Having nothing worthwhile to write about is a good reason to keep away from the page, though it’s a rule of thumb ignored by many, including most newspaper columnists. Another reason for writing paralysis, and the one that applies to me, is the opposite — a mumble mountain so high that any attempted expedition seems doomed to end in failure. It’s like staring at that forest of six-foot weeds on the allotment you’ve been allocated after years on the waiting list.… READ MORE.... …
Blog Posts
Two diverting walks to report. I’m afraid I got so bored with this entry that I’ll leave the second to next time. Here’s the first. 1. Sunday 14 March, Wagitalersee: Ah! Nothing better than a bracing walk in a blizzard to blow a few cobwebs from the fat bloke emerging from winter hibernation — even if a statement as glibly positive as this will be heard only after the trauma is over, and the memory rapidly diminishing in the rear-view mirror.… READ MORE.... …
What’s another word for thesaurus? I was carefully considering this important matter the other day when it struck me that one problem with this pre-retirement period is that I’m running out of things to worry about. It’s starting to concern me, and the fact that my increasing lack of anxiety is becoming quite stressful is itself a cause for mounting unease.… READ MORE.... …
Travel doesn’t just broaden the mind, it puts a bomb under everything you’ve ever known and detonates it in slow motion. The above headline should have been more startling than it was when I spotted it recently on www.swissinfo.ch. It’s all about the the burning of the Böögg, naturally: the climax to the annual spring parade in Zürich. The poor chap is stuffed with fireworks and set on fire in a ritual that’s watched with keen interest because the shorter the time taken for his head to explode, the longer and hotter the summer will be.… READ MORE.... …
As someone whose earlier athletic history would have made an arthritic sloth look like Usain Bolt, my midlife running career was an autobiographical plot twist to make even Jed Mercurio blush. So the idea of trying to revive this dead horse, seven years after it gratefully sank into the darkness beneath the coffin lid of the 2013 Berlin Marathon, is hard to explain.… READ MORE.... …
This week’s Mars landing revived memories of that most famous faux pas of them all, and acted as a suitable backdrop for another tectonic event — the official start of my campaign to complete a 5K run without intervention from the Grim Reaper. As any social media captive or desolate blogger will know, we’re all located at the centre of our own universes, and so, folded within this afternoon’s modest exertions, I spared a few sympathetic seconds to Neil Armstrong.… READ MORE.... …
So why is running the answer? And what’s it the answer to? Had I ever really asked myself these questions before? Maybe I’ve kept away from them, unsure of what the answers might be. Which reflects the barrister’s golden rule of cross-examination: never ask a question to which you don’t already know the answer. But anyway, today I did ask myself those questions.… READ MORE.... …
Mentioning the initial success of my weight-loss campaign was always going to be a hostage to fortune. Perhaps predictably, the wobbly downward line on the graph immediately turned horizontal, and even rose a bit, as soon as I’d issued my self-congratulatory remark on how well I was doing. But this is meat and drink, albeit lean and sugar-free, for a health-campaign veteran like me.… READ MORE.... …
Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It is — crikey — nearly four years since my last confession. We’ve some catching up to do. Life, eh? Well why wouldn’t things have changed in four years? The Trump tornado has blown through and vanished, at least for the moment, leaving us scratching our heads and staring at the wreckage. Worse is that if, as seems likely, he’ll escape a guilty verdict in his impeachment (currently playing out in the Senate) then he’ll be back in some form.… READ MORE.... …
The years are ganging up on me. One of those significant birthdays pops up this year, so I should attempt a last hurrah; a final bout against Old Father Time and his wingèd chariot. The idea of aiming for another marathon toyed with me, probably based on the adage that there’s no fool like an old fool — particularly where I’m involved.… READ MORE.... …
Today, 30 July 2016, is the 50th anniversary of England’s finest football moment. I was born in 1957, and until I found the trapdoor to adulthood, and escaped to university in the late seventies, lived in a dull London suburb called Wembley. London’s under-10s were too young to appreciate the Swinging Sixties, but we didn’t mind. We had more pressing concerns, like scrambling round crumbling bomb sites and being chased down empty streets by aggrieved, fist-waving adults barking dark threats to take us “down the station.”… READ MORE.... …