Crying out loud
Another step forward.
Four miles on a mild and bright evening, with the run element of the run:walk ratio back over 50%. The aim is to keep it creeping up, but I won’t let it reach 100% before I’m a stone lighter than I was at the start of this week. The good news, as predicted, is that the pounds are sliding off. The gains so easily made over the last few weeks and months are just as easily removed — to begin with, at least.
I’ve become something of a running wuss in recent years. It was only two years ago that a jacket became standard issue on cold winter mornings. For the four years or so before that, I wore a jacket a total of perhaps three or four times, when a number of conditions co-incided:
jacket = (temperature.Celsius < -5) AND wind AND (rain|sleet) AND (run.distance.miles > 5)
Anything else, and I wouldn’t bother. I’m not sure why I didn’t. It wasn’t bravado but, I think, the pleasure-deferral principle: the knowledge that while the first mile would be anguish and misery, the remainder would be more than adequate compensation. Once the inner furnace got going, something more than warmth and comfort resulted. The sense of liberation was tremendous. To run past the astonished stares of passers-by, insulated by so many layers that they could barely walk, added much to the joy. And the sweat — so much hotter and sweeter against the frozen air.
It’s nearly May, but today I went sans jacket for the first time since the late autumn. I was reminded of how good it feels to be unencumbered. I’ll pass up the easy metaphor opportunity, and press on, past the first two village pubs, with which I never make eye contact. I’m suddenly aware of a great commotion of pop music and mechnical noise in the field behind the church, and remember that the fair has begun today. A ripple of apprehension as I approach it. I pull the peak of my cap further down over my eyes, and therefore (so says the hat-wearer’s creed) becoming less visible myself. If I can see only 40% of the world, then only 40% of me is visible to the crowds of exciteable teenagers through which I must now move.
It’s also a good moment to increase iPod volume. I have what I’m sure would be regarded as an odd mixture of tunes. This evening’s shuffle moves me from The Beatles (Across the Universe), through King’s College Choir (Hark the Herald Angels Sing), Jimi Hendrix (Purple Haze), and the Kingston Trio (Puff the Magic Dragon). It’s a while since the Kingston Trio have made an appearance, and I’m pleasantly surprised. Enough to stop the shuffle and point the iPod at the album: Kingston Trio Golden Greats – 1957-62.
What fine young men, and how stirring their music remains, even to this day. I defy anyone with a beating heart in their breast to listen to these tunes without weeping:
Shady Grove/Lonesome Traveller
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
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Yet again, I’ve been thinking about trying to get some running writing published. So I spent some time last month pulling together, and editing, some previous entries into a compelling composite of the story so far — and sending them off to a couple of literary agents. Today I had my first rejection. The email read as follows:
Many thanks for sending this through and you make it all sound so easy! However, I am really sorry but while I think this is fun and entertaining, I think I would struggle to find you a publisher for a number of reasons. First you did the run several years ago, and so there would be limited publicity available for it, and second, and this is the one I am most embarrassed about, you haven’t got a profile and so we would competing with any number of celebrities when trying to place this book. If you had been Jordan, Richard Hamilton or any number of other celebrities I can’t be bothered to mention, you would immediately attract the type of interest this project deserves. Without that hook, the project is dead.
I am sorry to be both brutal and candid, but it is a factor in today’s highly competitive, celebrity driven market. You only have to look at the non-fiction bestseller lists for last Christmas to appreciate what I am saying.
So it is with regret I am turning this down – ever thought of changing your name by deed poll?
My first thought was, “well at least she read it”, but when I looked at her email again, I realised that she hadn’t. Since when have I made running sound easy? And what’s this about doing “the run several years ago”? I made it clear in my covering letter that this was an epic struggle stretching the length of the century so far.
Bah.
After sustained weeping over the Kingston Trio and the recollection of the earlier dream-crumbling rejection, I resolved to reach for a climactic hat-trick while still five minutes from home. With an anticipatory tremble in my fingers, I located Ron Goodwin on my iPod and jabbed the play button.
Not many people know who Ron Goodwin is, but one day in every year, the spotlight lands on one of his compositions, The Trap. It’s another hot button for me. At least once during the BBC’s four hours of London Marathon coverage, all the commentators run off to a portaloo, leaving the cameras to sweep over the perspiring, plodding hordes while this music blasts out. I’ve posted it before, but let’s hear it again
The Trap
(twice, back-to-back for some reason)
Yep, as cheesey as a bread-free quattro formaggio pizza, but it gets me each and every time.
It makes me run too though, and with my headphones shooting the shameless triumphalism through my brain like the electrodes crackling on the temples of Frankenstein’s monster, I felt positively spring-heeled as I loped past the car park of the Crown, just in time to see my mate Russ emerge from his car with his faithful 4-pint beer container, ready to be filled with the luscious Good Old Boy (both of them). I called out a breathless greeting, but didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. He grinned and gave me the thumbs up. He nags me to get running again.
Then round the front of the pub, almost knocking another regular, Rob, off his feet. He seemed aghast at the appearance of this floundering, tear-streaked mammal bearing down on him. I’d recently had a heated discussion with him about the value of ‘jogging’ for people our age. As I lumbered past him this evening, there was something in his look of incredulity — no, terror — that said: “Oh my g-god, he’s only g-gone and done it…”
Indeed I have.
