Running Out of Steam

It’s only 41 short days now until I get to show off my lack of physical prowess to the good people of Peterborough when I take to the streets for the Great Eastern (Fun) Run. I’ve added the hyperlink so that you can look at the website should you choose and to see the alarming countdown timer.

OK, so it’s all fine, but I have my concerns. I am only traversing a short distance, especially given that the full run is 13.1 miles. I am only doing about 2.5. What surprises me is that, whilst 2.5 miles is much better than the 20 metres I could only manage back in February before running out of steam, I still feel that I should be able to do more. 

A colleague of mine is doing a half marathon next month and has only recently started training, however she casually remarks how she went out for a run for an hour. An hour? I can do 35 minutes, but not easily. I have a remarkable ability to make running 2.5 miles look incredibly difficult. I certainly couldn’t get to the end of my run and think to myself, you know what, I think I’ll just keep going for another 30 minutes, maybe even an hour. By the time I’m finished all the moisture in my body has been sweated out and my heart is beating out a salsa rhythm.

Tomorrow we go on holiday, to sunny Majorca, with some friends. I have good intentions to keep up my running but given that the temperature over there is reaching highs of 35 degrees Celsius I’m more likely to be hidden from the burning sun under a beach umbrella and ploughing my way through the turgid bore-a-thon that is ‘Atonement’. Seriously, does anything actually happen in that book? Does there need to be so much tedious descriptions of all the minutiae? Thomas Hardy was bad for that but at least he stuck in a few more twists and turns along the way in between describing the rolling Wessex countryside.

My other issue is more delicate and personal, but one that came close to thwarting my new found running activities. 

I took a trip to a sports shop on Sunday afternoon. It’s not my natural habitat I grant you, as I fall into neither category of an incredibly fit person who is looking for clothes in x-small, and neither do I fall in to the category of a dangerously overweight individual who wears cheap sportswear because they can’t squeeze their corpulent body into normal clothes, however without my recent bursts of exercise I was fast heading in that direction. I think the turning point was when I found myself idly browsing the Jacamo website and suddenly realising that I really had to change my ways.

So I’d gone searching for a new pair of running shorts and settled on a particularly comfy pair that were a little shorter in the leg than the ones I have at the moment. 

Just before you ask they were not lycra shorts. No-one needs to see that. 

Their shortness in the leg seemed to surprise and startle the present Mrs Hayward when she saw me modelling them. She explained that it looked like I was going out running in a pair of boxer shorts. Frankly I’ve seen far more bizarre sights on the streets of Bourne so this did not concern me overly.

I should have listened to her though as my problem did, in the end, come from the shortness of said shorts as the first time I wore them I encountered some unfortunate chafing. 

So there I was on Monday evening looking up ‘chafing thighs’ on Google which feels somehow dirty and wrong but I was heartened to find that this was not an uncommon problem amongst us athletes and various solutions were offered on the Runners World forum, including the liberal application of Vaseline. 

My solution to this burning issue for now is to go back to my original longer shorts and wait until my thighs become less flabby. That seems sensible in the circumstances. Greasing myself up before a run is just not an option, especially as I’m concerned as to what happens to the Vaseline once I start sweating. 

The good people of Bourne, whilst used to unusual sights, might still be quite alarmed to see me panting my way down the road whilst white slime trickles down my inner thighs. The slimy leg guy is a moniker that I really don’t want to get in a small town.

Despite these issues I shall persevere. As the present Mrs Hayward wisely said to me, “If it was easy everyone would be doing it”. This is true, but I just wish the others that are doing it could make it look a little harder.

Under Pressure

I saw on the news yesterday morning that the NHS are changing the way they test for blood pressure. Those suspected of having it will be attached to a rather bulky looking machine for 24 hours so that it tests their blood pressure as they go about their normal activities during the day. Apparently this is to reduce the cases of people just having temporary high blood pressure due to being anxious during the test. I can sympathise with this.

About 10 years ago I went to the Doctor’s to have my ears syringed by a rather surly looking nurse. It was a hot day and I’d come straight from work. After she had removed the grim contents of my aural passages she decided, apropos of nothing, that it would be a marvellous idea to test my blood pressure. At the time I’d never had this done before in my life so I was a little surprised and perturbed by this sudden turn of events.

She wheeled out the archaic looking blood pressure meter (called a Sphygmomanometer if you’re interested), attached the thick black strap to my arm and started pumping away. As it tightened on my arm I felt myself become a little nervous and my heartbeat quite naturally increased. She looked at the results and concluded that my blood pressure was ever-so-slightly higher than it should have been and she requested that I return the following week for a further test.

So a week later, on an even hotter day, I went back to the surgery. It was a Friday afternoon and again I’d come straight from work, dashed on to a bus, sat downstairs on an old double decker where the only available seats were at the back seemingly on top of the engine. Worse still the bus got caught in traffic so no cool air was coming in and I was melting considerably. This of course had the knock on effect of making me slightly late to my appointment and I burst into the surgery in a sweaty mess.

The nurse strapped me up again, started pumping, and concluded that I definitely had high blood pressure. She told me that I would have to see a Doctor as things were not looking good. She handed me a leaflet about how I needed to change my shameful and decadent lifestyle. 

As I was leaving she gave me some cheery words of medical wisdom, “Blood pressure is a silent killer”. I looked at her, horrified. She responded by cracking a thin smile and saying “Have a good weekend”.

Mortified, I left the surgery and drifted along the pavement whilst scanning the leaflet she had given me. It basically told me that I would have to change my ways or else I’d be brown bread.

I was bereft. My life was over. So I did what any other man would do when faced with the prospect of the Grim Reaper and I went to the pub.

The following week I visited the GP but this time I booked an appointment for first thing on a Monday morning. I wasn’t hot and sweaty this time as I hadn’t rushed straight from work and, as expected, my blood pressure was normal. The GP speculated that it was only high because of the external factors I’ve mentioned.

He sent me away with the reassurance that he didn’t expect me to drop down dead from a heart attack at any given moment. I was relieved but also annoyed that the nurse had dragged me back a couple of times and predicted my premature demise with such relish. 

So the moral of this tale is that if you’re told you have high blood pressure by a belligerent nurse then, until it’s properly checked out, take it with a pinch of salt. Well, not literally. That won’t help at all.

Shopping in the Past

Whilst mooching within the vicinity of the TV the other morning my attention was grabbed when the reporter mentioned that he was in a shopping centre in Southampton. Sure enough, there he was, stood in the deserted belly of West Quay, the sprawling retail behemoth that sits right in the heart of Southampton City Centre. 

The reporter linked into a piece about how John Lewis in Southampton was re-organising its layout so that shoppers could roam with ease throughout the store without feeling they are crossing main thoroughfares. It sounds like they’ve created a maze of expensive crockery and ladies underwear but I can sort of understand the logic. 

For example, if I were in the Millinery Department and I spot a jaunty hat I like I could excitedly cross the aisle to reach it but, horror of horrors, I risk being mown down by a Hell’s Grandma speeding along in her souped-up mobility chariot. Thanks to John Lewis in Southampton I can now fulfil my desire for jaunty hat-based retail opportunities without the fear of shopmobility rage, or something like that.

When the report finished and they threw back to the lonely reporter, still standing in an empty shopping centre like the last survivor of a deadly plague that has wiped out humanity, he made the passing comment about how supermarkets put fresh fruit and veg at the front of the stores so as to give a good impression of the delights contained within.

It’s true of course, at least in most cases. The exception to the rule is Asda in Totton, just six miles away from the last man on Earth, and most likely the place where the plague started its deadly journey.

I know this supermarket well, my mum used to work there back in the 1980s and 1990s and even I had a brief spell there replenishing the booze aisles during the summer holidays in 1997. It was just the place you ended up going for, well, everything that you couldn’t get in Woolworths or couldn’t be bothered trekking up to Kwik Save for.

OK, so the fresh fruit and veg in Asda Totton is somewhere near the front of the store, I accept that, but the over-riding thing you see when you venture in is clothes. Rail upon rail of cheap, sorry affordable, clothing. I’m not dissing the clothing, I have many articles courtesy of George at Asda including a nice blue shirt that gets frequent wear.

It made me reflect on how bizarre the Asda of the 1980s would seem to a shopper these days. 

Firstly, like all supermarkets back in the day, you couldn’t just amble in. You would have to venture through a turnstile system and push your trolley underneath some orange flaps whilst a smartly dressed security guard in a cap would eye you up and down with some considerable suspicion. If you were under 16, or looked it, then you had absolutely no chance of gaining entry without being accompanied by a responsible adult. There are some prisons these days with far less security.

Right at the front of the store were records and tapes. I used to spend a great deal of time here perusing the chart hits of the day before settling on something I would later regret purchasing. ‘Spies Like Us’ by Paul McCartney, ‘The Only Way is Up’ by Yazz and the Plastic Population, and ‘John Kettley (is a Weatherman)’ by A Tribe of Toffs, were all bought from here. 

Fresh fruit and veg was further towards the back of the store, roughly in the middle. In those days you couldn’t just sling a few carrots in a bag and head to the till as first you had to get them weighed and stickered by your friendly greengrocer who had a little counter of his own. 

If you wanted a newspaper or a book then you had to wait until you finished your shopping and then head to the ‘Browser Bar’ where a lady called Beryl would sell you The Sun or the Daily Mirror, or even Today, that long forgotten newspaper (in colour). I used to spend much time here whilst my parents were trawling around the aisles, perusing the selection of ‘Fighting Fantasy’ and ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books on offer.

If you were a smoker or had a sweet tooth then you needed to go to yet another counter. This is where the pick and mix lived. Not pick and mix as you know it now; there were no Fizzy Cola Bottles or Fried Eggs recently mauled over by sticky fingered toddlers. There was however Peanut Cracknel, Pina Colada (they were blue and pineapply), Sherbet Lemons and Chocolate Limes, displayed on adult-height shelves illuminated by bright lights, as if they were glittering jewels rather than cheap boiled sweets.

Nowadays we just sling everything in a trolley and if we have to queue more than once we consider it to be an inconvenience. In fact if we have to speak to another human it’s a bit of a pill. Mind you, even I don’t fully understand why I willingly choose to be bellowed at by a malfunctioning self-service till. 

“PLEASE PUT THE ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA” 

“I’m doing it, for the love of God stop shouting at me, everyone’s looking!!!”

Like most things I write here, I don’t have any life changing point to make other than to reflect on how times change and not always for the better. I suppose what I’m saying here is, I miss not being able to buy ZX Spectrum games, I miss the strong tea served in the smoky café, and I miss having my bags of fruit having a little sticky label telling me what I’ve bought. 

Hell, I just miss the Browser Bar.

Starstruck

I’m not sure when the word ‘celebrity’ replaced more well-worn phrases like ‘personality’ or ‘well-known’ but it has become shorthand for anyone who has been on the telly regardless of whether they’ve had five minutes or five decades of fame. I’ve seen my fair share of what you could loosely call celebs. 

I saw Tony Blackburn coming out of a restaurant once, with ‘Diddy’ David Hamilton no less (just watch the old Top of the Pops on BBC4, you’ll see who I mean), I’ve seen four ex-Doctor Whos (Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy), and I once shook hands with Geoff Capes.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve had two brushes with celebrity and the present Mrs Hayward has had one, which given that we live in the wilds of Lincolnshire is not a regular occurrence by any means.

Celeb spot number one came on a train to Birmingham New Street. I said I’ve been on trains a lot recently and this was another of those days. It was mid-morning and the train was reasonably quiet until we got to Leicester whereupon the world and his wife seemed to pile on-board. 

From my vantage point I watched everyone squeeze on but I took particular notice of one individual, a young chap, tall and thin with dark hair swept over to one side. I’d seen him before somewhere. Now this wasn’t at all unlikely as I used to live in Leicester so I racked my brains until I realised that in fact I didn’t know him at all. He was ‘off the telly’. 

Once this penny had dropped it came to me in a flash; he was one half of Diva Fever. If you didn’t watch the last series of The X Factor then you will have no idea what I’m talking about. They were a duo, in Simon Cowell’s category but they sadly left after a couple of weeks despite Mrs Hayward voting for them in earnest. 

One comes from Leicester and the other from Peterborough, quite literally round the corner from where I work, just by the post office and near to the house of the old guy who stands at the end of his path in the mornings wearing sunglasses and watching the school kids go by.  He’s not in the band however. 

I have to stress I couldn’t remember their names at this point; they just exist in my mind as one amorphous entity. They are Diva Fever. I even follow them on Twitter (@RealDivafever, if you’re interested) so, noticing that this chap who’d boarded the train and was now propped against the door was on his phone, I hopped on line and investigated. 

Sure enough Diva Fever had tweeted that they had just boarded a train. I pondered the situation. Should I respond? Shouldn’t I? Oh what the hell. I tweeted back to say that I’d just seen one of them. They tweeted back and asked which one I’d seen. I thought it might be a little rude to tweet back and say ‘the Leicester one’ so did a bit of frantic Googling before I discovered that I was looking at Josef. The other one (the Peterborough one) is called Craig. 

It turned out that I was in a Twitter conversation with Craig but Josef later joined in after he’d got off at Nuneaton. I immediately texted Mrs Hayward at work and she was very excited. She’d hoped I’d got a photo but trying to surreptitiously photograph a man on a crowded train is a) creepy and b) going to land me in hot water if someone else thinks I’m trying to snap them.

Overall though I’m quite pleased with my little Twitter chat with Diva Fever and now they also follow me. They may even be reading this blog. ‘Hello’ if you are. Hope it’s all going well. Feel free to pop round to Chez Hayward one Saturday night when The X Factor is back on, although you’ll have to bring your drinking trousers as a lot of wine tends to flow under the proverbial bridge.

Celebrity spot number two is borderline in the celebrity stakes but he should get bonus points for having a royal association. I won’t beat about the bush, I saw the Archbishop of Canterbury last Saturday at Waterloo Station. I don’t know what he was doing there, well catching a train I guess, but I don’t know where he was going. I was going to the Great British Beer Festival but I didn’t see him there. Maybe he was going to the rugby match that was on. 

So if anyone else saw the Archbishop of Canterbury, he of the beard and amazing eyebrows, real name Dr Rowan Williams (didn’t even have to Google that) later in the day wearing either an England rugby shirt, or a Brains SA t-shirt and a fez, please let me know. 

Now let’s move on to Mrs Hayward’s celebrity encounter. Cast your mind back a few weeks if you will to the most recent series of The Apprentice. If you didn’t see it then you won’t know that the show was won by a young inventor chappy with glasses called Tom Pellereau. He wasn’t your usual Apprentice candidate, he was quieter and more unassuming, he was the one with the good ideas but sadly ended up being ignored by his team mates and often found himself in the losing team surrounded by the usual loud-mouthed arrogant morons. Somehow he survived until the bitter end and won the whole darn thing. 

I don’t know quite what it was about him but he brought out what I perceived to be maternal feelings in Mrs Hayward. She cooed over him like he was a little puppy and feared for his safety every week. Once the show had finished Mrs Hayward obviously did some Googling of her own and found Tom’s own website. 

He had, so it transpires, put a message up to thank everyone for their lovely emails and to say he would get round to responding to each one personally. Mrs Hayward, who hitherto had not sent an email, decided to do so, stressing how she had supported him week on week from the sofa. She claims she mentioned her husband in this email but I am not so sure. 

True to his word Tom did reply to Mrs Hayward and she jubilantly texted me this news prior to explaining the events that led up to his message. I shall be keeping my eye on the present Mrs Hayward as I have a suspicion that she intends to become the former Mrs Hayward and the present Mrs Pellereau. 

I can’t blame her; he’d be much handier around the house than me and could probably assemble flat pack furniture for which I have no ability. I am more likely to be found sat on the floor amongst planks of wood and Allen keys whining about how “I don’t get it”. 

Mrs Hayward assures me that my interpretation of events is not quite how it happened but it all sounds highly suspect to me. Either way I’ll let you know how she gets on.

Terry's Guide to Train Travel

I’ve been travelling by train a fair bit lately, mostly over to Gloucestershire for work, and in this comparatively short space of time I’ve picked up a few train-based tips that I feel duty bound to share with you.

1.       When you’re at Birmingham New Street station don’t assume you know which part of the platform the train is going to stop at. Every time I’ve caught the train from there to Peterborough it stops right at the far end of platform 10a. Everyone knows it. All the regulars stand at the far end and I feel I’ve infiltrated their knowing group, to the point that a few of us have even started to nod an acknowledgement to each other. Maybe it’s just me and they’re humouring me because they think I have a facial tic, who knows? Anyway we all thought we had the platform position sussed…….until last Thursday when the train went sailing past us and stopped in the no mans land of platforms 10a and 10b. So I then became part of a disgruntled group of hacked off commuters chasing a slow moving train and moaning to each other about this unwelcome change to their routine.

2.       Don’t offer your seat to a pensioner as they won’t thank you for it. When I fought my way on to the train there were no seats left, except one. I spotted the little fold down seat near the door and decided to go for it. After a minute or so an old chap, slightly unsteady on his feet, boarded the train. All the other passengers, especially those with a seat, pretended he wasn’t there. I, in a moment of British good manners, leapt to my feet and offered him my seat. “That’s alright boy, I’m fine”, said the old chap and moved his way through the crowds. Feeling a little snubbed I looked around and spotted an old lady on her way home from the shops with her daughter and granddaughter. I offered the seat to her. She looked at me as if I’d just offered her a dog turd in a shoebox. Coming to the conclusion that this was obviously the seat of shame I decided that I would stand as well and propped myself by the door, next to a girl in a long winters coat, a strange clothing choice on a blazing hot day in the middle of summer. I guessed that she must be a time traveller who’d pitched up in the wrong season. There was no other possible explanation for it.

3.       When you do get a seat don’t pick the one near the toilet. Not only do you get the pleasure of having commuters appear through a sliding wall as if, as Frankie Boyle once said, they were being revealed as prizes on a game show, you also have the delight of a smell that can only have come from the very bowels of Satan himself. I fail to understand how, in 2011, when we were all supposed to have hover cars and be commuting to the moon, train toilets have not advanced beyond installing pointless sliding doors. Is an air freshener too much to ask???

I shall be embarking on my travels again tomorrow and if I pick up any more useful tips I’ll be sure to let you know, and if you have any please feel free to share them.