When I was at school, I noticed that had TS Eliot been called ST Eliot,
his name spelt backwards would have been… well, work it out for
yourself.
Thought about that this evening, as I re-read the start of The
Waste Land. I hadn’t looked at it for… gulp, nearly thirty
years. Tonight, I finally realised what my English teacher was going on
about all those years ago. When I was 16, I thought it was an OK poem,
if a bit obtuse. It’s actually a quite brilliant piece of writing, but
I guess you have to be as old as I am now to realise that finally.
Why was I reading it?
Because I’d started this entry with the words: “November, surely, is
the cruellest month”, and I couldn’t quite remember the literary
reference. It turns out to be Eliot, whose poem begins:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
It was mid-afternoon before I got out. The sun was gone, but there were
seven miles still to be run. Erk.
I first detoured to the war memorial in the village churchyard. We’re a
pretty big community now, but in Edwardian times, the village was
small. Its raison d’etre was its position on the
old Bath Road — a staging post for travellers between London and
Bristol. It’s why there are so many pubs here. Two or three of them
still have cobbled back yards and stables.
I recently spoke to Roy, the village historian. During the First World
War, the population was “three or four hundred”. The war memorial I
visited in the churchyard this afternoon lists more than 30 Wilfreds,
Herberts, Ernests, Henrys who were casualties of the war. So about one
in ten of the village must have perished.
The sky was dense and battleship grey, a fitting backdrop to a run on
Remembrance Day. Despite what I recently said about avoiding the canal
for long runs, that’s where I headed today. Seven miles isn’t really a
long run, even if it occupies that slot this week.
It was a good outing. Hopelessly slow, but I’m not worrying about that
just yet. My current priorities are to build fitness and lose weight.
This was primarily a fat-burning run, and it did its job. A seven mile
jog, without any walk breaks, is good for my confidence, and amounts to
another useful step on the long road back.
I’m beginning to think that running with an iPod doesn’t work for me,
even if I can’t fully explain it. I’ve eschewed music for 5 out of the
last 6 runs, and all have gone pretty well. The one exception, last
Sunday, was fitful, and I never got going. I suppose it affects my
concentration. Perhaps that does make sense. The appeal of iPod running
is that it occupies your mind while you’re doing what can be a pretty
humdrum activity. And the act of “occupying your mind” must displace
something else viz your focus on what you’re doing.
So I’m having to relearn the pleasure of a period in which arbitrary
thoughts are allowed to rattle round my dream box. It’s like
unharnessing the working horses and letting them roam around in the
field for a few hours.
It was a sombre run on a sombre day, but I got back to the cheering
news that QPR had vanquished Luton at their wretched place. I was also
just in time to catch the evening game on TV between Blackburn and Man
Utd. Yes, after many years of resistance, I’ve finally relented, and
invited the great satan into my home.
Sky TV.
I don’t like Rupert Murdoch, and I hate the way that the Bosman/Sky
cocktail has corrupted football and detached it from its traditions.
It’s produced a tiny, wealthy elite atop a huge, pauperised pyramid
without any hope. But. But I’ve fallen into bad habits, like watching
the big games in the pub on a Sunday afternoon, which doesn’t do my
running any good. So I’ve finally caved in, and joined the masses. I’ll
even be able to watch England’s 5-0 Ashes drubbing as it happens. Or
the first and last hour at least. The matches start at about midnight
and finish around 8 in the morning. Australia must be a very weird
country.
Next week, the Brighton 10K. I’ll struggle to get round in less than 65
minutes, but at least it now looks likely that I’ll make it to the
finish line. It didn’t seem possible just a couple of weeks ago.
