September

[Sweder]

A new month, same old knee, same old running curfew.
Still, the new bike offers a genuine outlet for venting my spleen and shedding some of the accumulated lard. It's been slow going but any kind of going is better than none.

This morning's clatter up the hills was shrouded in deep thought. A blogging acquaintance of mine recently lost her husband. He suffered a monstrous heart attack a few days after his 50th birthday, slipping into a vegetative state before, heartbroken, his wife made the dreadful decision we all hope never to face; to withdraw life-support. They have three children and my heart is filled with grief for them. I don't know them well; we've never met and in all probability never will, yet the story touched me deeply, especially the following words published in tribute by the youngest daughter. It made me stop and think, and it followed me all over those sun-dappled hills on this beautiful, breathless morning.

You Can Let Go Now, Daddy
[SIZE="1"]excerpt from song by Crystal Shawanda[/SIZE]

It was killin' me to see
The strongest man I ever knew
Wastin' away to nothin'
In that hospital room
'You know he's only hangin' on for you'
That's what the night nurse said
My voice and heart were breakin'
As I crawled up in his bed, and said

You can let go now, Daddy
You can let go
Your little girl is ready
To do this on my own
It's gonna be a little bit scary
But I want you to know
I'll be okay now, Daddy
You can let go
You can let go

[Antonio247]

It´s a pity that that sort of death has to happen.


Get better from your knee, S. Anyway, Enjoy cycling now.

[Sweder]

Thanks mate. Things cooling off a bit in Almeria now?
There's an impressive list of people lining up for the half in January . . .

[Seafront Plodder]

Must confess I'd never heard of the artist there, so I youtubed the song. Extremely powerful lyrics. Reminds me of Dance With My Father.

I'd guess you have to be in a certain maudlin mood to fully appreciate the track, but am sure that many of us who have lost our dad can easily empathise with the message.

[Sweder]

Murakami-san has a lot to answer for.
I finally finished What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a book that echoes, or more accurately given the chronology of events, spookily previews my own relatively short running life. A tough ultra almost ended Murakami’s affair with running, beating the joy out of his footsteps, withering his resolve. It took a long while for him to fully recover, longer than he had at first thought, and perhaps that’s happened to me too. It’s no coincidence that the Two Oceans was the last big race on my calendar. Something in me shrivelled on that gruelling quest. The comparisons don’t end there; knee troubles, worries about writing, running shoes, rekindling a passion for running and the joy of finding that passion, whilst buried and bruised, still alive and kicking, all feature in this excellent autobiographical tale. It gave me hope, more it made me think – really think.

So when I woke up in the wee small hours, an ugly maelstrom hammering on my windows, I grinned like a man on the very edge of reason and reached for my running shoes. Don’t tell Nicola, my ever-watchful, brutally honest physio. She’ll punish me horribly for breaking my earnest vow of abstinence. I had to know; I had to look inside and see what lay there. Separation can be a terrible thing but it can also lead to an honest appraisal of where we are. I’d been completely apart from running for about a month and to my deep concern I wasn’t really missing it, at least not in a tangible, every day sense. Would there, could there be a reconciliation? Is there a future for me and my useless knees on the muddy hillside trails, or am I destined to pedal off into the sunset to pursue a new and less destructive affair with my admittedly attractive mountain bike?

If anything would find me out it was a fifty mile-per-hour broadside swirl laden with heavy rain and laced with spite. I started out slowly – really slowly – sensors focused on my mutinous joints. Tess, the ageing whippet of legend, took one look at the cavorting mist-rain, shook her lean white head and trotted back towards the house. Fair enough. The other two put their heads down and ploughed on, up the stiff early climbs and into the hills. A mile in and my early frantic pace settled. Sure I felt heavy (no shock there) and terminally slow, but so far so good on the knee front and I was still moving. Up past the stables, onto Mount Harry and finally that long pull up Blackcap, wind lashing in from the south to clatter into my banana-yellow windcheater, stinging the exposed pink flesh of my legs, an endless stream of cruel, darting barbs.

There’s a helluva wild whirlwind tearing through the world just now, not just out in the hellish hills around Lewes or even the beleaguered US Gulf ports of Louisiana. My beloved New Orleans may have dodged the very worst of Gustav but another dark and violent storm threatens to rip through the heart of the shell-shocked Republican convention some thousand miles due north.

On the plus side for the Right Gustav’s timely arrival has caused Messrs Bush and Chaney to bail out from almost certainly doomed lame-duck speeches at the star-spangled gathering. No sooner had the collected sighs of relief swept through the bedecked streets of Saint Paul a vicious, icy blast knifed in from the north-west. John McCain, surely the man most likely to collapse on reaching office since the last inaugurated Pope, rolled the dice and picked a spritely young female governor as a running mate. Female and feisty, commander in chief of her regional National Guard, Sarah Palin was chosen to smite the Obama publicity machine just where it hurts - in the pro-fem marginals, to take those disillusioned Hillary-ites and flip them across the red-blue divide. White-haired, wrinkle-jowled the Kingmakers at GOP HQ froze in horror as scurrilous rumours swirling around their hastily assembled 'Dream Team' were flatly denied then cruelly affirmed. Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is, to coin the current Hollywood vernacular, knocked up. Pregnant out of wedlock, a heinous crime that until recently warranted burning at the stake in the unforgiving Republican heartlands. The only thing better than this for Barrack's bandwagon would be if the co-creator proved to be either a torch-burning hoodie or -oh please oh please oh please - of ethnic origin. We're told today that the two 'plan to marry'. In this age of substitute opening ceremony singers can we be sure it'll be the biological father at the sharp end of Sarah's Moosekiller?

I nipped onto the GOP website to check my spellings and you know I could barely find hide nor hair of the VP-elect. This handsome, radiant, all-action mother of (four? Five?) who, just 24 hours earlier, threatened to derail the seemingly unstoppable Obama Express, has been swiftly swept under the royal blue Republican cyber-carpet, at least for the time being. One can only imagine the degree of throbbing to be found in the temples of the Grand Wizards; frightening. Put the Minneapolis emergency services on red alert, there’s coronaries in them there halls! What fun to see the spin and counter spin emanating from the north, enough perhaps to unwind the power of Gustav as the storm sweeps inland.

Speaking of ill winds there's a heck of a twister raging through the incomprehensible world of Premiership football. A bizarre day/ night saga involving Arab trillionaires, Oligarch gazumping and an apparent tug of war over a surly Bulgarian. Robinho heads for Middle-Eastlands with the scorn of his former employer ringing in his ears. ‘He has deep emotional issues; every time I talk to him he cries’ claims Real Madrid supremo Calderon, waving his slightly mucky hanky and peeling a small onion. Wait ‘till the Brazilian maestro gets into Manchester and finds out they have two premiership teams and he’s signed for the other one. They’ll need considerably better flood defences than the cracked levies in the Big Easy to cope with that sorrowful deluge. The irony of City being bought out by a company with United in its name is not lost here. But away sour grapes! for any swell of envy swamping my bile duct is surely (temporarily) cleansed by the joy of watching Roman and Peter kneeling together on the Stamford Bridge carpet in a rich parody of Nixon and Kissinger, wringing their hands over the tear-stained mugshot of their Brazilian idol. Get used to it boys. Al-Fahim's wealth is so great it can be seen from space – last night’s Fiver described the robed-one ‘playing with Abramovich’s yacht in the bath’. I have to admire the brass neck of the City suits, throwing out a wicked smokescreen as the witching hour approached; Berbatov, Villa, Gomez . . . genius boys, pure genius. I’ve no doubt there were plenty of squeaky bums at the Devilbowl as Lord Ferg and David Gill watched the Sky Sports News ticker in wide-eyed disbelief. Now Spurs can count their haul, Sparky can rub his hands and Abramovich can lick his wounds. Commence au festival!

Turning at the peak of the Cap I faced nature's wrath, a mere snapshot of the brutal power looming over the southern States but fierce enough for a man standing alone atop an exposed knoll clad in flimsy shorts. Not for the first time I realised that the side wind had in fact been shoving me outward. Now it roared back into my face with gleeful intent, daring me to step off the rise and start the homeward plummet. I grinned, a maniacal leer towards a squint-blurred impression of a hillside, setting my heavy legs in motion. As the ground raced to meet my hurtling form the answer to my question rose from the deep, bursting into my mind to embrace the endorphins streaming through my veins in a wild dance of sheer unfettered joy. My worries, my fears, dalliances with bicycles and thoughts of other pursuits fell away like spent fuel cells after a Space shuttle launch. I gathered speed, mindful not to do anything stupid like blowing a gasket or taking a terminal tumble off the rain-slicked flint. Running is, and shall always be in what ever limited capacity, a part of me. I'm pretty much a Godless soul but I thought of Eric Liddell, truly a man of God, the Flying Scot immortalised in Chariots of Fire, and this wonderful quote:
I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.
Well, when I ran today I felt my pleasure, and that's all I really needed.

The trail, wide and undulating at the dip, narrowed as I climbed again, tall grasses, heavy, wet and mean, leaning in to whip my lower legs. I grinned again, calm, soothed, safe in the knowledge that on this foul and heartless morning I’d got my answer; my passion lives! It’s there, muffled by injury, stifled by the frailties of my rubbish body, but it survives, it endures.

When the time comes and I get the all-clear and this bloody stupid knee settles down I’ll be back out there in the wind and the rain to gamely gallop across this unforgiving downland. The hunched silhouette returns! The haggard bundle of rags on stilts bowling along the Lewes ridge, hustling and bustling towards some far-flung fanciful goal. For now I’ll huff and puff my way across these trails on my trusty stand-in bike with renewed hope in my heart. Who knows? Maybe the bike will stay on, helping to ease the burden on ageing limbs, extending my lease on this running life. I hope so, but if she does she’ll play second fiddle.

[Antonio247]

Thanks mate. Things cooling off a bit in Almeria now?
There's an impressive list of people lining up for the half in January . . .

Well, it is cooling off a bit but it is still hot although not so hot as in August.

You will always be welcome in this town even if I have to hire a coach to take you all to the hotel.

By the way, last month I phoned the organiser because PaulK is interested in coming and he told me that there were 99 per cent chances that the half marathon will be on the last Sunday of January. I´ll phone again soon.


Saludos desde Almería

[Ana]

Thanks mate. Things cooling off a bit in Almeria now?
There's an impressive list of people lining up for the half in January . . .

Dear Sweder,
did SP already lined up?

[Sweder]

Dear Sweder,
did SP already lined up?

Shhh!!! Don't tempt fate . . . [SIZE="1"]but it might just happen![/SIZE]

[stillwaddler]

I do love reading your contributions Sweder, so glad you were able to steal a run.

Great joy teasing the supporters of Aboo Derby United today in the office, good news for us about Berbatov 'though :-)

[Sweder]

Heh heh . . . I thought Abu D'Arby was a second-choice midfielder at the Arsenal . . .

[Sweder]

The sun rose some time ago as I worked between the chambers on Main Stem. So much to do! Checking the sugar-stores for the Unborn, stacking food at the Nesting Place in readiness for the season-end Hatchlings, prepping troops to forage into new lands, despatching sentinels to scan approaches for Sky Raiders. It’s been a strange year; so much rain, not much sun yet an abundance of rich foliage for all that. Stocks are plentiful, we are greater in number than at any time in my brief lifespan. Our legions move from territory to territory, sap-harvests reach record volumes. The work continues; we build, we grow! Our Great Day approaches, our time comes . . .

I’ve been so busy I barely noticed the Rose Hips ripening on the Outer Branches. They’re turning yellow to red, blood-sweet skin blooming under a silken sheen. Three sunrises more - maybe four - and I’ll lead a harvest team onto the first bud. So many nutrients packed into so compact a vessel! Easy feeding, just in time to greet the Unborn. They will feed well, grow strong to lead a bold new army to glory and conquest. I must go and check the sap-rise; it’s not so far, just an awkward clamber into the Outer Branches. Not many leaves to munch on along the way, very little cover. But I must ensure these buds truly hold the precious force we need to fuel the Triumphant Generation.

Got to be careful; there’s a lot of Big Creature activity in this sector. There’s already been a few stinking Four Legs come through. They don’t trouble us here, high in the safety of Main Stem, but they do push and shove into the Lower Reaches, causing the whole assembly to tremble like world's end! Wouldn’t want to be hanging off a shiny, slippery fruit cluster when that happens . . .

Oh Mighty Aphina! Sweetness beyond dreams . . . these buds yield nectar beyond all reckoning! What a new breed we shall have, such an army as has never before scaled these lands! The rise of the Aphids has been a slow and careful travelling, knowledge-wealth handed down through our genetic code, evolved through generations in readiness for these momentous times. The culmination of millennia, the dawn of a new generation; Evolution! Conquest!

Must return, so much to do. Ah - that lone raindrop, clear sweet pearl, nature’s devine candy . . . I should take a sip . . .
WHAT!??? NO! -


That was close. I almost stacked the bike – and, more to the point, my own delicate frame - in the ugly cloth-grabbing thicket hedging the muddy switch-back beneath Stable Rise. The thorny tendrils all but tore a chunk out of my arm. I was distracted by those lustrous Rose Hip buds – I missed them yesterday on the run. It’s important to pay attention, especially on the super-slippery sections around the gates, more so when balanced on relatively unfamiliar wheels. I don’t want to end up with a face full of gorse spikes anytime soon.

Although nowhere near as satisfying as yesterday's re-affirming adventure today’s mounted thrash was still a decent workout. I heaved and puffed up the long slow pull of Mount Harry, a bizarre parody of a man in cardiac arrest. I've come to realise that the hardest sections are tougher to climb on the bike that they are to run. I'd certainly not expected that but here was the proof. That nasty little section out of the woods before the gauntlet of gorse and flint leading up Wicker Man Hill always sucks the energy out of my calves. Today I was all but stood still on the bike, in the lowest gear (lowest, that is, on the mid drive-sprocket – I refuse to drop down to the easier sprocket. It’s a macho thing - oh, and I hope you like my use of the technical cycling terms), struggling up the incline until finally I could relax back onto the (spitefully skinny) seat.

The hurtle home was, as ever, hair-raising. Discarded sheep offerings, ubiquitous across the rough-hewn trail, flew off my unguarded tyres to splatter my white running shirt with a generous dash of green-brown sludge. Lovely. After the first two-wheeled outing I’d press-ganged a pair of cheap sunglasses I’d found in someone’s car on the way to some golf day or other. These were now coated in crud as I sped downhill, standing up on the pedals taking mini-jumps at thirty-plus miles per hour, teeth clenched, eyes squinting behind the fouled shades. Gypsy, faithful Lurcher, chaser of racehorses, kept pace admirably even when I clunked through the gears to reach maximum velocity in the bosom of the inter-hill cleavage. She runs beautifully; sleek belly flat to the floor, legs flying back and forth, head thrust dutifully forward, tongue flapping from her open maw. She really loves these flat-out hammerings. I never cease to wonder at her capacity to repeat maximum effort on every descent. Willow, issued with woefully short legs, an abundance of thick curly hair and a portly Cocker's countenance, bundled along in a game attempt to match our speed. Halfway up Mount Harry she caught us, pre-Raphaelite ears flapping madly as if at any moment she might leave the ground, defying gravity to soar amongst the low grey cloud above the bracken.

Today’s weather, whilst not exactly glorious, was far kinder than yesterday’s ugly beating. Yet once again I’m sorry to report my old companion Tess abstained. Alas I sense this pattern will continue. It’s a new era, a painful collection of firsts and lasts. First refusal, first resigned shuffle back to the house, back-to-back bail-outs. These will inevitably lead to the lasts; last outing with the bike, last long run, last rabbit chase, last longing look towards the grazing sheep, last nefarious dump in front of a poor unsuspecting rambler, last walk, last cuddle on the sofa, last breath. Terminal decline surrounds us but it doesn’t get any easier to understand, much less accept.

I was deep in conversation with Captain Tom last night on this very subject. One of our golfing associates passed away at the weekend. A mutual friend had hailed him across a station platform only last week. The fellow had waved back cheerily, an apparent picture of rude health. We discussed a possible eulogy on the MGS website. The problem is this fellow had less redeeming features than he did annoying habits. Constructing a fair and noble epitaph whilst describing a man we could all recognise was proving beyond the wit of Captain Tom.
‘My Mum’ he said with a rueful glance ‘told me that if you can’t say anything nice about a person it’s often best to say nothing at all.’

Oh, I don’t know . . . I recall a thrilling piece penned by Hunter Thompson on the death and funeral of his arch-nemesis, Richard Milhouse Nixon. It was published verbatim in Rolling Stone. Here’s a snippet to give a sense, a flavour if you will, of the piece.

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a President. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

[Sweder]

Got the all-clear from the lovely Nicola to resume flattening the downland trails. The knee is on the mend and with due dilligence I should be right as rain in no time. I'll mix up the plodding and the bicycle-puffing for a while to be on the safe side.

Just at this precise moment both seem lightyears away from possible.
But more of that later . . .

[Sweder]

The sky is cryin’....cant you see the tears roll down the street
The sky is cryin’....cant you see the tears roll down the street
I'm watin' in tears for my baby
And I wonder where can she be

[SIZE="1"]Written by: Elmore James, Clarence Lewis, Bobby Robinson, Morris Levy, originally recorded in (1959)
Also recorded by:
Luther Allison, Eric Clapton, John Hammond, George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Stevie Ray Vaughan (and Double Trouble), John Martyn[/SIZE]

According to the evil drug lord Sugai in Ridley Scott’s Black Rain, immediately after the ‘Fat Man’ leveled Nagasaki in 1945 a black rain fell on the ruined land. I was 10 when the B-29 came. My family lived underground for three days. When we came up the city was gone. Then the heat brought rain. Black rain. You made the rain black, and shoved your values down our throats. We forgot who we were.

Well we’ve got our very own grey rain here and there’s no end in sight. If it weren’t so darned chilly I’d say it was monsoon-like but it’s bereft of that humid overcoat associated with downpours on the sub-continent. The skies over Sussex lack all definition; it’s all light and dark variations of the same dull blue-grey, subtle shifts in shades the only relief from oppressive drudgery. Rather like Sugai I too am unsure who I am, but for rather more self-afflicted reasons.

I’m watching all this from the safety and comfort of my office at home. Following a wonderful night at London's historic 100 Club I elected to skip the commute today. For one thing driving anywhere after a veritable flood of Murphy’s stout is probably a bad idea, and for another I’ve got plenty to crack on with without the constant interruption of people calling to flog me stuff I never knew I needed. I recently received, ironically via an unsolicited e-mail, some tips on dealing with various cases of foot-in-the-door intrusion. Don’t get mad, get even seems to be the best policy. For phone calls use the three word formula – One Moment Please – before placing the handset on the desk and going about your business. The angry parp parp parp from the handset will tell you when the offending sales weasel has hung up. For junk mail take the trash from company A, remove any reference to your personal details, place the remainder in the prepaid reply envelope of company B and vice-versa. I recently sent yet another offer of a platinum Amex to my tax office. Perhaps not the best example but you catch my drift. They have to dispose of the unwanted material whilst paying the postage. You never know, if enough people do it the swine might learn a lesson.

One more tip. If you occasionally receive calls at home and hear only static when you answer this is possibly a clever sales computer determining when you are m most likely to answer the phone. This information is distributed to yet more cold-calling low-life’s who will pester you ad infinitum. If this happens simply press the # key six or seven times in rapid succession. Apparently this bamboozles the calling machine, no doubt leaving it to sing Daisy Daisy in a drowsy voice until it implodes. Your number will come up as a wrongun’ and you’ll be removed from the database.

The gig was a peach. Girlschool continue to defy the inexorable march of time, turning out some excellent new material. This time they've collaborated with amongst others the diminutive yet powerful Ronnie James Dio and our very own Lemmy to great effect. The support was terrific too, the Tokyo Dragons performing their farewell recital, a fabulous blend of Foo Fighters and ZZ Top with a soupcon of Kaiser Chiefs whisked in to add fizz to their energetic broth. The old venue was rocking, rammed to the gunnels with Hairies young and old. During the early evening sound check I reflected on just who had graced this modest stage with Craig, webmaster of the Girlschool forum and dedicated follower for many years. Everyone from Humphrey Lyttelton to Babyshambles has played here. Craig reminded me of the infamous incident when one Sid Vicious smashed a bottle of beer against one of the columns, semi-blinding a nearby lass.
'Wonder which pillar' mused my be-stubbled Scottish companion.
I suggested it probably didn't matter much, least of all to the poor girl who'd had to pick glass out of her face.

Being a beer snob I eschewed the offer of free backstage lager, putting principals before finances by shelling out a lofty three pounds sixty for highly agreeable pints of Murphy's in ugly plastic cups. One moment of divine comedy came close to inducing my first full-blown panic attack. Enid, bass player and vocalist with Girlschool, flogged me one of her old Ibanez basses last year. As the girls came off stage after their main set, huddling pre-encore to one side as the dressing room, a surprisingly nasty little corridor, was the wrong side of two hundred sweaty head-bangers, she turned to me with a huge grin and asked how I was getting on with the guitar. I was a little taken aback, not expecting this at such a hectic moment in the evening.
'Er, not bad! A mate leant me 'Bass Guitar for Dummies' and, um, I'm working on it.' The wolfish grin widened to the very edges of her glistening face, tiny horns started to push through her forehead as she fixed me with a bone-chilling stare and said in a horribly audible voice
'Great! We'll get you up jamming with us then!'
I could have easily laid a modest wall on the spot.
She was of course joshing but that didn't stop the blood draining from my face and my legs turning to useless mush.

As the sheets of slag-tinted precipitation blur the view to a heavily shaded pencil sketch I’m thinking about pulling on the runners this afternoon. Having received the green light it seems churlish to pass up the opportunity to hit the hills. The grim weather has conspired with a rather woolly noggin to persuade me otherwise. I’ll give it an hour and see what occurs.

[Sweder]

Well I did eventually put my (woolly) head above the parapit.
The sun popped out in the afternoon, but by the time I'd laced up my offroaders it had scurried off behind the thick curtain of cloud. Halfway round the rain returned, lashing in from the south to add a good soaking to my misery.

A very heavy stumble in 49 minutes. It felt like I was flat out all the way; sadly I was only fat out, wobbling in ungainly fashion across perilous paths of slippery flint, sticky mud and slick grass. I'm off again in a moment, on the bike this time. Tired of scrubbing plastered sheep sh*t off myself I shelled out on a couple of sporty-looking mud-guards yesterday. After a good deal of cursing and one squished thumb I cajolled the things into place. We'll see how effective they are, this morning's raging wind and rain likely to provide a stern test.

Tally-ho . . .

[Bierzo Baggie]

I can tell you’re running again Sweder without even reading you.. just by the length of the diary entries Funny how one thing leads to another … it must stimulate the old creative juices!

Back to the mountain biking theme, ever since I bought a mileometer I’ve used the bike to measure all my running routes. Like you I’ve discovered that my off-road biking time is only marginally faster than my running time and that the steep uphill sections are without doubt harder when I’m biking it. The only place where I gain much time on the bike is with long, non-technical descents.

One Sunday I mountain biked the Aquilianos short route. It took me 5 hours 20 minutes, only about half an hour faster than I did it on foot once upon a time.

Another thing I've noticed is that when I'm using my mountain bike I feel much stronger running uphill so one thing clearly compliments the other.

[ladyrunner]

Sweder

That's good news that you are running again. Does that mean that you will soon be returning to the Hove Park 5k with socialable coffee afterwards?? The coffee bit is getting very popular now which is good as that's the enjoyable bit!!

Julie

[Sweder]

BB's right of course. My output has cranked up considerably due to a return to physical endeavours. It's all just brain-dumping at the moment but writing is for me wholly comparable (and compatible) with running. A common fundamental is to 'get back into it'. In running terms that means a few stodgy sweaty slogs. For writing read indiscriminate, sometimes nonsensical brain-dumps :o

I found time for the former this morning, clocking a pleasing 46 minutes under fresh, sunny skies, but not the latter. As soon as I fired up Old faithful e-mails battered by inbox like a gulf coast weather system

I did have one random thought about the recent madness at St James's Park. Newcastle should immediately appoint Alan Shearer as their new manager. By his own admission Shearer has limited/ no knoweldge of the demands of the position, making him in my view an ideal candidate. He is revered on Tyneside and is also - and here's the clincher for me - stocky enough to give that unctious little hemorrhoid Dennis Wise a slap. The (blind) faithful will flock to Shearer's call, buy a raft of new merchandise and hail the dawning of a brave new world in crackling Geordie harmony. Howay th' Lad!

[Sweder]

On the bike this morning for an essential detox after the Night of the Choking Scotsman* round at Captain Tom’s. The night started inauspiciously, we three well-met, well-fed fellows sharing a few gentle pints and a game of Eight Ball in the backroom at the Two Brewers. A cluster of grim-looking youths took an interest led by an under-fed extra from The Hills Have Eyes and a rather portly tattooed gentleman and his equally rotund concubine. Hills thought it would be a good idea to poke a large bear with a stick, deliberately knocking Captain Tom’s cueing arm mid-shot. There followed a low-key exchange of observations and opinions. SP ventured that our new-found companions may have taken a rather shallow dip in the gene pool and I added the observation that Hills might be the sort of person to find pleasure in his own company a little too often. It all broke up amicably enough, the wobbly female berating the tattooed lard mountain for starting it all (when in fact he’d tried to defuse things as soon as he’d taken stock of the size and grizzled appearance of his potential adversaries). There is, it seems, justice in the world.

Conflict and its resolution were in my thoughts as I flogged my sorry carcass across the Downs. The sky had the look of a cream pudding left on the stove too long, the high white layer of cloud broken and cracked, yellow at the edges as the sun peeped sheepishly through as if to apologise for having missed most of summer. As I pedalled frantically and without great effect Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow provided the soundtrack via the excellent Stargazer. Cozy Powell’s marvellous manic intro, pounding, Blackmore's driving rhythms and hugely dramatic, overblown guitar riffs, Ronnie James Dio’s haunting, powerful voice belting out lyrics laden with gravitas if a little confused in their meaning . You get songs like this, especially in the sword and sorcery world of heavy rock. Slow, rumbling music (Zeppelin’s Cashmere is another good example), conjuring images of slaves dragging ludicrously large slabs of stone through endless shifting sands under a merciless sun. The words bring added weight, often making little or no sense under careful interrogation but hey, this is heavy metal not anything important like, oh I don’t know, global politics. Barrack Obama calls the faithful to him, his own carefully crafted speeches filling vast auditoriums, echoes of the past chiming with an ernest demand for change, for a better, friendlier world. For all the plaudits, ovations and the sagely nodding of wise old heads you have to sift through the text for quite some time before anything substantial emerges.

I got to thinking about his adversaries. John McCain seems solid enough, what I call a Ronseal Republican; he does exactly what it says on the tin. But I was thinking specifically about Sarah Palin. Tomorrow in Cern, Switzerland, a bunch of (probably) mad scientists are going to fire up the world’s most powerful pea-shooter, the Large Hadron Collider, to re-create the birth of our universe. It all sounds a bit dodgy to me. There’s a 1 in 500 million chance it could all go tits up and we end up getting sucked up our own backsides as the world implodes. On one hand not very likely, but on the other if it did happen we’ll hardly be in a position to take the whacked-out white-coats to task. The Lovely Sarah [SIZE="1"]TM[/SIZE] is an avowed Creationist. Put simply she believes that the Swiss fiddlers have it all wrong as it wasn’t a simple cosmic collision that started all this at all but an old chap in white robes with a long curly beard and eyes of fire named God. And that worries me no end. Because if the American voters make a pig’s ear of things in November this lady will be a (rather old) heartbeat away from the ultimate executive power and the Big Red Button. As we enter the coldest snap in East West relations since the bad old days of Spitting Image we face the real prospect of the person with her finger on the trigger holding the firm belief that should the worst happen and she unleash World War Three Big G will simply whip out his celestial clapper board and yell ‘cut!’ closely followed by ‘The Earth, Take Two.’ It’s a heck of way to play poker; you can call your opponent’s bluff every time because you know what? You’ve got the ultimate resurrection card, your very own Ace of Spades, and who knows? Maybe God won’t create any Ruskies next time. God is almost certainly a Republican; I'm pretty sure I spotted him at the convention last week.

So there I was, sweating out a small flood of residual Guinness and Harvey’s, not to mention a few drops of fine late-night curry, wondering which Big Bang we should be most afraid of. I can at least sleep soundly in my bed tonight. If the boffins in Cern flip a switch tomorrow and we all take that Big Dipper to the other side of the Galaxy I’ll be the one screaming ‘I told you so!’

*[SIZE="1"]Night of the Choking Scotsman is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Mr Andrew Murray being ‘British’ when he wins and ‘Scottish’ when he loses.
For the record Murray didn’t choke, he simply lost to the Greatest Tennis Player on the Planet TM playing at an unwordly level.[/SIZE]

[Sweder]

I ran on Wednesday, the usual eight kilometre hilly slog. Under fifty minutes so a reasonable effort. Thursday I walked it, reasoning a rest day would be a good idea. Wrong! As often happens when I start or step up training I've picked up a minor sniffle, more a head cold than anything. Elected to take the weekend off then and see how I feel on Monday morning.

In a strange synchronicity with the much-hyped return of Strictly to Saturday nights I managed a full three-and-a-half-minute (felt like an hour) cha-cha cha with Mrs S at Phoebe's dance school anniversary dinner. Being me I also managed to pull a tendon in my left foot (the one on top of the foot/ankle intersection), although the generous appreciation of the onlookers, mostly mothers whos husbands had managed to dodge this particular bullet, was well worth it.

Good luck to Steepler who even as I write is hurtling around a city marathon somewhere (Munster?) in Germany.
Look forward to hearing all about it next week.

[stillwaddler]

Can you tango two??? Hope the foot will be Ok and that your cold is better.