Tues 6 July 2004

I was walking along Westgate in Wakefield, a few feet behind two nervous looking guys in their twenties. They kept peering round, but said nothing. Then without warning, they began sprinting. One of them vanished into a shopping centre to the left, while the other dashed into the road without looking, threading his way through the screeching traffic. A moment later I was surrounded by about eight young guys. All I can recall is thinking they looked strangely rustic: unkempt, and at least some wore muddy boots. One of them shouted "He'll do". That meant me. I was surrounded. It happened so quickly that I didn't think to feel scared until I saw that one of them was waving a knife. I heard myself saying, "But they're nothing to do with me. I don't know them". But all he said was "You won't do that again". And then he thrust the blade towards my stomach.

The good thing about nightmares is that they ensure you wake up nice and early. So there I was this morning at 5:30, suddenly awake in my Leeds hotel room, feeling grateful that my bucolic assailants weren't real, and wondering whether I should try dozing for another hour or two, or do the decent thing, and get up and run.

I did the decent thing. Except that there wasn't a lot of running involved. I shambled for a bit then stopped to try reasoning with _colin, my distance gadget. GPS seems not to like buildings very much. It's always disheartening, ten minutes into a run, to find that your watch is saying that you've barely moved.

Leeds at 6.15am is an elegant place these days. Today it was cool and almost empty. In the new Leeds, the streets are clean, and seem wider than previously, even though they've remained pretty much the same for at least 150 years. I plodded up towards the Corn Exchange, past our favourite Leeds restaurant, 42 The Calls. Into the Headrow where even the dole office seems happy now. When last I frequented the place, it was like an annexe to Hell. Then down the now pedestrianised Briggate, past those regal Victorian shopping arcades, all glass and brass and promise. This street has been around for at least 450 years.

Here are the two old bridges. Under the railway, over the River Aire. The latter, Leeds Bridge, has a fascinating, and undeservedly inconspicuous plaque, explaining that in 1888, it was filmed by Louis Le Prince, one of the first ever moving pictures.

I was panting miserably by now so turned back towards the hotel. _colin was coy about the distance but from the time taken I reckon it was about 3 miles.

This evening I strolled down the Headrow to some new cinema in some new shopping centre. I saw Mean Girls. Well worth seeing. It's a sassy comedy about American teen life. Funny and intelligent, and just about impossible to dislike.

Wed 7 July 2004

An even more reluctant run this morning. Just 2.5 miles round the ring road, past all those new apartment blocks and 'prestige office developments'.

It's hard to pick up a newspaper these days without someone droning on about how Leeds has become a kind of provincial Knightsbridge. It was time to take a closer look at Leeds life, so this evening I treated myself to a walk through Hunslet, a suburb close to the centre, but one that hasn't yet been informed of Leeds's new prosperity. I bought a tray of fish and chips and ambled around the empty wind-blown streets, past the abandoned, boarded-up shops. There are still cobbles here, and back-to-backs and washing lines strung across the narrow streets. Blokes in grubby vests tinkering with car engines shout greetings without looking up.

Phew, that's a relief.

Thurs 8 July 2004

No run today. As so often happens, my fish and chips last night seemed to become a signal, or more than a signal - an instruction, to my body that good, healthy wholesomeness is over for the week. So this morning I eschewed a run and chewed a bacon sarnie instead. Then a chocolatey afternoon and some more fatty fast food as I dashed off to the cinema once more, this time to see Fahrenheit 9/11.

I enjoyed this film immensely. It's not perfect. It omits plenty of stuff that's inconvenient for Moore's conviction that the war was nothing but a vehicle for the economic interests of Bush and the gang pulling his strings. But it's a brilliant piece of polemic, and as I watched it I wanted to shout for joy that the other side of the argument was at last being heard, and being heard in packed cinemas all over the planet.

Sat 10 July 2004

Today is something that has been happening in the room next door. I'm vaguely aware of what's going on in there by the muffled thuds and indistinct voices, and I communicate with its occupants by whispering through the cracks appearing here and there in the wall. What a corker of a hangover. Absolutely top hole.

I'd taken the recommendation of Malcolm Gluck in the Guardian this week for a cheap Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon. Too cheap really. I absorbed only one bottle, which doesn't seem excessive for a Friday evening, but at Ł2.99, there was always going to be a risk of a desperate Saturday. And that's what I got. After getting to bed at 4am I needed a good sleep but managed only 4 hours or so. This didn't help.

Another evening in the cinema, the 3rd time in 5 days. This time we caught up with the latest Harry Potter nonsense. This one is my last. I hate the Potter industry. I read the first book and found it deeply dull. The problem was, I didn't believe a word of it. Maybe's that's a surprising observation to make about a kiddie's fantasy, but proper fantasy is totally believable. With Potter, I could see JK Rowling tapping away behind the scenes, ticking off the list of buttons she needed to press to keep the kids happy. I did enjoy the first film though. The second less so. I wanted to see the third because I'd heard that the change of director had made it a more 'cinematographic' film. And it probably is. Some of the aerial scenes with a backdrop of the Scottish Highlands, are truly spectacular. But the plot is as thin as my chances of doing a marathon this autumn. I'm all Pottered out. That's it.

No running today, of course. Some more encouraging emails though, including one from Celia in Falmouth, telling me to upload this stuff. So here you are, Celia. I have a load of Cuba talk from June to post up sometime too. I had wanted to complete it before uploading July, but no matter.

Sun 11 July 2004

My planned 5 miler today didn't happen.

Off to Leeds again tomorrow. Bloody nightmare. Give me my life back, someone.

Must start running again this week. It's my only chance of reclaiming some sanity.

Mon 12 July 2004 - Leeds

Naked pizza eating, not much else.

No run. Instead I went out for a stroll along the Headrow, past the glorious Victorian Town Hall and round the back of the Crown Court, where one of my favourite Leeds pubs can be found. The Victoria is one of the greatest pubs on the face of the earth. A classic Victorian boozer, built as a hotel to service the circuit judges and their flunkies. All the usual brass and mirrors and etched windows, and a polished mahogany island bar. Around the walls are snugs with thick velvet curtains. You wonder what intrigue must have been hatched within these walls over the last 140 years. Adultery, murder, bank robberies, you name it. And a good few post-acquittal celebrations I should think.

Just a couple of pints of Tetley's to ensure that the quality hadn't slipped since last week. On the way back to the hotel I bought a pizza the size of a dustbin lid. Back in the hotel room, I take all my clothes off, lay on the bed with my pizza and watch BBC News 24. Yep, that's the kind of guy I am. That is what having a good time means if you're a 47 year old man.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

Tues 13 July 2004 - Leeds

Another idiosyncratic communication from Aussie Graham H-M today. Trying to read one of his emails is like running uphill for half the morning. Despite not being English, or even British, he has some interesting opinions, though finding them in one of his emails is like searching for your glass eye in a swimming pool full of the marbles he appears to have lost along the way. One observation was that I've sentenced myself to some Sisyphus-like existence. (He was the dude doomed to spend his life pushing the huge rock up the hill, only to see it roll all the way down again.) An inability to hang on to my fitness gains means a constant battle against my nature was, I believe, the general drift. Guilty, m'Lud.

But I did at least go running this evening, and I suspect I wouldn't have behaved so irrationally without the earlier correspondence.

The new pedestrianised Leeds might be bad news for the driver, but the freedom hasn't been lost, just redistributed. Runners get plenty of benefit. I'd no route planned, but it didn't matter. I was able to wander where I wanted through the empty streets. It reminded me what British towns and cities used to be like on Sundays.

I really am unfit. Yep, here I go. With my running routine so disrupted, and the shocking temptations placed before a man in a strange city with (in effect) someone else's credit card, it's not a surprise. The killer blow is hotel breakfasts. As I've mentioned before, I can resist anything except temptation. It's got so bad that I've deliberately booked a place that doesn't include breakfast in the price. It's the only answer.

I struggled to do my 3.5 miles, but I did it. Or to put it another way, it wasn't a huge struggle to do the distance, but the pace was about 1½ minutes a mile slower than the mark I regard as a reasonable level. It's to be expected. It will be the same next time, and the time after that. But as long as I manage to stitch a routine together, I know it will become easier from then on. I've got to do it. It's all about momentum. As the runs get slightly easier, and a few encouraging pounds melt away, I'm encouraged to eat better. The running will make the world a better place, and even my job might become more interesting and less terrifying again, giving me yet more appetite to run. This is the snowball phenomenon again, as often expounded here.

So perhaps it isn't a rock I'm pushing up that mountain, but a bloody great snowball. Whatever it is, I do know is that it's not so bad when you have friends to help. So cheers Graham.***

*** Note: But please don't take that as an invitation to write to me ever again.

Wed 14 July 2004 - Leeds

Just a couple of sodden miles before breakfast. I was aching from last night's effort, and my appetite for a sinewy 5 mile splash through the damp streets wasn't quite there. So I settled for 25 minutes of faltering plodacity in among the rather depressed looking city centre workers as they tramped towards their desks.

But it was enough to give me that glow at work all morning, and it even kept me awake after lunch, despite having to read a 200 page document describing the amalgamation of two databases filled with mortgage payment transactions. Imagine yourself to be a spider traversing a vat of marmalade. Make it orange curd. Or honey. Imagine yourself to be a spider traversing a vat of honey. No really. Imagine it: size(honey_vat)/(((squelch, gloop)*8)*spider_size). Er, that's what it was like.

Even more fun was to be had this evening when a few of us went to a packed Headingley to see Yorkshire beat Lancashire in the '20/20' match. Cricket continues to shrink. Foreigners, and Americans in particular, are usually alarmed when I explain that a proper cricket match lasts for five days - a total of about 45 hours. But such games are rare now. We've gone from 5 to 4 days for internationals, and down to 3 days for club matches. The 1-day game stays popular. And now we have the 20/20 idea. Twenty overs a side (that's 120 deliveries, for the uninitiated), all in about 3 hours on a summer evening. The limited time available means a lot of big hitting and entertainment. In about 230 balls tonight, we saw 338 runs and 12 wickets. I'm not a huge cricket fan, but I enjoyed this. Cricket is no longer chess, but true sport.

Fri 16 July 2004 - Leeds

As predicted, some kind of barrier has been breached, and I can report that I'm almost back to my usual level of chronic unfitness. This morning I got out for another 3 city centre miles, but unlike previous days, I didn't feel like a fish out of water. I didn't feel much like a fish in water either, if I'm honest. Let's settle for something amphibious, like a lobster. But one with a slight preference for land. Make it a dog. A rural dog. One that lives fairly near a big river, but not right next to it. About a quarter of a mile away. Perhaps a bit less. Anyway, from the start I felt stronger than I did the last few days. In running mode, I feel much less idiotic when I run than when I lose the habit. I don't feel like a wacky tourist attraction. No, it wasn't fast (when am I ever fast?), but it felt less slow than the last couple of weeks.

I ran down Vicar Lane, past the markets and the Corn Exchange, along past the back of the gargantuan Tetley's Brewery. Thoughts turn inevitably to matters alcoholic. I've had an abstemious week. Nearly.

The big problem with Leeds is finding somewhere interesting and pleasant to run. I know and like Leeds, but good running is limited. If I had the time and the inclination to get into my car, I could find some great running environments within a few miles. Perhaps it's what I'll have to do. Perhaps I should run in the evening more. I spoke with an old friend last night who suggested that I drive up to Bolton Abbey and run along the river there. The idea has strong appeal. We used to visit Bolton Abbey (which is near Skipton, and has no connection with Bolton, Lancashire) when we lived up here. The abbey ruins are magnificent, as is the countryside and the river walks. It sounds like a plan, but it will have to be an evening plan.

Being full of renewed running enthusiasm, my thoughts turn to possible future races. Written in my thoughts in very thick pencil is the Dublin marathon on October 25. It's 14 weeks next Monday. It could be done. I spent my lunchtime fashioning a spreadsheet to transport me from this morning's 217 pounds to 189 pounds by October 25. That's a target loss of 28 pounds, (or 12.6 kilos if you don't speak English). Two stone, as we would say. An average of 1.87 pounds a week. Can it be done? Of course it can be done. By me? Ah, now that's a different question...

Sat 17 July 2004

I sort of ran 8.22 miles this morning. I did run the first 4, then started to feel knackered, so the rest was run-walk. The intention was to head off down the canal to the second road crossing, and return via the main road. This is about 5 miles. But once I'd reached the A4 I decided to go straight across it and come back via the much longer, hilly back route. The hills are big and steep, and there are four of them on this route. I settled for walking up them and trotting down the other side. It struck me that I should be making more use of these chaps. Good preparation for the Burnham Beeches half marathon which I'm resigned to doing 4 weeks from now. It's the sort of race that gives "undulating" a bad name.

After a fortnight in the shadows of the dark satanic mills, I've started to re-appreciate greenness, and the gentle thrill of rural Berkshire. Trotting along one narrow lane, I turned a corner to find a deer standing in the middle of the road, rooted to the spot with apprehension about what was coming round the bend. He took one look and crashed through the hedge in panic. Silly fellow.

Bad news about the Warsaw Half on September 12th. It's not on September 12th. I called in at the website yesterday to find that they've changed the date for no very good reason. I can't even remember what the reason is, which proves my point. And so thoughts turn to the Budapest Half on September 5 instead. We could get to Budapest on the Saturday, do the race on Sunday, then perhaps get a train to Warsaw in time for the Poland v England World Cup qualifier on Wednesday 8th. This assumes I can get a ticket.

Returning from my run this morning I come across a sign draped across a hedge: HAPPY 50th, JULIE DOOLEY! A silly name.

8.22 miles? Caramba...

Mon 19 July 2004

A London meeting keeps Leeds at bay for a day longer than expected, giving me the luxury of a morning run at home.

It wasn't a great run, but it was the kind of morning that makes you value those ordinary things that the 21st century wants to beat out of you with a computer keyboard. The sunny lanes with their tall, dense hedges and twitchy rabbits; the long shadow of the medieval church, the avenue of oaks through the park, the deer by the lake, the two old horses nodding over the fence, a skyful of birds.

Americans love to reassure each other that they live in the greatest nation on earth. Such vulgar arrogance is beneath us of course, but can anywhere really generate more joy than the heart of rural England at 6:30 on a midsummer morning?

[Voice in head retorts: "What about Loftus Road at 3 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon?]

Tues 20 July 2004 - Leeds

My usual early morning running slot wasted heading northwards up the M40. Alan Bennett by David Hockney

But if I couldn't manage a run today, I did at least collect a running engagement. This evening I went over to Keighley to visit an old friend and his new (to me) wife and baby son. In Keighley, not only can you still buy a 6 bedroomed house with enormous cellar for next-to-nowt, but just round the corner is Timothy Taylor's brewery, purveyor of the nation's finest ale. What more could you ask for?

Over a pukka Indian supper of hand-crafted bhindi, chapatis, rice and dal, we talked about running, and agreed to make it up to Bolton Abbey one evening next week. The plan is to walk up a favourite hill, Simon's Seat, and run down the other side and along the path of the River Wharfe back to the abbey. Perhaps 8 or 9 miles in all. The views from the hill down across the Valley of Desolation to Appletreewick, Wharfedale and beyond, are stupendous. Let's hope we can squeeze just enough daylight out of the tube.

On the way back to Leeds I drove through Saltaire, that interesting area on the fringes of Bradford. We used to spend a lot of time at Salts Mill, an enormous textile factory built in the mid 1800s by one Titus Salt. It's now an interesting melange of shops and art galleries. Local-boy-made-good David Hockney frequently exhibits here, and can often be found lurking in the cafe/restaurant, staring glumly through a cloud of cigarette smoke. We saw him one day chatting with Alan Bennett, surely Britain's most reluctant celebrity. It was Bennett who said, when asked whether he preferred sex with men or women, "That's like asking a man crawling across the desert whether he'd prefer Perrier or Malvern water". Actually, I have my own Alan Bennett story.

It was a Saturday morning in February, and a pretty typical one at that. I'd been pottering about in my toasty, centrally-heated house, wearing just a pair of Bermuda shorts, a vest and some old flip-flops. I'd spent an idle morning alone with the Guardian and a frying pan with which I executed a peculiarly British tradition. The custom states that the slaughter of a pig and the ritual eating of hot pieces of its flesh will ward off the worst edges of your hangover.

Around midday, I suddenly remembered that M had asked me to post an important letter for her, and I realised I'd missed the local collection for the day. Beginning to panic, I recalled that there was a later one at the main post office in the city centre, and that I might just make it if I was lucky. So I just dashed for the front door, without stopping to get changed. I could park right next to the post-box, so it didn't matter, I reasoned. I got into the car and drove off towards Leeds.

As I set off, it started to snow. That was bad enough, but when I got into the city, I found that the layby outside the post office had been cordoned off, and I couldn't park there after all. Snow or no snow, I had no choice. I drove round the corner and parked just past Leeds railway station. It was now snowing thickly. I jumped out, still in my vest, Bermuda shorts and flip-flops, and started to jog back round the corner to post the letter.

As I passed the station entrance there, waiting outside, leaning against the iron railing, was the great Alan Bennett, looking his usual morose self in an impeccable buff crombie, scarlet silk scarf and black leather gloves. Framed by the thick snow shower, he looked rather magificent. His face was totally expressionless. He simply stared blankly at me as I approached and passed him. I knew he looked familiar, but... but it was a few yards further on, that I realised who he was. I glanced back over my shoulder. He had also turned his head, and continued to stare at me with no discernible expression. As a celebrated chronicler of the eccentricities of the British, he seemed quite unsurprised to see this plump middle-aged guy padding along through central Leeds in the middle of winter as the snow fell thickly, wearing nothing but that pair of Bermuda shorts, vest and clattering flip-flops.

I sort of knew what he was thinking.

One day, I may appear in one of his screenplays.

But at least this story has a running connection, albeit faint.

And the letter did make the post.

Wed 21 July 2004 - Leeds

At last, a pleasant early morning running route through central Leeds, courtesy of those helpful chaps on the Runners World forum. The Leeds-Liverpool Canal passes almost beneath my hotel and oozes straight through the centre of the city. Why didn't I think of it before? The towpath is wide and springy, and takes the runner past some scintillating industrial architecture, and beneath several wonderful bridges. From the path you can hear the traffic in the distance but can't see or smell it. In my 3.8 miles I saw 4 runners, 3 cyclists and a solitary angler. The water was dark, almost black, but not dirty. The atmosphere is unusual. Like that stretch of canal in Huddersfield that I ran along a few months ago, there was something slightly intimidating and 'serious' about the canal here, quite unlike the Kennet and Avon at home, which is rustic and green and idyllic and safe. These towpaths have secrets. The Leeds-Liverpool is about work, not play, and this provides some extra dimension of grandeur and nobility to the simple act of a pre-breakfast plod.

As I ran, it struck me that this canal towpath would be an excellent place to be murdered. It's central, providing super opportunities for your attacker to make good his escape, yet remote enough to muffle your screams, and to make it difficult for paramedics to locate your expiring body. If your assailant had the time, he could also use the canal itself as a hiding place for your weighted carcass. It might be months before it floated to the surface where, inevitably, it would be "discovered by an early morning jogger" as most murder victims seem to be these days.

(PS After I wrote the above, I read that police hunting the guy suspected of murdering 4 people in Yorkshire over the past week, announce that he is known to frequent canal towpaths.)

Sun 25 July 2004

Home and away...

7.85 miles on a warm afternoon yesterday. Not very enjoyable. First 3 miles were steady, then it just collapsed in the middle like a soggy sponge, and I ended up doing a run-walk shuffle for the last 4 miles or so. It happens sometimes, though it's happening more frequently these days. I can't remember the last longish (say over 5 miles) run I've done where I ran all the way and finished feeling strong and capable of going on. Where is my stamina and endurance?

A week or so ago I mentioned that my weight-loss programme was in full swing. I was 217 pounds, aiming for 189 by October 25. How am I doing? Hmm, well not too badly, but don't press me on it, right? Just shut up about it, will ya?

So the weight's been a bit up and down. This week started badly and got better. Saturdays are the problem. Yes, I did my long run, but then it was time for a trip to the pub (first one this week) then dinner then chocolate and ice cream and a few glasses of wine. This morning feels like the week's sacrifices were pointless. But not going to the pub on a Saturday night is surely a contravention of the Human Rights Act? I would have to sue myself for cruelty if I stayed in.

But another week looms, and with it, another chance to get it right.

Mon 26 July 2004 - Huddersfield

The first in an occasional series:

The Monday Rant

Baby On Board. No other 3-word phrase in the English language (with the possible exception of "Time gentlemen please") irritates me more than this one. Although I'm an unusually benign and patient driver, nothing is more likely to transform me into a mass murderer than this diamond-shaped proclamation swinging from the rear window of the clapped-out vehicle in front of me.

Someone explain to me: what does it mean? And don't say that it means there's a baby in the car because 9 times out of 10 there isn't. So it's a sign that tells me that the car very occasionally contains a baby. Or perhaps that the previous owner of the car had a baby who very occasionally travelled in it. Right, I see. Am I missing something? Why the FUCK should I be interested in this? WHY???

So 90% of the time it's a damn lie, an utterly meaningless point of misinformation. But let's concentrate on the 10% of the time that it might be true. Why should I be interested? Should I be? Or is it something altogether more sinister than this? Is it really some kind of instruction? Is it really saying that I should turn my radio down as I overtake in case the sagacious mumblings of Lionel Blue on Thought For The Day might give their child dreadful nightmares? Is that it?

Or perhaps worse, it somehow implies that I'm a reckless driver, and that I should consider reining in my Death Race 2000 instincts as I roar past their car; that I should consider not forcing their car off the road. That were I considering taking a sawn-off from the glove compartment and blasting the goddam driver's head clean off, that I may want to reconsider because there's a baby on board?

"On board"? Why "on board"? You get on board a bloody boat, not a bloody car. "My wife boarded the car outside Sainsbury's and we sailed to the hairdresser's". What is this goddam "on board" rubbish?

I come back to my central question: why am I interested in whether someone has a baby in the car? Maybe I should create my own sign: Wife On Board. Or perhaps Half-Eaten Apple On Board. Or best of all, how about Murderous Psychopath On Board Who Doesn't Give A Toss About Your Fecundity?

Tues 27 July 2004 - Huddersfield

I'm still chained to a project in Leeds but have shifted my patch of personal space to Huddersfield, a windy, stoney, spare and boney sort of town on the western fringe of the Pennines. I'm an urbanite by birth but cities are claustrophobic places, and sleeping over the shop makes it worse. So I've moved about 18 miles away, to a place where I can breathe more easily and perhaps see a little more clearly.

It's a not a wholly new running landscape. The first few months of this web log has me tramping over the tops from Flockton on a damp and blistery 12 miler in the approach to the 2002 London marathon. I was here again a few months ago for a Sunday morning trot along a frozen canal towpath.

Running isn't just about discovery; it's the rediscovery of things you know, or thought you knew. I lived here throughout the 1990s, and know the place as well as a Londoner ever can know a place like this. It's time to look at it again, and from another angle. For a place where I spent 9 years of my life, this remains strangely alien territory. Yes, I know the layout of the town. I know its taverns well, and where to get the best takeaway curries (the Medina Bismillah on the Bradford Road), although this information may not serve me too well on the current trip.

The people of the town were always something of a closed book to me, as no doubt I must have seemed to them. There is a strange paradox about Yorkshire. What the Americans call "a disconnect" between their public face and what seems like their real selves. No one flies the flag more vigorously than these people. Just today I read that a survey has shown that the people of Yorkshire have higher self esteem than anywhere else in the north of the country. It's bluster. Perhaps a bit like the American need for constant mutual reassurance. The belief that if they keep telling each other how marvellous they are, it will come true. Mass positive thinking. Maybe I never really understood the people of Huddersfield, but in my own experience, scratch the surface and you find the opposite. Submissiveness, resignation, acceptance. Peer into the Pennine soul and you find a kind of raw, windswept desolation to match the terrain. I find it quite attractive.

This morning I was out at 7am, chugging up and down the familiar inclines in the town centre. It's not a big place, and I exhausted the streets shortly before they exhausted me. So I dipped down onto the Leeds Road, left onto Great Northern Street, beneath the railway bridge where Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, left the neatly disembowelled corpse of Helen Rytka under a tarpaulin, then up past the Slubbers Arms towards one of the streets I lived on for a while.

I chose to run up here not because I once belonged to it, but because it's a bloody steep hill, and I need to run more hills. Why? My name's down for the Burnham Beeches half marathon in just 2½ weeks from now. I did it in 2002. Even if it's not so blisteringly hot, it will certainly be just as hilly.

2½ weeks? Cripes. We'll see.

Wed 28 July 2004 - Huddersfield

It seems like a long time since I lived in this town, and I'd taken it for granted that the people I hung round with then must have moved away or shrivelled into middle-age. But this morning I saw someone I recognised.

I was standing outside the George Hotel in my Reading Half Marathon teeshirt and shorts, waiting for _colin to wake up and find a satellite, when he shambled past me. I couldn't place him at first, but I knew the face. A guy in his thirties now, red-faced, eyes bloodshot, hair awry. He panted up the final slope to the station, shirt hanging out of his trousers, puffing on a cigarette. As he lunged past me, coughing, he seemed to give me a slanted, vinegary look that betrayed a faint flicker of recognition, but also an acknowledgement that there was now some uncomfortable, inexpressible gulf between us. Too much time had passed. Our lives had somehow forked and spun off in different directions. I smiled, more by instinct than by a real desire to talk to him. He ignored it, and panted onwards to the station.

It disturbed me, and I continued to think about it as I set off on what turned out to be a good run, and yet another affirmation of one of my oldest rules, that the success of a run is in inverse proportion to the level of expectation. I'd fallen asleep at midnight, then woke up at 3am to the loud honking of a car alarm outside my window and the sound of a bunch of people having way too much fun for a Tuesday night. I lay awake for two hours or so, before dozing until just before seven. I felt unrested and cranky, and a run seemed out of the question. Perhaps I could postpone it till this evening. I lay there, chomping on an apple, fed up. Then for no obvious reason, I changed my mind, and decided to give it a go. Five minutes later I was standing outside the George Hotel in my Reading Half Marathon teeshirt and shorts, waiting for _colin to wake up and find a satellite... and you know the rest.

Wearily, I plodded away from the vibrant epicentre of Huddersfield, along John William Street towards Birkby, where I lived for 6 years. Just before my old street I took a sharp left up Birkby Hall Road, one of the longest, steepest hills in the area - and that's saying something in this town. I got half way up before stopping for a breather, then fartleked the rest of the way, reaching the top just moments before the cardiac arrest was due to arrive. I knew it was a big hill, but I'd forgotten just how big.

It's a little known fact that I tried a brief spell of 'jogging' back in about 1996, just after I packed up smoking. I would leave home wearing an ancient pair of trainers that would have been more use for gardening than running. I could have combined the two activities quite neatly if I'd carried through the scheme I had for stealing vegetables from the allotments on the other side of the railway line. It was sloth rather than a sense of civic duty that prevented me. Not to mention the terrible thought of having to eat vegetables. The few miserable weeks spent on the pavements that summer included many attempted ascents of this hill. In retrospect, the odds against me enjoying the experience enough to become a runner were as steep as the hill itself.

One remarkable aspect of today's run must be reported. It was, admittedly, helped by the run starting slowly, then hitting a large hill before a downhill stretch and a long, flat finish, but remarkable nevertheless. I did 4 miles, and every mile was faster than the one preceding it. It's a first.

The last section of the run took me past another house I used to live in, and I found myself following my old route to the station. Almost every morning I was late. Most nights were party nights. Most mornings I woke with a hangover and a sense of panic that I'd miss my once-an-hour train to Wakefield, where I was a civil service wage slave, doing bugger all work for bugger all pay. I could shower and dress and be on my way to the station in 5 minutes flat. Trotting along the same road this morning, recreated that desperate daily routine. Down the hill, past the municipal swimming baths and onto John William Street again. Hoping that the traffic lights would favour me as I raced across the Ring Road. Underneath the railway bridge, hoping not to hear my train drumming overhead. Round the final corner where the station clock would tell me if I would make it or not. I'd be in a frenzy of anxiety by this point.

I was in my mid-thirties then. It sounds young now, but then I felt old and haggard and spent. I must have looked terrible too. Red-faced, eyes bloodshot, hair awry. Panting up the final slope to the station, shirt hanging out of my trousers, puffing on a cigarette. Lunging past the George Hotel, coughing, seeing all those middle-aged deadbeats on expense accounts emerging from the grand entrance, looking far too pleased with themselves. Making sure I gave them some slanted, vinegary look. They might smile back at me, in the irritating way that smug bastards like that sometimes do, but I ignored that. Our lives were different. To me, there was some uncomfortable, inexpressible gulf between us. And always would be.

We'll meet on edges soon, said I
Proud 'neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

From My Back Pages, Bob Dylan

Thurs 29 July 2004 - Huddersfield

A busy evening of wholesome exercise with Luke, my old friend from Keighley. We met at Barden Bridge, a mile or two beyond Bolton Abbey near Skipton, North Yorkshire. This is Wharfedale, part of the Yorkshire Dales, and as landscapes go, tearfully close to heaven.

We set off at 7:30 and walked steadily upwards for an hour or so, till we reached the craggy summit of Simon's Seat. No postcard shop, no ice-cream hut, and best of all, no people. Less than two hours earlier I was inching through the clouds of choking diesel fumes in the centre of Leeds. Now we were two men perched on a rock at the top of the world. Just the wind in the rocks and the haunting, lonesome cry of the curlew. This astonishing panorama can barely have changed in a century. Perhaps several centuries. Was this an escape from the real world, or an escape to it? I don't know, but in an existence that for the most part wounds and drains and exhausts, here was a moment of healing and replenishment and true joy.

George Bernard Shaw: "Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long". Which Luke put more prosaically: "It's the Everest syndrome, unfortunately. Should start to move down while the weather holds."

This is where we we began our slow jog along the paths across the tops. The slabs soon gave way to springy peat, and for a while it was like running on a very firm mattress. I could have bounced along forever on a surface like this. Hard not to chuckle. As we started the long, winding descent down the other side of the hill, the peat became a rocky path, and quite treacherous in places. More than once I thought I'd lost my footing, and waited for some horrible impact on my knee or elbow or face, but it never arrived.

Luke is younger than me, and faster and fitter. Last year he ran a half marathon in 1:45. But he's not run for a few months so is gratifyingly out of condition. On this surface and incline, we couldn't run fast in any case. The benefit wasn't so much aerobic as muscular. The climb and the long descent and the variety of surfaces meant muscles were being woken up for the first time in ages. Tomorrow I may ache.

The total jaunt was 8.95 miles. 2.65 of those were steep climbing, then just over 5 of running until we reached the 8 mile point. Here I could announce my exhaustion without shame, leaving us a warm-down walk of a mile or so. That final mile along the River Wharfe in the darkness was a good time to reflect on Hillary's famous remark that "It's not the mountain we conquer but ourselves".

We hope to do it again next week.

*** Confessional note: I admit it. I've no idea what a curlew sounds like. I once read a pamphlet describing the walks on Marsden Moor, west of Huddersfield, which said "the moors here are haunted by the lonesome cry of the curlew". It's too good an image not to recycle.

Sat 31 July 2004

Nature hates an imbalance. After an abstemious week, it seemed only right to use the weekend to redress matters.

At least I managed a sort of run first. 5.2 miles sounds good, but on such a sweltering day, my poor undernourished body really didn't want to play the game, and who could blame it? While the rest of the village snoozed on their sun-loungers or watched the test match from a favourite armchair, I pointed my Hal Higdon baseball cap at the horizon and turned the ignition. I dribbled along for a mile or so, then walked in the shade for a while, then trotted some more. And so it went on. I did work up a sweat eventually, but I suspect that would have happened if I'd strolled all the way.

In the evening I succumbed to a trip to the pub for my regular weekly surgery, where I released a number of important statements on a range of topical issues. Then I sat in the garden, dealing with a bottle of decent South African Chardonnay and a large, hand-rolled cigar - one of the batch I'd bought from a Cuban farmer on midsummer's day. I must finish off the Cuba entries soon.

And that's the end of another month. It's been an interesting one. I've managed 66 miles, which doesn't break any records, but it compares with just 16 last month and 64 the month before (which included 26 on one day), so I'm happy with it. The good thing is the variety. I've been based in 3 different places, with plenty of opportunities for exploring.

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