And girl it looks so pretty to me
Like it always did –
Like the Spanish city to me
When we were kids
Dire Straits – October 1980
La Rambla de Almería. An elegant Spanish boulevard, rising gently but inexorably towards the sunlit mountains of the Sierra de Alhamilla. Just 2.4 km of climb, and yet this one stretch defines an entire race. Twice.
An article on the radio this week said that 24th January was officially the most miserable day of the year. Apparently the combination of bad weather, dark nights, post-Christmas debt and broken New Year’s resolutions serves to make this the depressive lowpoint in our calendar.
The fact that it was a Monday can’t have helped much either.
Posted in 2005, life and times, winter
2004. A year all about rain. And one glass of grapefruit squash.
It’s a year since I wrote about the first long run of my 2004 London Marathon campaign. A wet and miserable winter run which uncovered some forgotten history on a wooded bluff above the River Wey. A line of tank traps forming the last line of defence for London against a Second World War invasion which never took place.
It was an unexpected and thought-provoking find, and I’ve learned a lot more during my running year of 1 000 miles since then. A year unlike any other I’ve run through.
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Posted in 2005, the marathon journey, training
“We learn geology the morning after the earthquake”.
Ralph Waldo Emerson – American poet, lecturer and essayist (1803-1882).
“We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness and pain. What really matters is …. How do I respond to those disasters ? Over that I have complete control.”
Leo F. Buscaglia – American guru and Professor at the University of Southern California (1924-1998).
“An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain – the equality of all men.”
Ignazio Silone – Italian author and earthquake orphan (1900-1978).
(Photos © AP, AFP, Getty Images)
If ever there were a week for new perspectives, then this is it.
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Posted in 2005, A1 - the best of roads of stone, geology, history
It was a cold and wet December day
When we touched the ground in fair DK
Denmark, like a Christmas tree
Tonight this city belongs to me
After ‘Angel of Harlem’ (‘Rattle and Hum’, Island Records – October 1988)
Another week, another city. The traveller’s laments may be eternal, but so often they are rewarded by a fresh viewpoint on the world.
It’s a short flight across the North Sea, and yet remarkably it deposits us from grey old Gatwick into the floodlit swirl of a million scattered snowflakes illuminated by our approach beam. Even in the airport there is that quintessential flavour of Denmark – warmth, light, sophisticated simplicity, and a sleek array of thinly sculpted, contemporary wooden furniture.
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Posted in 2004, music, Scandinavia, winter
… could make a welcome Christmas gift. But the arrival through the post at last on Saturday, of a consolation London Marathon rainjacket provides the unwelcome confirmation that I don’t have a ballot place in next year’s event.
That, and the yellow writing plastered all over the magazine packed inside. Just in case I was in any doubt.
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