|
<<< last month | next month >>> |
Saturday 2 July 2005 - The Dorney Dash 10KI don't believe in astrology. Perhaps this is a Cancerian trait.God and the stars; tarot cards and alien abduction - emotional Big Macs for those who need their hunger satisfied, and quickly, without the inconvenience of having to think for themselves. Low hanging fruit for those who don't want to have to reach too far. There - I've put my cards on the table. So the question is: can I still have a lucky number? This question consumed me for several moments a week ago, when I received my Dorney Dash 10K race pack. I decided that if I called it a favourite number instead, I'd be in the clear. "Lucky" suggests some external power; "favourite" could have some psycho-physiological justification. Anyway, my favourite number is 67, which always seems to startle those sufficiently interested to ask. The convention seems to be that a favourite, or lucky, number should be between 1 and 9. But surely this becomes one's favourite digit, not favourite number? I don't have a favourite digit, sorry. [Celestial voice: Get on with it] 1167 isn't quite the same as 67, but it will do. Perhaps it would bode well for my 10K PB attempt. After an unsuccessful 2004 in which no progress was made, my aim at the beginning of the year was to get a new set of PBs at all distances in 2005. And it's been a pretty good 6 months. Before today, I'd taken part in 7 races this year, and apart from the New Year's Day 10K, all of the others had produced PBs - 1 marathon, 3 halfs, a 10 miler and a 5 miler. The 10K has always been a particularly troublesome distance though. It's short and fast, and not really designed for plodders. There isn't much time for sight-seeing. That said, there is something comfortingly local about most 10Ks. Unless it's a high-profile event like the British 10K in central London, runners tend not to travel too far to run 6.2 miles, and at the back of the field you do still find people nattering about the new headmaster, and controversial planning applications for that empty shop in the village high street. I nearly didn't make it to the race. At 9:15 this morning I was still in my dressing gown, munching on some dry toast and sending a vinegary email or two to temporary enemies. I had 45 minutes to have a shower, find 4 safety pins, assemble my running gear, leave a note for the still-sleeping M, drive 28 miles, park up and walk the half mile to the start of the race. There seemed little chance of achieving this, but after 20 seconds or so of considering the matter, decided to go for it. Rather shockingly, at 9:40, I found myself sitting in the car park at Dorney, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, and fiddling with the car radio to try to find something to waste a bit of time on before I had to make my leisurely way to the start line. The newly-constructed Dorney Lake is a stark, almost bleak race venue. Owned by Eton College, it will be the location for the rowing events, should Britain be awarded the 2012 Olympics on Wednesday. It seems a remote possibility, but wackier things have happened. 
It was a perfect opportunity to get a 10K PB. All I had to do was beat an hour and 20 seconds. This course around the lake looked dead flat, and the conditions - bright but with a cool breeze - as good as you could reasonably hope for. I lined up at the back, by a sign that said GREATER THAN 51 MINUTES. Greater than? Did they mean SLOWER THAN? Yes, they did, but I suppose "slower" is one of those words that the organisers decided they couldn't use in case it made me burst into tears. Thank you. Boom! The gun goes off and we get going. There's no start line, so I hit my Forerunner button at a fairly arbitrary point close to the flapping "Start" banner set back from the path. I need to run every mile below 9:45 to get in under 60 minutes. Let's cut to the chase. Each of the first 4 miles is under 9:45. The GPS gadget tells me I'm 40 metres ahead of target. By the end of the 5th mile I'm 30 metres behind target, and desperate for a pee. There isn't much cover, but I have to address the problem. I spy a tree and head for it. By the time I'm back on the path I'm 150 metres behind target, and fading fast. I even stop for a walk break - not a good sign in a 10K race. With just under a mile to go I stop for another break, knowing the game is up. I walk past a panting girl who's also stopped for a breather. She says: "Come on, I'll run if you do." So we jogged the final mile at a gentle pace. Will I ever do one of these buggers in under an hour? I came in at 63 minutes dead. As it were. 804th out of 918 finishers. I picked up my engraved spirit glass (not had one of these before), and allowed myself a moment of satisfaction. "Greater than an hour", I thought. So the PB sequence comes to an end. I'd hoped to do it today to round off a good first half of the year. My hope is to get a new set of PBs at all distances in the second half of the year. But I'd swap them all for one 10K in under an hour. Then it was back home for some sporadic Live8 watching. There's been a lot of high-decibel mouth-to-ear combat on the internet messageboards and on the radio about Geldof and the Hyde Park beano. It seems that most of the antis are either disaffected teenagers who can't quite bring themselves to endorse an event showcasing so many crusties, or watery BNP types who can't understand why Africa is an issue that should bother us so much while our roads are still potholed. There's a confusion between the music and the cause that's creating some very muddled arguments, with people who hate the pop industry being forced to denounce the political campaign - possibly against their normal instincts, and those unhappy about the politics being drawn into denouncing the bands who, you suspect, they probably like. The concert was a curate's egg, with something to please and infuriate most watchers. Oldies like me will bend towards the view that Pink Floyd and The Who were worth the wait, with Snoop Dog at the other end of the spectrum - a crushingly depressing low point. I'm starting to enjoy old fogeyhood. Wednesday 6 July 2005You almost have to feel sorry for Monsieur Chirac. Almost. Compared with Blair, he's not been having a great time of it recently. Unpopular at home; losing the vote on the EU constitution; failing to wring a concession from Blair over "the cheque"; Blair delivering that barnstormer of a speech to the European parliament about the need to modernise and grasp the opportunities of new technology, while Jacques made himself look old and dinosaur-like by defending the indefensible, outmoded Common Agricultural Policy instead; the Battle of Trafalgar celebrations; the backfiring remarks about English cuisine; the UK leading the debate on Africa and global warming; the UK hosting the G8 conference; the UK starting their 6 month chairing of the EU Commission; and now, today, the final humiliation: the 2012 Olympics snatched from the jaws of Parisian victory by yet another inspirational tub-thump by his irritatingly young and articulate adversary from across the Channel.I've never quite understood the antipathy I'm supposed to feel about France and "the French". I like the place, and I've known enough French people in my time to judge them favourably. I like their food and their wine and their climate, and the way they play football. Yes, it's a generalisation, but I like what seem to be principled French attitudes towards art and politics and welfare. I've never forgotten their response to the Salman Rushdie fatwa. While most people in the UK shrugged their shoulders, in Paris a spontaneous protest march erupted in the streets, bringing out thousands of people who'd probably never heard of Rushdie, but who wanted to show their support for freedom of artistic expression, and their hatred of censorship. It made a lasting impression on me. As for Chirac, we tend to forget that he's not a popular man in France. He's not much of a mouthpiece for the French people at the moment, and most people there (from what I've read and heard) seem to regard him as a liability and a national embarrassment, rather than a figurehead and a unifying asset to the country. I like the banter we have with our French friends. I like the jokes that poke gentle fun at our national stereotypes. Much of the time we're actually parodying those who hold these views seriously. But there's some sort of invisible line that I get uncomfortable about crossing. When people talk about Israel or Pakistan the way we sometimes talk about France and the French, we accuse them of anti-semitism or racism. I'd like to think that, a bit like our relationship with the Scots, or our own friends and family, we feel we can be rude about them because we know that we're friends really, and no lasting damage will occur. But I sometimes wonder... But the great big fat, hairy, undeniable, astonishing fact is that London has been awarded the 2012 Olympics. Let's be pleased about this and, whatever we might be feeling under the hood, commiserate with those appalling garlic chompers from over the water. I was dreading the announcement, and the disappointment that I felt sure would accompany it. I went home for lunch so that I didn't have to show my emotions in public. Watching the build-up on TV was every bit as tense and dramatic and nailbiting as any big sporting event I've watched. That tight feeling all around your torso, with your heart literally feeling heavy in your chest. We had to sit through the execrable cacophony of three people tunelessly warbling the Olympic anthem before Jacques Rogge, after an extended preamble, casually eased his way into that absurdly large envelope. According to the story I read earlier in the day in some German online news website, Just 24 hours before the announcement, the frenzy has caused people to consult lip-reading experts to get a split-second advantage over others in terms of knowing where the world's athletes will gather seven years from now. Should Rogge close his lips after the phrase "And the host city is," Paris will party, Francois Grosjean, a professor of psycholinguistics at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland, told AFP. If the mouth stays open, it's London's lucky day.
but when the critical moment came, after a cruelly elongated pause, the bugger suddenly blurted out... London! Eh? Did he say London? There it was again. London! Not everyone has celebrated the news. Some people I've spoken to seem wearily irritated by the prospect of the impending fuss. But most of us understand that this will be one of the great milestones in our history. It's an event that will cordon off one era, one way of thinking, and open up new avenues into... into places we don't yet know exist. The impact on our lives, on the way that others see us, will change. The way we see ourselves will change, I'm sure. Exciting news for a great city. Thursday 7 July 2005 Life goes on.
It was around 10:30 this morning that I first heard about the bombs on the London Underground and the Russell Square bus. For a couple of hours, there was a sense of shock around the office - not helped by the lack of hard news. Rumours of further attacks and mounting body counts kept the internet humming for most of the morning, before my capacity for grotesque wonder was fully charged, and it became time to do something else. You can say "isn't it terrible?" only so many times. So I carried on configuring my server - a job that took the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. Running? I've had a good week so far. A brisk 5 miler with the running club on Tuesday evening, 6.1 miles along the canal yesterday, and just over 5 this evening. I'm beginning to feel on top of things again. I've even, at long last, started to shed some weight, even if I'm still 5 pounds heavier than I was on Hamburg Marathon morning. All I need now is to keep this going. Momentum is everything in running, though as I've often said, it works in both directions. For a few weeks now I've been chugging towards Hell; but the liner may have been turned round at long last, and I seem to be heading back in the right direction. All I need now is a successful weekend - I'm behind schedule in the long run department. Coming up to 12 weeks to go till Loch Ness, and I don't have a double-digit long run to my name yet in this campaign. Time to change that. Yep. Life goes on. Friday 8 July 2005Running a marathon through its streets has given me a bond with Chicago, whether I like it or not. (And as it happens, I don't mind...). On a freezing morning a couple of days after the marathon, I went for a wander up Madison Avenue to the magnificent Chicago Tribune building, in search of a newspaper. You can read about it here. I continue to call in at the Tribune from time to time, via the web. Here's yesterday's editorial:
A Letter To London
To The People Of London: The battle against global terrorism that conjoins our nations on so many fronts has long been, in our belief, a fight to the death. It is all the more so as Friday dawns. We are profoundly sorry that you, who have given so much, so often, to this battle, now should shed more blood. You have our compassion. You have our continued resolve. And as that battle rages, perhaps longer than many of us will live, you have our commitment: No appeasement, no retreat. But we do observe, with uncharacteristic humility, that you need no advice on how to cope, certainly not from your excitable American cousins. Instead, it is we who can learn much from you. Even as Thursday's carnage filled our screens, we saw the calm fortitude of your prime minister, Tony Blair, as he spoke important words-yes, from the G-8 leaders gathered in Scotland, but also from his heart: "Today's bombings will not weaken in any way our resolve to uphold the most deeply held principles of our societies, and to defeat those who would impose their fanaticism and extremism on all of us. We shall prevail and they shall not." As Blair spoke we thought we heard, from one of memory's cobwebbed corners, the distant, gruffer voice of his predecessor, Winston Churchill, speaking via the BBC on July 14, 1940. The peoples of Europe would not be subjugated, he pledged, by Hitler's gospel of hatred, appetite and domination: "Should the invader come to Britain, there will be no placid lying down of the people in submission before him, as we have seen, alas, in other countries. . [W]e would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved." Our own experience with global terrorism on the home front is limited to a single horrific morning in 2001. We have no concept whatsoever of the Blitz that Churchill's words foretold-of bombers by the hundreds blackening your skies night after night for months on end, of loved ones torn from your families by the tens of thousands. The goal then was to drive you from World War II-as perhaps the goal Thursday was to shake your commitment to exterminating as many of the nihilists as you can. The Blitz did not break you. Hitler failed, as surely as Thursday's far less frightful, less lethally equipped, band of killers will fail. We have seen, admired, the stoicism in your DNA. We know, though, that there are those in many lands who yearn to shrink from this battle, as if there is some safe place for nations to hide from zealots who see democracy, economic liberation and civil rights for women as mortal threats to their agenda: hatred, appetite and domination. There is not. London, like New York and Washington and Madrid, is a citadel of the West. To ply their murder spree, Thursday's terrorists walked free in your midst, enjoying the openness, the liberties, of your society. They will do so again, on your streets or ours. They will see transportation arteries for what they are: the lifelines that make our cities, our peoples, both prosperous and vulnerable. As you move beyond this moment, we will watch and learn, knowing that the today we glimpse may well be the tomorrow for which we must prepare. We also will know that no matter how long this battle lasts, no matter how many honorable nations join in this fight, one ally will be there at the end, secure that defeat was never an option. We think we'll be there too. And we will be, provided we never forget what a Churchill contemporary -- you remember FDR -- said about the only thing we have to fear. I'm indebted to "Waapster" for pointing me in the direction of another missive, taking a slightly different line. This one comes from the London News Review.
A Letter To The Terrorists, From London
July 07, 2005 What the fuck do you think you're doing? This is London. We've dealt with your sort before. You don't try and pull this on us. Do you have any idea how many times our city has been attacked? Whatever you're trying to do, it's not going to work. All you've done is end some of our lives, and ruin some more. How is that going to help you? You don't get rewarded for this kind of crap. And if, as your MO indicates, you're an al-Qaeda group, then you're out of your tiny minds. Because if this is a message to Tony Blair, we've got news for you. We don't much like our government ourselves, or what they do in our name. But, listen very clearly. We'll deal with that ourselves. We're London, and we've got our own way of doing things, and it doesn't involve tossing bombs around where innocent people are going about their lives. And that's because we're better than you. Everyone is better than you. Our city works. We rather like it. And we're going to go about our lives. We're going to take care of the lives you ruined. And then we're going to work. And we're going down the pub. So you can pack up your bombs, put them in your arseholes, and get the fuck out of our city. I think I like that one even more. Wednesday 13 July 2005 - DusseldorfDusseldorf, by all accounts an elegant city nestling in an elbow of the Rhine, has been home for three days now, but I've not seen much of it.What I have seen plenty of is the interior of Mercedes taxis - invariably driven by heavy-set, grouchy Turks who abuse me when I question their choice of route. Trilinguality and tranquility are out the window when confronted by their dishonesty, and they revert instead to some threatening hybrid of German and Turkish. Perhaps I shouldn't care - someone else is paying for it (ultimately, the customers of a certain British mobile phone company.) Not a good attitude to take, but I don't need any additional stress. Yes, all I've seen so far are taxis, boxy offices in IT Departments and this hotel room - though as hotel rooms go, this fairly futuristic one is quite interesting. It's centred round a clear glass and chrome pod containing the shower. Not the sort of room to share with someone you don't know too well. Had a good run on Monday evening, repeated yesterday morning. Through the neat suburbs, alongside the cycle path and tram tracks. Past the Garten Center, whatever that is - some place with lots of plants and plastic furniture - then onto the park with the "Green Sea". The grünes meer is a large lake, around which a forested path runs. About a mile and a half, and an ideal place to run. It's been unseasonally hot here this week, as everyone keeps telling me, including the taxi drivers, before the conversation switches to their creative route planning. Then all small talk is off the agenda, and it's into the heavy duty abuse. But I've been there already. Today I finished my main work just after lunch, and returned to the hotel to change and run. But it was just too hot and humid. Instead I grazed at the salad bar for an hour or so, before tackling some written work to waste time before 3 o'clock, when my colleagues in the US finally decide to get up and get to work. I don't know how they get away with it. A couple of hours of emails and reports and updates, and it had to be time for a run. But it was still so hot out there. So I waited some more. And some more. Eventually, at 7 o'clock, sitting in the hotel room, the fan at full blast, gazing out towards the hazy horizon, listening to the church bells clanging lethargically, I knew that I'd lost the game. There would be only one winner here. Beer. So I went wandering into the local town of Ratingen, managing this time to track down the centrum that had eluded me on previous walks. It's a large, pedestrianised circle containing dozens of pavement bars and restaurants and ice cream parlours. On a long, baking evening like this, nearly all seats on the street were full, but I eventually found a spare table in the town square, where hundreds of locals had gathered to eat and drink and gossip over a few glasses of alt beer and plates of snacks. Interestingly, not a sausage-wallah in sight. Hamburg is deeply sausage-centric, but over on this western fringe it's more middle of the road, pasta and steak and fried fish and wiener schnitzel. Jacques Chirac's recent comments about the quality of British food puzzled me. I don't make any great claims for British cuisine, but when I visit a place like this, I really don't understand what is perceived as being different about the Great Elsewhere. Take Belgium. An interesting place to visit, but their national dish seems to be anaemic chips coated in mayonnaise. Not much wrong with that, but hardly exciting cooking. In Germany you have your wiener schnitzel - veal deep-fried in breadcrumbs, and you have your bratwurst and frankfurters - pink processed meat boiled in a plasticky skin - and we are supposed to regard this as exalted cuisine? Danish national dishes are variations on one theme - cold fish pickled in vinegar. OK I suppose, if you like cold fish pickled in vinegar. Holland? Pretty much the same as us though their cheese isn't as good. Greece and Turkey? Hard to dislike slabs of grilled meat and rice and bread, but it's not terribly innovative. Seems to me that only Spain and Italy have truly distinctive cuisines. Think of paella and tortilla. Think glasses of sherry and tapas. Think pasta and pizza (even if pizza really is a New York Italian dish rather than a Milanese one). Think truffles and wild boar and glasses of rich Barolo and Barbaresco and Amarone. So let's admit Spain and Italy to the top table. But what of France itself? It's undeniable that the best meal I ever had was at a Michelin three star restaurant in Rheims, a guest of Jean-Baptiste Lanson. (The wine business did have occasional perks.) And I can think of a couple of other occasions when I ate really well in France. But it's equally undeniable that some of the worst grub I've ever been confronted with has been in French restaurants lower down the accolade league. Execrable food that I wouldn't have fed to a dog unless I was trying to kill it. So this sets you thinking... when Chirac and other haughty Gallic food critics talk about "British food", what British food are they referring to? A decent plate of fish and chips in Whitby or Brighton, or a standard home-cooked steak and kidney pie on the average high street, would knock most average provincial French restaurant food into a cocked beret. Very fine French restaurants are certainly great places to eat, but I doubt if they are that far ahead of their very fine British counterparts. In other words, compare like with like, and the differences are not as great as Chirac might think. And let's face it, what does he really know about British food? How often does he pop into an ordinary British pub or restaurant for le nosh-up? Or come to that, how often does he use bog-standard French restaurants? Probably never. Hurrumph. Er, where was I? Ah yes, in the town square in Ratingen, supping a couple of glasses of Pils, nibbling nuts and occasionally feeling indignant. And reading Simon Armitage's excellent "All Points North". Seems like a long time ago that I used to see him at those poetry readings in the George in Huddersfield. A shame that I never bothered getting to know him. He's become quite the celebrity these days. He could have opened doors for me, that lad. I am very bothered I am very bothered when I think of the bad things I have done in my life. Not least that time in the chemistry lab when I held a pair of scissors by the blades and played the handles in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner; then called your name, and handed them over. O the unrivalled stench of branded skin as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in, then couldn't shake off the two burning rings. Marked, the doctor said, for eternity. Don't believe me, please, if I say that was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen, of asking you if you would marry me. Simon Armitage The book is a fascinating celebration of the north of England - or supposed to be. What it's really about is your existence in Huddersfield in the mid-nineties. It allows you to feel enormous relief that the day of escape arrived. You're also struck by the way the book is written entirely in the second person, which you don't often come across. It gives it a strangely compelling, if slightly unsettling, tone. You. It's as though he's addressing me directly. Interesting to be reminded of bizarre phenomena like the summer of 1995 when all the Pennine reservoirs dried up north of the town, and for months on end we had a never-ending stream of water tankers arriving to tip their loads into Scammonden and Blackmoorfoot and Swellands, allowing the nasal townsfolk to top up the tin bath for Friday night's traditional ablution. I'd often drive back from some folk club in Halifax or Todmorden, or from the late show at the Rex in Elland, past midnight, and marvel at the spooky sight - the eternal caravan of tankers parked up on the hard shoulder of the M62, waiting for their turn to traverse Ainley Top and hit the narrow moorland road to the reservoirs. I hated that life, though I don't think I realised it at the time. Things are better now. Tomorrow, I must run again. Sunday 17 July 2005I didn't run again in Germany. I didn't really run today either, despite my GPS watch reporting a 12 miler. It's getting slightly worrying.For the second weekend in a row I've set out on my long run in very strong heat. On both occasions I've managed 4 steady miles before having to stop for a breather. From then on, it's been stop-start all the way. Yesterday's 'run' turned into a walk after about 7 miles, dotted with brief bursts of lethargic jogging. I'm blaming the heat, but I'm sure my preparation could be better. I've always had a thing about not carrying fluid with me. On this particular route I can drink from the water tap on the canal tow-path after 4.5 miles, but from then on there's nothing. It's not the reason I ground to a halt, but it made the situation worse. Since returning from the run I've been gluggling orange squash voraciously, without feeling bloated and wanting to pee - a sure sign of severe dehydration. Perhaps I should start using that 'Camelbak'-type hydration system I bought a while back. News: Ted Heath expired today, and the internet is already brimming with nostalgia about the 3-day week of the early 70s. I remember it well. In particular, I recall a whole bunch of school friends descending on my house one wintry night to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus (first time round of course) because our street had electricity that evening, while they didn't. Oh happy days! Sunday 24 July 2005So. John Tyndall is dead. Founder of the British National Party. I met this horrible man once. No, twice.I was at the Battersea Beer Festival one year (about 1988/89) and got talking to a middle-aged Asian guy. We got on quite well, had a bit of a laugh. He was really quite pissed, and I probably wasn't far behind him. I must have been spouting off about race relations because he suddenly started laughing and said "Come and meet my friends. You'll be surprised!" We went and sat down at a table, and who would be there but John Tyndall and Martin Webster, plus various other old NF/BNP luminaries. Martin Webster is a famous name that will mean something to people of my generation, if not the younger guys. He was the NF leader in the 70s, and was absolutely notorious as an uncompromising fascist. I wasn't sure whether to be amazed or disgusted or what. I was flabbergasted as these blokes started joshing with "Ali" - they all seemed to be the best of buddies. Ali told me that they were all gay, and asked me if I wanted to join them for a nightcap at Webster's flat nearby. I declined. A week or two later, I walked into my local Battersea pub and saw Webster sitting on his own. I couldn't resist. Despite my Anti-Nazi League 70s credentials, when Webster was the hate figure of all hate figures, I couldn't resist the chance to talk to him when he was sober. He remembered me from the beer festival. We talked for about an hour. He was some sort of printer, and told me that he spent his days bellowing out Wagner while he worked. He also warned me against my plan to go to Yorkshire to do an MSc, on the basis that "Huddersfield and Halifax and Bradford are all now ruined by the arrival of those disgusting Asian people". I never let on that I knew of his NF past, but I did make it clear to him that we had quite different perspectives, something he seemed to enjoy. The conversation was lively enough, but I was impressed that he never allowed it to become truly abusive. He was obviously a veteran of these exchanges. Our meeting ended when John Tyndall arrived. They asked me if I wanted to come with them to some club in Clapham. I said no. Tyndall tried to hug and kiss me. I made my excuses and left. Running has been out the window recently. Two good runs in Dusseldorf a couple of weeks ago, but nothing since. I blame my wife. She's been away from home for the last week, and I've behaved in a rather pitiable way. I'm like a kid who's been left on his own. Why cook when I can eat ready meals and fast food and greasy snacks? Why go running when I can go for a wander up the road to a couple of pubs instead? The grisly details must be withheld. Let's stick with the facts: no runs in 12 days; 5 pounds heavier. She's away again next week. This time, things will be different though, won't they? Monday 25 July 2005I woke at around 6 this morning and listened to the rain swishing the new gravel drive. As I sank into bed last night I promised myself to get up early and run.It didn't happen, but I managed the next best thing. Working locally these days, I was able to wangle myself an extended lunch break - enough time to pop home, get changed, run 4 miles, shower, change back and return to work without anyone noticing I'd been gone a bit longer than usual. The run was better than I feared it would be. A break of 13 days and a bout of gluttony is usually enough to ensure a whimpering, bloated, intermittent run-walk of a plod. It was surprisingly non-bad though. Not fast, but no walk breaks. Less than 10 weeks to go to the Loch Ness marathon, and I've still not managed a proper long run. Oh God. |
| <<< last month | next month >>> |