tabloid dross

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Aliveandrunning July 13 2014

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Brighton, Sussex. This pic was taken as the sun went down. The light was fading and people were becoming silhouettes. The beach had a dreamy and languid feel which gave the remnant of the the destroyed West Pier a romantic aspect. We were in Brighton for my daughter’s graduation and to collect belongings  from her accommodation. This went well, despite the poor weather, although very emotional for her.

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The bonus to our little trip to the South coast was being able to take part in Brighton parkrun (Preston Park) on Saturday morning. Unlike Cambridge parkrun which is along narrow woodland paths, the Brighton course is on tarmac paths on open park grass land, with 3 loops. Very enjoyable.

I arrived alone and maintained a cool insouciance throughout. They knew I was an unknown quantity, a stylish outsider that possibly had what it took to blow the local running talent to smithereens. I took my place on the front line and saw the fear in their eyes. Two of the young bucks had the temerity to look me directly. I faced them down with my steely alpha male stare, forcing them to lower their gaze in submission. A quick gesture by swivelling my eyes indicated they should move back to the secondary line behind me. They complied, ashen faced and shaken. I went off like a rocket and remained well ahead of everyone for an easy 20 metres before running out of steam and eventually coming in 96th out of 244. Oh well, you’ve gotta aim for the stars!

 

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Today was the inaugural Cambridge junior parkrun, a 2 kilometre run for children aged 4-14. It was very successful with 97 children ( plus some accompanying parents) taking part. It didn’t rain during the race but there were plenty of puddles to run through and the children clearly loved the whole thing. It took 25+ volunteers to stage it and the plan is to run it (pun intended) weekly which is quite an undertaking for the event and race directors who are, of course, volunteers. An added difficulty today was the Alzheimer’s 10k and 5k sponsored walk through the park which was scheduled to start at the same time as the juniors set off (at 10am). There were 500 of them! It got sorted. We delayed our start time by 15 minutes and this didn’t result in any problems. It’s wonderful to see the joy on the faces of the youngest children as they put everything they’ve got into running. I’m sure  it will continue to be very successful.

If the Daily Mail was to cease publication overnight, the mental health and well being of the nation would increase significantly with immediate effect. It’s raison d’etre is to cause maximum angst and existential stress in it’s readers who can’t get enough of its dystopian outlook. And that’s putting it politely.

The Sunday Express headlines? The Queen is worried about the possibility that the Red Arrows team  (acrobatic aviation jets) will be disbanded. Our Queen must not experience this kind of perturbation. Mr Cameron, please allocate an increase in funding to safeguard these brave flyers and prevent our monarch from suffering continuing mental unease. After all, there’s plenty of money sloshing around in the mental health services budget and they can’t shout very loud. And libraries, too, when I come to think about it.

 

 

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Aliveandrunning June 27 2014 Juneathon Day 27

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The madness of the off road runner. I was drawn to the on coming tornado like an iron filing to a magnet. I ran across uncharted fields, untrodden since medieval times. I felt an urge to embrace the tornado like some people hug trees and then to enter the centre of the funnel where Iwould experience a transcendent peace. As I raced ever nearer, I spied cows and pigs swirling around the vortex 50 metres off the ground. I sang Follow the Yellow Brick Road in my head. I was a few seconds away from being sucked in but at the last moment, it abruptly changed direction and at such a speed I was unable to follow. The heavens opened up and I got thoroughly soaked. I took it easy on the homeward journey but still got jogger’s nipple. It could have been a lot worse!

About 5.5k in all. The paths were very overgrown in parts. There was no-one around. The loneliness of the short distance runner.

Tomorrow we’ll go to Wimpole Estate parkrun as Cambridge parkrun is not happening.

Very interesting and thought provoking headlines in the Daily Star about a prediction by scientists that a new generation of rats will be the size of cows. The same paper tempted you with the front page description of another story inside : “Evil Savile Sicko Sex.” This is the level of a lot of discussion about Jimmy Savile’s decades long sexual abuse of men and women, adolescents and young children. It leaves you with absolutely no appreciation or understanding of how or why this behaviour might have come about, how a person might develop such proclivities. http://bit.ly/1mEcx8E This link to The Guardian’s Oliver James assists a more grown up view of what may be going on in this man’s head. Such a pity there is very little discussion at this level.

 

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Aliveandrunning June 19 2014 Juneathon Day 19

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A little bit of garden I tend. In the picture, it looks  busy and densely planted but it’s full of weeds including the delicate plants with white flowers. No matter. I do like the stipa gigantica, the tall grass seed heads just right of the conifer in the middle background. Couldn’t do much gardening today because I was placed in the unfortunate position of having to destroy  the homes of small spiders. They love our very old creaky cottage and want to live in harmony with us. All they ask is to be able to create a fine network of webs over everything. Why, you can hardly see them unless you’re really determined to wrong foot the little creatures, bless their little arachnid hearts. Anyway,  their finely spun abodes have been swept away and they surely want revenge. They’ll attack, on mass, in the small hours and we’ll just be relegated to a comic headline in the Daily Star “Spider Hordes Eat Family : Police Looking For Motive”.

Day 19 of Juneathon and my run was restricted to 2 miles. Short, sweet and unproblematic. May go running in Cambridge City centre tomorrow. Saturday it’s Cambridge parkrun and Sunday Hatfield Forest 10k. On June 28 there is a trial outing for Cambridge Children’s Parkrun (age 4-14) and the inaugural run is  on July 13. Lorna is one of the race directors and is assisting in setting it up.

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Aliveandrunning February 26 2014

Out with Cambridge and Coleridge running club last night. Usually, I feel like the fleet footed Greek god Hermes , moving freely between mortal mankind and the divine, delivering messages and protecting travellers.This time I felt wounded, as if Zeus had unleashed a thunderbolt at me in a fit of godly pique. A spot on my right rib cage  felt painful and sore on movement and when I breathed more heavily. The reason for this was rather less exotic than being struck by Zeus’s bolt or tapped by Thor’s hammer.I think I asked too much of my muscles by lifting and throwing heavy items onto a skip we’ve hired.

I ran up and down the garden path for a few seconds earlier in the day and pronounced myself fit to run and lo, when we did an 800 metre warm up on the track it felt reasonably OK. However when I did the dynamic warm up exercises and stretching I don’t think I did myself any favours. It felt OK when we jogged over to where we start our road training and then we did 5 x 600m, with a 600 metre recovery jog back to our start position each time. We split up into 4 groups of 5-6 runners according to speed. I was in the slowest group and the slowest in the slowest group. Oh how sudden was my fall from grace! The ignominy, the trashing of my reputation, the shame! Actually, I just ran less fast because the soreness increased and it interfered with efficient breathing. Still, I won’t go running again to the weekend. Parkrun on Saturday and a 5 mile race on Sunday. I’m sure I’ll be back to full fitness by then.

Today, I did a dreadful thing. I hereby make my confession on this blog. I bought a copy of the Daily Mail! I somehow resisted the temptation to blather an excuse about “conducting research” and “not usually making this kind of immoral purchase.” Why did I do it? To compare content with other papers I am more familiar with. I want to confirm my prejudices and pet theories. A preliminary scan of the news (or lack of it) suggests confirmation won’t be difficult. Working hypothesis : the Mail is harmful to your mental health. You risk a substantial increase in levels of anxiety, depression, anger and antagonism. Forensic analysis to follow.

Another interesting snippet caught my eye as I read yesterday’s paper today. Thanos, a Christian thinktank, has found a widespread belief among those surveyed that the poor are to blame for the perceived woes of the welfare system, putting ordinary Christians at odds with bishops who have been protesting about the effects of government cuts. One of the problems with organised religion is that when you have God on your side, you often feel the freedom to express all manner of harsh opinion, unkindness, bigotry and hostility. Faith and righteousness can provide excellent camouflage for aggressive, selfish and class attitudes. All too frequently there is nothing less Christian than a self confessed practising Christian.

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Aliveandrunning November 23

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Decided to go to Wimpole Estate parkrun today. Our 5K run takes us twice past the main house, the largest in Cambridgeshire and dating from 1640. The course takes us around the parkland and incorporates a medium short hill which is steep in parts. I have tried to run up it in the past but now I walk, or rather stride, a section because it’s quicker than a slow jog. It was very chilly and on the muddy side. I wore gloves, trackster bottoms and a heavy running jacket because I feel the cold acutely when the temperature  falls beyond a certain point. Of course some people wear shorts and vests in defiance of the cold and last year, when it fell to minus 10-11C there were still individuals wearing summer kit. The run went OK but the time was inevitably slow for me. Traction was poor and the ground was soft underfoot. I enjoyed it, however and I was only a minute outside my personal best on this course. I didn’t stop for coffee because none of my chums were there. Lorna is still a long way from starting running again and isn’t coming along to parkruns. I was therefore a lonely running god, my only audible human interaction confined to thanking the marshals at the gates. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Once I could be regularly seen sipping barista created coffee in the Wimpole restaurant, surrounded by friends and engage in light banter.Perhaps I would indulge in some limited badinage but I never stooped to persiflage. They were but distant memories today but one single, beautiful thought kept me going. The anticipation of the joy of browsing in the excellent second hand bookshop! But the Fates were against me this morning. What greater woe can a bibliophile experience than to face huge closed doors, possibly 6 metres high, barring the way into the Courtyard containing the aforesaid bookshop. In common parlance, I was too early and bookshop hadn’t opened yet. Greatly irritated, I attempted to split the oak doors asunder by using a particularly powerful glare but to no avail. Crushed in spirit, I called it a day and headed home.

Lorna had a scan on her ankle this week. She is considered to have  Achilles insertional tendonitis. It’s still swollen after 6 months and can be painful after walking even short distances. Running is out of the question. Next week we will get the results of the scan and a decision about treatment will be made. I do hope she will be back running  early next year. I  do miss running with her.

Good article in the Guardian concerning the destructive nature of the competition laws on the NHS.  http://bit.ly/1hNvh4z

The Sun newspaper has a daily circulation of 2.8 million. Big bold headlines yesterday SUICIDE MUM IS WATCHING OVER JOEY. This is a reference to Joey Essex, a young actor in a reality TV programme who is currently a contestant in another reality TV programme called I’m a Celebrity….Get Me Out of Here. The celebs are living in the jungle and undergo “trials” like eating insects or grubs and having various creatures crawl over them in confined spaces. The headline refers to Joey’s mother who committed suicide when he was a child. More evidence that at least 2.8 million people in the UK have switched off, or possibly permanently deleted, their critical faculties. Note to self : devise a sensor to identify Sun readers and enable me to take evasive action.

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Aliveandrunning2013 October 8

I decided to do a little research online regarding my calf problem and found that I almost certainly have “calf strain”. It described symptoms of mild ache at rest to moderate pain on using the affected muscle, swelling, discolouration, redness or bruising and difficulty rising up on your toes or pushing off with your foot. Calf strain is a common injury and often caused by overstretching or by putting excessive force through the calf muscle at the back of the lower leg. In this injury the muscle fibres are stretched and weakened, resulting in bleeding into the muscle. Well, there was mild swelling and a discoloured/bruised area and pain but two days after it feels much better. Therefore I have mild calf strain. The website prescribed rest, ice, compression and elevation. Yeah, yeah, yeah ! I’m a very mild case, mate. I’ve blogged a 140 words and my calf feels appreciatively better than it did at word 1 ! So I will rest for a few more days then do 2 miles and if that’s OK I’ll do the 5K parkrun on Saturday.

Yesterday, the Guardian carried an article, on page  4, concerning the Metropolitan Police ordering officers not to respond to calls from mental health units and emergency departments for help to control and restrain patients unless there is a “significant threat to life and limb”. There followed a sensible and reasonably balanced  discussion which mentioned that research by Victim Support indicated that people with mental health problems are five more likely than the general population to be victims of assault, with 9% of those questioned saying they were victims of crime in a psychiatric inpatient context, by other patients or staff. By contrast, the Sun’s front page headline screamed 1200 KILLED BY MENTAL PATIENTS with a smaller line below explaining “Shock 10 year toll exposes care crisis”. A classic gutter press headline for consumption by foolish people, the credulous and the pathologically prejudiced. It’s the UK’s biggest selling daily national newspaper (current daily circulation around 2.4m). God protect us from this paper and the people who read it.

Paperboy.com provides comparison of newspaper headlines in the UK and other countries. Today, the Guardian ran with Hope of Malaria Vaccine Within Two Years After Successful Trials, The Daily Express had MADDY : “WE’LL FIND HER ALIVE”, The Mail – Human Right to Make a Killing which concerned UK taxpayers footing the bill for European Court “payouts to murderers, terrorists and traitors”, the Daily Star’s (Princess) Diana’s Secret Baby. You can compare daily headlines for up to 12 past issues. Read and weep.

 

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Aliveandrunning2013 September 29

Cambridge parkrun went well. No problems with my right calf muscle and I was only 22 seconds away from a personal best. My arch rival, Mike, beat me by 17 seconds but ” vengeance is mine, sayeth the runner” and we go head to head next week in the Wimpole Hall Estate Hoo Haar half marathon. Lovely, sunny weather for the 5K parkrun. Lorna volunteered, scanning finishers’ barcodes and, after the race,  we had coffee, with friends, outside in the warm sun. Why wouldn’t you do parkrun at 9 am on Saturday morning? Staying in bed often results in feeling lethargic during the day and susceptible people are at risk from Krispey Kremes or other dangerous sugar and fat confections if they don’t take active steps to wake themselves up. If you are feeling down in mood, running and particularly social runs can help you to manage your mood or positively alter your mindset. Runners readily form communities and everyone can belong. There are so many more available races these days and it can work out fairly expensive in terms of entry fees. Soon, people will be turning to crime to fund their running habit. But parkrun is free! They only ask you to volunteer occasionally (and this is fun rather than a chore). It gives an insight into the amount of organisation required to stage a run and allows you to contribute to its success. Parkrun is very inclusive ; parents frequently run with babies in buggies, carry toddlers or run with older children. You don’t have to be a “serious runner” or particularly fit but it will motivate you to think about what you would like to do regarding levels of fitness and how you could realistically achieve those goals.

At the moment, I think I will be sufficiently fit to do the Wimpole half marathon. I have done very little training, due to injury, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to complete the course without calf pains. If I feel uncomfortable, I will stop running. After more than 30 years, the penny has finally dropped. DON’T RUN ON AN INJURY ! It’s so tempting. How easily we can delude ourselves and become  unrealistically optimistic. We find we can run the race and the pain hasn’t been so bad. Then we discover, at our leisure, that we have compounded the injury which might have cleared up in a third  of the time  it will now take. Anyway, that’s the theory. But if I’m just ahead of Mike and my calf starts to twang, no way am I going to pull up and let my arch rival beat me so easily. In fact I will redouble my effort and push on, even if I need to be stretchered off at the finish line.

Today, we spectated at the Bourn to Run 10K where Mike and Sue were running. Both ran well over an undulating trail course and their young daughter, Emily, did the 3K race. A second excellent day of weather with unbroken sunshine and early Autumn warmth. We met loads of running friends of all abilities and it was an enjoyable way to spend a Sunday morning. Again, why wouldn’t you want to be a part of that? If you experience problems with your mood, here’s a gold standard activity (running or volunteering or spectating) to mitigate and manage those difficulties.

Chief Constable Mike Barton of Durham Police has called for the decriminalisation of Class A drugs and advocates the care and treatment of addicts rather than criminalising them. He argues that the  disappearance of the criminal element of drugs removes the income stream of criminal groups, erodes their power and influence and allows for a “controlled environment” for the dissemination of addicts’ drugs, possibly administered under the auspices of the NHS. This approach has been implemented, or part implemented, in a few other countries. I don’t know what the outcomes have been but it is a dramatic change of tack that is increasingly being discussed. Unfortunately these kinds of controversial measures are laden with political risk for the party bringing in the appropriate legislation. The government would be denounced and pilloried by the right wing media whose demographic comprise the frightened middle classes, unthinking people, bigots and the mindset that requires all transgressions to be punished. I presume the coalition, or rather the Tories, won’t genuinely address the issue or will dismiss it.

Lorna pointed out a statistic in yesterday’s Guardian. “For 36% of Britons , a tidy home is a greater pleasure than a holiday, a night out or sex But the study showed that woman still do most of the tidying).” Source : survey of householder appliance manufacturer Beko. Ye Gods! What inferior kind of holiday, night out or sex are these people having?

Random pictures of books in our home. Reading a book, of course, is a greater pleasure than keeping a tidy house.

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Aliveandrunning2013 July 3

Yesterday, I had an enjoyable run with the club. We did a time trial followed by intervals of 3 minutes followed  by 3 minutes recovery. The amiable coach counselled against “sandbagging”, that is under performing deliberately to gain unfair advantage or to save energy when effort is required. We were advised not to “brick it” which is to experience such alarm that the unhappy individual defaecates in their pants! This is all lad’s stuff, of course. It was like being back at school. There is frequent banter about times, distances achieved, cross training, injuries, races and expectations. Most of this has limited interest for me. I’m not a technical runner. I usually just run as fast as I can. The running fraternity is a broad church and I tend to gravitate towards the less competitive people who have a life outside of excessive exercise. However I heeded their warnings. I neither sandbagged nor bricked it. The latter condition, had I succumbed and driven home, would have required the car to have a deep clean.

Today,I scanned the headlines of  the print papers in our local supermarket. The Sun and Mirror led with the “scandal” of Coronation Street soap stars endorsing “fake” products, the Mail told its demographic that at last a radical cleric would soon be deported, the Star explained that a  Big Brother reality show contestant had received a death threat [surely par for the course} and the Express revealed that a mother of 11 had been allocated a “mansion” worth £500,000 by a council or housing association that was being paid for by “us” i.e. tax payers.

Wow! It must have been a slow day for grown up news. But everyday is a slow day for the tabloids.

Theresa May, Home Secretary, has announced a 6 week consultation over the future of police stop-and -search powers. She told MPs that black people were still seven times more likely to be searched on the street than white people. “If it’s being used too much or with the wrong people, then it’s a dreadful waste of police time,” she said.

Putting aside the issue of “wasting police time” { which translates as black people having the audacity to walk openly on the streets thus provoking officers to stop and search them needlessly}, this racist behaviour has been controversial for decades and was previously known as the sus laws. Since the police remain institutionally racist, things will remain unchanged.

Another item mysteriously absent from the front pages of the tabloids was the National Audit Office report that tax officials have failed to collect £9.6bn of VAT returns in 2010-2011. Clearly the government priority is to persecute benefit claimants and drastically cut health and social services rather than pursue lawful revenue streams from their business allies. More about this in a future blog.