re out for a cuddle, the presence of a three inch snot-trail across their face is not going to stop them from giving you one. I believe that it is probably in the small print of Domestos: ‘Kills 99.9% of all known germs, unless they are associated with a weeping child’. Whatever it was that Tony Blair and George W. were hoping to find in Iraq, they were looking in the wrong place.

The Common Cold is not a serious complaint (unless you are a man) and its effects are not too bad – I find that breathing is probably overrated anyway – but by and large I could manage perfectly well without them, thank you very much. The snotty, runny-nosed sneezing phase is one upon which I normally only embark on the morning of an interview. Crispin Underfelt will recall that when we first gathered together for the recording of our radio series- so many moons ago that Apple was just the label used by the Beatles and a laptop was something you rested your dinner plate on – I was mucus-filled and consequently sounded just like every other adenoidal local radio broadcaster on the tapes. If my cold had not cleared up by the second recording session, I think I might have been offered a job.

And I cannot consider running with a cold. I get out of breath just thinking about it and my throat is so sore that I dare not suck air through it except in the minimal amounts called for by total slothfulness. The combination of blocked-up nasal passages and sore throat means that breathing is accompanied by what I can only describe as a death rattle. My hooter** will become bright red and sore, my limbs will feel like they belong to somebody else and I will not run even if the rain has stopped – especially if the flashing lights are no longer in the sky, but behind my eyes and the rumble is not of thunder, but of my chest trying to do something, anything, with the meagre amount of oxygen it is receiving. If (by dint of some miraculous tear in the space/time continuum) I saw me running towards me with a cold, I would immediately be looking for the man with the scythe chasing on behind. I sound like a man who is far too ill to be in the mortuary, let alone running around the village streets in a pair of baggy shorts and a T shirt clearly made to fit somebody else.

The Cold will return when Covid restrictions get lifted and will, doubtless, make a real nuisance of itself in the absence of recently modified antibodies. Surely Science is missing a trick by searching for cures for specific diseases, when what it really needs to do is to come up with a multi-purpose antibody, perhaps a miniature Batman equipped with a utility belt or a midget Iron Man with a medical A-Z. Like a biological McAffe, but without the tendency to make everything else crash around it.

Anyway, in place of the Cold, everybody seems to have hay fever at the moment. However, the rain has now arrived, the pollen has all washed away, the air is clearer and, despite my increasing slothfulness, I will be able to run today after all. Unless, of course, I catch a cold in the meantime.

You know the way things go.

*Acute Coryza is one of the many scientific names used for The Common Cold. It is seldom used by doctors as such a diagnosis is always followed by the patient saying “Why thank you doctor, I think yours is very cute too.”

**Nose – usually when of the size and shape of W.C. Fields proboscis.

The first running post, ‘Couch to 5k’ is here.
Last week’s running post ‘A very Hot Business’ is here.
A sneaky extra running post this week ‘An abject apology’ is here.

An abject apology

I haven’t been out to run today. I haven’t really stopped to do anything that I want to do – and that includes writing this blog. I am sorry.

I will try very hard to write something tomorrow because I don’t like to see untidy gaps. Not, unfortunately, that I am seeing untidy anything at the moment because I am in receipt of a new pair of specs and, truth be told, something is definitely not where it should be. I can, with a little difficulty, arrange them in such a way that vision is available, but unfortunately when I look in a mirror I then find that my glasses sit at a forty-five degree angle across my face. Now, I know that my ears are not symmetrical and my nose is a little eccentric in its positioning but, none-the-less, this is really not working for me and I’m beginning to get a bit of neck ache. It is a situation I will have to address just as soon as I can be bothered.

Nor is this a valid reason for a) not writing a blog and b) not running, because I tend to do both in contact lenses and I have my old glasses anyway. Somehow the day has just disappeared into a miasmic haze of grandchildren, double-glazing salesmen and plumbers and I can’t seem to pick up the threads. Three consecutive nights of lying awake reading whatever came to hand (last night ‘Adrian Mole – the cappuccino years’*) listening to cats prowling (yes, you can hear that) foxes yowling and homeward bound couples bickering have taken their toll. My whole being is teetering on the brink of a sleep that will, somehow, never come. I have tried no nightcaps, I have tried one nightcap, I have tried two nightcaps; this evening will probably involve a whole bottle full. I feel like many years ago when I sat through the film ‘Ghandi’ wondering ‘why have I chosen to do this with my life? I could have stayed outside, in the sunshine, counting my toes.’

Anyway, tonight I will go to bed with a pad and paper and tomorrow I will run. One way or another you should get something that, although a day late, will fit the criteria. In the meantime, please accept my apology. As always in my life, the circumstances are beyond my control…

*Probably tells you more than you ever need to know about me that these books still make me cry with laughter at times.