Linda striding purposefully onward at Happisburgh, North Norfolk
1. Biting off More than I Can Chew
Linda and I are doing a couple of challenges this year. First,
we are trying to collect the alphabet of Parkruns, that is complete a Parkrun
for places beginning A, B, C etc. So for example, I have already done A, B, C (Armley, Bognor Regis, Coldham’s Common)
and thirteen other letters. The Parkrun alphabet has twenty-five, not twenty-six
letters. There is no X. This is not because there is no place name beginning
with X, it is a matter of policy. The organisers figured that if there were an X,
it would likely be the only one, so it would be swamped with Parkrun tourists
like myself and Linda, getting an X on their list.
For those that haven’t read previous blogs, Parkruns are organised
5 kilometre runs which take place on Saturday mornings worldwide. As noted
above, I have collected 16 letters of the alphabet. Linda has 18. She has the
distinction of having run the Futakotamagawa Parkrun in Tokyo and the Lillie Parkrun
at Ann Arbor, Michigan. The most exotic I have managed is Castlewellan in Northern
Ireland. To get a Z, we will have to go to the Netherlands, which should be
fun.
Recently, to obtain a U, we did the University Parks Parkrun
in Oxford, and had a pleasant little weekend break there. Although I have been
to Oxford many times, the Parkrun visit was the first time in my life that I
had been to the city as a tourist. All my other visits there had been for work.
I have to say, I like it much better as a tourist. And if you go, be sure to
visit the Ashmolean, a beautiful museum of art and antiquities. Incidentally,
the museum is rightly proud of its collection of works by Manet, but it seemed
to me that some of these had areas of blank canvas on them, or other evidence
of their being unfinished. It was as if Manet had been in the middle of
painting them when his mum told him that his bus was coming, so he had to leave
them as they were.
Next month, Linda and I are planning to walk Hadrian’s Wall.
Ten years ago, I would have been perfectly sanguine about this, but at age 69, I
am a little intimidated about walking 14 miles a day for a week. I feel I have
lost a bit of strength and stamina from last year’s treatment. However, we had
a pleasant bit of more modest walking at the North Norfolk Coast last week, and
I can report no ill-effects. Fingers crossed.
The other challenge I am thinking about is grading up to
third dan in taekwondo towards the end of this year. This one I find
significantly intimidating. How can someone who can’t fight his way out of a
paper bag grade up to third dan? When I did the second dan grading five years
ago, I could make up for shortcomings in technique, speed and flexibility with
strength and stamina. However, I don’t have the same strength and stamina now. I
have been trying some of the fitness tests for the grading in the privacy of my
own home, and immediately afterwards, I have wondered whether to summon an
ambulance, if not a hearse. My excuse is the hormone and radiation treatment
last year, but if I am honest, the truth is that I need to lose a bit of
weight. But that would mean eating and drinking less. And we don’t want that,
do we?
2.
From the Sublime to the Gorblimey
The phrase above is one my dad used to use to signify
something extremely corny or bathetic. Recently, I have been thinking about
some couplets in verse and song which I think would have come under this
heading of my old man’s. There is of course, the obvious one from the oeuvre of
the classic Scottish bad poet, William McGonagall, from his poem about the Tay
Bridge disaster:
The stronger we our houses do
build,
The less chance we have of
being killed.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote some awe-inspiring poetry, but
also a series of humorous, arguably bathetic verses entitled Moral Emblems. One
of these, about a man who shoves another to his death in the sea, notes that
the perpetrator will be tormented by his conscience thereafter:
And he will spoil his evening
toddy
By dwelling on that mangled
body.
I remember once saying to my brother John, ‘I like the look
of.., ‘ and then pausing as I had forgotten for the moment what exactly it was that
I liked the look of, and John helpfully suggested ‘Marshal Zhukov?’ I later
trotted this couplet out at the Hastings Poetry Festival, representing it as my
own work.
Surely the funniest is from Frank Zappa’s song, Eddie are
you Kidding, about a shop selling off-the-peg men’s suits. To appreciate
this you have to know that the body shapes are represented by US categories of
the time: portly, regular, long, etc. The song
contains the lines:
I’m
coming over shortly
Because
I am a portly,
You
promised you would fit me
In
a fifty-dollar suit.
I first heard that song when I was at school, and even now,
more than fifty years later, the rhyming of shortly and portly cracks me up.
3.
Speaking of corny
Speaking of corny, I feel rather sentimental about the Radio
4 UK theme. This was a mishmash of patriotic tunes and folk melodies which used
to be played first thing every morning on BBC Radio 4. I have a sentimental
attachment to it because it reminds me of when the kids were pre-school and
always got us up early in the morning. As you can hear from the Youtube
recording below, it is pretty corny, but it does have something. I particularly
like how they play Men of Harlech and Scotland the Brave simultaneously
and make them fit together perfectly. Even more impressive is the combination
of Greensleeves with What Shall we do with the Drunken Sailor?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48YxyR-PSi8
Also on the subject of corny, here is the April poem. I feel
a bit shamefaced about this as its flippancy does not sit well with the state
of the world and the horrific events of the middle east over the last few
years. My excuse is that it was written about and soon after a lovely extended
family holiday in the Derbyshire Peak District in 2007.
April
Hope Valley, Easter
2007
Brothers and sisters, aunties and
uncles
Walk the loop, eight miles all
told.
Sunlit hills over Hope and Edale,
Green and azure, afternoon gold.
Sitting in the garden in the
Woodroffe Arms,
Two generations drink beers and
eat ice cream.
Circling and protective, the hills
cluster round.
Safe in the valley now, stretch
out your feet and dream.
Brothers and sisters, aunties and
uncles,
On Kinder Scout, in strength and
mirth,
Where years ago in mass trespass
The people took back English
earth.
Sitting having dinner in the
Cheshire Cheese
The teens and the twenties are
rowdy, throwing chips.
Outside, the darkness descends on
the valley,
Outside, the mist starts to
cluster in the dips.
Brothers and sisters, aunties and
uncles
See the world from wood and hill.
Stanage Edge and Froggatt Edge,
Church and farm and watermill.
Sitting in the car, back to work
and home.
Goodbye to brothers, sisters,
hilarity and cheer.
Aunties and uncles, nephews and
nieces,
Go forth in peace, Jerusalem next
year.
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