A Thames Trot

I’ve just received an email to tell me that tomorrow’s ‘Thames Trot’ is on, despite the weather. The name is the organiser’s idea of a joke, since it’s a 50-mile event along the river from Oxford to Henley. It’s my longest-ever run (though I’ve done 100km as a walk) and every bone, muscle and tendon in my body has started hurting since the moment they heard that it is happening.

Suddenly I feel sick to the stomach and don’t know whether to go equipped with ice axe and crampons or kneepads and skates. I must say that even ignoring the distance, the idea of running on ice is about as appealing as swimming in treacle. And I’ve got to drive to the Prince of Wales pub in Iffley for the start in the early hours of tomorrow morning.

Earlier this week a friend sent me a link to a BBC news report in which:

‘Margaret Morrissey, of the Parents Outloud campaign group, said the decision to keep thousands of schools shut for a second day sent the wrong signals to children.

She added: “We are giving children the message that when things get difficult you should just stay at home and have fun.”’

‘What’s wrong with staying home and having fun when things get difficult?’ my friend asked.

I reckon that by this time tomorrow nothing could appeal to me more.

Riot shields into sledges

On balance, I think I’ve probably forgiven the school caretaker who destroyed the best skating rink I’ve ever known by putting salt down in the school playground way back when we had real winters and no one cared if a few kids cracked the odd bone or two. I don’t think I’ll ever come to terms with Camden Council deciding to lock shut its parks when the snow fell this week, though, because, in the words of council leader Keith Moffitt, ‘I’d rather you were criticising me because some children couldn’t build a snowman than because a child had died on a frozen pond.’

We climbed over the fences into Waterlow Park anyway, giving the older kids a leg up and tossing the toddlers over to be caught on the other side. No one died on a frozen pond (or in it, for that matter), but it would have been our fault and not Councillor Moffitt’s if anyone had.

I’m not sure who would have been held to blame if anyone had died on nearby Hampstead Heath, which has a lot more ponds but can’t be locked shut because it doesn’t have gates restricting access. In any case, the revellers on the heath in the early hours of Monday morning included a platoon of police officers, who turned up with their riot shields – which they proceeded to convert into the coolest makeshift sledges in the capital. If only life was always like this.