I have 6 days to reinvent myself. Six days to switch identities yet again. The beer-guzzling, midnight chow mein and cheddar eater must die once more. It’s like that movie – Cape Fear. The one where you keep thinking the baddie has been finally exterminated. But he just keeps coming back to set the cinema screaming yet again. (Robert Mitchum’s 1961 version is probably better than De Niro’s remake in the 90s, but the latter’s baddie picture is badder.)
So here I am again, lurching to the surface to wreak destruction on a harmless Berkshire village. But that was Saturday, and we had a famous victory over the Argies to tease into reality, and then to pick over and celebrate. Waking up yesterday, the memory of the 3 a.m. bowl of Häagen-Dazs Macadamia Brittle painfully recent, I knew it was yet again time to turn myself in to the authorities. I’d been on the run too long.
Just one last indulgence, I decided. So I got up in search of bacon sandwiches. No bread, so I wandered up to the village. On the way back, I noticed the wreaths of poppies around the war memorial in the grounds of the church. Of course. Remembrance Sunday.
It makes you feel sort of ashamed, doesn’t it? I had to go in and take another look at those names from the Great War. I’ve looked at them, and wondered about them, many times. In all, 21 names. One died in 1914, none in 1915, then a big group in 1916 and 1917.
Last year, I was out running when I came across the village Remembrance Day parade. This year I was hunting bacon sandwiches in the pathetic tail of another lost weekend. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… At least we have tomorrows to look forward to, unlike many.
There are only six tomorrows left before the Brighton 10K, and it’s time to act if I’m going to give myself any chance at all of smashing the world record next Sunday morning. Positive thinking. It’s the only way.
Today I ate all the right things and this evening I got out for a gorgeously cold and black 4 miles. Not particularly fast, but steady, and with no walk break. Another 3 or 4 of these before Sunday and I’ll be OK. With running, it’s never too late to start again.
Today’s piece of wisdom: never let the postman deflect you from the path of self-beautification. Let me explain.
I was in the kitchen at 0845, finishing off a coffee, and just gazing out of the window at the new pond, as you do. M appeared in her usual last-minute fluster, telling me she was going to be late. I manfully offered to help her. While she scraped her windscreen, I slipped on my old gardening shoes and trotted out to the end of the driveway to open the gates. Just as I’d finished the painful task of dragging them across the gravel, the postman appeared with a large box. We exchanged greetings, and I took the package from him. It could only be my new running shoes.
And so it proved. I’d ordered two pairs of New Balance 854s as it has yet again been claimed that they are being discontinued at the end of the year. After admiring them for a couple of minutes, I realised I was going to be late for work myself, so returned them to the box, grabbed my coat and jumped in the car. Drove to work. Got out of the car, walked to the office. It was just as I got to the door of the office that I looked down, and saw that I was still wearing… my gardening shoes.
Mortified isn’t the word. These ancient, mis-shapen slip-ons are caked in mud, and have tufts of dead grass and weeds plastered all the way round, like the straggly beard on that Lithuanian tramp I’d chatted to on Shepherds Bush Green recently. What could I do? I had a meeting to attend. I couldn’t go home and change them. I’d no spare shoes in the car. No choice. I had to go through with it. I felt like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, walking back to his cell for the final time. Except his shoes were too clean; mine were too dirty. As Red explained:Andy did like he was told, buffed those shoes to a high mirror shine. The guard simply didn’t notice, neither did I… I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a mans shoes?
Not that often, mercifully. All morning I hid my rustic footware as far as possible under the desk, desperately hoping that no one would notice. And I don’t believe they did. I don’t work with the sort of people who would hold back in such a situation, bless ’em.
After about 16 hours, lunchtime arrived, and I was able to rush out of the office without being seen, and get back home to change them.
Let’s hope that before Sunday I can change the rest of me as easily.
