11:17am: It’s seldom I’d still be in the scratcher at this hour but a commitment that would have had me up and about before 8am didn’t come to pass – so why get up? Granted, it was also 2:30am by the time I settled (meaning the dogs had a very late night walk) so it’s not as if I’d had an incredibly lengthy sleep but here I am, facing into a Bank Holiday weekend, apparently. I just couldn’t listen to talk radio this morning - “Covid, economy, covid, economy, covid, economy…” Cheaply produced programming has never had such a lengthy run in my lifetime.
12:48pm: Suited up under a thick grey sky, I take Buddy and Zippy out on our five-kilometre loop. The narrow road running behind our estate is holding a considerable level of surface water so the wellies proved the most logical choice of footwear. I’m determined to complete the loop no matter how heavy the rain gets – so I do complete it – even if the rainfall proves as heavy for a time as any I can recall.
Getting soaked isn’t too big a deal for me, a legacy from my cross-country running years as
a teenager and, to a lesser extent, my time in Carrick-on-Suir RFC colours. The soft ground has always been an ally of mine and while I’m out in what I think might be the worst of the day, with the city, Comeraghs and the spire of Tramore’s Holy Cross Church all shrouded from view, but it clears up somewhat by the time we get back to base. Buddy and Zippy get towelled before I do: it’s the natural order in this house!
4:20pm: My latest 10-kilometre run comes to an end as I cover the distance in 57 minutes and 38 seconds, recording an average pace (so my Nike Run Club app informs me) of 5’46” per kilometre. It’s my 72nd run since May 4th, during which time I’ve covered 562.8 kilometres at an average pace of 5’37” per kilometre. An hour earlier, I was just about to hop into the shower having dozed with Buddy for a while following our walk when I decided to go for a run and enjoy the shower all the more when I got back. I run on a loop I’ve never taken on before, which takes me down a particularly narrow country lane which I know will bring me back out onto a road I’ve run on many times over the past seven months.
Eventually I’m back along the damp tarmac I had the dogs out on earlier and exchange greetings with a woman out for a walk when our paths cross. “You mustn’t mind the weather,” she says to me. “No, not all,” I reply, “sure it was way worse earlier on when I was out!” The sun was out for the final four kilometres and I draw great solace from the knowledge that running the route in the opposite direction will almost certainly mean I’ll run faster than what I just did.
My eating habits over the past two weeks have been absolutely appalling so while my fitness levels are thankfully high, I’ve got some padding around the midriff that simply wasn’t there by the end of June, which feels about a year ago taking the pandemic into account. So I need to get my nutritional house in order again.
I come back in to see Ireland comfortably seeing off Italy in their Six Nations meeting at Lansdowne Road but just can’t get too excited about it. For all Ireland’s front-footed play, Italy haven’t won a Six Nations match since 2015, have beaten Ireland only once since entering the Championship and have only managed to win two matches in the same Championship on two occasions (2007 and 2013).
If Georgia had been admitted to the Six Nations instead of Italy 20 years ago, relegation and a Tier 2 European Series running concurrently with the existing competition would surely be in play already. You see, Rome is an easier sell to away fans and broadcast rights holders than Tblisi so expecting any move on relegation from the Six Nations soon still appears unlikely. Ireland travel to Paris next week and will face a team that won’t roll over like the Italians did again today.
7:30pm: Patrice Evra and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink provide more entertainment for Sky Sports viewers in their post-match analysis than Manchester United and Chelsea did during a scoreless draw at a damp Old Trafford.
Hasselbaink makes the case for a positive outcome from Chelsea’s perspective based on losing 4-0 at the same venue last season and in the context of a second clean sheet for a team which has had even more leaks than the Irish Government before a cabinet meeting has even reached Any Other Business.
Evra isn’t having it, saying both teams played with fear and not in a manner which suggests they’re capable of mounting a serious title challenge. For all the unexpected brilliance United produced in Paris on Wednesday night, it remains difficult to make a convincing case that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer can get his heavily remunerated squad into contention given the unevenness of their performances. Evra rightly labels the game boring and wonders where’s the leadership in United ranks.
Quite what new signing Donny van de Beek, again confined to the stands tonight, must make of his new surrounds (i.e. the stand) has got a lot of tongues wagging.
“He’s been signed for £40m doesn’t seem to be at the forefront of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s plans in every game,” says co-commentator Gary Neville. “It’s a bit of a mystery that one. The more he doesn’t start and the more he doesn’t come on the more you’re thinking: ‘Well a £40m player, ordinarily you’d get him in the team’. He must be thinking: ‘What am I doing here?’ at this moment in time.’” Why sign him indeed, which again casts a spotlight on the club’s transfer policy and the absence of a Director of Football.
I like Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and he’ll always be a United hero but I don’t think he’s the man who’ll take the club back to the summit. His managerial record prior to getting the United job didn’t merit his elevation to one of the biggest gigs in European football and there’s no getting away from that. He’ll always have Paris – twice, admittedly – but the doubts about his long-term future in the job remain.
9:20pm: We’ve just watched ‘Borat: Subsequent Movie Film’ and, on the whole, it was fine and certainly funny in places. It’s not nearly as riotously entertaining as the 2006 original – but it couldn’t be given that Sacha Baron Cohen’s creation was then unleashed on an entirely unwitting American nation.
It certainly has its moments: a singalong at a Q-Anon-ish gathering, Borat’s disguised appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and his daughter (the excellent Maria Bakalova) espousing the virtues of self-pleasure at a conservative women’s gathering immediately spring to mind.
The heavily publicised Rudy Giuliani scene is undoubtedly odd, uncomfortable and completely squirmish. But as someone who has seen a lot of Giuliani on TV over the past four years, Cohen’s satirising a man who has already made such a buffoon of himself through his own words time and time again means this scene doesn’t land nearly as hard as the pre-release hype suggested. Borat has provided a lot of laughs over the years – and I’ve no doubt a lot of people will find this a highly entertaining movie – but I really hope there isn’t a ‘Borat 3’.
10:37pm: The dogs have had their evening walk, during which the distinctive triple call of the fox catches my ear, catalysing many dog barks from several fields away. I tidy up a few odds and ends downstairs before heading upstairs and writing this entry.
I flick through my New York Times app and see a piece written by David Aloi (40), who says: “nothing can calm me like rocking”. In fact, he can’t get to sleep without it.
“It makes me feel less anxious, more present. And beyond all that, it just feels good…What better way to re-centre than with a little rhythm. What better way to find stillness than to move.”
While I can’t really relate from a sleep perspective – with the exception of an 18-month spell in my early 30s when life was a bit tougher for me than it’s been before or since, I’ve always slept soundly – running is my best form of relaxation. That might sound odd but given that I’ve frequently gone for a run despite feeling tired and have never returned from any run in my entire life with any level of poor form or bad temper, I guess I run like David Aloi rocks himself to sleep. Why ‘amend’ something that works?
11:50pm: Before I head back downstairs to feed the dogs, I read a short poem dating from the Tang Dynasty, included in a work titled ‘Lyrics from the Chinese’, translated by Helen Waddell.
Peach blossom after rain
In deeper red;
The willow fresher green;
Twittering overhead;
And fallen leaves lie wind-blown,
Unswept upon the courtyard stone.
Autumn is falling into Winter. The world keeps turning. Hope springs eternal. Good night, all.
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