Even my cat would be depressed at the moment — if I had a cat. Iraq, the stock market, the Zimbabwe fiasco, England losing at home to Australia in the football, the washing-up still to do. At least the running is going reasonably well again, and it was a lovely day for it too. Seven hard miles at lunchtime today. Four steep hills meant a slow, but character-building run in the sunshine, and gave me a brief respite from the sense of doom that is descending over the nation.… READ MORE.... …
Month: February 2003
I like a good link. I heard this exchange on Radio Four’s Start The Week yesterday morning: Andrew Marr: Well, it’s not often we can bring you breaking news on this programme, but I can confirm that Andrew Roberts has at last arrived in the studio. Andrew Roberts: And it’s all due to the sterling work of Geoff, my taxi driver, and his skill in dealing with the London traffic, for which I strongly commend him.… READ MORE.... …
Once you’ve drifted past the age of 27½, things cease to be much of a surprise. Not the sort of surprise I had yesterday evening, anyway. We went to see the remarkable Bodyworlds exhibition in east-central London. It was staggering. It’s the exhibition of ‘plastinated’ corpses, assembled by Professor Gunther von Hagens (the man who conducted the notorious televised post-mortem on British TV a few months ago).… READ MORE.... …
The moment I’ve been dreading finally arrived this evening. An email from James, my old college mate. He lives in Hong Kong, and visits every two or three years. He’s here. Oh Lord. Trouble is, whenever he’s around, I feel obliged to drink gallons of strong ale, and consume furnace-like curries, just to humour him. To twist the distastefully Bohemian dagger further, he will insist on taking in a match or two as well.… READ MORE.... …
Sometimes people ask me what I think about when I’m running. Well, tonight I was thinking about ‘serious runners’ who can’t hide their disdain for… people like me. People like me will never win a race, will never even know what it feels like to try to win a race. Will never run a marathon in under four and a half hours.… READ MORE.... …
It was only three and a half miles, but after nine runless days, it represented something much bigger. Even at my level – or perhaps particularly at my level – it’s frightening how quickly you can lose that feeling of familiarity with something as simple as running along a road. After just a week or so of idleness, I felt even more awkward and unco-ordinated than normal.… READ MORE.... …
It’s usually easy to work out where motivation comes from, but a loss of motivation can be more mysterious. Eight days now without a run, and it’s baffling. I can’t even get enthusiastic about the idea of feeling depressed about it. Curiosity and a spirit of keen enquiry seem like better options, though no conclusions have yet appeared. A good way of dealing with it would seem to be to lie about it.… READ MORE.... …