A combination of the sea air on the Northumberland coast and an increasing knowledge of my advancing age have convinced me that, rather than just strolling down the wide beach near our holiday cottage in the early morning, I should run. I should become, for those brief minutes in the sun, a running man. Bear in mind that although I walk a lot and I feel quite fit and healthy, I have hardly run anywhere except when I have had to run for trains or buses and then my action would be more of a totter or a galumph or, if we’re being picky and specific, a totter-galumph. And of course, running on the beach I wouldn’t be able to do that ‘I’m not running’ run that we’ve all done when we’ve TG’d for a double-decker that has seen us coming and pulled away from the stand.
I put my sand shoes out the night before in an attempt to convince myself that I would actually do the run. My wife sensibly pointed out that I wasn’t a runner and that I could, in her very image-laden phrase, ‘do myself some damage’. That night, which never really seemed to get dark because it was June, I had a strange dream; perhaps it could be interpreted as an anxiety dream about my jogging aubade but it didn’t feel like it when I woke up and the dream was still as real as a spider on the ceiling. In the dream I was sitting in a chair in the very cottage we were renting and I was translating a book of poetry from a language that was so endangered it was only spoken by the person who’d written the poems and who was, according to the vivid and widescreen logic of the poem, on her deathbed. I remember that in the dream I had read one line aloud: ‘The small streets are too tight for my boots.’ Anxiety? Well maybe.
And then, as they say in the best fairy tales, I woke up. I padded through to where I’d left my sand shoes. Yes, they’re not the kind of shoes anybody who’d ever been on a run would go running in but I point you to the middle-aged man making his legs go as fast as they can as a bus pulls slowly away from a suburban stop. The sun already feels escaped-balloon high. It’s warm and I put my sand shoes on. I feel a sense of excitement when maybe I should have been feeling a sense of dread. You’ll see that, like the translator I was in my interrupted dream, I’m flip-flopping around past and present tense.
I walk towards the beach because of course you have to walk before you can run. I envision a future me with sculpted stomach muscles although I’m not sure if you can translate running into stomach muscles, but I’ll give it a good go.
I’m so early that there are no dog walkers about, which is good because I’m not, in my mother’s phrase, dog-fond. I didn’t want to be chased by one and then be told by its owner that ‘It’s as soft as a brush’. Well, that’s as maybe, but even soft brushes can be dangerous when you’re bending over gasping for breath.
I find myself in what I’m guessing experienced runners might call a ‘pre-run state’. I stand still. I bend and stretch like I’ve seen runners do. I look like I have failed a contemporary dance exam.
Suddenly (because I sense that this is the only way to do it) I hurl myself into a run. One moment I am motionless and the next moment I am motionful. It is comparable to one of those times in the development of moving film when great strides are made very quickly. My strides aren’t great but they are functional. I am running. For the first time since I was a young man and got heckled from passing cars by youths, I am running for exercise.
The beach is vast but my pounding feet are covering it with speed. Maybe I am going too quickly; perhaps I am going too slowly. I have no idea what the correct speed is. Some dog walkers have appeared at the far end of the beach. I hope their dogs don’t decide to chase me because I have an instinctive grasp of the fact that no matter how fast I ran, even the oldest dog in the North of England would be able to catch me easily.
What’s that noise? A bellows is revving up to get an old church organ going before the congregation troop in; an old elephant is blowing air through its leathery trunk. Someone is scraping wallpaper from a wall using the bluntest of instruments; a mountain is clearing its throat. No, none of the above: my lungs are straining loudly to keep up with my feet.
I feel exhilarated and anxious at the same time; surely I shouldn’t be breathing this loudly? Surely I should have made some progress down the beach? Surely the sea should be a little bit closer rather than a little bit further away? But still, I’m running. I’m running across the sand and this must be doing me just as much good as my endless early morning and late evening strolls.
Then in the blink of an eye and the click of an ankle (or vice versa) I am posted through a letterbox marked pain. I’ve slipped on some seaweed and my ankle has jarred a little and I grind through some gears and come to a halt. I hop a few times, and then tentatively put my weight on my ankle. It hurts, but not too much. I limp back to the holiday cottage, my pride smarting.
O beach the size of a county, do not laugh at me behind my back! O wide, wide sky, forgive my middle-aged hubris! O running dogs, ignore the person who limps by the sea; you’re right, it’s best to believe he was never there! As it almost said in my dream, the wide beach is too slack for my sand shoes. Now where’s that settee?