May I borrow your wall, please?

My best mate at university was a highly suspicious lady.  Her father worked in intelligence.  She had achieved a very creditable fluency in Russian.  She was (anathema!) a practicing Christian.  She was acting as nanny for the family of an influential diplomat in the US embassy in Moscow.  As such she merited a greater degree of attention from the Russian intelligence service than your average nanny. Such attention, though flattering, had its drawbacks, one of which was that items of personal property at times went "missing".

During her stay her address book went "missing" in this way. She never misplaced items.  If it wasn't where she expected it to be, it had been moved.  There was a well-known method of recovering such items.  You lamented aloud the loss: "I need my address book. It will be my Godmother's birthday in three weeks, I must write her a card; she will be terribly hurt if her birthday comes and I appear to have forgotten it. You see, she has no child of her own.."

Then you waited. At times this did not work, particularly if you were only a nanny, even a rather Interesting nanny.  But no cause for despair.  The next step was to borrow a more influential wall.  Thus she approacher her employer,  "Please sir, may I borrow your wall?", and repeated her lament.

The address book returned.

Please sir, may I borrow your wall?

I wonder at times whether my Parkinson's is a late addition to ongoing struggles to keep in motion.  I allow for the possibility that Parkinson's is the newcomer in an already complicated plot.  But even allowing for that, even if there were only the ghost of a chance that PD is the culprit, I think people should be studying me, because the quality of my life has been going up rather than down for the last nine years.  I think that those who are trying to help people with Parkinson's should listen.  I have a lot to say on the subject. There may be something to be learned from my experiences which could help others.  

I have a very diligent guardian angel. It nudged me in helpful directions long before I got any diagnosis.  In my opinion, my guardian angel is nothing short of inspired.  In these ways it guided me, make of it what you will. 

For a start, two people I respected suggested I cut wheat and dairy out of my life.  I was desperate enough to try it.  Two weeks later I walked.  Without sticks.  For the first time in 18 months.

Second, once walking, there was the obsession about running.  It had to be an obsession; no rational motivation could have generated the will to keep focussed on running through the frustrating years when three days of running would be followed by a week back on sticks. 

Third, there was the happenstance of a bad case of plantar fasciitis coinciding with a time when the illness was obviously active.  My lovely running GP prescribed celebrex for the pf, and, simultaneous with improvement of the pf, the fog, the twitchiness, the headache dissolved.  A useful lesson learnt.

Fourth, I can't quite remember how I got involved with Pilates, but I did.  My lovely Pilates teacher (also a runner) was very much into the Franklin method, and the role of the much underrated psoas muscles. She taught us their function in our lives and how to access them deliberately, how to stretch and strengthen them. (What muscles do you think are contracted to produce the characteristic PD stance? Given contracted psoas, is any form of ambulation other than the parkinsonian shuffle even possible?)   I began to think analytically about running, about moving, and to consider which muscles needed more strength, more flexibility, and how to achieve it.  I'm still learning.  Lots.  There seems to be a whole chain of "anti-Parkinson's" muscles.  Twitch one, they all respond to counter the stoop.

Fifth there is the matter of sports massage.  No feel good stuff this.  I am not sure I am going to call my massage practitioner lovely.  He isn't a runner, although he is a champion race-walker.  I will at some point tell you how I got into this, because it is an entertaining tale.  Particularly when preparing for a running event, I see him on a regular basis.  I scream. I shout. I swear. Tears start in my eyes, I bite my lip, I sweat all over.  But I stand tall and run freely.

Sixth, I suppose there is also the matter of the viola and the work.  I will never know how much worse cognitive function would be if I didn't play, if I didn't struggle on a daily basis to impose discipline on the chaos of ideas that bounce around my brain.

Even if mine is an isolated and idiosyncratic case, and others will not get similar benefit, people need to hear this.  There are things to try. People who get the diagnosis and get the pills should also get the advice, the training, the massage, the education, and the viola lessons, if it takes their fancy.  It takes time I suppose, and time is money, and money there is none.  But honest, during my time on sticks I would have sold my ears for the pleasure of running. If money could have bought it, I'd have paid.  If the lovely NHS can no longer provide such costly measures as advice, education and training, then at a minimum we need to find some way to get the message across that there are things that could be tried.   It might cost effort, it might cost money, but we don't have to sit back and wait for pills and immobility and a cure that might come too late for us.  It might not "work" but I'd far rather try all sorts of things than wait patiently (ha ha, get the pun) for the men in white to fix it please. Maybe others would too.

I got a lot of questions too, but one rant at a time.  I will wait, and see what ears this wall might have.

Exercise? Pah!

Exercise? Pah.  I don't Do exercise. "Do you take exercise?" suggests a medical prescription, a pill of bitter taste and evil side effects. Exercise, the word itself conjures a slideshow of unpleasant recollections.  I am thirteen, standing at one point of a lattice while my classmates in identical jaundice yellow gym tunics  stand at others and fail to do star jumps or windmills or whatever other penance on the instruction of our mousy haired gym mistress.  I am eighteen, flute in hand, hands shaking, eyes watering, trying to keep blowing, playing finger twisting exercises out of an evil book labelled Ejercios diarios (it doesn't sound any better in Spanish), the flute teacher looking out the window, not troubling to disguise her contempt. I am 28, and the sergeant major i/c  frightening pregnant women at the maternity hospital has us all on the floor doing something or other which was supposed to be useful, but I can't remember why or what.  I don't do exercise because I don't like exercise.

Sport, now, I have time for sport.  As a kid I wished I was a boy so I could play football.  Girls didn't play football in those days. At school I played field hockey in a spirit of vengeance, a stick being an expressive tool in the hands of an angry teenager.  Mostly I hit the ball.  Not perhaps tennis - we played on clay courts; I spent too much time picking gravel out of my knees to enjoy the game.  Sport can still stir my spirit.  I can watch rugby with admiring horror.  The sight of eight strong men in a boat can bring tears to my eyes. These days, my place in most sport is on the sidelines.

But running, now that's the stuff.  Exercise is to running what Complan is to the finest of high table dining.  Running has infinite variety.  It has low cloudy days, when you have the fen to yourself and the gulls because no one else is daft enough to be out there.  By the river in the morning the eights are sweating, reminding me that I could probably try a little harder.  Or there is the changing life of the kingfisher stream - the curious purple flowers in May, the grasses that grow tall in summer and seed as the days grow shorter again.  Autumn turns summer's canopy of green to a tea-scented carpet of browns and yellows.  On winter days I scan the framework of empty branches for the low-flying streak of luminous blue. Mostly it is only there in my memory, but one day I will see it again.  It is quite true, I never run by the same stream twice.  I never know what I'm going to see.  

And that's just the entertainment laid on.  Then there's the running itself.  Long slow run?  How far?  What direction?  Run/walk? If so, what run/walk ratio? Intervals? How long?  How long a recovery? How many repetitions? Concentrate on core. Concentrate on not tensing muscles that don't need tensing.  Concentrate on glute media.  Let psoas stretch.  A bad run is the motivation for a more carefully planned and executed outing the next time.  A good run is gold.

A good run is so much more than gold. I will shortly be shedding the clothes of respectability and heading west from work to run to the hill that overlooks half of Cambridgeshire, to watch the sun sink beyond the land. I can see it now, already in my mind's eye, as I have run that way many times before.  From the top of the hill, with the American Cemetery quiet behind me, the roar of the motorway, the day's frustrations and aggravations alike muffled in the evening mist and faded in the dimming light.  A separate peace, accessible only through the effort of the climb, visible only through salt-crusted eyelashes in the fading light, durable enough to guard the spirit through the day to come.

Running is the motive as well as the means, the goal as well as the discipline to achieve it.  It is a belief, a healing force that has given me back the ability to walk, to work, to live as fully as any other.  Exercise - the word shouldn't even share the page with running.  

Have fun out there.

An apology to a guardian angel

I am beginning to realise that I have been lucky.  My guardian angel is a generally a conscientious and energetic spirit but at times I admit I have been rather short and sour with it, and quite failed to show the respect due to guardian angels.  Perhaps never more so in the years living with an unnamed illness.  I have described before the bitter frustration of the bland reassurances that my increasing problems with mobility were "nothing serious".  So often was I thus "reassured" that I christened the illness Nothing Serious, or NS for short.  The frustration was acute in the early years.  I would have mortgaged my ears those days for a label, anything I could present to family and colleagues to explain and excuse my failing abilities.  I was inclined to feel Hard Done by, and regarded my guardian angel somewhat coldly in those years.

The diagnosis of Parkinson's, after fifteen years of NS was abrupt and unsought.  I had been having increasing difficulty  running.  I had even written before the consultation to suggest that we dispense with seeking a diagnosis, as all prior attempts to arrive at a diagnosis had resulted in fruitless frustration after tedious tests and outpatients exams. Perhaps we could just talk about strategies to help muscles adapt.  The consultant however did not appear to have any doubts in his mind.  The consultation had not lasted many minutes.  He sat down briskly and started writing.  "I can tell you what you've got. If you want to know, of course."  Er, come again?  Please sir, no sir, I don't want to know anything sir, or why I have come to see you sir? The end of man is to know (Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men).

The years of NS undoubtedly cushioned what might otherwise have been a severe blow.  It was a shock even so.  I had to go straight back to work that day and host a farewell party for some two hundred students.   I got a colleague to see to setting out the nibbles, and took a turn around the grounds, three deep breaths, and then pretended (with indifferent success) that no thoughts beyond the future careers of our students troubled my mind.

Having a diagnosis brought advantages  A diagnosis made chemical assistance of a specific nature available.  When I finally got the stuff, it worked a treat; my running speed improved by two minutes/mile overnight.  There were social gains as well.  I had an explanation.  I had been acquitted of all the charges implicit in the diagnosis of Functional disability.  I could plan.  I had a rough time-scale, and the chance to think constructively about how I wanted to spend my likely allotted span of active life.  

I was, I am, grateful for an answer. But the double-edged nature of having a diagnosis gradually became apparent over the summer. Benefits that I had imagined would follow in the wake of a diagnosis proved hollow.  In the early days of NS I had been desperate for a support group.   I made one rather desultory visit to the Parkinon's UK forums.  It didn't feel like home.  Nobody wanted to talk about running.  More sinister, Parkinson's the Explanation began to transform into Parkinson's the Excuse.  The drugs enabled me to run faster, but the diagnosis made it harder to get out the door.  Why bother?  Does it matter whether I hang up the trainers now or in 2016? What's the point?

It took a couple of months to pull out of that slough of indifference.  I was lucky (I told you so), in that during the years of NS I had learned an elementary truth.  There is one, and in my experience only one, effective alchemy capable of transforming the bitterness and leaden despair of misfortune into the 24 caret consolation of enduring satisfaction.  That is to give.  

You can't be really poor so long as you can give.  During the years when I generally got up, saw the kids to school, walked the dog and then came back and went to bed until the kids came home again I spent many of my waking hours  playing string quartets and chamber music with school kids.  As honorary teenager in the viola section of children's orchestras I had a privileged position; part of their music, part of their lives, caught up in their exuberance, excitement and energy.  Honoured indeed, and soul made whole through their generous spirit.

In running too, the great reward had little to do with speed. (I still quite fail to see the point.)  My first post-sticks half was run in honour of a young friend of mine, ten years old when she was diagnosed with a brain tumour.  She endured two brain operations, radiation therapy and two interminable years of savage chemotherapy. For a while we both used sticks.  When I got rid of mine, I made her a deal.  She was to choose the charity, I would run the half marathon and do the begging.  She chose Clic, I and a dozen sailors from the sailing club to which Lizzie's family and ours belonged trained over the summer.  We netted over £3k for the cause.  I ran in grand company that day.  The race was in the same village as the club and sailors who weren't running turned out at strategic points to cheer, and a hearty tea was available at the club following the race.  

So I knew what was required to burn off the fog of indifference.  Phil, one of the sailors who had run for Lizzie had himself come down with leukaemia, and was having a rotten time with the chemo.  I made him the same deal I had made Lizzie, thinking to run London marathon for the charity of his choice, Leukaemia Research.  Slight hitch, I didn't get a place, not even a golden bond place.  Knowing that I was not going to finish in under six hours, entering a different marathon was not really an option.  Most marathons have six hour cut-off times, which I respect, out of respect for the marshals.

Nothing for it, I measured out 26.2 miles along the banks of the Cam, beginning and ending with our own club waters, extending up to Ely with a loop around the city to fill out the miles. All last January and February I practiced, running the river banks at their very muddiest, learning all parts of the route, taking photos and preparing a guide for the sailors and friends who were to join in running all or part of it.

It was a magic day.  Over 45 sailors and friends took part one way or another, running, walking, swimming, sailing or climbing (on a climbing wall).  Toddlers and octogenarians joined in, slogging around the two mile loop including Bottisham Lock and the bridge at Clayhithe.  The clubhouse was bursting with over 60 people eating all day, and yet the supply of sandwiches, cakes, quiches, pies, crisps, sausage rolls, pasties, salad and trifle never failed, such had been the industry of those who supplied the galley.  And Phil was there to see every runner home.  Running doesn't get better than that.  Alchemy effected.  The fog dispelled.  There will be a day when I hang my trainers up.  But it's not going to be a day earlier than it has to be.

Did I tell you I was lucky?  The years of NS were a severe but effective apprenticeship.  It wasn't a matter of learning to live with the disease, it was a matter of learning to live.  

I had a very sobering weekend not long ago, when I joined for the first time in a Parkinson's UK Working Age group local meeting.  There were three of us, together with three professionals, meeting to discuss the annual Event.  One was a woman who had been diagnosed about ten years ago, apparently coping well with the disease, and the other was a man newly diagnosed.  Difficulties with running had led him to seek advice.  He had given up running.

I wanted to shout, tell him No No No do Not stop running.  Learn how to stretch the psoas so that they don't double you up and make running (and a lot else) impossible.  You can, you can, you can!  But my story is not his story, my illness not his, and the assumption that my experience qualifies me to advise (and implicitly to judge) is inexcusable arrogance.  I kept (mostly) quiet.  

But I began to understand how much I owed to my guardian angel, who withheld the diagnosis until I had learned how to live.  If I had had the label of Parkinson's from the start, would I have had spirit enough to defy the diagnosis and try and run?  I don't think so.  I would have found a home on the Parkinson's UK forums, not on the Runners World UK daily training thread.  At best I would have felt gently sorry for myself and tried to put a cheerful face on a life of limitations, contenting myself with the consolation of sympathy.  Gratias ago tibi, guardian angel, for teaching me the lessons I needed to learn before shouldering the label.  

But I still want to shout.  There is so much that I have learned, that might be of use to others should they wish to try it.  Go google Parkinson's and Psoas.  A paltry 200,000 some hits.  Not one of them appearing to recognise the enormous benefit to us pd peeps in understanding the role that muscle plays, and how to stretch and strengthen it.  I reckon we have something we can teach runners too, about the nature of Hitting the Wall, and something to learn too, namely that just as runners who train adequately for their marathons do not hit the wall, so adequate training might also help us avoid such painful encounters with the unmoveable.

I want to shout.  I want to share what I've learned, grace to the good offices of my guardian angel.  There must be others who might find as I did a second life through better understanding.  And a lot of hard work and determined training.  But it's worth it.  It's worth it for every day that I can run that I might not have been able to.  To me it's worth it.

Others will have other priorities and other enthusiasms.  I know that muddy trails are not for everyone. Just, please folks who share the illness, whatever it is that you love, let that define your life, and not the label. 

sticks

"What, lost our skis, have we?" "Bit warm for that, isn't it" It's odd that I can't remember more of the taunts from the days on sticks. It was a daily experience for nearly two years.  I clanked. There was a time when I thought I would never forget, for the simple reason that the days of clanking along seemed to unroll endlessly before me, without hope or explanation or variation.  I don't give it much thought these days.  I step out the door and down the street with my mind on other things.  Even once the sticks were history, it was a long long time before I turned my back on the front door without some small half surprise to note that my hands were free and empty, free to carry the groceries home, free to shove in my pockets, free to flag down a taxi or a bus without accidentally poking a passerby in the eye.  It is entirely correct and right to forget those times, but it is also right for me to tell you some small bit about them so that you can also forget them.  Somehow, it is better that you should join me in forgetting them than never know whence came my forum name of Stickless.  

It is ten years since the husband read about Les Foulees de la Soie. It puzzles me still what attracted him to the trip.  He was the runner in those days, though in earlier years I had trotted around a few half marathons.  But he hated running in the heat, or up hills.  So why go all the way to China in search of those conditions?  And what was I supposed to do while he was trotting around the desert or the mountains?

Those familiar with domestic negotiations will recognise all the symptoms: of course we signed up.  Alan got stuck into an impressive training routine, and I, with doubt in my heart, bought myself a book entitled "Learn Chinese in Three Months" - complete with tapes. That was fine, it was January that we signed up, the trip was not until the beginning of August, twice the required amount of time, should suit even a slow learner.

The snowdrops came and went, the crocuses followed. I could say my name and say that I was a student/translator/secretary in Chinese, which wasn't quite the truth. The broadbeans got their heads up, the potatoes grew, and as they grew, so did my misgivings, thriving in the rich soil of my gloomy imagination, bursting full flowered into troubled dreams by night and royal Worry by day.  

What, you may ask, could be so terribly worrying about a holiday, even if it was a running holiday, and I was not a runner, even if it was to a foreign land, where I spoke all of six words of the language, even if the tour company spoke another language (French), that I had not thought about since I left university.  Well maybe there is a little to worry about there.

But the greater problem was the sticks.  Sticks per se are not so bad, it's what the sticks stood for, what the sticks meant, and what they meant for me.  In spite of extensive testing, no organic explanation for my deteriorating mobility had been found.  The medical euphemism of the day was that it was a "functional" problem.  "Functional" has a variety of translations into plain English, for the layman, for the colleague, and worse, for myself.  It gets translated as "malingerer" or "idle" or "pity-seeking" or "neurotic" or "doesn't want to walk".  I could have lived with others thinking this of me, but so often had the verdict been given, that however solidly I believed myself innocent of these charges to begin with, the years of testing and null results had forced me to consider the possibility that the accusation was just.  The sticks had malingerer printed in large letters on them, and I couldn't walk to the post-office without them.  I had to grab them in both hands and accept the implicit accusation.

Moreover, sticks in and of themselves have an effect that goes way back in time, to the days when we ran about on all fours, chased our lunch while others chased us for lunch. Those with visible infirmities were first on the menu.  The instinct Not to be seen as easy meat is a strong one even after millennia of civilisation has made such fears no longer a realistic threat.  

Oh yes.  I was looking forward to my holiday.  With considerable trepidation, which grew as the inverse of time till departure.  Ten years have kindly erased the details.  I do remember that there was a system go slow that resulted in half of the flights from London to Paris being cancelled, including ours.  I remember seeing another man - large, grey haired and kindly looking sporting a Foulees t-shirt - and then lost sight of him as we galloped through the airport catch the earlier flight which was not cancelled, and which was in its final boarding.  I remember struggling through Charles de Gaulle airport, minus our luggage, and trying to explain that others of the team would certainly be delayed.

Shanghai was a thunderstorm, that much I do remember.  Our view from the 30somethingth floor was of a city obscured in mist, only fellow skyscrapers rising above the fog, superior to the obliterated city below.  The thunder growled all night, was still growling at 4:30 in the morning, when the call came to rise and shine, to pin a number on our fronts, and join in the race - the Prologue - through the city streets, at the fashionable start time of 5:30.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to pin a number on your front, when you're an unnatural quadruped in competition with greyhounds?  I can't believe I'm doing this.  I'm not doing this. This is absurd.  People on sticks don't take part in races.  Yes there were others walking, not many, but there were no others clanking. This isn't happening.  I'm not doing this.

I did it.  I really did pin the number on my front.  We got down to the lobby late, and I found a dark corner until we all moved outside to meet our day's running companions - members of a senior citizens running club.  I cowered at the back.  It was conveniently dark, and most of my European colleagues were at least at the front, and only Chinese runners were milling around where I was.

Then one ancient Chinese man came towards me, a tiny shrunken man, who came up to perhaps my shoulder - I could easily look down on his silver head.  He pointed to the sticks.  I pointed to my legs.  "Bu hao."  The little man leapt up and down with delight, gesticulating wildly thumbs up.  The horn went and called us to order.  I was last and lost within three minutes, alone to wander the streets of Shanghai unfolding in the rain.  

Somewhere inside me an ice-block of accumulated resentment cracked and the thaw began. To that little man I was a runner.  He saw the sticks and didn't see the evil writing on them.  He saw the number on the front and saw the runner.  Because he could see the runner, I too glimpsed that other image of me, as if in some mirror that reflected the runner and not the sticks.  Or, the sticks were there, but were no longer the emblem of shame; the number on the front transformed them into a symbol of defiance.  It was a beginning.

Over the fortnight we travelled together, little things happened which were Big things to me.  It was from the start the habit of the walkers to stand aside on narrow paths and cheer the runners as they passed by us.  Within days, the runners were yelling encouragement as they passed me.  At the end of the races, there was a podium for those who had placed in the day's race, both for the runners and the walkers.  Towards the end of the week one of the runners came to me and said "if there is a podium today, if I am on it, you are coming with me."  There wasn't one, and she wouldn't have been on it had there been one, but that didn't matter.  I required no further proof that I was a runner,cast in the same spirit with all the others who pinned numbers on their chests.  It was enough.

The story should go on to read that from that day forth I got rid of my sticks and walked, but of course it didn't happen that way.  It was another four months of steadily decreasing powers before a radical change of diet and the right anti-inflammatories set the course for physical improvement.  But my head was free of the curse of sticks even as I grew more dependent on them over those four months.  It will come to you as no surprise that my resolve to return to run Foulees de la Soie dated from the first day I walked without the sticks, which (you will not be surprised to learn) was also the first day that I ran.  It took three years to get there, but I got there in 2004.  It will also not surprise you that even now I have very little difficulty finding the motivation to lace up the trainers and get out there and run.

Mathematical daisies

Mathematical daisies.

I am having a bad week.  This is not on account of a vicious encounter with plantar fasciitis, and not entirely to be blamed on the spirit of doom and gloom that pervades every department of every university in the land, though it is not unrelated to work.  It does indeed have a great deal to do with work, but to understand the subtleties of present evil temper, something must be understood about the nature of mathematical research.

Few people outside of mathematics have any very accurate idea of what mathematical research entails.  I've always rather wanted to have a secondary school work experience kid posted to tail me in my days activities.  I would like to observe him or her observing me.  What would she make of the long hours staring at a blank blackboard?  The corridors in our shiny new department have thoughtfully been made circular, presenting the pacing mathematician no obstruction and no need to reverse direction.  If I please, I can be counter-clockwise all day (actually, I prefer clockwise).  I believe they design homes for the demented on the same plan. Would she follow me loyally through the day as I pace out the circumference, many times, as if to multiple check its measure?

What would she make of the hours of feverish excitement, when she is pressed into service as listener, who understands nothing, not that that would reduce the effectiveness of her role, of sympathetic ear that doubts nothing of what it hears.  The celebratory mug of tea, with extra chocolate biscuits, when the conclusion has been reached that the last link in the chain of logic holds firm, that the theorem which depended on the proposition which depended on the lemma is intact, proven beyond reasonable doubt (subject to re-checking the calculations of course).  A fairy pink paints the sky of the late afternoon winter sun, surely there must be a god in his heaven as all is right with the world.  That last lemma effects a deification: god-like I see the shape of the mathematical universe spread out below me as from satellite height, each bend and ripple according to the laws which I have just demonstrated on paper.  I am not totally devoid of earthly ambitions too, I must acknowledge.  The clarity of my vision and the elegance of my arguments, the wit of my prose will certainly win me the honours that have been so curiously lacking in my career.  I will accept them, though tardy, with gracious magnanimity.

What would she make of the following morning, when, shaking the rain off my coat, I come in, late, moody, uncommunicative.  These days come with the predictability of Singaporian thunderstorms; you don't know when, you don't know where, you just know for sure it's going to happen.  The hapless work experience student must imagine me crossed in love, so evil is my temper.  It is not an inapt metaphor; we understand what we see from the point where we are at; we go further, the view changes, understanding grows, sometimes bringing delight, sometimes distress. We are no more able to guess what tomorrow's understanding will bring than sweethearts are able to see tomorrow's heartache on the horizon.  He loves me, he loves me not, it's true, it's false it's true.  How many petals does a daisy have?

But today's vile spirits arise from a source beyond the spectrum of true or false.   The pernicious daisy representing the elegant theory I have laboured long to describe possesses yet another petal that has no parallel in the annals of the affairs of the heart: a deformed brown and shrunken petal labelled Useless.  The whole of the structure is built upon a dream, an M.C. Esheresque contradiction in spite of the local elegance, and the dream itself without point or conclusion, the So What? of judgement without reply beyond the query's own echo.

The wise work experience student would best model her behaviour on that of the hound, who observes with one raised eyebrow and then quietly slinks off to a distant room to wait until the atmosphere has cleared. The student should perhaps consider seriously a career in the City.  Perhaps the hound does.

Today, banned even from venting my temper on my trainers by the pernicious PF, I can only scowl in stationary silence.  But this is our life.  I'll be back at it tomorrow, sifting through the shards of my elegant but shattered structures, trying again and again, most patient of suitors, to win the way to the heart of the matter.  I've done this all my adult life.  I can't see me stopping now, but shall persevere until the mathematical daisy bald of petals proclaims my day is done.

I've known runners like us.  From this perspective, the training schedule stretches invitingly before me.  Plantar fasciitis is but a minor complication which will melt away like last year's snows.  The long runs marked in pencil on the calendar I imagine to be as good as run. Shedding the extra weight is easy - just exercise restraint.  It's as good as done. So my grand theory looked in its youthful stages, the lemmas obviously true just needing careful statement, the whole standing up clear, bright, evident, and above all, important.  Just waiting for the passage of weeks to proclaim it so.  And then it fails.

But we're runners.  Put yesterday's defeat in the past, and find the trainers.  Begin again.  It's what we do.

Training today? No way. Foot not right.

Eye to eye with my running partner.

Alright.  I was an hour or so late.  She can't entirely blamed for indulging in a mild revenge.  We have also only been running partners for a month or so.  She hardly knows me well, I must allow that she might well have felt anxious.  Nonetheless, I was not in a mood to cope with petty vengeance.  The rights and the wrongs of the occasion escaped my notice. This was an offence I did not intend to overlook.

I eyed her coldly and deliberately. Neither of us spoke.  It may have had something to do with her mouth being full at the time - of my hands, as it happens, along with the as yet unidentified hostage.  I was going to win this battle.  I had to win this battle.  She looked directly back at me, not a twitch of remorse, not a second thought in her mind, but that my tardiness fully justified her pique, that I had earned the consequences and must pay the price.  I looked directly at her, tight lipped, and said nothing. I could surely outlast her, couldn't I?

Ok, I didn't. How long it would have gone on I don't know, but I have to acknowledge her the winner.  In the end, after perhaps five minutes, I resorted to force majeur, and let it be known that I was not pleased.  There were harsh words (on my part). And then I felt bad.  The disputed property? An unmatched pair of socks.  Did a pair of socks matter so very much? And holes - as long as they don't occur where toes might peep through, or where a heel might rub, do they matter so very much?  (And they weren't my socks anyway!)

It was a shabby way to reward a near ideal mate.  She lets me choose the route, whether we walk or whether we run, whether we go fast or slow.  She has been ever willing to head out the door, neither rain nor cold diminishing her enthusiasm.  And I quibble at a pair of socks?  That are not even mine?

We have made up.  There have been hugs and kisses both ways.  I have played toss, and she has played fetch, and I have even stooped to her favourite game of tug of war.  Lumps of cheese have fallen from the table, and there may have been more of interesting bits in her dinner than is normally included the ration.  She is now having a carefree woof outside, and I shall not chide her.

She won indeed, and I, chastened, but in possession of a slightly moist un-pair of socks, have received her unqualified forgiveness.  I have also forgotten what I was cross about.  It can't have mattered, no more than an un-pair of socks at any rate.  We have, in past engagements disputed more coveted items: a hat, a sports bra (which stood up remarkably well to the teeth and the rough and tumble), two rather expensive pairs of eyeglasses (which did not), and a five pound note.  But even these were but a small change to pay for the companionship beyond price of partners in training.

Today: another 40 minute run with the beast, the last until after the weekend, and then only if she comes back to lodge with us again.  I have a fear that after a weekend back at her real home, her people may not wish to be parted from her.

Meditations on a double bass

The thing to remember about a double bass is that it is big.  We had one in residence one summer, for a fortnight.  Its case lay in a vagabond way over the armchair in the front room, while the body stretched like a somnolent teenager occupying the whole of the settee.  Every time I entered the room I half expected to find a selection of empty beer cans on the floor beside it.  Watching television became impossible; I could hear it snorting its disapproval at my choice of entertainment.

I am reminded of this fact (that a double bass is big) every time I resume work on the instrument.  Work began 18 months ago, and I am slightly vain about its progress.  The body is now complete, and it is safely resting on high (of course, the best place to store a double bass body is on a high shelf requiring one to stand on a high stool to get it up there) awaiting the union with neck and fingerboard.  The scroll and pegbox are very nearly complete.  The fingerboard, nearly a metre of it, is in place, and the task of Tuesday was to ready the neck for joining to the body.

Did I say a that a double bass is big?  So, proportionately is the neck and fingerboard.  I can look over at other makers on other benches doing the corresponding job for a violin, or even a cello.  It seems but the work of an hour to flatten the bits of the neck root that need flattening. No need to finish the neck; that can all be done after neck and body are one.  Things are different with a double bass.

I look at my lump.  There are three hours of gouging to remove excess wood before final flattening with a plane can even begin.  But the time is not the issue here, it is how to hold so large a beast.  Gouging is a whole body experience, legs arms braced, the gouge itself merely held by the hands, but driven through the wood with body and soul propelling it. The minimal vices that suffice for the smaller instruments are not really up to securing this lump immobile while I attack it.  Even the bench need be firmly anchored to the spot.

I should not complain of the neck and fingerboard being unwieldy.  For a start, it was worse.  The neck arrived in the shape of a young railway sleeper.  Lifting it was done only after careful thought, and after a place to put it down again could be guaranteed.  Secondly, it will be worse.  Once neck and body are united..

Hence the need to proceed to the final finishing of neck and scroll before that union takes place.  Even so, the task is fraught with awkwardnesses.  One stage of the finishing process is best done for the smaller instruments (yes, even for cellos) by slinging the body of the instrument over your shoulder, holding the scroll in one hand while wielding the knife with the other.  Er, I think, in this case, not.

And so a happy hour or five is passed, finding ways of supporting/restraining carving the neck as it increasingly resembles that which should be attached to the top of a double bass body.

Does this, you may ask, have anything at all to do with running the LAMM in June of this year?  No.  Not really.  I just thought you'd like to know about it.  It does, perhaps explain why long training runs don't happen on Tuesdays during term time.

Or maybe it does.  The LAMM is itself no small matter, not something that can be tossed over the shoulder of a runner's year, details to be worked on at a later date.  On announcing at the workshop that my intention was to make a double bass I was given plenty of (unsolicited) advice, mostly variations on the theme of "don't", most particularly and emphatically from some who have themselves previously made double basses.  They have watched surreptitiously as I slogged through the desert wastes of gouging and scraping front and back, and thicknessing these.  The pleasure of completing these tasks receives a dash of spice through proving the doomsayers wrong. So eyebrows rise when I reveal my intention to run the LAMM.  I know there are watchers..

More parallels appear.  I made five cellos, if you like, by way of apprentice pieces.  I have run five marathons, if you will credit the Run for Phil unofficial run as a marathon (it was every bit as long and rather more muddy).  And I find the same calm of purpose in approaching the task.  Yep, it is a big one.  There's a lot to be done.  But I have learned, from those five cellos, those five marathons, the rewarding discipline of doing the training, one run at a time head down, secure of purpose.

Enjoy the run folks.

Today's training: 2.5 miles with the beast - a rangy golden retriever on loan for a few months.  Just ticking over, out of respect for a poorly foot.