Sunday 7 May 2006

I called my elderly mother this evening. "How are you?" was my innocent question. Pause. "I looked in the mirror today", she said, " And I saw Death staring back at me...."

Maybe she's been a closet Tottenham fan all these years.

It's been a wretched week. I'm ill. Or something. My back has been aching all week, I have a rash across my chest, and my stomach sort of hurts. Headaches, dizzy spells, feverish. Extreme inertia, even by my trail-blazing standards. And an itchy wrist....

Itchy wrist? Yes, itchy wrist. Only one of them however, so it could be worse. An optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist sees the hole, as I heard someone say today.

God knows what I've got, but I thought it best not to add to my mother's worries by mentioning it.

It's not done a lot for my running career. I was supposed to set off once again on Monday, but my back had started aching at this point, so I thought it best to postpone the relaunch. At the time I put it down to the excessive excitements of the previous day. A frustrating match at the Madejski, watching my team go down to a dodgy penalty, followed by an increasingly wayward meander round the local beer festival.

But it hasn't gone away, and I've gone on to collect these other symptoms.

Here's how bad it was -- I didn't even make it to the pub to watch the final day of the Premiership season. Instead, I twitched in bed all afternoon, listening to TalkSport, which I always think of as the provisional wing of Sky TV. But they told me what I needed to know, and when the news finally filtered through from Highbury, that Arsenal had got the final Champions League place, and Tottenham hadn't, I was able to sleep a bit more.

So I've done no running this week at all, though I've tried to make up for this by devising a plan. Ah yes, a plan. Always a good alternative to action.

The plan involved reading John L Parker's book about Heart Rate Training. I was tempted to be disappointed by its Dummies-like inanity, but decided that this was better than something with anatomical line drawings and a tedious excess of explanation. At least it ensured that I read it.

There was some discussion on the forum a while ago about heart rate training. My own missed a beat when I read it. We chaps at the back are always on the lookout for the silver bullet, that which will transform us not into elite athletes -- that really would be asking too much -- but into just ordinary runners. Y'know, a 4:30 marathon; a 2 hour half. The heart rate correspondence offered that possibility, and shortly afterwards I snapped up one of the new Garmin 305s with built-in HRM, though I decided to postpone the heart rate stuff till after Zurich.

So this is my new initiative, once I get back on the road. It'll be a long haul back to fitness, but I've already made a plan and decided on my first target, though it's a pretty daunting one.

To get out of bed.

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Thursday 11 May 2006

It could be a long, anxious summer.

No, I'm not referring to the World Cup, though no doubt the tournament will throw the usual heart-stopping moments at us. We'll be led up the garden path of hope once more, but will end up collapsing in the fetid compost heap of failure, just short of those roses. It's the English way.

No, it was something that happened the other day. Tuesday of this week. We had a couple of our silvery-tongued American bosses over to address the troops. Give us a bit of encouragement. Or so I thought.

The Sales Supremo began by asking: "Who knows what 'pontificate' means.....?" No one else seemed keen to volunteer an answer, so I half-raised my hand. "Er, well, to express your opinions in a rather pompous manner", I said.

The SS looked at me quizzically. He repeated: "Pompous...? Pompous?" Then he shook his head slowly as if feeling rather sorry for me. "I don't think so, Andy. Well I sure hope not, because I have been described as pontificating now and then. No. No, it means to talk a lot, to be somewhat long-winded. Well today, I am not going to pontificate."

He droned on for a few moments, generating a series of bizarre sentences, each more extraordinary than the one that went before. One was so wild that I had to write it down. "Like a bat out of the Dickens, the wave washed over us in Q1..."

Let's try that one again, in case you missed it. "Like a bat out of the Dickens, the wave washed over us in Q1".

What could this mean? I resolved to contact John Prescott to seek a translation. This daydream was interrupted by something altogether more comprehensible. "For these reasons, we are here today to announce that we will be making some redundancies here in the UK. I'll now hand you over to the Director of HR who will explain more".

She probably did explain more, but I doubt if any of us heard much of what she said. Something about 4 or 5 people leaving (out of a team of 12), and individual meetings to be held after lunch.

The meeting finished; we returned to our desks. The first thing I did was to click on my link for the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, and tapped in p-o-n-t-i-f-i-c-a-t-e.

It said: To speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way.

Pompous, yes. I was right. Stick that in yer Yankee pipe and smoke it.

Lunchtime dragged over 2 or 3 hours as our small team broke into groups of two or three. Some in the kitchen, some in the lobby, some outside. The women dabbed their eyes; the men stared at their shoes. We swapped around from time to time. Sometimes one of us would go off to stand alone somewhere. The conversations and the thoughts were recycled a hundred times. "I'm bound to go". "No, no, they'll definitely want you to stay. It's me who's the obvious candidate." I could think of a good reason for keeping everyone, including myself, and a good reason for getting rid of them. Including myself.

Eventually, at around 2 o'clock, the meetings began. The first candidate for the gallows emerged with a faint smile. The second appeared at last, but ran off up the corridor, weeping.

My turn came.

We sat facing each other alongside a table. This is de rigeur these days for managers who want to be thought approachable.

She began to speak in that luxuriant New England lilt. I can recall little of what was said, though a few sentences in, she got to the point: "You'll be wanting to know exactly what this means for you, so let me tell you now. [PAUSE] Your name has been chosen to go on the provisional list for those who are to be made redundant."

*****

Through the window behind her, I watch two baby rabbits playing in the sunlit flower bed. Above them, the eucalyptus tree shivers in the gentle breeze.

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