It’s all going too well now: I find myself scouring the horizon, wondering where exactly the shipwreck will happen. The coast of Sicily looks a decent bet. The telescope moves from smoky bars showing the Champions League semi-finals, to quaint ristoranti overflowing with hearty regional specialities. How long could I stay on my feet in a place like that, surviving the temptation to tackle a plate of cassata, washed down with a very large glass of one of the island’s famous dessert wines? The first mouthful would be enough to generate an out-of-body experience. A few more glasses of Marsala and it’ll be the more familiar out-of-head variety. Short-term bliss, but I fear it could be the pin that pops … …
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According to “experts at Leeds University”, the formula for the perfect bacon sandwich is: N = C + {fb (cm) . fb (tc)} + fb (Ts) + fc . ta where N = force in Newtons required to break the cooked bacon, fb = function of the bacon type, fc = function of the condiment/filling effect, Ts = serving temperature, tc = cooking time, ta = time or duration of application of condiment/filling, cm = cooking method, C=Newtons required to break uncooked bacon. It partly (I presume) explains why I enjoyed my breakfast so much this morning. The other bit of the explanation is that I let out the nutritional leash another couple of inches today, and was overwhelmed … …
It’s been a good Friday alright: weather warm and sunny — just right for a few hours in the garden, tackling the grass for the first time this year. We grumble about winter, but at least you don’t have to devote half your free time wrestling with horticultural insurgents, gatecrashing your life to suffocate your idyll. Bugger off you bullying bastards — who invited you? It’s frankly unacceptable, but will anything be done about it? Will it hell. Grrrr. Perhaps because I’d not fought the garden for six months or so, it was almost a pleasure. A kind of uneasy peace though, which could have exploded at any time. All seemed well on the surface, but a bit like the … …
Three partial workouts to report. The last of the three — today’s gym induction — was never going to register as an over-rigorous ordeal. You usually expend more effort trying to sound convincing when asked about weekly alcohol intake, than you do on any particular piece of apparatus. A gym induction comes close to being almost faintly exciting. For the first bit you sit there and say all the things that you want to hear yourself saying. You’re talking not to the instructor but to yourself; to the plump shirker within. It’s intra-propaganda, and it’s cheap and easy. Like bragging about running the marathon that’s still several pages away in the calendar. You can afford to sound utterly self-assured about … …
You know how sometimes you pop into Marks and Spencer to top up your Y-front collection, and come out with a suit and half a dozen shirts (and no Y-fronts…)? Same happened today on the running front. Went out for three miles and came back with seven. Encouraging. I’m serious this time. Yes OK, I was serious last time, and the time before that. But I’m properly serious now. The weather’s breaking, spring is close. Races start glowing on the calendar. There’s no April marathon to taunt me — first time in four years. Thoughts are turning autumnwards, but I’ll leave a decision for a while. Runners find it easier to enter races than to get to the start line. … …
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. This flash of insight came to me at lunchtime, during my brief round-the-block 3½ miler. It’s the sort of thing that appears to someone who likes words and docile computer programming. Is it diverting … …
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. Two or three decades ago I would have thrown another log on the fire. Nowadays we turn the central heating thermostat up a couple of notches. Not quite as satisfying. It was at that precise point — at the very peak of the tempest, and … …
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. Then running happened, and I knew I really wanted to write about it. Running and writing are different creatures but they sit on the same rock. It’s why this website exists. The plan was always to do something more substantial, and a couple of years ago I wrote a hefty chunk, offline, of a book-to-be, then stopped. I didn’t … …
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. Money is something I think about too much. When I was a kid — and I was a kid until 7½ years ago — I worried about money because I didn’t have any. Now that things are a little less fraught, I worry about how best to deploy the bit I have. It’s one of the few problems … …
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. She is, it need hardly be stated, wonderful, but at that very moment, let’s face it, a dessert spoon groaning under the weight of raisiny porridge had an allure unmatched by any human being, or any mother-in-law. The other serial-ringer is my very own wife, who sportingly feigns sleep as … …