Everything about the Hot Yoga studio is small and neat, even the receptionist’s sales pitch, after which she asked: “Do you have any questions?” “Just one — why is Hot Yoga always spelt with capital initial letters?” “Oh. ” M and I finally made it to a session last night, after a hesitant week or two. It was good to rope her in.… READ MORE.... …
Blog Posts
It’s at least 3 months since I quoted this Twainism, so it must be time for a reprise: If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got. It dropped into my head again early Monday evening, as I pulled up sharply, clutching my left calf. The annoyingly whiney voice that accompanies hindsight tells me that this was an ill-advised jaunt.… READ MORE.... …
Considering this blog bears the strapline: Running is the answer, it seems like a long time since it reported an instance of this purportedly miracle activity. Barring my Connemara stroll, the Almeria Medio Maraton, at the end of January, was the last time I heard the slap of rubber on tarmac — and even that one ended in calf tears.… READ MORE.... …
BALLACK WINDS UP ENGLISH I read this headline the other day, and for a moment, misunderstood it. I thought it was saying that Michael Ballack, of Chelsea and Germany, the owner of the most punchable face in football, had ended up being English. Perhaps he’d married an English woman and applied for British citizenship? But no, it meant something else: that he was cheekily prodding the old enemy in advance of the Crash of the Titans.… READ MORE.... …
I’m not a parent, but I suspect that starting a business is a bit like having a child. Life-changing. A shuffling of priorities. Being kept awake half the night. Networking is the new sex. Or the new black. Or perhaps the new running. I’ve attended plenty of hand-shaking festivals in my time but what was, in a previous life, often an onerous, awkward duty, now seems like a self-reaffirming recreation.… READ MORE.... …
It’s time someone gave a new image to ‘the jobless’. When the TV news has an item about redundancy or unemployment, they tend to reach just an inch or two into their image library for monochrome clips of dole queues snaking round the corner of the labour exchange, or clumps of silent modern youth on street corners, eyes downcast. When they interview one of these tragic statistics, we find some gloomy middle-aged bloke on a sofa, as if paralysed by boredom, blaming politicians and cheap foreign imports (both the human and factory-produced kind) for his plight.… READ MORE.... …
An unseasonably hot, claggy day in central London today. 29 degrees might be the sort of temperature that would make an Aussie reach for his overcoat, but for us, it’s just on the uncomfortable side of warm — unless you’re in a beer garden. I wasn’t in a beer garden. Instead I was sardined on the London Underground system, floundering in a forest of armpits and hissing headphones, and can attest that it’s a less pleasant spot from which to enjoy the heat.… READ MORE.... …
It’s about time I wrote another Starting Over post. Everytime I do it, I hope it will be the last one. Not because I want the running to stop: just the opposite. I want the stopping to stop. At least the circumstances are different. Usually, an extended period of idleness follows a major race effort. This time, a startlingly enthusiastic late autumn and early winter was brought low by a series of calf strains and unconsummated races.… READ MORE.... …
As Churchill put it, “Democracy is the very worst form of government — except for all those others that have been tried”. For a political junkie like me, the last few weeks have been one big party, and that’s what we seem to have ended up with. Looking back, not much happened during the 3 weeks of the election campaign. An elderly lady in Rochdale was described as a bigot, and this became national news for several days.… READ MORE.... …
I’d been waiting for the chance to issue some cliché along the lines of “normal service has been resumed”, but it struck me today that normality will probably never reappear. Or not that old normality. Some different lifestyle, currently unimaginable, will eventually rise from the swamp and conquer all that came before. The form it might take will be revealed — just as soon as I manage to identify the real thing in among the statues and their shadows.… READ MORE.... …