Rocktober

[Sweder]

Well, there's nothing like a crap run to kick you squarely in the pants and that's the truth.

Jet-lag roused me at just after five and I just couldn't shake the idea of a pre-dawn run. There's no logic here; crap run, tired legs, get up in the dark, haul on the Offies, saddle up the hounds and hit the hills. What was I expecting? Exorcism perhaps? Redemption? That's a little high-falutin', even for me. Still, there it is: for whatever reason I found myself out on the muddy trails in the near-dark, chugging onto the downs before reason had chance to throw off the duvet.

Turned out to be a splendid idea. Not only did I move a couple of minutes closer to a respectable time for the course (and actually felt better about it more's the point) I got to see the sun rise over the Ouse valley. A featureless smothering of low, dull cloud greeted my first wobbly steps but by the time I'd hauled my lard up Blackcap and turned to face the east a glorious orange-pink letterbox had opened up on the horizon, offering a cheeky peek into the day ahead. It filled me with hope and expectation as I launched off the summit, feet plunging into yielding, rain-sodden turf. These moments make it all worthwhile. Even as I laboured manfully home, breath hee-haw-ing in and out as I tried desperately to maintain any posture other than 'slumped' on the slippery flint I knew this was better stuff. Squadrons of Starlings launched across the fields, their take-off roundly heckled by the ever-prescent Rooks, unpurturbed by my lurching form as I steamed my sweaty way home.

Musically PR was still off the boil. Happily at about the time I started to feel the benefits of a second outing in 18 hours Alice served up a classic piece of Bon Scott ACDC. Night Prowler, with its low-slung, sleezy backline and Scotts' menacing, mischievous delivery, was controversially linked to the infamous Richard Ramirez, known in the mid-eighties as the Night Stalker. Ramirez, a viscious raper and killer of women, left a baseball cap with the band's logo at one of his crime scenes and, once captured, confessed to a liking for this particular song. There followed a public outcry in Los Angeles (where the killings took place) with calls to ban the group from the airwaves. The Aussie rockers protested their innocence, claiming the lyrics referred to a boy sneaking into his girlfriends' bedroom at night. I have to say the lyrics suggest otherwise, but none of this deflects from the excellence of the production or the warming effect of hearing it at sunrise on a deserted Sussex hillside after half an hour of Journey and Boston. And there again any allegiance with nefarious activities is somewhat undermined by the last-gasp, almost lost in the fade-out hommage to Robin Williams's Mork (Mork & Mindy). Nanoo Nanoo indeed Bon; rest in peace old son.