Idle thoughts of an idle hussey

Saturday, May 15, 2004
 

Running scared

This was the best of the unblogged blogs, written 18 April.

The budgie is fine, a brush with death has made her raucous, a happy bird. The first budgie we had used to love La Marseillaise (it was 1993 and There Was A Lot of It About, what with the bicentennial of the execution of the King of France). Twilight is less discriminating and will squawk at anything from Eminem to Mozart. But this is another story.

Your intrepid blogger was up betimes this morning. The Daughter had a job in Blackheath (a suburb in south-east London. As our postcode begins with NW, you can guess it's quite far away). They were photographing her at a hair salon for the Hairdresser of the Year awards.

Normally if we'd been mad enough to be on a tube train at 6.45 on a Sunday morning, it would have been a scene out of 28 Days Later or Shaun of the Dead - the odd derelict who'd forgotten to go to bed. Or who had no bed to go to.

This morning was different. More like a mass Rocky tribute. Station by station we gathered more and more keen young men (and even more keen middle-aged men. A couple of them were women. They had green hair.). By the time we got to Charing Cross, the train was packed. They were all in running shoes, clutching identical white carrier bags and reading instructions, clutched with white knuckles. London is full of little sects, and we'd just stumbled among another one - the London Marathon runners.

Fortunately the Husband reads the newspaper so I did know that the whole of central London would be closed off and Blackheath was one of the start points for the race (that's why we didn't go by car), but the scale of it all was still astonishing. I'd expected to be deeply out of sympathy with these people. A bit like when Princess Diana died. I felt very sorry for the sad, attention-seeking woman who could never have enough love because she didn't love herself and I hope she saw what happened in the few days following her death - the grass in front of Kensington Palace where she lived became a vast ocean of flowers. The local council, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea eventually used teams of volunteers to strip the cellophane from the rotted offerings and build a huge compost heap.

But going on the tube every day with the mourners on their pilgrimage (I worked for Penguin Books, just round the corner) was a disturbing experience. There was a seething resentment and intolerance, not just for her weak sap of a husband and his family, but for everyone who didn't wallow in the depths of hysteria with them. I just kept my head down and eyes averted, much as I probably would have done in Nazi Germany I'm not proud to say.

But back to the marathon. By the time we got out of the train at Charing Cross station I felt like standing at the top of the stairs and shouting 'You are all going to die, just like the rest of us you know'. But I didn't.

More than 33,000 of these sad obsessives with unhappy/no marriages keen and charitably-minded (it raised £34 million) people converged on Blackheath/Greenwich to start the marathon. And another half a million came to watch, and most of them were on that train with us from Charing Cross to Blackheath. Luckily they were all thin (the Daughter fitted in nicely). Most of them seemed to be from up North where Mr Ariel comes from. Resist the urge Mr A.

As I said, I expected not to like them very much but actually they were sweet. Wide-eyed, like little boys on their first day at school. Fear and excitement in equal measure. Making friends. Not quite knowing what to do.

As we were all sardines in a tin, we got to know each other quite well. There were a few loyal families/partners who'd come out this early on a Sunday morning to support the runners, but mostly they were playing out the drama by themselves.

One young man, not from the North, reached new heights of sadness. Amongst the somewhat insane he shone like a beacon. It was his first time. But he'd done a dry run - the whole train journey timed, and had walked the course. Instead of keeping quiet about this like a normally abnormal runner, he told us. He was right though, you began to realise just how far 26 miles is when you've been on the train for a while. They all shuddered slightly at that.

Having dropped the Daughter for her shoot, I just had to go and see the start. There was someone dressed in a giant running shoe, a beefeater, some bedraggled pirates, though none as beautiful as Johnny Depp, Paddington Bear. A few women, all under 5 foot tall, so that lets me out. Perhaps most startling was a beefy man dressed as a cheerleader, pom poms and all, with the pointiest breasts since Madonna.

Despite all this jollity, it was drizzling slightly with a chill wind. The runners were being motivated by a commentary over loud speakers, 'smile for the cameras', and 'oggy, oggy, oggy' to which they were meant to respond enthusiastically with an 'oi, oi, oi'. It was a bit like officers encouraging men over the top in the Trenches.

Then they were all gone and we started drifting away. The plastic bin liners that the runners had used as raincoats to keep dry blew across the heath like tumbleweed. The drizzle got colder and harder and I felt very sorry for the runners as I headed for the nice warm empty train back to Charing Cross.

The centre of London was an extraordinary sight. Thick crowds lined the Embankment, but of course the runners wouldn't be coming for hours yet, so there they were staring at a completely empty street. Surreal.

I had to hang about Central London waiting for the Daughter for most of the day. What a pity, browsing the shops, having cups of tea. It's a hard life being Mrs Worthington.

When the Daughter eventually finished she came for a little browselet with me herself, clutching the £50 she'd been paid (slave labour but still).

With some astonishment we noticed that the truly hardy runners were amongst us, taking the opportunity for an afternoon in London, proudly wearing their medals round their necks. Now that I admire…