This is a toecentric period alright.
The right-hand toe, as it were, has moved through last week’s shiny gouty inflammation to a sort of buried pain that’s starting to reach backwards along the sole of my foot when I walk. It’s not cripplingly painful. In fact it’s much better than the last couple of weeks, but while it lingers, and for as long as it issues a small crackle of pain each time I bend the toe, it makes me nervous. I wrote off all of last week, and don’t want to waste more time. I managed 5 miles on Tuesday, so it’s clearly not keeping me indoors any longer, but I worry a little that by running on it, I may be setting back full recovery.
So today, instead of the intended 4-miler, I stayed at home and squirmed on the floor for half an hour. History will show this recorded in my spreadsheet as a ‘core workout’, and the fog of time will rapidly conceal the truth.
But wait, that’s not the end of the Toe News.
This evening, while rushing from my bathroom to Basingstoke, I misjudged the optimum path, and crashed my left foot against the protuberant corner of the shower. Minutes later I was still floundering on the landing, boiling with pain, desiccating the corner of a towel between my gnashing teeth, and beating the back of my head with a fist. This hastily arranged programme of co-ordinated analgesic activities seemed to help, and I was eventually able to continue my journey, albeit with a theatrical double limp. I haven’t walked like that since that night the Falcon had a lock-in.
Waiting for us in Basingstoke was Eduardo Niebla, a superb flamenco guitarist. I’d not heard of him before, but M, a glutton for obscure late-night arts programmes on TV, had insisted we sign up, and as usual, I felt it wise to accept her recommendations.
Eduardo has a nice line in bathos. He introduced some of his dazzling pieces by referring in faltering English to the inspiration he draws from his rustic home, where he is surrounded by spectacular hills and ancient history, and the company of decent, simple folk. Where was his home, I wondered? Galicia? Navarra? Catalonia? The Basque country? No. North Yorkshire.
And again, he introduced a piece as inspired by the memory of an encounter with a beautiful girl called Helena. After a dreamy pause, he added: “We met in Tunbridge Wells”.
You can gauge the intimacy of a gig thus: when he took to the stage and uttered “Good evening”, the entire audience of a couple of hundred replied politely: “Good evening”, as though we were issuing an “Amen” in church.
But a great evening of memorable guitar wizardry, even if the hobble up two flights of steps to the car park took nearly as long as the 20 mile drive home.
Back in time for the opening credits of the much trailed, much-debated Question Time starring the egregious Nick Griffin of the British National Party. Should the BBC have invited him? Should he have been treated differently during the programme? The media has been ablaze with opinions, bloody opinions for 24 solid hours, so the addition of another seems quite superfluous. Despite the publicity, I quickly grew deeply bored with the spectacle, and switched to the superb BBC iPlayer to catch up with the penultimate episode of MasterChef. Along with marathon viewing sessions of old Come Dine With Mes, to which I have developed an unnatural nocturnal addiction, I am overflowing with reminders of my inadequacies in the kitchen.
Tomorrow, I hope I may be fit to run, before turning out an unforgettable cauliflower cheese.
