Tooting's Popular Front

Some time last summer, I took the unprecedented step of deciding to take up running.  I’ve always hated running; even at school I always came last and in more recent years, any thoughts of it were generally accompanied by the fear that my spine would just crumble right out of my back.

However, my new year’s resolution last year was to take up Pilates which I did and LOVED it.  I loved the tiny camp teacher, I loved the way my back stopped hurting and I loved feeling all stretchy afterwards.  Because I don’t particularly enjoy doing cardio at the gym, I had the ingenious brainwave that I could run there, thus saving time because I’d already be warmed up when I got there.  After many, many weeks of trying, I could just about run all the way.  It’s barely a mile.

Despite my lack of aptitude, I really enjoyed it though.  The route goes through some conservation ground so I would trot through the grass and trees while the birds sang in the sunshine.  I decided to do MORE.  Unfortunately, my good intentions have been scuppered by a severe lack of time: I don’t finish work until late and I’m too tired (i.e. can’t be bothered) when I eventually get home.

I started doing the Couch to 5K thing before Christmas and managed to complete Week 1 as I had some days off.  But then, well, Christmas, so I started again.  This morning.  I got up at 6am (well, 6.01.  The first minute was spent moaning that I didn’t want to go) put on my new running tights(!) and ran out the house. 

IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.  I had to ask myself if I was dreaming (or more truthfully, tripping, a flashback from less virtuous days).  There was a full moon beaming down and young foxes scampering away, looking over their shoulders thinking they were being chased by the other runners.  Not me because obviously the laws of the universe decreed that every. single. time I passed a ‘fellow’ runner, it was during the interval that I was walking.

I didn’t die and I made it home almost unscathed (I fell up the stairs going up to the flat) so if I can keep it up I should be able to run 5k by my birthday.  And that will be my big resolution for 2012.

Blee

• As I type this, my boots are probably being loaded back on a plane, snatched away from me before I ever even got to see them.  Goodbye boots.
• I think I need to extend the lease on my flat.  This is going to be terribly expensive – even though (I believe) the law has changed to make this cheaper and more straightforward, you need to appoint a conveyancing lawyer, who will no doubt swallow up any savings.  I wonder if I’ll be allowed to use the work one… unless he’ll deem my little flat in Toots beneath him, after doing on the ones in Chelsea and Regent’s Park.
• My bathroom’s falling apart.  Expected cost of a new one : £1 millionty
• I’m having to organise the work Christmas do and it’s making me anxious in case anything goes wrong.
• I feel guilty because I’m not going to my nephew’s barmitzvah in Israel.  I probably could have got the time off work, but it doesn’t seem to have occured to anyone that going on my own probably isn’t going to be that much fun for me (my sister & co will all be heading off scuba diving immediately afterwards, leaving my dad to stay over Christmas.  I want proper Christmas in the country with my other family, with twinkly lights and mince pies and a greedy dog).  Why couldn’t they just do it here?

Glee

• I’m heading north this weekend, predominantly for a school friend’s birthday party but as it’s been a while since I’ve been back, I’m having to organise it with military precision so I get to see everyone I want to see.
• Assuming nothing goes wrong in the planning, it’s the work Christmas do next week.  In Bruges!  I intend to eat chocolate and chips and get drunk and let someone else take charge as soon as we get on the train.
• My Trans Summer is on telly tonight – hooray!
• I think this weekend it might actually be cold enough to break out the beautiful leather gloves I bought in Florence (in baking heat).  I’m looking forward to wearing them.

I lost my original post and now it’s very late and I can’t really be bothered to write it again.

I’m doing family things again this weekend.  It’s nice.

I would like to write about the Swedish food market I was supposed to be going to tonight.

However, despite everyone else who wanted to go getting a special dispensation to leave at 6, I was still in the office at 7pm.  No matter, I thought, I’ll just pop along to the Swedish church and find the others there.  Turns out, the Swedish church isn’t where I thought it was, something I realised as I almost blundered into Mass at St Mary’s, looking for some Dime Bars and meatballs.

A series of phone calls and missed texts and I am now back home as it transpires that the others went to the Spanish pub around the corner, and not the Swedish one as planned.

I’m off out for dinner now, to make up for my lack of Scandinavian provender (any excuse) and the latest update from the people at work is that they have bought me some sweets to make up for missing the fair.

Hopefully, it’ll be some more of these:

There’s an interesting debate today about jobseekers being forced to stack shelves in Tesco and Poundland, otherwise their benefits will be stopped.  Obviously this is disgraceful; they’re not learning anything, they’re not getting a job out of it (why should they kept on for a wage, when they can be replaced with more free staff?), and companies involved claimed they were led to believe that this is a voluntary scheme.

And yet… as I was reading the comments on this (“this is slave labour” yay! “people should be made to work for their benefits” boo!), I realised that this is something I actually have first hand experience of.

After I failed my exams at university, I spent a bit of time helping out friends of friends with their accounts, before embracing life on the dole.  This ended up with me moving to Bradford and having gone through the job pages and realising that there was nothing that I could really do, I got myself put on a course for unemployed people.  I learnt how to type and not be terrified of a computer – I had an excellent teacher, who on the first day told us “the only way you can break this computer is if you drop it.  You won’t hurt it by pressing the wrong buttons”.  There were lengthy classes on How to Use a Photocopier, with advanced sessions on Make it big!  Make it small.  I was very proud when I received my certificate saying I could now type at 17 words a minute (without looking!).

After the first few weeks on the course, we did day release, spending four days a week doing work experience somewhere.  I did mine at City Hall and LOVED it.  I was still only getting my benefits, plus busfare, but it was brilliant.  My boss was a bit of a lush and would frequently leave feeble messages on the answerphone in our broomcupboard that he “would be in when he was feeling a bit better”, followed by “having a bit of trouble getting going and would come after lunch”, leaving me to read the Reader’s Digest and practise using WordPerfect* on his PC.  When he was in, we would chain smoke and search for land where evicted Travellers could go, or organise collections of clothing and food for earthquake victims.  He’d take me to excrutiatingly dull meetings and to more entertaining trips to the pub with his friends from the Foreign Legion.

Eventually, I got offered a paid job (at Grace Bros!) and took my leave of local government.  I wanted to stay but despite pulling as many strings as he could, my boss wasn’t able to get me in for anything.

Why was I prepared to work for free?  Well, for one, I wasn’t working very hard – there was a lot of smoking and drinking and it got me out of the house, I wasn’t any worse off financially and I knew that I needed some experience to get started.

However, if I was put in the situation that jobseekers are in today, I don’t think I would express an interest in this kind of experience.

*Yes.  I am that old.

The number of seemingly common words, that I use all the time, which are not in my phone’s dictionary, is astonishing.  Amongst others, I have had to add:

Otters
Scone
Sequins
Mascara
FUCK

Nokia, I love you, but Mutesr, scoods, rammes, restins, marccsc and dubl ARE NOT WORDS.