2011 Streak Day 151/365: Thinking of childhood

2011 Streak Day 151/365: Run - 3.31 miles, Time 31min 05sec, Weather - warmer and sunnier as the day progressed (I ran first thing in the morning)

Yesterday I posted a rather good poem by Philip Gross. Today I took a photo of a delphinium and all I could think of was a verse by AA Milne: There once was a dormouse who lived on a bed / Of delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red).

I know one of the ideas of the 2011 project is for me to see something and make some associations but reaching back into my childhood, and recovering one of the pebbles that rattles about, is stretching it a bit far. I might just as well have taken a photo of a wheelbarrow and said:  "Jonathan Joe had a mouth like an O and a wheelbarrow full of surprises".

As you will probably guess I was bought up on AA Milne - my mother liked reading the verse as well as Winnie the Pooh and used to sing me to sleep with 'Christopher Robin is saying his prayers'

What this has left me with is fragments. I cannot remember anything as long as a verse but the odd line or two will occasionally bubble to the surface.

So much of your childhood is always with you. You do not carry it around in the forefront of your conscious mind but every so often something will jog a little memory and you can picture things as they were

The Ridings

My effort to continue exercising daily did not last. Although Manchester provided excuses for breaking the thread, once those days were gone my motivation withered. As I knew I the target had already been missed I could not keep going a few days later when I felt very very tired; and once I had missed a day without good reason the game was up.

I have since had a week off and so it is now time to start again with a new regime and a new challenge.

Usually at this time I think about an autumn marathon but this year will be different: cycling to all the places I have lived - an act of kinetic memoir.

My birthday in April prompted massive introspection as I looked back at all the things I had done, and more prominently all the things I had not done. I started to think about who I was at the various addresses from infant to adult and realised I have not revisited many of the places and I have no idea how much they have changed. That is reason enough to find out. I have had 13 homes in England (always in England, I seem to have missed out on the gypsy gene). The furthest north (and west) was Cheshire (Farndon is a village on the Welsh border), the furthest south: Horsham, the furthest east: Colchester, with a number of places in and around London. London is always the centre and I still think of myself as coming from London.

The plan is for three trips and as there are three they will be called the Ridings.

The first one is planned for next week and will be the South Riding and will cover the places in London, Surrey and Sussex. It will start at Colliers Wood (where I lived my first 8 years) but apart from that nothing willbe chronological. The North and East Riding will be done after I come back from holiday, probably in September/ October.

You can see they would punch a hole in any marathon training programme but that does not matter as there is always another time. in fact I rather like Tom’s idea of celebrating the 2,500 anniversary of the original Marathon next year.

So this year the plan is for some gentle, credit card touring, staying in hotels or bed and breakfasts. The aim is not primarily fitness and endurance. Instead they will be journeys of personal psychogeography and take as long as they take.

Slightly Old Fashioned

I do not use my blog to record my runs; instead I prefer to write out the details in a notebook. There is something about the act of hand writing my diary whilst still in the post-run, relaxed frame of mind, that is pleasurable. In saying this I am admitting that I am not part of the modern world ( illustrated by this piece by Tanya Gold about giving up technology for a week , where she found out she was unable to write using a pen ) but sometimes we just have to own-up to things.

One of the advantages of have the diaries is that I can easily look back, year on year, to compare. When I do I realise two things. The first is that there is a recurring pattern of stop start i.e. I will establish a routine for only a short time before something happens to break it; the second is that it is almost written in code, with my own names for different section ns of the runs. They are of absolutely no use to anybody else. Nevertheless it is useful to have the books on the shelf, especially on winter evening when I am planning what I will be doing in the upcoming year. They earn their shelf space.

I have been thinking about this quite a lot recently as we are in the middle of an exercise of going through our possessions, trying to reduce the amount of clutter. To be kept, something should be either useful, beautiful or have sentimental value. Sometimes it is a hard judgement to make but the question must be asked.

Recently we emptied the loft, to insulate it to modern standards, which has led to an enormous amount of sorting. Stuff kept there is either sentimental, or of very occasional use (otherwise it wouldn’t be in the loft) and because it had been out of sight for a long time much of it had been forgotten. The process is therefore slow as everything has to be looked at carefully and memories are stirred.

Sometimes there are discoveries. Amidst some of the memorabilia from my father I found this telephone contract from 1907 (the signed contract is on the other side of the charges). Where it came from I don’t know, except I have a vague recollection that he found it in the loft of one of our houses. He would have kept it out of professional interest (he worked in telecoms all his life, as did my grandfather). Certainly none of my ancestors would have been wealthy enough to own a telephone in 1907. According to this site the annual fee of £17 would today be worth £1,236 in terms of increases in the retail price index but if it was looked at in terms of per capita GDP it would be worth £7,571. That is an awful lot of money to talk to a small number of people.

It shows how much things have changed in 100 years and I will think of that when I next take out my fountain pen to write in my notebook. A very tiny anachronism.

Memories, A Pen, My Grandfather, And Finally A Reference To Running

I spend a lot of time in coffee shops, always have. They help me think and I often find myself writing things in my notebook. I am here now watching the nib of my fountain pen as it moves across the page. I like using a fountain pen - I don't know why. Perhaps I like the way they feel in the hand or the design of the nib, maybe it's the way the ink flows. I don't know. I suspect the reason has more to do with subconscious associations: images of important people signing important documents, black and white films, the desks of famous writers, or my own memories.

Looking at my pen, I open the door to memories of myself as a young boy, probably about five or six in my grandfather's house. He lived across the way from us and I used to pop-in and the two of us would talk. Perhaps it would be about bird watching and he would show me something then hand me his binoculars. Sometimes we would go to a room he had which was full of wonders: like bits and pieces from radios, a flying suit on a hanger on the back of the door and an old roll-top desk. I loved that desk and the way the lid would disappear. It was magic - furniture that actually did something interesting.

In that desk was a Swan pen. The fact that I know it was a Swan means he must have told me and he was proud of it. Being a boy, who liked to fiddle with things, I liked the little lever recessed into the side with the tiny scoop so you could flick it up with your fingernail but I can also remember looking at it and marbled pattern of the barrel, fascinated by the interlocking shapes and varying colours. That pattern made a deep impression on me because I can remember an art lesson in my junior school where we were told to paint a pattern. I drew a few bold geometric shapes and painted them different colours. The teacher liked it and held it up for the class and then asked why I done it that way. I said it was because I couldn't do it the other way. "What was the other way?" he asked but I couldn't describe it. All I knew was that in my mind I saw a richly variegated, random pattern, a bit like my grandfather's pen. I knew it was beyond my abilities and so I just made things simple.

Sometimes we would be in my grandfather's garden. It was used to grow fruit and vegetables. I can remember him reaching down, giving me something and saying "Here try one of these goosegogs". I didn't much like it and I have never really cared for gooseberries but I love the word 'goosegogs' and in my head I can still hear his voice saying it. Our memories are full of these odd little things.

I always thought he looked like Mr Pickwick (we had some Dickens illustrations on our wall so I even though I was young I knew what Mr Pickwick looked like). He was round in shape with a comfortable belly, wore small round glasses, was bald on the top of his head with grey hair growing at the side and back and had a ready chuckle. He was vigorous right up until his end and everybody called him 'Pop', not only the family, everybody. He was part of the community and at the end of the garden was a scout hut he had helped build.

Also (and here is the running link) he had been a member of the three As. I don't know in what capacity - as far as I know he was not a runner. I only have a memory of my father mentioning it, but there were no further details and there is no one left alive who I could ask. I am thus free to imagine it as one of his interests like the scouts or being a radio ham. I am also free to imagine that my taking-up running is a belated connection.

Just like that marbled pattern of my imagination, being good at athletics, being a competitive runner, running with grace and elasticity is beyond me. Instead I have to simplify things down, plod along at my own steady pace and be content. But you know what - there is virtue in simplicity.

If Your Run Was A Piece Of Music, What Would It Be?

A recent post was prompted by the death of Paul Rutherford. In the past couple of weeks there have been two more deaths to add to the list: Joe Zawinul and Mike Osborne. Of the two Joe Zawinul is the great name. Weather Report is a high cultural peak, which still sounds fresh and inventive, and the Miles Davis record 'In a Silent Way' (the title track of which is a Zawinul composition) is one of my all time favourites. However I never saw him live. Mike Osborne on the other hand played with people I loved to see (Mike Westbrook and Chris McGregor). When I heard of his death I could see him standing there, a bear of a man, making the alto seem very tiny, blowing with intensity and passion.

The contrast then is between someone who has been the background sound of chunks of my life and someone of whom I have a vivid memory. In running terms it is the contrast of a run in Ashridge (beauty with ever changing views and surprises such as glimpses of deer. Always there, always different.) and the sharp memories from a race (when there is either a higher feeling of satisfaction or deeper level of disappointment). I don't enter many races, so each of them tends to be clear in my mind. Some of the best pictures come from 'A Run Around Wyre Forest' - a rather lovely half marathon with lots of greenery and a wicked little uphill finish. So that can be Mike Osborne.

Ashridge can be Joe Zawinul and just thinking of that way adds an extra dimension to it. You are running through a wood of beech and oak and when you look ahead you see a series of layers. That is very much like Weather Report (the arrangement of Birdland for example is like an intricate mesh).

Writing this piece has been the first time I have thought of comparing runs to pieces of music. I rather like the idea - it is playful, and part of soft core running is play.