Saturday 3 June 2006

A marathon may be a metaphor for life, as we like to suggest, but let's give it another dimension. Instead of any old mara, let's make it the notoriously undulant Beachy Head. It becomes ever clearer to me that the analogy is about more than the distance and the fatigue. Factor in the topography -- the ascents and descents; the stumbling climb to the peak, the uncontrollable slide into the crevasse -- and the image takes on a more realistic, 3D aspect.

In my last entry here I was sitting opposite the HR supremo, having my redundancy confirmed.

Next, I spent a couple of days working through those feelings of self-pity, resentment and anger that those cast adrift tend to feel. Following the script, the pain of abandonment finally turns into a strong sense of liberation and a determination to make them regret their decision. This is the vital period, when motivation is at its highest, and you still have a financial cushion.

So after lunch on the Friday of that week, I turned to the internet. Went to Jobserve, typed in the name of the company I'd just left, and was surprised to see a vacancy with a London company looking for someone with these skills. Called the agency and was told about another opportunity much closer to home. To cut a short story even shorter, a day or two later, I was confirmed as the owner of an extendable 6 month contract, starting on Monday.

Best of all, the new job is far more suited to me than the one I've left behind, and pays a lot more. Hurrah!

Sometimes, life is a bowl of cherries, and sometimes it's a bowl of cherries nestling in a bed of roses.

So what have I been doing with my time? Not running, sadly. I've had a bout of shingles recently (chicken pox for grown-ups) and haven't been able to do much apart from surfing the web and wandering off to the pub now and then to discuss the impending World Cup. It's been a godsend to be able to stay at home where I can be shirtless without shame. Domesticity makes a big difference to the itching classes.

My tadpoles have grown several feet in the past couple of weeks. I'm indebted to my master of wine friend, Richard Bampfield, for augmenting my family by a thousand or so of these creatures, though they were little more than a large blob of tapioca when he donated them.

It's nearly 40 years since I last followed the life of the frog like this, and am pleased to be able to notify the great scientific institutions of this world that evolution appears to take longer than this to change things very much. On a warm late spring afternoon, there aren't too many better ways of spending your time than by peering into a garden pond, watching nature struggle to bring forth a new generation. This is theatre like no other. It's like gazing at one of those fantastically chaotic paintings by Hieronymus Bosch or Breugel or Hogarth, teeming with life in all its splendour and all its distress.

Latest bulletin is that the advanced wave has produced a platoon of smug-looking froglets.

Much of the rest of my time has been spent on the bureaucracy of becoming self-employed. This means becoming a limited company to take in the consultancy work as well as the the web hosting and other stuff that I do. I'm now Running Total Ltd (website may not be operational yet -- I now need to give it a major overhaul). In fact I've been Running Total Ltd since just after the Hamburg Marathon last year. It was while I was shuffling round the Alster Lake for the second time that I began thinking about formalising a few projects, some running-related (hence the name), others IT. I've been web hosting for years for pin money, but it seemed like time to take this more seriously. I've not followed this up till now. Time to get moving.

So I've been busy appointing and talking to an accountant, doing my accounts for last year, sorting out tax, company bank account, joining a professional body or two, buying professional indemnity insurance, and all that stuff. It's time I started doing some of this stuff properly.

But in this high-pressure world of business I've just entered, I'll need some way of puncturing the stress bubble, which is where running comes in. This illness has been debilitating but it might have done me a favour. Needless to say I've been eating and drinking too much, and have put on a few pounds, but the break has allowed me to rest properly. Some coaches, including Hal Higdon, recommend that you take 6 weeks off once a year. It's been more like 8 in my case, but so be it. I'm unfit, but nothing that a few painful, breathless sessions on the towpath won't sort out.

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Sunday 11 June 2006

It says something about the longevity of this site that we are now into our second World Cup. (2002 tournament started around here.)

As tradition demands, England's first match has been greeted with disdain, despite the victory (1-0 v Paraguay).

It happens every time. And why shouldn't it? It's a marathon remember? Start slowly. And we always do. In 2002, we drew with Sweden in our first game. In 98, we scraped past Tunisia before losing to Romania. in 90, we drew our first two games. 86? Lost to Portugal in the opener, then drew with Morocco. And the European Championships... first match last time, lost to France. Euro 2000, lost to Portugal. Even at home in Euro 96, we could only scrape a draw with Switzerland.

Apart from one of these tournaments, England have always gone on to qualify from the group, and have twice reached the semi-finals. In 66 we drew our opener and went on to win the cup.

It's par for the course. So much so, that history suggests we should be worried to have actually won the first game.

It's hard not to be nostalgic about sport. In my case, football, though others will find their lives measured in Ashes series or golf tournaments. Our lives are filled with drifting clouds of personal zeitgeist, and for me at least, these occasional tournaments represent a means of contextualising them, and anchoring that cloud to a particular year.

Euro 2004 we were in Cuba. For the Japan/Korea World Cup of 2002, we'd just landed in Berkshire. It was the year we flew south; the year I ran the London and Chicago marathons. France 98, Les Bleus, was Leeds and M. Euro 96 and USA 94 I was adrift in my tiny Huddersfield flat, trying to squeeze too much fun from too little Civil Service cash. Italia 90, the year of the weeping Gazza, was Anna and Battersea. Mexico 86, the Hand of God goal, was Jane and Clapham. Spain 82 was that long hot, hazy summer in Manchester, fresh from graduation, shortly to have my understanding of the world rearranged by several months travelling in India, Nepal and Bangla Desh. Argentina 78? I was still living at home with my parents, doing my A Levels. Mexico 1970, the great Pelé show, I associate with my hollow middle school years. 1966 and all that? Primary school bang opposite Wembley Stadium. World Cup Willy. Men in awesome fancy dress. Ponchos, lederhosen, jaunty berets. But no Russians, Hungarians, Bulgarians or Koreans anywhere. A time when 8 year-old kids could vanish in the morning and reappear at 9 at night without search parties being organised; without their mothers being arrested for child cruelty. It was my first experience of the international world. It was also the time I stood outside Wembley Stadium during the Uruguay match, shocked by the tumult, the clamour, the noise coming from the other side of the wall.

And what of 2006? Needless to say, it would be good to be able to look back on at least one of these tournaments for sporting rather than personal reasons. 2006?

"Ah yes, the great Walcott Year. He'd not even played in the Premiership then, y'know. 17-year old, came off the bench to score a hat-trick in extra time in the quarter-final against Germany, the semi-final against Argentina, and the final against Brazil...."

We can dream.

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