I was a lonely flyspeck on the earth

  • Thursday, December 14, 2017
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Did I ever tell you about the young Zoad,
Who came to two signs at the fork in the road.
One said to Place One, and the other, Place Two.
So the Zoad had to make up his mind what to do.
Well…the Zoad scratched his head, and his chin and his pants, 
And he said to himself, “I’ll be taking a chance...”
(Dr Suess)
I am the archetypal middle aged guy.
I have started to take myself too seriously, something that should not be possible for someone with a shiny head smoothed by the slipstream of life, five toed shoes and Austin Powers glasses. Here I am, weathered like rocks hollowed out by wind and dust over the millennia, with my hard granite dome, a man Matopas. I should be wiser, but I’m only more foolish.
It snowed here on Sunday so I went out in my Vibrams to enjoy the experience. I don’t want to call it a zen run because that is the type of serious middle aged post hippy shit I’m trying to avoid but that is exactly what it was. It was a zen run in the wind and the snow and bursting with the solitude I crave. I was a lonely flyspeck on the earth, shuffling along in my blue Norwegian jacket, the manufacturers label worn off by the friction of a thousand miles, creased like the face of an angry god but still keeping me dry and warm despite this.
It was not a training run at all - which I’ve had precious few of recently. I’m no longer a mileage whore having mellowed and allowed my running to subside into something altogether shorter and more sedate. This was a lekker, maar stadig run with lots of pauses for photography or standing in the stillness and the quiet, alone and waiting for the whisper of the still small voice.
When I left home the snow was fat, the flakes like the falling feathers of winter geese or dead angel kisses against my lips and cheeks before swirling past and dropping to the ground. By the time I got home the air was dry, cold and empty but my heart was full.
Zoad is a word that Dr Suess used deliberately in his poem about the choices we face in our lives and the direction we take. Read it. The root of the word is Greek that indicated a ladder. Running is my ladder, the vehicle of my ascent to a better level of wellbeing and equilibrium. My zoad.
Running is an act of prayer to the great Nkosi who dreamt me when there was only nothingness and formed me fearfully and wonderfully in my mothers womb. My feet crunching over the icy crust with liturgic stamp was the sound of the choir, steady and harmonic, touching heaven and earth, a ladder of hot breath, blood, sinew and blood connecting human and Divine as one. My congregation was the indifferent sheep, blissful in their frozen field, and my sermon was solace.
I’ve failed as I so often do. I don’t want to be serious. I’m not a serious man but this is what happens when I run. I can’t go out and run to simply record my pace, distance and calories burnt. Running is an act of love for me. I can’t help myself.




It’s lonely out there in the dark with only an inquisitive and possibly insane Fox for company

  • Saturday, December 09, 2017
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 “I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.” – Lucille Ball
vine.JPG
How do we live in a way that makes the most of life girl of stunning luminosity? How do we make the most of the short moments we have? How do we celebrate? Aristotle suggested that we should try to live and act thoughtfully. We should, he proposed, live in a way that enables us to explore and reflect on the ordinary happenings of life, as well as the extraordinary. We should also try to act out ordinary things in an extraordinary way. It’s probable that Aristotle was right. It’s also possible that he was a joyless bore.
I’m in no position to judge.
Each day has the potential to be extraordinary. Each day brings it’s own inherent gift.
When you reached out through distance and time it was a gift. A quick virtual brush of your fingertips and a hint of warm breath on my face like the sweet smell of African rain mixing with the hot red dust that I miss with the intensity that only a hole in the soul can produce.
I’m battling with life and I’m telling you this as the woeful romantic in me imagines you both waiting for the dawn and simultaneously carrying it within you, the guardian of trembling souls and hearts that know only how to trust. The responsibility is huge.
My expectations of you are high.
I’ve been studying on these things as I run because that is the medium I use to populate the blank canvas of my mind.  Last night I was doing lap after lap of a local school in the dark while my laaitie did football training. Every week there is a beautiful Fox with a thick coat of winter fur that sits on the marshy corner of the field at the furthest end of the school where it is darkest. Every time I come around for another lap she is there, crouched low and alert, her ears pricked and her muzzle tracking me like a gun and as I pass she gets up and follows me for a few metres. Odd I know and I don’t know why she does it. It’s both wonderful and slightly unnerving, I feel blessed and slightly menaced at the same time.
Tomorrow we will learn that we have lost a child, he’s been at our school for years but now his physical presence has been snuffed out by his highly complex physical and medical needs. It sucks and we will be collectively bruised by his passing, a little punch drunk and a little quieter for a few days. He was a fighter this kid, tenaciously scrapping for each new day, extending his life expectancy and refusing to give in.
Thank God I can run even if it is supposedly mind numbing laps. It’s lonely out there in the dark with only an inquisitive and possibly insane Fox for company, the floodlights around the football pitch are wreathed in an orange foggy haze and the grass on the field is starting to sparkle with the early evening frost. It’s colder than a witches tit but this is my celebration, reflecting, thinking and being emotional in the mundane. I love running, there is something deeply elemental about it, the fusing of brutal physicality with snot, tears and sweat, the hopes we have, the humanness of thought and the presence of love.
 “losing love  
Is like a window in your heart  
Everybody sees you're blown apart. Everybody sees the wind blow  “
Paul Simon.
                                                                           

This strange and terrible urge to kill or maim strangers

  • Wednesday, August 09, 2017
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I wanted to run today but the rain has been sheeting down since the early hours. In the past I would have stuck to the plan and shrugged off the wet but now I can't be arsed.
Instead I have paced restlessly over the cheap laminate floorboards that I laid in the crumbling rented house in the dead end street where I have lived for 17 years. When we moved in the carpets stank of stale dog's urine and were so rotten that I was able to poke my fingers through them onto the floor beneath. 
I can't stand the silence so I'm listening to the Bhundu Boys, still Zimbabwe's best and most famous band. They took the UK by storm in the Eighties but typical of many who are uprooted from home and placed in an alien culture they fell apart through bad management, sickness, the tragedy of Biggie Tembo's suicide and disappeared. 
 
I am also waiting for an email from Annie that never arrives, she is meant to inform me when she has returned from holiday so that we can make plans for some August running.
While I pace, listen and wait I have been reading about Jogger rage. The media is full of the story of the Putney Bridge jogger who shoved a woman into the path of a Red London doubledecker bus.
There has been a lot of opinion both on written and social media and on talk radio about why this fool acted in the way that he allegedly did.
I'm completely baffled, if you watch the video he passes a man and then seems to alter his trajectory enough to seemingly shove the women into the road. He then runs on almost pathologically and without emotion or remorse.
It's weird.
There is a lot of speculation that he hates women/ they were stunt actors/ he was a hit man and even that she tried to trip him first! The prevailing theory though, is that he was exhibiting 'joggers rage' a previously unheard of affliction causing aggression brought on by running. Many members of the public are coming out and saying that they have been targeted by hostile runners and that this is a growing affliction of modern society. 
The Independent humorously asks whether people have been suffering in silence from this strange and terrible urge to kill or maim strangers once they pass the 5km mark on their morning jog.
I've searched myself as a long standing runner to see if I've ever felt this urge to become violent towards innocent members of society whilst running but I can't think of any. I don't think runners are always angels and concede that they can be conceited and rude but I think they are a boorish minority. I've seen runners who are undoubtedly absolute pricks and sadly they are almost always men but I haven't seen any violence apart from last year when I was shoved at the start of a race by a foul mouthed idiot who felt I was holding him up - but it's the only time in a decade of running where I've experienced anything like violence.
Mostly I think we just want to run and enjoy it but I hope that this will make some runners pause for a moment and think about how people perceive us and perhaps try a little harder to make eye contact, smile and greet people.
We are not, after all, gods.


The Putney Bridge jogger.

I drank one bottle of wine and cooked on the floor.

  • Saturday, August 05, 2017
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"Because that's rock and roll"
Deadpan response by Olly Smith of the band Hothouse
 to a small girl asking him why he was playing his keyboard behind his head during the band's finale.

There's not a lot of running in this post and it occurs at the end.
The tribe and I have camping in Stoneham Aspal, a small village in Suffolk. We have been at HEFF, the Glastonbury of Home Education. As a family we are in our fourth year of Home Education but this was our first festival. Camping does not come naturally to me, at least not any more. When I was younger it was normal and I never gave it any thought but as I've got older my enthusiasm for camp beds, groundsheets and guy ropes has vanished along with my suppleness and my hair. Nonetheless I borrowed a blue tent from loud Samantha and set off in our white Chev with joy and anticipation. I was not disappointed either.
I've never doubted our decision to Home Educate which is good because it takes a certain amount of courage. HEFF was a joy because it reinforced many things for me, not the least of which is that it is a lifestyle, pretty much every thing we do and think about revolves around our kids and their development. It was wonderful to be completely immersed in community and it was wonderful to see how kids can flourish by taking a different path. The other validation that I got from the week was a sense of being at home, nobody thought I was strange going around barefoot and I was able to wear the type of clothing that I prefer and that helps me express who I am. I've needed this restoration of my self identity.
The week was busy yet relaxing, there was a myriad of workshops and activities for the kids and some interesting talks in the conference tent. 
I saw freedom, I saw mutual respect and I saw a lack of hierarchy.
I saw inclusion take place organically.
I saw Bollywood dancing and traditional African dance. There was Ukulele workshops, tutu making, mask making and my kids built paper Spectroscopes. I saw a man with a Taliban beard and I had some fantastic conversations with some fantastic people.
I learnt a lot.
I drank one bottle of wine and cooked on the floor.
Every night I heard some quality live bands, my favourites being Casey Birks, Funke and the Two Tone Baby, Oliver and Company and the cream of the bunch, Hothouse. Patrick Channon you rock.
I heard a kids orchestral ensemble play Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall.
My kids bought a Red Ukulele and my son played his Bass in two bands.
On Saturday night there was torrential rain, thunder and lightning.
It was the apocalypse in time lapse.
The best thing I saw are children who have been given the freedom and encouragement to explore their interests no matter how diverse or strange and also to just be children, no matter how diverse or strange. Through that magic happens and we get self confidant, well balanced kids who all mix well together regardless of age or disability. We get kids who achieve, some of whom are overcoming huge challenges. These guys I found interesting from a professional point of view, especially those with social communication difficulties and ASD. 
As Dr Suess said, sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
I think allowing these kids to just be who they are and allow them to find their in their own way in their own time works, they don't do the paradigms or time structures of so called neurotypical people but march to their own unheard beat. It's up to us to tune into their frequencies and when we do the gifts we receive are great.
I also went to HEFF intending to do a fair amount of running, I knew from talking to our Home Ed friends that mostly the kids tend to go off and do their own thing and consequently I would have lots of free time. In the end I ran only once, two days before we left. I was so relaxed by the festival, so absorbed by the vibe that I just decided not to run - and it was impulsive after an early chicken and red wine supper when I pulled on my Vibrams and went into the fields adjacent to the site. My run took place under one of the loveliest skies imaginable, the timbre and quality of light was too beautiful. I ran along a muddy farm track and next to adolescent Wheat and then onto a weirdly deserted Golf course, As a run it was odd, I felt both the total peace of my environment and struggling with a bellyful of Red Wine.
I saw no one apart from a young man with a beard on his sunken cheeks, he was sitting cross legged beneath a dead tree and gazing at the horizon. When I stopped and asked if he was OK he looked up with dark eyes and without speaking he flashed me a thumbs up, I ran on wondering if he had a wound in his side until he was just a dark speck against the Wheat.
Running alongside but not through a Wheat field Mrs May.

 Our home for a week


Mud, sun, clouds.




Speakers corner and marquees.

The Priests telephone is ringing with an old fashioned jangling ringtone

  • Sunday, July 16, 2017
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Ever since I heard the howlin' wind
I didn't need to go where a bible went
But then you know your gifts seemed heaven sent
(Justin Vernon, Heavenly Father)


There is something sacred and holy about coming home after a hot summer run and sitting in the garden with the cracks and knots of the warped wooden fence at the West side of my garden slicing and shining the late afternoon sun like the mellow strobe lights of heaven. I sit with blood from bramble cuts and sweat running down my legs and cold Thai beer dribbling down my unshaven chin, the label with it's two Elephants puckered and peeling with the condensation beading on the green bottle curled in my left hand. Above me the Zimbabwean flag stirs slowly on the breeze and an unsuspecting pigeon sits on the umbrella above my head, it's shadow misshapen and mutated through the canvas and sharp tipped feet scrabbling for purchase like the sound of rain.

It's been a tough week where my stress and distress has risen sharply. I knew I simply had to get out and run and try to roll back the creeping black tide that is my mental health. It's always the trees and the soil where I go, the textures and the smell of summer ferment calm me and possibly remind me of a better place and time where life was simpler and there was no demand or responsibility and I didn't have to think, I was happy in my solitude and summer seemed perpetual. Somehow the contentment of solitude has been replaced with a sense of isolation and anxiety and I dread the inevitable approach of a winter that I can do nothing about. I have such a deep love of the woods, the ridges and undulations under my feet, the roots, stones, flowers and grasses. I run the same beaten pathways over and over, past the ponds with their ducks, moorhens and herons, along the river and on the homeward stretch past the Catholic Church where the Priests telephone is ringing with an old fashioned jangling ringtone from another bygone era. As I go past I wonder if it is announcing a birth or a death, both causing the incumbent to reach for his yellowing Bible and thumb his way through the thin pages to the appropriate passage or if it was something as mundane as a double glazing salesman calling. I will never know and I hurry past, wheezing toward my beer, the edifice of my life just about standing.
Running in South Croydon in April, I spent 15 minutes out staring a deer in the rain.
June, always within a mile of the Sheep...

Like a hormonal salmon swimming up river to spawn

  • Sunday, January 29, 2017
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January 2017 has been superb. In the latter stages of last year I became sad, the blues, morbs*, thief whisperers and psyche trolls overwhelmed me, sucking running out of me and leaving me hollow shelled and whey faced with the burden of keeping up with my mileage. Under those circumstances we invariably fail and I did. I began to hate running because of the obligations that I placed upon myself.
I don't exactly know what broke the yoke but something distinct happened when I ran on new Years Eve, I felt an almost physical tear in the things causing my resistance to running, the rain, the cold, the dark, the preference for a cup of coffee instead. The can't be arsed. There was a moment of clarity where I knew that the various demons hampering me had been consigned to whichever hell had sent them. Their power shattered I've easily rolled out for a run and in doing so I've fallen back in love with running. I've been set free from my dystopian mindsets to run through the jagged edges of winter landscapes, the fields and hedgerows razored with frost and fringed with cobwebs like bridal lace that have been beautiful in their starkness. I've abandoned my other burdens, heaving laundry from washing machine to tumble drier, bending my back over sinkfuls of dirty dishes and dragging out odious bags of garbage. These things still exist but I have been more focused on sunrise, sunset and frost, in my mind I leap over roots and rocks like a hormonal salmon swimming up river to spawn, deep down I know I am a bald and bespectacled 50 something bloke trundling through the mud in strange shoes. I am at peace with either image.
 Running with my laaitie**



Sullen sheep huddle in the field.




The frozen pond, sunrise.


Sunrise.

Sunset







* Morbid feelings.

**  Laaite ‎(plural Laaites)
  1. (South Africa, slang) A youth; a young person, especially male.