This is it – my last night of nutritional abandon for another while. I’ve not made the most of it. No alcohol, no cream cakes. I’ve OD-ed on naughtiness this week, and done no running. I just don’t have the energy to get drunk one last time. Pitiful really.
Middle-class, middle-aged depravity isn’t a patch on the twenty-something version, it has to be said. I was mournfully tackling this very important issue over a few post-match pints and large gins with one of my QPR buddies in a Hades-black, raucous Shepherds Bush boozer just yesterday. Instead of scrapping and screwing and snorting, the worst we can do now is spend longer in the pub than we promised our wives, and avoid our running shoes for a few days. Woooo-ooooo. What’s the world coming to?
It’s been an interesting week, but I’m seriously wondering if running isn’t the new debauchery. I’ve spent much of my life living in fear of becoming a goody-goody, but I may have to reassess the tell-tale signs just to stay sane, Perhaps taking part in a race is the new lost weekend. MY MARATHON HELL. A four mile run through the empty, post-dawn streets tantamount to doing a half bottle of Smirnoff before breakfast. It’s the new fuck-ya bastards rebellion. Getting drunk? Way too accessible. Too conformist these days. We need wicked and anti-social. We need shock, and maybe running is it. Try telling someone at work that you’ve decided to stop drinking for a while because you’re training for a marathon, and it’s like you’ve come clean about your crack addiction.
I’m not alone in this revolution. Even Tracy Emin, whose work I anarchically delight in enjoying, was on Desert Island Discs today, confessing to eating nutritiously and going to the gym.
Crikey. The game’s up.
[Distant sigh] Pass me those muddy, toe-blood-bloody trainers.
