Four runs, a new job, and no chocolate cake.
It’s been an interesting week.
And it’s one of those ironies that the more interesting and eventful life is, the less time there seems to be to digest the lessons fully and to regurgitate the wisdom. But perhaps there’s still just time to leave a blogoscopic scratch on the week’s surface before it vanishes completely.
Thursday 13th: No run, but a voluble and bibulous evening to mark the end of my bondage to those who would send me to orifices malodoreuses like Leeds and Dartford. Well, perhaps Leeds has things going for it, but Dartford? But most things were forgiven during a delightfully fractious, argumentative session, lubricated by the fruits of Mr Brakspear’s labours. I even managed to catch the second half of Jez Lowe’s set at the local folk club. Jez Lowe? Why, one of the finest songwriters in the country, that’s who. [Bah. What do you know?]
Post-party Friday was largely a remote experience, and a run was never on the cards. Instead, I had the unusual sensation of a Friday evening QPR match, thanks to the football despots at Sky TV, who had decreed that our first victory in two months was an occasion worthy of live, global satellite coverage. Oh. Well, not a bad decision this time, perhaps. The crushing 1-0 trouncing of Stoke City was a good way to end a hectic week.
But Saturday woke me with a clearer head and a powerful sense of liberation. It had taken a good night’s sleep for the old road to rapidly fade, as the prophet had decreed it would. It felt like a birthday. One of those occasions when you and the world seems new and different for a few hours. This sense of having walked free from Wormwood Scrubs after a 4½ year sentence kept me afloat all day, and it was a buoyancy I needed to manage a sloshy, bedraggled plod in the early afternoon. 4 and a bit miles round the damp lanes. Chilly yes, but refreshing chilly, not punishing, wretched chilly.
Sunday: Ten miles, get in.
I had all sorts of interesting stuff to think about on this long meander up the canal. The state of my new year resolutions for one thing. Most of them are limping along, ready to fall into the gutter, but one is doing OK. It’s the attempt to break the ankle irons that shackle me to the computer. I’m nearly free boys, nearly free.
I’m not looking for a total divorce. I love these machines really, and I work with the things, so I can’t hope to remove them from my life, and nor would I want to. But I realised over Christmas that the web was intruding too much. I was beginning to feel like a dutiful vicar, tramping round the parish to small-talk his flock and tend to his Favourites. It can be a draining, geeky whirlpool.
This site and all who sail in her are, of course, not included in this. It’s the pointless bickering I’ve tired of. So all my football sites went for a burton on the first day or two of the new year. Crikey, the sheer weight of bullshit that gets thrown about over on those places. And all those newsgroups I was drifting around for no very good reason. Time gentlemen please.
It struck me on my run that computers and the web has destroyed almost as much as they’ve created. Chess. Chess has had its creative heart ripped out by limitless number-crunching power. And do students bother reading books any more? What for? The web is a plagiarism wonderland. General knowledge competitions are a thing of the past. And anagrams – what’s happened to anagrams? I used to love trying to solve or create anagrams, but computing has broken the challenge now.
Tramping up the canal towpath, I remembered how pleased I’d been to discover, years ago, while torturing myself with the Times crossword, that carthorse is an anagram of orchestra. As I ran, something struck me as odd. I’ve often thought that the distribution of letters makes it a corker of an anagram, but I’d never thought beyond this technical level to compare the meanings of the words, and I’d certainly never related it to running before. But think about it. What’s a carthorse? A slow, heavy, shambling, unsubtle creature. Lovable maybe, but ungainly. And what’s an orchestra? A collection of wacky wooden and brass objects? Perhaps, yes, but in the hands of the right people, capable of generating something sublimely subtle and complex, inspiring and energising. And how easily we turn this clumsy behemoth into this angel. Carthorse becomes orchestra. And isn’t that what running is all about?
Monday was new job day. I seem to have fallen in with a good bunch of people. Even better, the two guys who sit closest to me are runners. Proper runners. Reading half marathoners.
So far, it’s all been an unusually pleasant and civilised experience. Y’know, I’d honestly forgotten that it could be like this. Colleagues regarding each other with respect and good humour, and all buying into agreed, joint objectives with a common plan. It’s been a long time.
The work is much better suited to me than my last job too. But the icing on the cake? The location of the office – just under a mile from home. How luxurious to be able to pop home for lunch. And how good to arrive home at 5:40 and get out for a run without all that post-work motorway stress to throw off. It’s a good move for me, and I’m going to make sure it works well.
Tuesday looked like a bad night for running – black and cheerless, with a biting wind that would cut you in half. So there wasn’t much choice. I took most of my clothes off and ran around the streets for nearly 5 miles. To sugar the pill, I joined up with the local running group again. But it was still pretty hard, Sunday’s long run weighing heavily in my legs. There were other difficulties – these streets are unfamiliar to me. Broken pavements, badly lit in places and full of obstacles like wheelie bins left on the pavement for the next day’s collection. This was a really tough run, but sitting in the car afterwards, breathless, hot sweat dripping through my cap onto the steering wheel and down onto my legs, I luxuriated in the reward.
Tonight, Wednesday, was milder, the run more bland. I was out again for another 4½ miles, these ones local and familiar. It wasn’t a bad run, and was less slow than most of my over-stately recent efforts, but there was something a bit unsatisfying about it. A useful reminder that it’s just as easy for the orchestra to re-emerge as the carthorse.
