Good Friday, 6 April 2007

It's been a good Friday alright: weather warm and sunny -- just right for a few hours in the garden, tackling the grass for the first time this year. We grumble about winter, but at least you don't have to devote half your free time wrestling with horticultural insurgents, gatecrashing your life to suffocate your idyll. Bugger off you bullying bastards -- who invited you? It's frankly unacceptable, but will anything be done about it? Will it hell. Grrrr.

Perhaps because I'd not fought the garden for six months or so, it was almost a pleasure. A kind of uneasy peace though, which could have exploded at any time. All seemed well on the surface, but a bit like the unrecognisably avuncular President Ahmadinejad bidding a fond farewell to the British sailors this week, you could sense that something wasn't quite right, despite appearances.

Being an incorrigible geek, I wore my GPS watch -- and found I covered only two miles in my horticultural circumambulations. Last time I tried this it was over seven miles, though that had included the much larger front garden. I couldn't face the front today. We've carried out various operations to the front over the last couple of years -- levelled it, added four large vegetable beds, dug a huge hole which will be a second pond or an exotic sunken garden -- depending on who you ask first, planted half a dozen trees and fenced off that bit to be a sort of haven for wild flowers, created a long border and planted a beech hedge.... and all... and all to try to minimise the mowing needed. But it still needs doing. Just not today.

Wearing the GPS watch seemed like a good idea at the time, though I later regretted it as I noticed to my dismay that according to the excellent Sportstracks, the software I download the data to, my average pace for the week has risen from 11:15 minutes a mile to 54:57. This is something of a bad start to the month.

Anyway, the back garden grass got its comeuppance, so it's not all bad news. I also managed to throw out a lot of junk without my wife noticing, and executed enough jobs to make me feel good about the world. So good that, when the village clock struck seven, I threw down my mattock and went for a run.

Just the usual 3½ mile round-the-blocker. I was tired, but it actually felt good to get out there in the warm twilight and stretch a few different muscles.

It's become de rigeur on the forum recently to nominate a Track du Jour for those of us who sometimes wear an MP3 player in training. This evening, a rather strange one popped up on the shuffle that I'd not heard in a very long time -- Wonderful Land by the Shadows. This was on an EP (remember those?) we bought soon after taking delivery of our first ever record player, back in about 1964. For sentimental reasons I downloaded it a while back and forgot about it. But tonight it jumped out of a crack between Lloyd Cole and Leonard Cohen. What a great track. Cheesy as hell, but strangely other-worldly. Just right for a dog-tired lope through the gloaming.

Tomorrow sees the running of the 2007 Two Oceans Marathon in Cape Town. It's the race I flirted with before realising I was way out of my league -- at least for 2007. Six or seven months of inactivity followed by a half-hearted attitude, borne out by a near-2:30 half marathon in Almeria, added up to a very clear signal. You could hear it hissing scornfully: Sorry mate, this one isn't for losers. Some other time perhaps.

But the RC flag will at least be fluttering on Chapman's Peak with Sweder and his two mates, Moyleman and Rog. As I write, they have exactly five hours to go till the off. They won't read this before the race, but good luck boys. You may think you've had it tough, but try a few hours in my garden.

I need sleep.

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Monday 9 April 2007

According to "experts at Leeds University", the formula for the perfect bacon sandwich is:

N = C + {fb (cm) . fb (tc)} + fb (Ts) + fc . ta

where

N = force in Newtons required to break the cooked bacon,
fb = function of the bacon type,
fc = function of the condiment/filling effect,
Ts = serving temperature,
tc = cooking time,
ta = time or duration of application of condiment/filling,
cm = cooking method,
C=Newtons required to break uncooked bacon.

It partly (I presume) explains why I enjoyed my breakfast so much this morning. The other bit of the explanation is that I let out the nutritional leash another couple of inches today, and was overwhelmed by a sense of relief after a week of finely tuned, minimalistic eating experiences. I was like a ravenous dog who'd been thrown a slab of raw meat.

That might not be quite fair. I've eaten well in the last week, almost following Hal Higdon's instruction to "eat a wide variety of lightly processed foods". The "almost" is down to me not actually taping a reminder to the fridge door as he suggests. That seemed like a step too far along the starey-eyed road for comfort.

One of the good things about 'eating properly' is that you begin to appreciate food. I'll disown the ravenous dog image now that it's served its brief purpose. I've not been hungry at all. Or less so than usual. When I eat crap, I want to eat more crap. When I don't eat crap, I don't miss it.

The result is a loss of seven pounds or so, and a shinier coat -- though the latter may be explained by the Easter Special at the local dry cleaner. More important is the renewed sense of purpose. I've been gathering ideas, plans and targets but I'm keeping quiet about them at the moment. Too many false dawns. Which reminds me...

I had a quite bizarre experience recently when I woke up at two o'clock in the morning and heard a voice coming through my radio, talking about me, and telling me about my tentative running plans for the next twelve months.

?

If you conclude from this that I've gone quite nuts, that's OK. It would be a reasonable end to a train of thought. But no, if I'm struggling with my mental state at the moment, it's trying to cope with feeling extra sane -- something brought about by the chomping of a wide variety of raw and lightly processed foods, and washed down with no alcohol whatsoever.

But it's true: I woke up and heard someone's voice coming through the radio, blithely stating what my running plans are for later this year, and next spring. I'll explain soon enough, but I need to be sure that the plans are stapled onto my head, as it were, and not just a flight of fancy.

It's been a great few days. An extended Easter weekend with no vexatious commitments is a very, very fine phenomenon. And my football team won twice, almost guaranteeing survival in their division for this season. Phew.

That and a bacon sandwich.

What could be better?

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Wednesday 11 April 2007

It's all going too well now: I find myself scouring the horizon, wondering where exactly the shipwreck will happen.

The coast of Sicily looks a decent bet. The telescope moves from smoky bars showing the Champions League semi-finals, to quaint ristoranti overflowing with hearty regional specialities.

How long could I stay on my feet in a place like that, surviving the temptation to tackle a plate of cassata, washed down with a very large glass of one of the island's famous dessert wines? The first mouthful would be enough to generate an out-of-body experience. A few more glasses of Marsala and it'll be the more familiar out-of-head variety. Short-term bliss, but I fear it could be the pin that pops the health bubble.

Best appreciate the opulent fruits of asceticism while I can.

The big fat hairy unknown is how far I can enjoy the culinary sensations of Italy AND retain that permanent fresh-from-the-airing-cupboard body-glow that I've grown accustomed to recently. Vital question. I've often said on here that momentum is all. Whichever direction you're headed — up or down — the longer you let it run, the harder it becomes to turn around (though naturally, it's easier to fall than it is to rise).

If I can break that tendency, or at least bring it under control, I can look ahead to limitless tranquility. The world is my cloister.

It's not quite a plan, but I'm musing that if I could make do with frugivorous, purgatory breakfasts and light salady lunches — chased through my intestines by litres of water — then there's every chance I could knock out a longish lope around the antiquities and along the coast road in the late afternoon. And if I manage that, I'd feel better about an evening of pasta and puddings and alcohol.

It's worth a go.

This morning, I woke at six-thirty and went for the run I've waited more than a year for. The gate has swung open again, and I'm in.

Just two days after I last plodded my usual short route, I did it again, but this time the 3½ pre-breakfast miles belonged to another lifetime — one I thought I'd discarded by Lake Zurich.

The bounce is back. Average pace was a full forty seconds less per mile than Monday.

What joy there is in honest sweat.

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Sunday 22 April to Monday 30 April 2007— Sicily

Sunday, 19:30

Buon giorno.

Just occasionally, it's hard to imagine yourself happier. Or is that too controversial an idea for this world? As a voracious consumer of news, I feel under constant pressure to feel miserable. It pisses me off.

Let's follow our instincts, and laugh at the absurdity of it all. The madness is universal and omnipresent — though its intrinsic qualities are revealed only gradually, it seems. It must be why old people chuckle to themselves all the time. They don't give a damn anymore. If it isn't going to kill you within a week, it really aint worth worrying about.

It's early evening. I'm in Taormina, Sicily, sitting on the sunlit terrace of our hotel room, high above the Mediterranean. Half an hour ago, I returned from a challenging three mile plod around the narrow, hilly streets of the town, where, a little self-consciously, I had to weave my lardy frame through the elegant crowds, out on their Sunday evening promenade. Fortunately, they seemed elsewhere, blinded by their own designer sunglasses, and an ineluctable compulsion to gaze upwards at architectural masterpieces real or illusory. The pedestrian traffic is anarchic enough, but factor in the honking, carnivorous vehicles and their deranged occupants.....

Tomorrow I will head for the sea.

Since returning to our spartan hotel room on the fourth floor (78 elevator-less steps from reception), I've showered and donned a newly-laundered-and-ironed shirt and trousers, ready to shamble into the town to find a restaurant.

I'm glowing. Vibrating with that saintly feeling you get after a run, a torrent of hot water, and a change of threads.

But I was wrong to say I couldn't imagine myself happier. A capacious glass of icy, astringently-dry white wine would be a welcome addition to the scene. The other minor detail is my state of uncomfortable ignorance about yesterday's football results. A day without the Internet should be liberating, but it's hard to acclimatise to a state in which you can't discover everything you need to know within ten seconds. I hope my desperate text message will be answered by the time I get to the restaurant and lift that glass to my lips. If the reply tells me what I want to hear, my day will be complete.

I've spent the pre-run part of the day vegetating physically, but keeping my mind alive with A Question of Upbringing, the first volume of Anthony Powell's twelve-part A Dance To The Music Of Time. I completed the first twelfth just before going for what I will call a run, but what some cynics would call a mere mingle.

The book is a very good read, if you like that sort of thing. The first thirty years of my life were spent convinced that I'd been born ten years too late. Since then, inflation has taken hold, and I've realised that my birth year was actually fifty seven years behind the ideal.

It's a grim confession, but I have a weakness in the knee area when I read about English house parties of the twenties and thirties. I can't think why. As a teenager, I remember having a long natter with an elderly lawyer at some sort of gay cocktail party I found myself at. He told me all about life at Oxford in the early 1920s, describing some of the rather languid characters he came into contact with, the inconsequential supper parties, and being chased by proctors in silk top hats along the High Street if he was out too late at night. I was entranced, though the anecdotes weren't quite valuable enough to have sex with him, which I think is what he was hoping to purchase with them. How irritating for him.

The second volume of the Powell magnum opus is here with me, and I wish I'd brought the third. That said, I do have three of Doctor George Sheehan's running books in my suitcase, as well as Ian McEwan's half-consumed Saturday, so I won't lack reading material.

Sunday, 23:00

Just getting into bed, and the text message finally arrives. It says: We won 1-0, now officially safe from relegation

Monday, 23:00

I wouldn't much fancy being a step-machine vendor in Taormina. I'd have more luck selling Liverpool shirts outside Old Trafford.

Late this afternoon, I set off for another leg-propelled tour of the region, this time turning left out of the hotel, away from the town, descending through a series of hairpin bends till I reached the sea, twenty minutes later. It was a sensual journey through perfumed clouds of jasmine and orange blossom, past drooping palms and surreal cactii, and everywhere, flopping over the high walls, cascades of purple bougainvillea. Towering above all of this, dominating everything we see and do here, the conical shape of Mount Etna, brooding like a... like a volcano.

Join the running army, and see the real world for the first time.

Reaching the main road that traces the shore, I turn north. How good it feels to taste the sea and to seem lost, even here, where every passing vehicle threatens to knock you over the cliff. Today, as ever, the Med is a rich, clear hue of aquamarine: the way that summer seas must be. I lift the world to my ear, and the world hears the roar of the ocean.

On past the outcrop of Isola Bella, and into Mazzaro, Taormina's beachside enclave of hotels and restaurants and grockle-emporia. I look for the path crudely represented on my map — the one just before the cable-car station. I start to trot up a long path alongside it, but give up — I don't think this is it. Instead I retrace the trail until I find a narrow flight of steps between two restaurants. On the wall, an arrow points upwards. Taormina >>

I'll cut a long and steep story short. I reached the hotel room eventually, but it took me just under 450 steps to get there, as well as prolonged stretches of road that shot upwards at random angles like the meaty leaves of the local dracaena. Splendid training for the Cliveden 6 miler on New Year's Eve, I thought.

3.6 miles in 52 minutes. Hee hee.

Wednesday, 18:00

My ears are still faintly hissing but my head hurts less than it has done for much of the day.

I dimly recollect last night's visit to the Irish bar in Taormina — "Where Ireland meets Sicily". Like Molly Malone's in Almeria, this establishment feels it deserves the designation simply by having draught Guinness on tap -- though at least Molly's has smiling bar staff. Admittedly, I feel slightly bitter because when the time came to settle up, the decidely glum, decidedly Sicilian, custodian tried to persuade me that I'd consumed 50% more Guinness than I actually managed. I was momentarily flattered, then outraged. Much noisy negotiation followed before he backed down. I seem to recall likening him to cheating Italian footballers, though of course this unsporting behaviour is no longer the preserve of the latin nations.

Anyway, it was a most unwise insult to throw in the land of the Mafia. I was filled with fear and regret this morning, when I awoke to find a horse's head on the pillow beside me.

When I realised it was just my wife without any make-up on, I was hugely relieved.

I will pay dearly for that totally untrue, utterly fabricated, final observation, but I couldn't resist. Like my visit to the bar, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Talking of football, I watched the Manchester United v AC Milan Champions Leagure semi-final here, a lone MU Rowdies voice amongst a noisy local crowd of Milan enthusiasts. It looked grim for a time at 1-2, but Rooney's late winner won the Rowdies the match. Next week's second leg should be quite a game. The other semi-final, Chelsea v Liverpool, is tonight. The gods of football have been kind to me recently, ensuring that Queens Park Rangers stay on English football's second tier for at least one more season. Have I used up all my favours, or could they queer the pitch for Chelsea tonight? I recall watching the identical fixture two years ago in a storm-besieged hotel room by the Baltic, a couple of days after the Hamburg Marathon. I was more than pleased with the goalless draw that night. Could it happen again? I don't expect it to. The diamond-studded, platinum-plated Chelsea bandwagon is extremely tedious to watch but it's developed quite a head of steam in recent months. Tomorrow I expect another sore head, but this time a painful heart to go with it.

No run again today. Knowing that I'd be out on the town on football-related business on Tuesday and Wednesday, I'd intended Wednesday and Thursday to be static days, but yesterday I missed one. Perhaps I'll try to get out tomorrow (Thursday) to make up for it. Still, there's perhaps enough exercise to be had in this town without formalised sessions.

Today we went down to the beach, an excursion which involved the descent of at least 657 steps. I gave up counting after that. With a throbbing noddle, it was a miserable experience. At the very bottom of the descent was an enormous cactus or succulent of some kind, and I noticed that someone had carved IRAN into one of its leaves. Was this an athletic boast? Or an expression of Islamic nationalism?

What a relief to find a beachside café where I could collapse into a chair for a morning of non-alcoholic rehydation, hearing little but the comforting creak of time inching past....... and watching nothing through my god-send shades....... but the bored-looking waiter....... his head....... I suspect....... idly crammed with wriggling crustaceans....... and freshly-squeezed tourists.

We also got to the Greek amphitheatre today. It's rather awe-inspiring to sit at the top of the steep terrace, looking down on the arena that's been serving up live entertainment for five thousand years. It'll be nice when it's finished.

Wednesday, 22:00

The bad news is that Liverpool didn't get that away goal, though a 1-0 away defeat isn't too bad to take into the second leg. The good news is that I've made up a couple of excellent jokes:

Q: When a smoked fish plays football, what's his favourite position?
A: Goal-kipper.

The other one isn't quite as good, but I'll leave it till the end.

Thursday, 22:00

Another Internet day today, but I had some work to do, so couldn't waste quite as much time as I'd have liked.

I've spent part of my week chiselling away at the writing project I mentioned a while ago. There's no shortage of raw material. It's getting the angle right. People I've spoken to dismiss this talk of the angle, but I think it's a fundamental requirement. I'm still lobbing bricks at the monster, and poking it with sharp sticks, waiting for it to roar. When it does (and I expect it to), I'll know I have a chance.

Friday, 10:00

I think I'm finally getting to grips with this Celsius lark. I've been slowly collecting a few rules together, based on my observations of BBC World, the rather anodyne TV channel one happens across in hotel rooms. It's the only English-speaking choice out of the 21 on offer. It's either this or Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire in a variety of languages.

Anyway, it seems to me that these are the rules of Celsius:

If starts with a 3, it's hottish.
If it starts with a 1 it's coolish.
If it starts with a 2, it doesn't matter.
If it starts with a 4, you're in Northern India.

This is all simple enough, but it's only true when the temperature consists of two numbers. The complications arise when there's only one. If there's only one number, 1 is still coolish but even more so, 2 no longer doesn't matter, but matters quire a lot because it's cold, 3 is no longer hottish but very parky, and if it's just 4 on its own, you're no longer in Northern India.

It's taken a while, but I think I'm nearly there.

Friday, 23:00

A good run this evening [PIC]. Four miles or so, down the hairpins to the sea, then along the treacherous coast road as the sun was setting over Etna. I cheated by not running back up the hill, opting instead for the lazy, and quick, way back to the town. As I entered the cable car, puffing and sripping with honest sweat, all the nicely dressed-for-dinner couples shrank back in horror. I grinned all the way to the top.

This was our last day in Taormina, and decisions had to be made. So — what's it to be? A couple of days inching round polluted Palermo in a car, honking the horn like a kid on the dodgems, all for the chance of trailing round an endless string of extortionate shoe shops? Or freedom on the open road, taking in Mount Etna and a host of dazzling coastal antiquities? This formed the basis of a... lively discussion over dinner this evening. We didn't see eye to eye on the matter, though I won't reveal who was on which side.

Saturday, 23:00

Palermo, or near as dammit. Cefalu, in fact.

The hotel is one of those beachside, happy families jobs, though out of season they tend to get colonised by the newly-retired and baleful drifters like us. Supper was a solemn affair. Twenty or so tables, each with a whispering middle-aged couple. I felt sorry for the two punky young waiters. This must have been some living hell for them. It was bad enough for me. Of course, we still like to think that we are a bit more dynamic than this. It's everyone else who are the pre-geriatrics. After all, I listen to Jimi Hendrix and get drunk and plod marathons. Oh. Or does that just prove that I'm irretrievably middle-aged and withering?

The worst thing about this place is the TV. The only two English-speaking channels are populated by Christian nuts. What is it about these people that I find so irredeemably depressing? I don't mind the casual Christian. Y'know, the bloke who goes to church on Sundays but who's pretty normal apart from that. They make no bones about their dual life. To them, religion is an insurance policy, and that hour on Sunday is the premium.

It's the happy-clappy evangeslistas that make me want to kill myself. I spent ten minutes listening to some 'praise the lord' actor-preacher-celeb type hypnotising the glistening-eyed crowd, and I was in despair. It's 2007, and half of America seems delighted to find itself marching down this intellectual cul-de-sac. At the end of the performance, the TV cut to a shot of the same man in a studio who said: "If you want to receive a copy of my sermon on DVD, absolutely free of charge, just send a minimum fifty dollar donation to my ministry at...". Jesus Christ. No wonder he was grinning like a lunatic.

Talking of grinning like a loon, I nearly ran again today, making it as far as the hotel door, strapped into my iPod, and in full athletic regalia, but realised I was just too sleepy to go through with it. A day of driving is strangely disabling, and I know from experience that a run when I feel like this doesn't generate much benefit. Given our schedule, and my gradually accelerating Corvo consumption, I suspect that my Sicilian running days are behind me. So be it. I've managed less than I'd hoped, but more than I'd feared.

The first part of the day was spent winding round the lava fields of Etna, ever upwards. It was cool and rainy and misty up there, reminding me of the day I spent driving up in the mountain countryside of New Hampshire a couple of years back. That same sense of freshness, and of being hidden from the rest of the world. The black landscape belonged elsewhere, recalling last year's trip to Iceland.

The power of involuntary atavism. Here's another unexpected rhyme: what is it about lemon trees? The sight of them along the roadside tugs me back into some Byronesque dreamland of my schooldays — one that I didn't know I'd ever inhabited.

Sunday, 22:00

I feel I should be wearing a teeshirt saying:I survived a day driving in Palermo

It's anarchy. Law of the jungle. One enormous game of chicken. There appears to be no right of way, no rules, no laws, no road markings, almost no road signs. You park anywhere. If there's nowhere to park, you park anyway. Double parking? No problem. Not quite enough room to park? That's fine — just drive into the space head first and park at a right angle.

As we entered Palermo, hundreds of motorbikes appeared, coming towards us — obviously some sort of club outing. They rode on both sides of the road, weaving in and out of the oncoming traffic with staggering insouciance. One chap was talking on the phone, head thrown back in laughter. Another sped past us, brushing a wing mirror, as he stared downwards, trying to light a cigarette. We just weren't there.

Once they'd finally passed, something similar happens with a dozen bucolic types on horseback.

The striking thing is the fanatical impatience of road users. The bloke behind us is utterly affronted that I'm leaving ten feet of space between me and the car in front as we crawl through the outskirts. He blares his horn at me, before recklessly barging through a tiny gap to land diagonally in front of me, glaring at me as he does so, as though I'd made an indecent suggestion to his granny. He then spends the next fifteen minutes sitting in front of me in the jam. He hasn't got anywhere any quicker. Out of the city, scowling psychopaths will happily flirt with death by overtaking on blind, hairpin bends next to a steep drop. Hooting and sticking a finger up at me as they do so. It's inexplicable, irrational and wholly pointless. It belongs to an alien moral code. And the indignation on their faces! Why are they so outraged when I brake as some kamikaze truck laden with cement shoots out of a side road, right across my path?

Stressful, nerve-wracking and, if I'm honest, all quite exciting as well. I survived, and feel somehow reinforced by the experience.

The city of Palermo is pretty grim, incidentally. We'd thought of staying there a day or two, but were glad that our driving energy had run out just before we'd arrived. The tiny, winding cobbled lanes, the ancient monuments and baroque splendour, could make this place a true tourist magnet but instead it's more like an abandoned third-world capital. Its empty, wind-blown streets, with the beggars and the graffiti, gave it a sense of chaos and dissatisfaction. It didn't quite feel dangerous, but there was some mildly threatening and hostile undercurrent to the place. Perhaps it's a Sunday thing.

Monday, 22:00

Our last full day in Sicily, mostly spent driving from Cefalu to Catania, from where we depart tomorrow afternoon. The plan had been to head for Syracuse and the catacombs, but even the dead have a day off it seems. Their rest day is Monday. So instead we opted for the slow drive through the mountainous national park that seems to stretch across most of the northern half of the island. Post-Palermo, this verdant idyll was like a period of recuperation after a traumatic illness.

We're in Catania, a large and likeable city on the east coast. Il Principe, close to the duomo is a great hotel, quite possibly the best we've stayed in on any holiday. It's almost a shame to leave the room, but we did so to wander along the main shopping streets in search of ever-more exotic gelati and delicious arancini.

I managed to cling to my sensible eating regime for at least three days into the holiday, but now my grasp has gone, and in the words of our out-going Prime Minister, I aint bovvered.

It's been a great trip. But now it's time to run it off.

Knock-knock
Who's there?
Harry
Harry who?
Harry-vederci

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