A Tale of Two Cities - Part 2

After fours hours of driving I am tired and I don’t want to go running. But I know I will feel energised if I shake off the lethargy of an indulgent weekend, so it’s an easy fight to win for the Lycra lout in my mind. I pull on my broken running shoes, muddied from a Yorkshire field, and step into the corridor. I jog down the five flights of stairs, feeling the breeze from the open window where smokers often gather. The sharp smell of old vomit lingers from a week ago when an over-refreshed merry maker saluted the evening by voiding their stomach across the landing. Past the invisible crime scene and I am out into the courtyard.

Here, beneath the windows of 90 flats, I always feel I am being watched. Each day I have to suppress the urge to perform a ludicrous dance routine, or the brutal slaying of an imagined foe, before spreading my arms wide and shouting up to an unseen audience, “Are you not entertained?”

The hustle and bustle

The streets are dark and loud. Traffic bunches at the lights, belching heavy fumes. Buses’ brakes squeal too close and startle this rural refugee. Adjusting back to the hustle and bustle, what a contrast from yesterday’s run across farmland in the frosty dawn. Past Kingsland Shopping centre, where Sainsbury’s and Matalan lie slumbering after a busy weekend pumping out goods. I follow the curve of Dalston Lane, slowing to avoid a collision with kids surfing the pavement on their bikes. Further ahead, pedestrians are corralled between the plastic fences guiding them past road works. I swing left and run towards the traffic to avoid being trapped.  

It is hard to find a rhythm. There are obstacles to be dodged and pauses that are impossible to prevent. After the busy junction at Hackney Downs, where the lights of the Pembury Tavern illuminate Sunday drinkers enjoying a pint of cider, I stretch my legs up the gentle incline towards Clapton. Concrete rears up on either side of me. The presence of nature is restricted to a patch of grass or a tree guarded by pavement slab sentries. But there is life everywhere. I can feel the city buzzing with energy and it seeps into me, rolling around on the floor, locked in a struggle with the residual countryside calm.

Past Lea Bridge roundabout and the old tram depot, towards Stamford Hill and the heartland of London’s Orthodox Jewish community. My breathing is laboured, I feel over-stimulated by the myriad distractions on the streets, and I can’t find my stride.

Acknowledging emotions

I turn the corner at the junction and run downhill towards Stoke Newington. As I run, I think about how 2013 has begun. It has been busy;  going on holiday, new projects at work, the sale of my late mother's house falling through and the subsequent search for a new buyer, appeasing the taxman from the year I spent self-employed, finding a new flatmate to replace our outgoing friend. Perhaps I have not stopped to ask how I feel. I have been so caught up in events that I forgot to acknowledge the sadness. There has been a piece ripped out of me, things are not the same and never will be. My Mum is dead. It still sounds wrong to say that and 6 months on I am still shocked by the harsh reality of this cold fact. Grief is a lonely place. Rightly or wrongly, I feel that there are few people who can relate and so I don’t share my feelings often. Few people ask how I am and if they do their timing is probably wrong and I am not in the mood for a heartfelt chat. It is hard for friends and colleagues to get it right. I don’t blame them for treading carefully around powerful emotions. If a person who has gone through a trauma appears okay then why encourage wailing and gnashing of teeth? It is almost impossible for a person to judge the appropriate time to ask, I mean to really ask, “How are you?” But, if by some miracle of intuition they choose the right moment then it can be a great relief to have the opportunity to unburden. It is necessary to restrict one’s vulnerable moments in order to survive in the manic circus of the city.  We wear armour around our hearts and face the world with a mask projecting how we would like to be seen. But it’s okay to vent sometimes. In fact it’s necessary. And if the usually taciturn Robert De Niro can express his emotions publicly, like he did recently on a TV chat show, then there is hope for all of us.

By the time I reach Stoke Newington High Street I have put the world to rights inside my head. The bright lights of KFC seem to sneer at the bourgeois enclave of Church Street where TV producers pay £59 for the best flat white. Onwards towards the strip of Turkish restaurants, packed with Sunday trade, and the bars and clubs forming the backbone of Dalston’s nightlife. Moustache Bar, Efes, Alibi, Dalston Superstore; now all is quiet on the Eastern front but last night these venues would have been the trenches where drunken revelry was waged. I feel my stride lengthen as I am nearing home. My mood is lifted and a blockage has been shifted. I stand before the challenge and accept it. I am ready for another week.

You can see my loop around Hackney here

This weekend sees the final fixture in the Met League cross country calendar. Check back to hear more muddy tales....

A Tale of Two Cities - Part 1

It is the first morning of a weekend in the countryside, staying with relatives in Yorkshire. My sleep was disrupted by a busy brain and I wake before anyone else. When, as an insomniac, you accept defeat, acknowledging that unconscious rest is beaten, you have a choice; lie awake and think or embrace the day and begin. I would be insane to miss this opportunity to run through unknown green places. I find great joy in journeying under my own exertion through the beauty of natural spaces. It is a tonic for mind and soul. So, I get up.

I leave the house asleep and step out in the freezing air. I am woefully underdressed in a vest and shorts, white-socked toes poking through the sides of my broken running shoes. The sky is blue and the temperature is not much above zero. The village of Goldsborough is still very much in bed as I run past the red phone box, the old post office and the pub. I stretch my legs over icy puddles and head away from the houses towards the lanes and farmland. My road swings around to the east and I am greeted full in the face by the low winter sun. Blinding but not yet warm, its huge presence like an irrefutable alarm clock to a frost covered landscape. Now that massive ball of gas is in the ascendancy and the elegant half moon, still proud but fading, slips towards the horizon in her chariot to continue the never-ending celestial chase.

Away from civilisation

There is an opening in the hedgerow and I run off the tarmac and onto a muddy track. The sun is so bright I have to concentrate on the ground in front of me and try to pick a way, sliding through the sticky treacle. Through a creaking gate and I am running across a softly undulating field following tractor tracks and watching my breath take form in the air. I have no planned route but will keep following the yellow arrows attached to posts indicating the way of the footpath. At the edge of the field I eschew the stile and leap the cross-country fence built for horses. I am into the woods, dodging the quagmire and ducking the low branches of the naked trees.

Below and to my right, the River Nidd wends its silent way, curving gracefully between grassy banks. A great fishing spot, my uncle tells me, where he spent many happy hours as a lad, pitting his wits against nature.

A step back in time

I break through the tree line and I am running across a wide lawn towards a huge house, Ribston Hall. From behind a tree I watch the many-windowed mansion as a scene from history plays out on the driveway; an elegantly-frocked lady descends from a horse drawn carriage, taking the hand of the footman as she fans herself. The cold is clearly going to my head.

Continuing my jog through a period drama, the path takes me across the Nidd on a grand stone bridge, between two gatehouses and beneath a carved crest. Onwards, towards the edge of the farmland where a modern house is waking up. A Land Rover Discovery sits idling at the front door before a man in a flat cap gets in and drives away. A bit further ahead I pass two dog walkers and pant them a morning greeting to no response. Perhaps they were surprised to see a man in a vest running across the field. It is the 18^th Century after all.

Impossible to ignore

The cold is beginning to bite as a bitter wind whistles across the open ground. My Garmin tells me I have covered 5.6km, which seems a nice round number to call the halfway point and so I turn back the way I have come. Now I am heading into the wind and tucking my thumbs into clenched fists does nothing to alleviate the sensation of fingers being flayed fleshless by the steady onslaught of frosty air. Running without gloves was a bad idea. I bend forward into the breeze and attempt a smile; enjoy the beautiful surroundings because tomorrow you will be back in the concrete jungle. The cold seems to slow my body down and the tranquillity of the landscape becomes a secondary concern to the sensation of running naked across the Arctic tundra. This would be a bad time to bump into the ladies of the Hall.

Twenty-five frozen minutes later and I am attempting to remove my muddy trainers at the door of my uncle’s house. My numb fingers are about as dextrous as a side of ham and a few whispered curses are needed to uncouple myself from my filthy strides. Under the hot shower my hands begin to defrost a little too rapidly. The deep ache and tingle of blood returning is reminiscent of school days and uncomfortable minutes spent thawing in the changing room after rugby training on the wintry pitches. In those days I had no choice. This was voluntary. As my temperature returns to normal I feel the familiar sensation of calm descending over me. It’s good to be alive.

You can see my Yorkshire run here