Not The Perfect Doughnut - But Good Enough

Juneathon day 7: run 7.16km time 42min

Geoff Dyer is one of those authors I like and admire without feeling passionate about. He manages to be very artful, write well and make a number of acute observations (that you wished you could have made yourself), whilst giving the impression he is merely knocking off some thinly disguised diary pages.

Today he has an article in the Guardian about living for a short time in New York, finding the perfect cup of coffee and doughnut, and how important they were to his daily routine.

“Nietzsche so hated what he called "enduring habits" that he was grateful even to the bouts of sickness or misfortune that caused him to break free of their chains. Unlike Nietzsche I succumb all too easily to enduring habits. I like to go back to the same few places all the time – then, as soon as I break free of the prison of routine, I am left wondering why I kept going to a place I had stopped enjoying years earlier.”

I can relate in many ways, except many of my habits tend to be self limiting as once I realise I am doing things out of routine rather than real desire, I will stop - for example I had a period of really liking the almond croissants from Cafe Nero but I have not now had one for a couple of years. However in matters of running routine is important.

I have a small number routes I like and I tend to run them again and again. Occasionally I will make a point of trying-out different places, and I enjoy doing that, but most of my runs are meat and potatoes - standard fare. In fact it is all a lot like food. Most of the meals we cook at home come from a fairly standard and often repeated repertoire but every so often we make a conscious effort to try something new. Most of the time we don’t want to think too much about cooking, we want to eat. It is the same with running most of the time I don’t want to worry about it I just want to get out.

So today was along the Nicky Line.

“Delectica had been my base, it was the point from which my sense of familiar and localised happiness had spread. It was the epicentre of my wellbeing – what Marx, in a non-pastry-related context, termed the heart of a heartless world. I've always been dependent on places like this wherever I've lived.”

For me the heart is more the canal than the Nicky Line but the principle is the same.

Juneathon statistics
run 5/7
distance 36.62km

time 3hr 36min

Cycle 1/7

distance 21 miles

time 1hr 32min

Gym 1/7

time 45min

Running to Bookshops - No More

And so it has finally happened Borders UK has gone into administration and the options for those of us who like browsing in bookshops will be reduced. I am saddened even though it is odd to be writing this about Borders, who, when they first came to Britain, were seen as part of the problem: a big pile-them-high merchant who would squeeze the life out of the small independents. Now they in turn have been squeezed by a bigger pile-them-high merchant in Amazon … so goes life.

I started to like Borders from 2000 when I realised that Waterstone's had radically changed. This was symbolised by the sacking of Richard Topping, their Manchester manager, for refusing to reduce the number and range of titles he carried. Previously I enjoyed Watersone's and thought it had improved the standard of bookselling in the country (I am old enough to remember when the only place to buy books in some towns was W H Smith and if you ordered a book it took weeks to arrive) but I then started to think of their dark-wood shelves and subdued décor as an affectation: a self-conscious referencing of a gentleman's library, whilst the brasher blond wood fittings of the Border's shops, with books piled everywhere seemed more honest. Yes we sell in bulk, it seemed to say but there is a lot of stuff here and we have chairs and a coffee shop so you can take you time sifting through it.

My lingering affection for Waterstone's was then further frayed in 2005 when they sacked a senior bookseller for some fairly mild comments in his personal blog. So it happened that I preferred using Border's (there are no independents in my area). But over the past few years you could see things were not going well and stock started to reduce. No longer were there piles of stuff, shops were rearranged and shelves disappeared. This has been particularly marked in the last year where there has been more space devoted to the offers ( 3 for 2, buy one get one half price, 2 for £10) and non-book items whilst the stock behind has become thinner and thinner.

But why am I writing about bookshops on a running blog?

The answer is that, as unlikely as it might seem, Borders in Watford is a significant part of my running landscape. From my home, along the canal it is about 10 miles away, a nice distance for a longish run, along a route I never tire off. I have been doing it regularly for 5 years with the affection that can only come from familiarity, especially as it is associated with another institution: the family meeting. I meet my wife at the in-store Starbucks (she goes by car and brings me a change of clothes) and we discuss our joint projects and plans, and check off our progress. A lot of it is mundane such as jobs that need doing so the list could be something like downstairs blind - fixed; treating the garden fence - still outstanding; but sometimes we talk more speculatively about what we should be doing and where we should be going. On these topics we rarely reach conclusions but they need to be discussed because the real topic of these meetings is to try to work out how we can support each other better. And that is very important.

Borders brings three things together: browsing, running and relationship maintenance - a strong combination. However things always change and there are many other good locations (pubs for example). Borders might be soon be no more but the meetings will continue and I still like the idea of running to them.