Notebook Thinking

I like to spend a little time each day pondering my thoughts by writing them out long-hand in a notebook. Sometimes an entry is all about one thing, how I am feeling, what I am going to do that day (usually I write earlier in the day rather than later) or something that is bothering me. Often the thoughts are more scattered and random, crashing about from one theme to another with no obvious structure.

I’m not sure when this habit started but, as can be seen from the picture below, it clearly become established about 5 years ago when I adopted a standard size and type of notebook (Moleskine pocket hardbound, usually squared, sometimes lined). I also have a standard type of pen (Mitsubishi USB185S, usually black, occasionally blue but only for a day or two if my black has run out and I have no replacement handy). I buy the pens in bulk and the notebooks a few weeks in advance – I have my next one ready and waiting. It would now trouble me quite a lot to use a different type of notebook or a different type of pen. I know that’s not a good thing… surprisingly, it doesn’t seem to bother me what colour I have.

I write in full sentences, recording my thoughts in an almost conversational style – just like this blog entry really. I think that this act of writing thoughts out by hand in pen on paper, slowly, is central to the enjoyment and value I get from the exercise. It stops me from racing ahead and forces me to stay with a line of thinking for longer than I probably would otherwise.

Sometimes I just end up with a page or two of writing that doesn’t say anything very much and it seems a bit pointless and forced. Other times I can stay in my groove for quite a long time (maybe an hour if I am well situated with a decent coffee nearby and, perhaps, not where I ought to be doing what I ought to be doing…). On those occasions I can really unlock blocks and constraints in my mind and my life, settling myself down, sifting my thoughts into order, resolving problems and geeing myself up for action. It’s wonderful when that happens.

To my knowledge, no-one has ever read anything I have written in these notebooks. If they have, they have certainly never admitted it. That’s probably just as well – I don’t generally write about deeply personal stuff involving other people although I do quite like to grumble. But I do write about what I am thinking and feeling, the frustrations I have with myself, especially in relation to my ongoing battles with procrastination and my tendency to be always be looking forward to some future time when life is how I want it to be rather than getting on with it now (I’ve ALWAYS been like that) and I am not sure that anyone else should have to suffer by entering that world.

The All Of It (Jeannette Haien)

At the start of the year I decided that interspersed within other books, I would aim to read one book by an author from each letter of the alphabet in sequence chosen from James Mustich’s wonderful volume 1001 Books To Read Before You Die. In particular, I wanted as much as possible to try to use this mini-project as a spur to read (or listen to in audiobook form) works that I wouldn’t otherwise consider. So far this year I have already worked my way through Edward Abbey’s ‘Desert Solitaire’, Natalie Babbitt’s ‘Tuck Everlasting’, J.L. Carr’s ‘A Month in the Country’, Alain De Botton’s ‘How Proust Can Change Your Life’, Loren Eiseley’s ‘The Immense Journey’, F.Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ and William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ amongst 22 other books mostly not in Mustich’s big list. Last night, I finished my ‘H’ book, Jeanette Haien’s ‘The All Of It’.

‘The All Of It’ is a short novel (just over 140 pages) and was Haien’s first, written in her 60s after she had had a successful career as a concert pianist. The novel is set in the wild part of northwestern Ireland and revolves around the ‘confession’ by a 60ish year old woman Enda to the local Catholic Priest Father Declan after the passing of 63 year old Kevin. I won’t say any more about Kevin in case you read the book. Interspersed with Enda’s ‘confession’, when she tells Father Declan the ‘all of it’, is description of his attempt to catch a salmon on the final day of the fishing season, a day or two after their conversation. I can’t really say any more about the plot because that would give everything away. It’s a simple story, nicely told and really it is a story about being fearless and taking the plunge, of which there are at least four taken in the story – Enda and Kevin’s plunge in their childhood, Enda’s plunge in telling Father Declan the story, Father Declan’s plunge in having one last cast with a fly (a trout fly even!) and then Father Declan’s final plunge, arguably the most significant plunge of all.

I bought my copy of ‘The All Of It’ secondhand from an eBay seller. It absolutely stank of what I can only describe as musty, old lady, perfume – not exactly the best thing at a time when you have heightened awareness of the contents of the air that you put near your face and you have a habit of flicking quickly through the pages of a book to look for chapter breaks and to gauge how far you have to go. Several times I blasted my face with old, I mean REALLY old, perfume and who knows what else. But I am still alive so far and, oddly, the musty old perfume smell made me feel just a little more connected to Enda than I might otherwise have been.

I’m an absolute sucker for a story that holds wisdom within it and, although simple, ‘The All Of It’ certainly does hold wisdom, oodles of it. Sometimes in life you just have to step over the threshold, or start to talk, or cast your line,…

… or listen to your heart.

Symmetree

I love trees. I love the way that they seem to produce all of their substance out of nothing; the way that they can hang around for ages while the world changes around them; they way that they are all so different whilst still obviously being trees; the way that they change on all kinds of timescales.

I like taking photographs of trees, particularly ones with a high degree of symmetry where the shape of one side of the tree is the same as the shape of the other side and where the trunk is nice a straight and down the middle. I don’t only like symmetrical trees but I do think I like those ones the best.

A couple of days ago I was up on Roborough Common (on the south-western edge of Dartmoor). It was my first time properly outside of Plymouth for at least 8 weeks. It was a beautiful sunny and still evening – aren’t they all at the moment? We parked up the car, set out for a stroll and there it was, was one of my favourite symmetrical trees; one that is always hard to walk past without taking a photograph. And so, of course, I did, resulting in a picture that I am particularly proud of.

This isn’t just a symmetrical tree; it’s a Symmetree…

Blog Holiday

I have been umming and ahhing about whether to keep trying to write a blog post each day and even whether to bother maintaining this blog at all. If truth be told I am really not sure why I have this blog site, why I want to write on it, what I hope to achieve by putting effort into it etc. But what I do know is that even though I don’t spend a lot of time crafting my entries (understatement of the year) I do spend SOME time on it, and then because I do this I also spend some time looking to see whether anyone has visited (even though I say that I don’t care) and I spend quite a lot of time on any given day thinking about the fact that I still have to write an entry for the blog or thinking about what I could write that entry about. If I am honest with myself, it’s not really a productive or sensible use of my time, and I probably do it just to avoid doing something more productive or sensible.

I was thinking about all of this earlier today and although I came to the conclusion that I ought really just to close it down, I can’t quite bring myself to do that (yet). In my true indecisive style I think I am going to takes a holiday from writing daily entries (writing any entries in fact). I think I will remove the ‘Streaks’ page so that I don’t feel the need to maintain it, but I will keep my lists of books, films, races going if only because I don’t have any other good place to put these yet and it would be a shame to lose, or break, these historical records of my activity until I am more sure how I want to go forward with things.

All of which means that this will be my last entry here for a while – how long is anyone’s guess, I certainly have no idea. Adios amigos.

Coffee Shop Loyalty

Today I walked home from work with my elder daughter who had dropped into the city to pick up a few things. On the way back we called into a branch of Costa for a drink and while I was there I picked up one of their loyalty cards. I’ve never bothered with one before because I don’t tend to go to Costa unless I am with another member of my family and since they all have loyalty cards already it hasn’t really been worth me getting one. In any case, I already have loyalty cards for Caffè Nero, Cafe W (in Waterstones bookshop), McDonalds (occasional use) and the University cafes.

Reading the blurb on the card set me thinking about which of the various coffee loyalty cards I hold is the best deal. Costa give you 5 points (worth 5 pence) for each pound you spend so that is, in effect, a 5% return. Caffè Nero and Cafe W are both ‘buy 9 coffees and get the 10th free’ which, assuming you always buy the same coffee, equates to an 11.1% return. The University cafe deal is buy 8 and get the 9th free (12.5% return) and McDonalds gives you a free coffee for six purchased, which is 16.7% return. So, McDonalds is the best deal – but also definitely the worst coffee. Thinking in more detail, Caffè Nero is probably the winner because their deal is such that you can buy 9 cheap coffees (e.g. regular Americano at £2.40) and get a free large fancy coffee (say £3 in value) which works out at around 14% return for a much better product (than McDs). The snag with this argument is that I now don’t drink milky coffee and don’t particularly want a large Americano, I can’t make full use of the deal. Anyway, all of which probably partly explains why Caffè Nero is my coffee shop of choice (with Cafe W also right up there) and Costa isn’t.

The Best Tasting Fruit Ever… Ultramarathon Fruit

At lunchtime today I was talking about fruit to my wife and elder daughter (I have been working at home checking and approving Module Delivery Sheets – the forms that Module Leaders have to complete to request the teaching sessions and rooms that they need for the 2018-19 academic year). There was a difference of opinion about whether the satsumas that they were eating tasted ‘really nice’ or ‘a bit sour’ (for the record I had my regulation lunchtime apple and banana). This set me thinking about the best fruit I have ever tasted and brought me to the realisation that ALL of the best fruit I have tasted was (any of) the fruit that I have eaten while running ultramarathons.

When I ran the Dartmoor Discovery in June 2016 (my first ultra) I found myself absolutely, and as I then thought inexplicably, craving oranges at about the 26 mile mark, and so it was rather remarkable when I passed a supporter of the runners with her car boot open full of goodies who asked me if there was anything I wanted and, when I said ‘oranges’, grabbed a plate of orange segments and offered them to me. Those oranges were the best ever, the juice literally exploding into my taste buds as I crushed them in my mouth.

And then last year, on the Somerset Flat 50 Miler and Mendip Marauder 30 Miler I found that at pretty much every aid station I was drawn first to the fruit pieces – oranges, melon, pineapple, strawberries, water melon. My oh my, just thinking about it makes me start to salivate and feel a tingling sensation in my mouth. The strawberries at Mile 32 of the Somerset Ultra were incredible – popped in whole, crushed in my mouth, juice exploding, unforgettable.

So, for anyone who likes fruit but wants to taste really good fruit or for anyone who doesn’t like fruit and can’t see what all the fuss is about I have one piece of advice – get some fruit, chop it up into bite size chunks, stick it on a plate and go out and run 25-30 miles before sampling it. You might think this is a bit of an extreme way to get more enjoyment out of some of your ‘5 a day’ (or is it supposed to be 7 a day now, I have lost track?) but believe me, you really need to try it. Honestly.

Action Management and Idleness

On my way home from work today I listened to another episode of the excellent Hurry Slowly podcast, this one an interview with writer Oliver Burkeman titled ‘Against Time Management‘. I have previously read Burkeman’s book ‘The Antidote’ and enjoy his column in the Review section of Saturday edition of The Guardian newspaper. He writes on topics such as busyness, happiness and leading a productive life.

In the podcast interview I particularly enjoyed a section in which Burkeman and host Jocelyn Glei discussed how the concept of ‘time management’ is a misnomer – you cannot actually manage time, just utilise it as it passes – and their consideration of whether thinking of time as a resource like money (‘time is money’) is a valid concept (it is and it isn’t – money can be invested, banked, spent whereas time simply passes and has to be used as soon as it is gained). Burkeman argued that it is better not to try to manage time but, instead, to try to think in terms of constraints on what activity you can pursue. These constraints include things like space, money, energy and, importantly, time. He admitted that he didn’t really have a term to describe this approach and struggles to fully describe it. As I walked along thinking about this I turned the idea over in my head – was he simply talking about prioritisation, was it managing activities or something else. In the end I came to the conclusion that ‘Action Management’ was a better description and the goal was to become good at managing your action within the identified constraints. For example, at that point in the day I had ~6 hours of time left before sleep, some energy, a high degree of freedom and a range of things I could or wanted to do – go for a run and have a post-run shower, check the tyre pressures on the car, review a job application that my daughter was making, eat tea, watch a couple of programmes on television, put the bin out for collection in the morning, write a blog entry, meditate for 10 minutes and read something scientific and so my task was simply to navigate my way through the actions necessary to accomplish these activities in a smooth and efficient manner. From now on, in this way, I’m going to try to think in terms of managing my action amidst a suite of varying constraints rather than time management as much as I can and see what effect it has on how I feel.

I also really enjoyed Burkeman standing up for the idea of idleness. By this he meant true idleness not, say, relaxation now to enable better performance in the future. Idleness simply for its own sake. This immediately made me recall a second-hand book that I bought years and years ago (~30) when I was an undergraduate student – Jerome K. Jerome’s book of essays titled ‘The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow’. I still have this book on my bookshelves and I am now going to have to pull it out and dip into it in some idle moments. For some reason, I find the idea of being an Idle Fellow rather appealing!

Endeavour

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I loved watching the TV series ‘Inspector Morse’ based on the series of novels by Colin Dexter (which I have also subsequently read). John Thaw’s portrayal of Dexter’s erudite but somewhat grumpy, crossword solving, beer drinking, opera loving, detective working in Oxford (broadcast shortly after I had been a university student there) gave us one of THE iconic actor/TV character combinations of recent decades. Morse was always accompanied by his trusty Detective Sergeant Lewis and, once Morse left us in the 33rd episode we were treated to many series of the also excellent Lewis (now Detective Inspector). More recently, in a masterstroke of characterisation and historical setting, those of us who fell in love with Morse in the 1980s/1990s have been delighted to be able to follow the early part of his career, as the young Morse (given name: Endeavour) made his first steps as a Detective Sergeant in 1960s Oxford.

In many respects Endeavour is better than Morse. This might just be a product of it being produced in a more modern era (better production technology etc) and showing less signs of the obvious biases of the 1980s (re-watching the original episodes of Morse, as I have been, is an education into the casual sexism of the times). But I think Endeavour is also better than Morse because of the absolutely superb performances of Shaun Evans as the young Morse and Roger Allam as his mentor, Detective Inspector Thursday. Endeavour does a great job of picking up on the development of the various character traits exhibited by the older Morse and providing glimpses of what ‘later’ becomes the back-story of the original character. Morse’s simmering but, so far, unrequited relationship with Thursday’s daughter Joan has the potential to fill in a huge piece of the jigsaw that defines the older man, whose relationships with women are always tainted and constrained by an unexplained pain from earlier in his life.

The 1960s setting is wonderfully recreated. I am sure that there are some viewers who are able to pick holes left, right and centre with the details, but nothing too obvious jumps out at me.

Series 5 of Endeavour finished last night and it is amazing to realise that Endeavour is already up to 23 episodes (Inspector Morse made it to 7 series and 33 episodes and Lewis to 9 series and 33 episodes). Given that the two previous series (in terms of broadcast date, not setting date) both made it to 33 episodes it is tempting to think that there may be 10 more episodes of Endeavour to look forward too – that is the kind of symmetry and detail that the writers of all three series would have appreciated.

Winter is coming… and we’re ready for it

For quite some time now I have been meaning to put a lot more insulation into our roof because one thing our house isn’t, is warm. Months ago I identified some suitable insulation – 20cm thick and not made of glass fibre, so much easier, safer and more pleasant to handle. It was even on offer (3 for 2) which, at £21 a roll and with 8 rolls needed, was a saving not to be sneezed at. But then, at the end of last year, just around the time I was thinking about buying the insulation the offer ended and it went out of stock for home delivery. In an instant the price had rocketed and the convenience gone. Autumn changed to winter, including some exceptionally cold weather, the house stayed cold and the ‘sort out loft insulation’ job remained on my to-do list.

Then, a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the price offer was back on AND home delivery was possible and so despite it already being March and with temperatures rising steadily I put in the order. And on Wednesday of last week the house filled up with rolls of insulation, partially blocking the hallway, sitting waiting for me to move them upstairs. My intention this weekend was simply to cart the rolls upstairs, lift them into the loft and leave them there until a spare half day magically appeared to allow me to unpack them, cut them, lay them out etc. I would have been happy if, today, I could have simply moved the rolls into the loft, but having started to shift them around it seemed much more sensible to begin to lay them. So, for two and a half hours my wife and I scrabbled around in the dusty, dim loft space, cutting and ripping the rolls apart, and packing them into the empty spaces across the top of the existing thin and tatty insulation. I had carefully measured the space in the loft, which was a complex shape due to a bay, and a large boarded platform that we use for storage in the middle, and had figured we would need 8 rolls. Consequently, it was immensely satisfying that it turned out that we needed exactly 8 rolls – no waste, no missed sections and a better fit than I could ever have imagined.

It may now be Spring and Summer will soon be on its way but Winter is coming. Winter is ALWAYS coming – and we can now be smug (or should that be snug) in the knowledge that we are ready for it.

Long Run = Very Tired!

This afternoon I completed my longest run since early September. I was aiming for 18 miles, mostly down and flat for 4 miles to Coypool then up the Plym Valley Trail for 5 miles to Leighbeer Tunnel before turning around and retracing my steps. The problem with this route is that the last 2-3 miles are uphill all the way which is exactly what you don’t want for the final section of a long run. The other issue with this run today was that in an attempt to catch the best weather (clear, reasonably warm and even a little sunny) I was setting out at 2:30pm which is not a time that I normally start a longer run. In fact, on some previous occasions when I have done this I have found I have struggled a lot. And it turned out that today fitted that pattern.

I was in pretty good shape to the halfway point, which was disappointingly a couple of tenths of a mile short of 9 miles and was expecting to find the long downhill stretch between 9 and 14 miles to be quite a lot easier and faster. It didn’t really turn out that way. I was a bit quicker than on the way up but not as much as I expected and by the time I was back at Coypool (14 miles) I was feeling pretty tired. I decided to split the last 4 miles into 4 sections and then deployed a variety of techniques to get myself through them. First, I spent a whole mile focussing only on my breath, essentially completing my mindfulness meditation practice while I ran. Then, I decided to count my steps for a mile, reaching 1900 in total. For the penultimate mile I went through the alphabet, first trying to think of a film title beginning with each letter (I succeeded apart from X – later on my wife suggested the somewhat obvious X-Men) and then the name of a classical composer (failing only on Q). That left me with just the last mile to get myself through but by then I was really, really tired and just plodded home, taking a slight shortcut such that, in the end, I completed 17.4 miles.

Tonight I feel much more tired than I hoped I would and can really feel that my legs have been working hard. I guess that is to be expected but it would be nice to be a bit further advanced in my training. The Grizzly is going to be tough next weekend…

One good thing was that I passed the 25 mile mark for the week (actually reaching 32.4 miles) so I have got that streak going again. I’ve hit this target 9 times in the 10 weeks of 2018 so far and will easily hit the target again next week assuming that I do complete The Grizzly on Sunday.