March 2017

[Sweder]

8.87 kms, hangover cured.

We celebrated Phoebe's 22nd last night with mucho gusto.
Cocktails, including a rather wonderful attempt at Daniel Craig's Vespa Martini from Casino Royale, Guinness, more cocktails, a decent session IPA, a sublime Argentinian Malbec and as much grilled meat as a man could ever hope to carry. Not a Maffetone in sight. Raucous laughter filled the Monday night air as our family rabble-roused into Tuesday. Great fun.

   

Cue 06:00. Dawn's nervous blush turned to full-on blossom as I dragged myself out the door, hounds in tow. No time to wonder what or where that pounding was coming from, I just needed to start running ... Start I did, very, very slowly, wobbling up onto the downs as the Big Dimmer Switch In The Sky eased onto full brightness. Past the stables, where young people wrapped up against the cold lumped clods of soiled straw into an open skip, horses whinnying hopefully as they sensed an outing close at hoof. On to Blackcap, rumbling up the steep approach, looping around the trig point to sling-shot back down the slippery slope. Momentum shoved me up Mount Harry. My legs groaned, glutes still whining about Saturday's efforts. On I chugged, sweat rolling down my frozen face. 

All the while a totally random Peter Gabriel track played on repeat in my head. I used to love PG. I saw him soon after he left Genesis, in 1978 at Battersea Park, on after the Skids and just before the Stranglers. That gig is infamous for the Stranglers' use of six cuddly strippers during Nice 'n' Sleazy. They'd hinted that they might parachute into the gig. The powers that be ruled against this on safety grounds and spent a good deal of the day scanning the horizon for unauthroised aircraft. Even as the band cranked up the first skank bars of their latest hit, officials craned their necks, binoculars glued to their foreheads. On came the six luscious ladies, replete with stockings, suspenders, feather boas and enough exposed female flesh to satisfy Rubens. Cue chaos as security scrambled to get to the stage, desperately searching for the 'off' switch. 

   

Gabriel, hair cropped, kitted out in white overalls with an orange safety bib, had just written and released Salisbury Hill, the song that tells the tale of his departure from Genesis, but it wasn't that that looped through my foggy noggin this morning. It was this:



'I ride tandem with a random
Things don't go the way I planned them
In the humdrum'

Great stuff. I got home and played Peter Gabriel 1 from start to finish as I scarfed my eggs and bacon.
What a talented nutcase he is.