He sketched out a weird hieroglyphic shape

  • Saturday, June 14, 2014
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I knew a man Bojangles and he danced for you, in worn out shoes.
With silver hair a ragged shirt and baggy pants,
The old soft shoe.
He jumped so high, jumped so high,
Then he lightly touched down.
(Jerry Jeff Walker)


The significant people in my life tend to be maverick, irreverent, Machiavellian and off the wall. If their personality contains a splash of darkness then all the better.
There is no better example of this than Jerry who in turn can mutter darkly, stumble under the monkey on his back, reduce me to laughter or have tangential conversations that would be of interest to both a room full of bar room drunks or white collar academics. Normal rules do not apply.
On the sort of beautiful day where God wakes up remembering He is a creative guy and had better get off his sofa and prove it, I was running around Shoreham.
The day before I was at home frying eggs and juggling kids when Jerry arrived, stubble faced and gimlet eyed with 20+ cheap tent pegs and a bunch of cardboard labels. Scribbling on my dining room table with my kids around him he sketched out a weird hieroglyphic shape and explained that the tent pegs are temporary mile, kilometre and water station markers. These were for a new 10K trail race around Shoreham he has been asked to develop the route for and I was to go along.
There is no arguing with Jerry in these moods and I wouldn't want to anyway.

On some runs it's the observed details that make it, the way a stand of trees spike the sky, a deer porpoising through the undergrowth with a hide as red as oxblood or being itchy kissed by nettles. This was one such run with some stunning views although it was also punctuated by some bastard hills!
We were wetnosed by dogs, spoke to a walking man about our Vibrams and interrogated a blonde astride a muscled horse.
It's going to be a tough but fantastic event come September and I'm looking forward to a few more months of on the ground planning.