Dear Andy
“I’m not interested in football, I just support West Ham”.
That’s the saying of my lifetime.
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Posted in 2003, football, heroes, life and times
Today saw a very pleasant four miles along the River Wey towpath on a sunny Spring afternoon. That’s more or less how I started running, almost six years ago, and the perfect final outing before my third (and reputedly last) marathon.
London, Chicago… and er, Stratford-upon-Avon.
Well, it’s my home town, where I grew up, and I know those lanes like the back of my hand. It’s the perfect place for my farewell from international athletics.
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Posted in 2003, Shakespeare Country, the marathon journey
#1 – 2001 London – a world class marathon, in the city where I now live.
#2 – 2002 Chicago – a World Record Marathon, the finest and fastest in the US.
#3 – 2003 Stratford-upon-Avon – my hometown marathon, with closing symmetry in the town where I grew up.
My perfect marathon tour has just a month left and I have two questions to ask:
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Posted in 2003, the marathon journey
It was the Celts who discovered the hot springs of Bath, around 500 BC, worshipping their goddess Sul here. From 43 AD, the Roman city of Aquae Sulis – the waters of Sul – developed around the site.
Bath was built as a town for recreation, not a garrison, a kind of ancient Las Vegas, and the impressive baths today form some of the best Roman remains in Europe.
In more recent ages, Samuel Pepys, Queen Anne, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, David Garrick, Thomas Gainsborough, William Wordsworth, Josiah Wedgwood, William Pitt and Dr David Livingstone all visited at one time or another.
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Reading. A picturesque, and largely flat town lying pretty alongside the Thames. Not quite, and never have I spent so much time amongst such a dismal set of warehouses. As the architecture of start lines go, it wasn’t pretty. A place which was seemingly designed with one true purpose in mind – the ideal location to find a grotty alley for a guiltless splash behind a rubbish skip.
Dear Tony
The peoples of the world are more or less united, and at the very least divided. With the exceptions of the US, UK and Spanish leaders, a world majority feels that there is not yet a case for war.
Millions protest in the streets, cabinet ministers resign in the face of their electorate’s overwhelming view that although there is a real case to answer, the case is not proven.
Everyone agrees that whilst there is a threat, actually there is no new threat here since 1991, and, crucially, that there is no link whatsoever demonstrated between Iraq and 9/11.
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Posted in 2003, divided by an ocean, Iraq
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roads of stone 