I Come 100th in my 100th

There’s no such thing, not any more at least, as a free parkrun t-shirt. I’m glad I didn’t find this out until after my 100th parkrun yesterday. Here I am, sweating my way to the finish in many degrees of heat in London’s Brockwell Park. My longest-serving friend was on the finish line camera in hand, having cleared the course and recovered her breath before I rocked up.

And here’s the t-shirt I was expecting to get to mark the occasion. When I reached 50 runs, I received the red one: an incentive gift from parkrun. 

It’s taken me a long time to get from 50 to 100. In-between the two milestones, a bad back and lockdowns meant I missed many parkruns and many were cancelled. I've been quipping that my motivation has been the free t-shirt. It's been a means of self-deprecation, of saying that I'm not serious about running, not really. 

Checking the parkrun website today, I've discovered that by 2021 the cost of sending out free t-shirts had become unsustainable due to its popularity and the numbers of people reaching milestones. I’d missed this news item, and I appreciate the development as a very good thing. UK parkrun statistics are impressive: there are 790 event locations in the UK If you'd attended the Norwich Christmas Day parkrun in 2019, you'd have been in a crowd of 1360 runners. The record number at my regular course, Shrewsbury, is 733. Running in a community helps me to keep going, and I suspect it helps the millions of park runners worldwide too. 

So, I have to admit, the free t-shirt banter has been a decoy. I parkrun because it makes me feel great: alive and thankful that I can move my body. The run itself can be hard to get into some weeks, but I’ve learnt to give myself a better chance of enjoying it by having a regular Friday night bedtime, stretching before and after runs, and by drinking plenty of water. Parkrun has been the means by which I’ve started to listen to my body more closely and to notice what it needs.

And parkrun, with its way of looking on the bright side, has been good for my mind too. My younger son encouraged me to get a personal best for my 100th run. Not a chance, I said, mindful of the heat and Brockwell Park's hills. But then I did. I ran this particular course faster than the other time I ran it, meaning my results email said: "Congratulations on setting a new Personal Best at this event!" It also turns out I was the 100th female finisher on my 100th run. I managed that statistic without even trying. Parkrun - it's a glass half-full event.

What I’m noticing right now is that my body needs a new t-shirt, and so for that matter does my soul.  I’m going to get onto the website and order one just as soon as I've finished this blog, and what's more, I'll pay up more than willingly. 

I Inflate My Pyjamas

Disclaimer:

The first thing to say is that I got it wrong. Now that I'm back on-grid, I've been able search inflating pyjamas for life-saving. I came across this video from the US Navy which I strongly recommend you watch rather than following any of what follows (if at any point you think I must try this at home.)

I Inflate My Pyjamas

But you too may be of an age to have inflated your pyjama bottoms while engaged in Bronze / Silver / Gold awards in school swimming lessons. 

I walked with my schoolfriends to the Swiss Cottage baths. This memory came up for me while holidaying with my Longest-Serving Friend in North Wales. 

Did you wrestle with your pyjamas while treading water and fifty years later wonder why, if it was even possible? My Longest-Serving Friend said she did.

We were eco camping to stave off the world for a while, so standards plummeted, and Tuesday was sticky with heat, risotto, sun cream, and fly repellent.

We made a plan, took our pyjamas to change into after swimming. Here's the lake - the water a warm-cool blue: more France than Snowdonia.

We walked in without gasping, swam about, cooled off. The paddle boarders were few and distant. The mountains looked on, thirstily. 

Dressing pragmatically (straight into pyjamas) we talked about swimming and long-ago pyjamas: fly-sewn-up, patched at the knee, handed down from brothers. 

We returned to the lake and working from memory, I submerged my pyjamas, then tied a knot at the end of each leg. I blew in through the waist.

My Longest-Serving Friend took on the drowning. She splashed about, trod water, swam what would've been lengths, said, help. 

I knotted and blew. We laughed and I blew. I tied  more knots. She said, I'd be dead by now. We giggled; but it's no laughing matter, drowning.

They were right to teach us to aid each others' survival. Two to a cubicle, we learned to wriggle out of wet costumes. We sat together through Maths in damp cardigans.

I tried to remember. My pyjamas inflated for seconds, a tartan balloon, before sinking. There's no way I'd have saved myself with these half-memories.  

That day was perfect - the lake calm and warm. It was total immersion, a cleansing joy. We swam about, came out pure and new, soothed and happy. 

We came out saved, buoyant. 

I Scrap My Car

Last week saw the end for me, for the foreseeable future, of car ownership. I've been saying for a while that I wouldn't replace my car when she finally became uneconomic to repair and, now that she's gone to the scrapyard to be recycled, I'm following through on that commitment. I like bikes and trains, and I dislike traffic jams, so it makes sense personally, as well as environmentally. But that sense isn't quite adding up for me yet. 

In the seventeen years I drove her, Volva became for me that thing that psychologists call a transitional object: the sight of her parked up was an emotional comfort. She's been a reliable ally in many of my life's adventures: camping and other holidays, getting to work and other necessities. She's helped with nesting and de-nesting, moving my sons' stuff during their school days to and from guitar and cello lessons, sports days and parties. We've driven to and from Falmouth, Antwerp, Edinburgh, Oxford, and London as they've journeyed around their early adult lives. She's carried me twice to the Outer Hebrides and hundreds of times to Wrexham and Newport. She contained the only functional cassette tape player I owned. Two weeks ago, cruising down the M5 to Dorset, I listened again to the tapes of 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue' that have been in the glove compartment for years, and chuckled to the jokes for the nth time. Volva clocked up around 250,000 miles since arriving in our family - a trusty stead.

Then on Thursday, as I was on the brink of one more London stuff-moving trip, the journeys ended. It's thrown me off-course, this change, and for a few days I've not quite known how to organise myself. Kind friends have offered to help out and I've signed up to a community car share scheme which I'll soon get the hang of. 

I've questioned the validity of my feelings of disconcertion about this change, and the decisions that led to it. There's so much that's so very much more important to be sad about - of course there is. But it's not the chunk of metal I'm missing, but the loss of connection with what has been a consistent and reliable space for so many mundane and exceptional adventures. 

It takes six weeks to embed a new habit, I've heard. Maybe by the end of June, I'll have got the hang of this. 

I Seal the Now

I wake up, ask Alexa the time, and think: "I feel a sense of loss for having slept till 9.13am on a Sunday morning." There's a danger of this day running behind the now before it's even started.

I reach for my glass of water. It's cool and refreshing. I feel the cotton sheets and the weight of the bedcovers. I bat away a thought about the sales pitch which persuaded me to buy this alpaca duvet on the basis that it would work with my internal thermostat. That's in the past. The sales pitch, not the duvet. The duvet is comfortingly present, though in the night I got too hot. But that's in the past too. I let it go.

Another thought, this time about what I'll do today, and about not having anyone around to ask to re-seal the bath for me. I'm distracted from the present and, as I've been listening to Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, I understand that I must not attach myself to the thought that 9.13am is half the morning wasted, nor look for fulfilment in anyone else's silicone sealant skills, past or future.

So, I accept that re-sealing the gap between the bath and the tiles is a moderate act of independence that is part of my now. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed.

I drink tea and eat cereal. I climb into my attic where I keep my DIY kit. I assemble silicone, sealant gun, masking tape, and a Stanley knife (shut). I climb down. 

In the bathroom, I begin scraping away the old sealant with the knife. I stay focused on the now, so as not to cut my fingers. I do this by both imagining a future spent in A&E and a past spent listening to advice about pushing the knife blade away from my fingers. I'm pretty sure that this way of achieving focus on the now is not mindfulness. Remembering the person who advised me is annoying, and reveals I still have an ego attachment to that person, or at least an attachment to him redoing the seal for me. I remember too that I have a detachment issue - specifically the detachment of the tiniest bit of the tip of the middle finger of my left hand. It went missing, amid a lot of blood, when I was chopping an onion three years ago. 

I call to mind Eckhart Tolle's thoughts about the power of now. Now. I refocus, prepare the join between bath edge and tiles, cleaning away old sealant and establishing a boundary with masking tape. Boundaries are important to the now.  

I set up the sealant gun with the new tube of silicone, then squeeze. The silicone takes a while to emerge, so I squeeze again, hard, with both hands. A white worm of silicone emerges and I trail it along the bath/tile border, smoothing it with my finger. The silicone keeps coming, and I am utterly absorbed in the moment, without thought, just squeezing and smoothing, squeezing, smoothing to the end of the bath ... 

The now doesn't end, and neither, it turns out, does the sealant, which, unlike the masking tape, is not within my control. At the end of the bath, it keeps coming. The white worm grows from the end of the nozzle: now. And now again. And now. And yes, still coming. Now. A concentration of the present, focussed, and unattached. I can't do anything about it, but wipe the end of the nozzle, then watch as the now re-emerges time and again. Like my Sunday, it flows and curls, dangles and spirals. 

I Chant And We Cheer

I know the more sophisticated of my readers may be disappointed to hear this, but I have been to the football and I have been chanting, but not like a nun. I understand that some imagine me as a well-behaved lady poet, sitting behind my typewriter and waiting for poems to come to the rescue, but after the events of last weekend, I feel compelled to reveal the darker side to my character. 

What happened was this. My brother, the middle one, the one who has Arsenal written through him like ... well, a stick of rock, organised for me to go with my sons to Arsenal vs Bournemouth on Saturday 4th March, 2023, kick off 3pm. It's worth being precise about the date  and time because history was made. I've supported Arsenal since I was a kid growing up in Highbury, but that support has come to life again recently, as my eldest son has become as keen a fan as his uncle. 

The goal Bournemouth scored in the first few seconds of the game felt like a kick in the stomach. The familiar feelings of resigned defeat, learned on the netball courts in 1976, washed over me. "It's only a game," I lied to myself. I felt tense. Responsible. As if me being there was bad luck for this game that Arsenal, top of the league, should win easily. I remembered this feeling of old. I wanted something different, something for my boys to remember. 

The crowd was silenced by the shock of the early goal for a few beats, and then the chanting began. Ars-e-nal, Ars-e-nal, Ars-e-nal. I joined in - the words weren't hard to learn. It was a relief to sing. I breathed deeply. 

I'm not a football expert but I did notice that for most of the game Arsenal players had the ball at their feet. But this majority possession didn't result in goals. It felt unfair, as if luck was against us.

After half-time, Bournemouth scored again from a corner. 2-0. The mood was brooding in the stands, but the regulars knew what to do. Ohhhh Martinelli ... We've got super Mik Arteta ... We're the north bank ... Somehow, Arsenal scored. "We'll get another," said my eldest, with a football confidence which I've never managed for myself, but which I have learned to trust in him. We did. 2-2.

Feeling success within reach, it became increasingly unlikely as the minutes of the match ticked away. "It's only a game," I said to myself again, and this time I believed it. I embraced the truth of it. It being a game doesn't make it not matter. Games are important, I reasoned, because they're an opportunity to release our inner children. Hadn't Michael Rosen said this, in his book Play?

Freed up by this thought, I starting jeering when the Bournemouth goalie got a yellow card for time-wasting. It's only a game, I thought, so I can let go. "Send him off!" I heard myself shout. "Lo-ser! Give him a red card! Red ca-ard!" I looked across at my sons - they were roaring at the goalie too, shaking their fists. It was wonderful.  

I was enjoying the game, but time was running out. Some fans  started pushing along the row to get out of the stadium to beat the rush to the tube. One older man, let's call him Thierry, stood next to me in the gangway. There were only a few minutes left, injury time. I felt a mix of emotions, was clinging to a thread of hope, was building myself up to be brave.

Like a reprieve from a sentence of disappointment, like compensation for the netball defeats of old, like an acknowledgement that this day was special, my lads at the Emirates for the first time, all of us in Arsenal shirts, Arsenal did it. They scored again. 

The moment had a poetry and drama I've never experienced watching sport before - with uncanny timing, the goal mirrored Bournemouth's at the start of the game. We looked at the scoreboard, hoping it was true. 3-2. It was.

I found myself being hugged by Thierry, who was transformed from grumpy to ecstatic. Then we were hugging and being hugged by fans of all ages as the stadium was split by a grin and a roar as wide as north London and as long as 30 minutes. 

3-2 to the Ars-e-nal, 3-2 to the Ars-e-nal! 

I'm so grateful we were there and that I learned, at last, to the ends of my red and white scarf, that football is a game. 

Dedicated to David, Jess, Gabriel, Jonty, Jeremy, Paul and Roy - crazy Arsenal fans

I Valentine This Day

I have it on good authority that “there ain’t no noun that can’t be verbed” so I’m valentining today. Why? Because I’ve found that waiting for a noun to drop through the letterbox is a poor way to approach love. 

The way I’m going to valentine my day is to go to work by train, and to notice all that’s beautiful and wondrous: a frosty sunrise, a conversation with a colleague who’s full of enthusiasm, the repairs to the keys ‘O’ and ‘R’ carried out on my laptop, new sheets of card. I will reflect on the many blessings of love I have in my life, one of which is for mushroom risotto which I’ll cook for myself this evening when I get back to my warm home. As I stir the onions in oil, I’ll remember the times I’ve done this on a stove each evening of the brilliant camping trips I’ve shared with my longest-serving friend. Our next adventure begins in 3 months, 13 days, 15 hours and 57 minutes’ time.

Later, I’ll take this picture down from my wall. It’s a work of art that moves me each day of the year. It was brought home from school by my eldest son one February 14th long ago, He showed he is good at valentining from an early age. I relish the way his work shows a free, creative, colourful and open expression of affection for his younger brother. I’ll sit with it next to me while I eat the chocolate hearts given to me by my amazing goddaughter yesterday. We spent the afternoon painting pottery and chatting about this and that. My bowl expresses my love of flowers; hers, her love of animals. Both express our love of play. In her farmyard scene, among the chickens and pigs, lurks a T-Rex. If you look very carefully (and with your imagination) among my flowers, a chameleon is hiding.

❤️

I Rewild My Garden

In the height of the first lockdown, I discovered I had a garden (I Find A Garden). It was something of a surprise, given that at the time I found it, I'd lived in my current home for several years. Part of the explanation is that access to the garden is through a window, and climbing out of it reminds me of why I practise Warrior 1 and Child Pose. There was always the feeling, in doing so, of what the British Board of Film Classification calls 'mild peril'. But to everything a season and a risk assessment, and, sensing opportunity and necessity, I became proficient at folding myself in and out.

The rooftop garden meant freedom and fresh air at a time when living in a flat seemed like a poor choice to have made. I climbed out sometime between 11 and 1 each day of that first beautiful and strangely silent lockdown spring to drink coffee and watch the leaves on the nearby plane tree unfurl. These were the hours I learned that the sun passed by before hiding behind surrounding buildings. This was the time by which I needed a break from my laptop screen.

I pottered about clearing leaves and moss from the flat roof, reclaiming some abandoned plants. I made do with what I could find, enjoyed the inventiveness and limits of it all. I wrote poems, painted canvases, phoned friends, read books, hung out my washing. In the long hot evenings of that strange summer, I took my glass of wine outside, chatted to my shirtless young neighbour who was sat in the courtyard below, keeping cool. I think I reminded him of his mum whom he couldn't visit. Once, he sent a gift of a pizza delivery for me and my younger son. 

In the second year of lockdowns, growing in garden confidence, I planted seed potatoes in tubs given to me by my Longest-Serving Friend, with socially distanced compost borrowed from a friend's garden. I grew lobelia from seed on my windowsills, then transplanted the seedlings outside. 

With the return to greater freedom in 2022, my visits to the rooftop began to decrease. In the spring, I tidied the space again, but by summer, when restrictions lifted, it started to feel like an eccentricity. It was harder to explain why I was climbing out of a window to meet the sun in a few square metres of space, when there's a huge park, long cycle rides and friends' gardens nearby. When the restaurant next door became busy again, I began to feel conspicuous sitting above the chattering guests in the courtyard, with my underwear out on the drier. None of them mentioned pizza. 

I haven't given the garden much thought in the past few months, but today, when the fresh young sun beckoned, I decided to go out, to tidy up and think about this year's planting. Looking through the window, I stopped myself before opening it up wide, noticing a blackbird gathering flat-roof moss. It was so bright-eyed, so glossy, so busy collecting what it needs for its new nest and brood that it came to me, there and then, that I will let my garden grow by itself this year. I'll leave the moss and the leaves and the twigs of last autumn for the birds, the brave ones who visit the town centre, and their young. 

For everything, there is a season. A time to garden, and a time to refrain from gardening. The rooftop was loaned to me, for a while: an open secret. For the time that I needed it, I made of it a sanctuary.