Time is a Gift

I found this a quite inspiring conversation:

The son of a long standing family friend was describing how he had moved from fine art to book conservation. In his graduation show he printed a dissertation about the influence of Japan on American artists as Japanese book, with traditional paper and binding. He also produced other books containing photographs, all bound in a similar way. These books were then displayed in an installation of a print works. For him the interest was in submerging himself in a traditional craft and learning how to make something carefully, accurately, and beautifully. He enjoyed the way that people instinctively reacted to and appreciated something well-made. He felt these objects communicated more than his abstract works.

I asked how this gelled with the attitude of his lecturers with their romantic idea of personal expression and individuality. By focussing on skill and producing an object in a traditional way, he was challenging this. He said that one of his lecturers had described him as reactionary but he never sought to challenge their beliefs and was always respectful and that the photographs in the books were within their tradition. Paradoxically, by being self effacing he became more of his own man. After the show a gallery approached and said that they like his work but he knew that he did not want the life of an artist and gave all of his books away. He was just grateful for being given the time and support to develop his skill.

I love the idea of craftsmanship, when something comes together well and with precision and have previously posted on trying to work out the craft in running. I don’t know if there is any, but there is a similarity of trying to do something as well as possible and continually working at it. You loose yourself in the task and in so doing express your personality more fully.

However in the conversation I was really struck by the idea of time being a gift and that for us soft-core runners there is all the time in the world. It need not be a constraint. There is no need to try an force a spring marathon if you do not feel ready. There is the time to progress as slowly as you want, try base training or any other approach, or work on your technique. You can go backwards to go forwards. You can afford to have a long term objective.

Yes time is a gift.

Stairway to the Serpies

The big cultural event of the week has been the Led Zeppelin concert. So how can I link that to running? Well actually quite easily. I don't need the full six degrees of separation just a memory from 40 years ago.

The first thing is that a huge part of my imaginative identity at that time was bound up with music. It was not only a matter of listening there were a whole range of meanings and social signifiers. Authenticity, invention, attitude, edge, were the things that mattered and reading about them was an important way of augmenting knowledge of this (never mind Frank Zappa's jibe that writing about music is like dancing about architecture).

The second thing is that I have been reading the Guardian since the age of 16 and can remember any number of their writers. One of them was Geoffrey Cannon who, amongst other things, wrote about rock music. He reviewed the first big concert of Led Zeppelin at the Albert Hall (they were always a band that started at the top) and incidentally was not overly impressed, recognising the visceral power but concluding with the line that they were 'plastic fantastic'. I don't know why I remember that but I do.

He is the link with running because he moved from music to health and especially diet. He also ran and his lasting legacy is the founding of the Serpies. To me this is a huge thing.

The following is a quotation from a speech that was published in Public Health Nutrition: 6(4), June 2003, 326–328.

My best deed in those days was to found the Serpentine
Running Club, which celebrated its first 20 years with 700
members in May last year, whose details are on info@
serpentine.org.uk; its members include world champions,
but the club remains dedicated to the absolute beginner.
Every time I come to London and stagger round
Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, I look at the
unofficial paths parallel to the tarmac, made by the
incessant tread of countless thousands of runners. Those
paths did not exist before the days of the Serpies, and I feel
proud. However, jogging goes back to the 1960s, long
before anybody dreamed that most able-bodied citizens
could run a marathon. My own inspiration was Norman
Harris, founder of the Sunday Times National Fun Run in
the late 1970s. Here is the story of the first-ever jogging
club, and the invention of the word ‘jogger’.
Norman’s inspiration was his fellow New Zealander
Arthur Lydiard, the fabled coach of Murray Halberg and
Peter Snell16, who, as Norman explained to me (Harris N,
personal communication) in 1962, “decided to start an
informal club of former runners, who would amble a few
miles on a Sunday morning and then maybe have a picnic.
As the then New Zealand Herald athletics writer, I was
asked to put a piece in the paper. They said the guys
would just be jogging, and I remember saying: ‘So what
will you call it – the Auckland Joggers Club?’ There was a
bit of a giggle. But the name stuck. So I think I invented not
the verb ‘to jog’, but the noun ‘jogger’!”
Bear Arthur Lydiard and Norman Harris in mind next
time you go for a jog. Remember too, with due deference
to Gunnar Blix17, Per-Olof Astrand18 and the other Nordic
pioneers, that it was the citizens’ running movement of the
1970s and 1980s that supplied the cohorts of tens of
thousands of enthusiastic volunteers for the experiments
of exercise physiologists that have now proved beyond
reasonable doubt that regular physical activity prevents
chronic diseases. With no funding from USAID, too!
Before jogging there were two separated populations, of
elite athletes and the sedentary masses; so researchers
could not be sure of the meaning of moving from being fat
to being fit. Now we all know.
Arthur Lydiard and Norman Harris began the movement
that led to the launch of Agita Mundo onWorld Health Day
in Sa˜o Paulo in April 2002 and the new WHO global
strategy. They are the founders of a global grassroots
movement that has improved the quality of life of millions
of people. Salutations to them. Raise your glasses, please,
filled neither with Coca-Cola, nor cachac¸a nor calvados.
Sau´de! Good health!

Victorian Virtues

Yesterday there was a Channel 4 programme on John Ruskin. I was really pleased about this and hope there will be some revival in interest in his work.

I previously mentioned that my favourite house in England is Brantwood, which used to be the home of John Ruskin. Partly this is because of the location (the view overlooking Coniston Water is sublime) but more importantly it is a celebration of the ideas of one of the great Victorian thinkers.

I can remember being told, in a school lesson 40 years ago, that the bookshelf of any educated artisan of the period would contain works by John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle. It was a strange throw away remark, just one sentence when a lesson went off-topic, but it has stayed with me all this time. Somehow it snagged a number of romantic ideas about idealism and seriousness, the way this could be embraced through all levels of society, and faith in the possibility of change, so that the quality of life could be improved for all (i.e. a better society was possible).

When I look out from his study, over the Water, to see the fells change colour and shape with changes in the light, my appreciation is heightened by all my internal associations. One of his great ideas was that you should learn through the close and direct observation of nature. But there is more to it than just standing and staring.

Strangely this brings me back to running and the justifications I make to myself for spending time on an activity where my only realistic aspiration is to be mediocre. Part of the fascination is a slightly Ruskinian idea of exertion making you feel part of the landscape - part of nature. It happens in two ways: you can observe quite closely and notice things that might otherwise have passed you by; also you are very aware of the workings of your body. External and internal nature. The balance varies with different types of run. When you are slow and easy there is more chance to look at the landscape, more a sense of being at peace with it. When it is more of a struggle you look inward and can notice nothing about you surroundings.

Today, for me, it was all inward looking. Having had a long break, eating too much and doing little exercise I have to go back to the start and build back up. In the mean time it feels like hard work. I will just have to content myself with the idea that hard work is also a Victorian virtue.

Empty Phrases

Oh how I hate management bollocks. It is an incubus that ravages our language, inhibiting thought and shriveling the imagination. The other day I had to produce a document with the word ‘synergies’ in it. I had no choice – I was presented a template for a marketing sheet and I had to use it as a heading. Ha I thought, as I wrote my empty phrases, what can you expect from a company that is proud of its new ‘transactional input/output centre’ (I think it’s a fancy warehouse but I am not 100% sure).

A close relative is the company slogan. Mostly they are incredibly smug, as if they are trying to show they are clever. However when I see a delivery van with the slogan “Delivering Quality” I groan. My favourite might be Lockheed Martin (who produce military equipment, which they sell around the world) with their “We never forget who we’re working for”. It sounds scary and I know they are not working for me. Another arms manufacture, our own BAE, is obviously staffed by idealistic hippies because they are “Innovating for a safer world”. That is really reassuring.

I like it when a slogan has real meaning, “Never knowingly undersold” would be a good example. I also like the lineage, as a slogan is no more than the motto on a coat of arms.

I thought about this today because the guardian carried a picture of Mark Lewis Francis in his Birchfield Harriers vest. Their crest carries the motto ‘Fleet and Free’. I did not feel at all cynical or grumpy when I noticed it, instead I thought it a wonderfully neat encapsulation of what you can find in running (providing, of course, that fleet is used in a relative sense).

You see a motto or a slogan can be good. It does not have to be bollocks.

I was pleased the example I saw came from running.