If I had a pound for every time I’d heard someone say: “If I had a pound for every time I’d heard someone say: ‘If I had a pound for every time I’d heard someone say: “If I had a pound for every time I’d heard someone say: ‘I’d like to be a rich man’, I’d be a rich man“, I’d be a rich man’, I’d be a rich man”, I definitely wouldn’t be a rich man because I’ve never heard anyone say all that.… READ MORE.... …
Blog Posts
Every time I glanced through the window today, I felt smug about working from home. Who would want to venture out in that? The temperature bobbed around freezing all day, though the wind chill must have brought that down further. In the morning it rained heavily; in the afternoon, we had sleet and snow. By five-thirty, as I was winding down for the day, we were back to rain, while the windows rattled ever louder.… READ MORE.... …
I’ve been quiet recently, but have a good excuse. From time to time I mention writing a book. In fact, I’ve been mentioning it to someone or other for much of my adult life. There’s been the odd false start: a few years ago I wrote a really terrible novel which fortunately, no sane person was willing to help me publish.… READ MORE.... …
I’ve mentioned Mark Twain before, admitting that my admiration for him is derived not from a comprehensive reading of his works, but from arbitrary quotations spotted in other people’s email signatures. Here’s the latest one: A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain. I like that.… READ MORE.... …
Waking on a Saturday without a hangover is an unsettling experience. I needed an extra hour in bed while the nausea subsided. More strangeness was to follow. Porridge-Spoonful-1 had just successfully taken off and was climbing steadily mouthward when the bastard phone rang. Damn. The flight was nearing its destination. What to do? I had to think fast. Only two people ring on Saturday morning: one is my wife’s mother.… READ MORE.... …
They’re already calling it the Race of the Century. Scanning RW for likely local races last night, I happened across the Oxford “Town & Gown” 10K, May 20. Researching further, I glanced through last year’s results as I usually do, to get an idea of how many take part, and how close to the back I’m likely to finish. And there I spotted a name I’d not seen in ten years — Mark M-W.… READ MORE.... …
Yesterday? Yesterday morning I was up at sunrise, running 5 miles in record time while the world was still comatose. A couple of hours later, rattling with endorphins, I march into my boss’s office and tell him where he’s going wrong. He rewards me with a stellar promotion and a payrise that promises me permanent financial security. Y’know, I sometimes wonder why I don’t just fabricate the lot.… READ MORE.... …
Not everyone appreciated the staccato insight offered by Marnie Mueller’s poem in the previous entry. For some true doggerel, how about: Toucans in their nests agree Guinness is good for you Open some today and see What one or Toucan do I gazed for some minutes at this original Guinness poster in Dolan’s Bar, down the Dock Road in Limerick, last Tuesday evening, trying to force it to scan.… READ MORE.... …
Strategy for a Marathon by Marnie Mueller I will start when the gun goes off. I will run for five miles. Feeling good, I will run to the tenth mile. At the tenth I will say, "Only three more to the halfway." At the halfway mark, 13.1 miles, I will know fifteen is in reach. At fifteen miles I will say, "You’ve run twenty before, keep going."… READ MORE.... …
It’s 10 months since I ran this distance: long enough to forget a few things I should have remembered, but too long to remember what it was I’d hoped to forget. The race was as tough as any half I’ve done — a comment not on the event (a straightforward town race with no gotchas worth wibbling over) — but on my lardy unpreparedness.… READ MORE.... …