Brendan Nolan's Blog, page 3

Smoking Runner

I am walking along, determined to be a better person than I am when I meet a smoking runner coming towards me.

She has just completed a 5 kilometre course with others wearing the same pink shirts that proclaim they are all individually members of a group dedicated to some common cause.

Either the word women, or, ladies is printed among the other words on the shirts; but I am too polite to stare to see which, for I may be perceived as a predatory male walker.

I smile at the sky above their collective heads, instead.

There is a 10 kilometre course up ahead to complete for those who did not want to go home.

But since that is the same course run twice it hardly seems to count as a longer distance.

More of an instant action replay of the previous distance covered, I feel.
The smoker carries a plastic two-litre bottle of Coca-Cola from which she swigs in between puffs of the fag. I can't help noticing she is a little overweight for a runner, but resolve not to stare.
She is walking towards me and I step aside, breaking my own training pace.
She takes this as her right for she is a veteran now, having chased the others around five kilometres of tarmac, for a while.

They sweep past me with the determined step of the righteous achiever.

The solitary smoker is on the outskirts of the group; a weak animal to be left behind by the fitter members of the pinkshirts, when her time comes.

She does not know this as they pass me by, unnoticed.
I stopped smoking twenty years ago; but am overwhelmed with desire when her trailing smoke reaches my nostrils.
Jezebel I think, unfairly, as I resume my own pace.



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Getting dangerous in a hoodie

Buying and wearing a hoodie should not be taken as an act of aggression.
I walk now with more determination than a gardener seeking a site for a new rose bed; so, I buy some track suit trousers to allow for faster movement without chafing my legs to death.

While in the giant shed of a retail outlet I purchase a grey top with a zip front and a hood atop the whole thing. This is known as a hoodie, much loved by the criminal with a bad hairdo.
I buy it for the weather, not as a criminal disguise.
However, I cannot fight perception and find it more practical to wear this top with the hood down, a contradiction in design if ever there was one.

Solo walking takes application to the matter in hand, so when I first step out in the hoodie I seek a walker in the distance to pace.

I see a young woman in street clothes who is, I begin to believe, related to Superwoman. She walks with a measured gait that seems to set the universe spinning beneath her feet. She moves across distance at a pace a winged steed would find emotionally satisfying.

I lock in to her moving form with determination and she drags me along with her. It is a while before I realise she is fleeing from me.

For, I am wearing the hoodie with the top up against a vicious breeze that seeks to separate my ears from my body.
If I call out to say she is safe; her apprehension will be confirmed and she will phone the police to arrest me. For wearing a hoodie.

I take a less travelled path at the next junction. I put my hood up. For hoodie walking can be dangerous.


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If the hat fits wear it

Walking in the rain will make your head wet.

I walk by the bank of the Liffey near where I live. Rain does not respect our image of our wonderful selves. It comes down in sheets upon my unprotected head and on the land and trees and greenery all about me.
Come summer, this will be a verdant place suitable for tourists, and the like, to have their photos taken by the white water weir.
For now, my mind seeks shelter inside my skull from the hammering of raindrops intent on piercing my being.

When a voice hails me I think it is the Weather Gods mocking me. It is John the Hatman.

He becomes that when he produces a white plastic bag, with handles, from his pocket and waves it at me.

He is walking a dog on a leash, the bag has come from his pocket, he wears a multicoloured peaked cap himself. The plastic bag is for my head; To keep me dry, he says.

I ask his name.

I pull the hat down over my soaked hair.  It fits. I bless John and all his descendants and thank his ancestors for the fine breeding they have achieved in this man, whom I have never met before.

Later, I come to terms with the awareness that I am waking beneath a bag originally intended to collect John's dog's waste as he perambulated along. I know though, for I have judged John in my mind, that the bag was unused when it was presented to me by a kind man.

I wear it with determination even when the rain stops and the sun shines on my headgear with malevolence.

I pass an Angus steer in a field and say nothing, nor does he.

You either understand these things.
Or not.


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Nice shoes

I decide I will take this walking a little more seriously.
People are looking at me as I walk along with intent and a faraway look in my eyes. I discard the heavy hiking boots and purchase some runners for my feet. And since I don't feel easy with the concept of runners I opt to call them trainers.

That name suggests there is an alternative for me somewhere down the road. A short cut I may explore in lieu of pounding the main drag with serious people who move with their heads down.
In winter, some buy little lights for their heads so they can run in darkness, in conflict with nature which dims natural light so we may remain indoors and vegetate, while watching outdoor videos.

However, many winter moons have passed since it was easy to walk into a shop to buy a pair of anything for your feet.

Trainers there are in dozens by price, maker, colour and many more definitions that are hard to follow unless you are indoctrinated by the manufactures' marketing people.
I even have special insoles moulded to suit my feet which, I am assured, have developed lazy arch muscles because of a decades-long pause in anything approaching a serious work-out.

They turn out to be so comfortable that I walk on air, a giddy sensation, not unknown to liberated men escaping the shackles of domesticity.

The assistant says she will email me the readings of my feet for my own records; handy to have if I ever forgot what my feet look like and have to search for them.

But she never does, even though she is very careful of the spelling of my address.

I may just walk back there in my trainers to see what happened to my missing feet.

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Just get to the corner

I decide I will enter the Dublin City Marathon.
As a walker.
Running has a sense of urgency about it that eludes me.

Entering the marathon is an easy decision for the event is on October 27, a public holiday, and my decision is made in the short days between Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

Lots of time between the two dates, I say as I reach for the TV remote to change channels.
However, I doubt my sanity when I find that not only can I not walk 42.195 km to begin with; but I can barely make two kilometres from my home without every bone and muscle saying it is mid-winter: when humans are supposed to hibernate, gorge, and be slothful.

I ignore my protesting body and carry on towards the cheering crowds at the finish line in the future of my mind.

Tragically, I make the mistake of telling a select few at festive gatherings that I will henceforth be an athlete in training. They should understand this when I decline to linger on my training days.

Everyone immediately takes sides and make wagers on my likely failure.

Nonetheless, the forgotten warrior inside me rises to the challenge and walking begins more or less each day.

I find a pair of fairly unused hiking boots, a wool skull cap and a heavy waterproof jacket and I venture out in the rains to mortify my body in the name of marathon glory.

A surprised pet dog accompanies me on these forays in the belief that it will not last long and calm will return in time.

For days afterwards I cannot reach the remote and have to rely on family support to watch television.

Just the same, I tumble out of bed to begin again, begin again.Storytelling here

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Investing in an Ark

                            
A man wants me to invest in an ark with him. 

More to the point, he wants to build an ark and I will pay for it to be built: which means financing his wages and materials and anything else that comes up; like some housekeeping money for his wife.
Why I ask, not unreasonably I feel.

Because it may never stop raining, he says with patience. Animals can only swim around for so long and then they drown: whereas humans can sit on a roof for a long time: pending cessation of the downpour.

We, meaning he, will do  it and I will pay him to gather a pair of every animal there is to be found locally and bring them into the ark. When all is dry once more we, that is he and I, will produce them like a magician producing many multicoloured rabbits from a hat and declare we have a monopoly on all the animals left on the earth and they are all ours, now.

This he seems to believe will lead to effective world domination by him, and me, in no time at all.
Which is a good thing, he says without saying why or spelling out which of us will arise first in the morning to do the ruling of the world.

When I point out that pairs of animals are like to mate and that if the rains last for a long time the new animals may very well take over the ark and decide to sail away to an  new Animaland across the sea, without us. he gives pause for thought.
While he does so, the sun comes out and the rain stops.

He is terribly sad at this turn of events.
He goes home to explain to his wife that climate change has thwarted their ambition.
Once more.
I put my rain hat in my pocket and walk on.

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Kissing Charles Aznavour

The woman is kissing Charles Aznavour on the wrong street in Dublin. She is much younger than he and he seems to be accepting her admiration with benign patience.

It is early morning and I wait politely for her to conclude.
She has asked me for directions to a conference venue.
She and a male companion, not Chuck the singer, are on a street parallel to where they should be and have declared themselves to be lost, to me.
I know where they should be and begin to say so when passion overtakes the woman who takes leave of Monsieur Aznavour now that I have become her guide.
The third person in the relationship tells me they are enroute to a very important conference where a great many important people will gather to hear more important people speak to them about a matter of great importance.
I lose interest when he tells me his own area of interest is in the nuclear field. He waits for a suitably admiring reaction from me; but I am heading home from a session with a physiotherapist for a damaged small finger on my left hand.
My finger hurts from a leap from a high wall and the consequent treatment and I could care less about nuclear.
To no response, I tell him the 18th century building we are standing beside was once a city hospital. I tell him where he is going, The Royal Hospital at Kilmainham, is modelled after Les Invalides in Paris, to no response.
By now, Charles is peeling the woman away from his presence.
She smiles shyly at me as if I am party to a great secret; but I now see it is not Charles Aznavour at all, but someone else.

I don't know who he is and wonder if he is French at all, or, just someone she mistook for another.

 I wonder who she thinks I am, as I take leave of them to catch my bus home. 

Nuclear.
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One coin is like another

I watch the cashier and calculate my change so I can casually check it while lifting my purchase with my other hand.
I tire of being shortchanged by underpaid till jockeys supplementing their rent by imposing a thief's levy on unsuspecting shoppers.
Before me, an older woman waits after the till is closed. She has a few pastries in a bag.
"Was there anything else, Madame," asks the suddenly wary sales assistant.
She says she handed over three two-euro coins totalling six euro; but received change from a fiver.
The man opens the till and stares at the tumbled coins and notes of many transaction. He says yes you are right, I have your other euro here in my hand for you. Did you want anything else?
She shakes her sorrowful head and walks to a table to clutch her paper bag and await the arrival of someone else, who seems in no hurry to appear.
The same thing has happened to me, thrice, in different places in the past few weeks. All challenged by me, all apologised for as a mistake.
If it was a mistake, why did they not mistakenly give me too much change?
On my way out, I think to bond with the pastry buyer; but she flicks her wrist and produces a two-euro coin secreted by her in her coat. She had handed over not three coins, but two, to a value of four euro and received change of five.
She is in short, a thief, and the till jockey is not only an honest human but is now short of his employers' takings.
Do the police know who she is, or should I lock her in and ring them, I wonder?
I do neither; but watch out for pickpocketing grannies on my way home.
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A famous person

I am minding a market stall for a friend while she goes away to eat a sandwich in peace. She has had enough of people bargaining and walking away when she gives in. But she has paid for the day and will stay until the bitter end.
The trader beside me tries a different approach. When the price is ten and he is offered five he says you can have it for twelve. This has the effect of confusing people no end.
When they offer a lower price he proposes a higher one. He is selling steadily to bewildered people and I try the same approach on behalf of my absent friend.
A young woman with an expensive hairdo approaches with a lap dog male companion. His function is to slaver.
She seems to think I should know her. I smile and nod and say it is nice to see you once more, though I don't know who she is. I get ready with pricing.
She picks at small low-priced items that are smaller than her very attractive finger nails.
A tight smile quells my hopeful salesman's patter. I am to be silent. Fair enough, it could be a big sale.
She hands me a tiny thing valued to sell at two and waits for me to wrap it for her. She declines to bargain. Her very best friend insists on finding a paying coin in his tight trouser pocket.
It's a marker stall, so my friend does not provide wrapping. I hand the purchase back to the woman before me with the expensive hairstyle and well-dressed male companion.
I say thank you. Will there be anything else?
Disconcertingly, she departs, with a flounce.
Next evening she is on television declaring something open. People mob her.
I wonder who she is?

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Winning one for the jumper

A man asks me if I want to buy a frog.
I say no thank you, for I was always taught to be polite; no matter how strange the conversation.
He says it can jump farther than most frogs. If there was an Olympics for frogs this one would win first prize, he says with conviction.
A gold medal, I correct him as I wonder why there are no Olympic games for animals without humans on their backs?
What use is gold to a frog? he demands as I feel myself being sucked into his world of alternative realism.
I say again: I do not want to buy a frog.
What about a share in a frog, we could form a syndicate and hire a better trainer for him; we could get lots of endorsements for him once he wins the Tour de France and we could charge stud fees?
I ask where he found the frog, in a mad grasp for the safety of sane discourse.
He found me. It was meant to happen, he says. I was out on Saturday night and on Sunday morning when I awoke in a field the said frog was sitting on my belly.
What did he say?
Frogs can't speak beyond a croak on Sunday mornings, he says and somehow I feel I have lost something in his estimation, though what it is I cannot say.
I'll find someone else to invest he says, asking for bus fare to the far side of the city where a man lives in a small house who knows about racing frogs, he says.
I part with some coins and we part from one another, forever, so far.
I cannot shake the feeling that I have missed a wonderful investment opportunity.
A world champion jumping frog.

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