On Saturday night, I ran for an interrupted total of about 90 seconds and has firmly become one of the worst decisions I’ve made in recent times. Worse than drunkenly downloading Super Mario Maker for forty quid, playing it about three times and never being able to swap it in a store for credit due to the fact that it’s a digital entity. Nicely enough, that second instance of a stupid thing I did seems to explain the existence of the first. I mentioned a video game, which is largely an indoors, sitting down activity. To put it another way, I’m shit at running.
The events preceding the ordeal of stretching one leg out in front of the other in an alternating, repetitive motion are vast and any one of them, or a combination thereof, could be to blame. Let’s back-peddle, shall we? Even though back-peddling doesn’t move the bike backwards, only the chain. Furthermore, it involves the use of our legs. Instead, let’s rewind, shall we? That way we don’t have to get up from our seated position.
A somewhat spontaneous text prompted me to visit the suburbs of southern Manchester, a considerable public transport aided distance outside of the city centre. Making it back in time for the last train already seems implausible at this point in the story, no? But still, my stubborn brain thinks it can make it. My brain isn’t the one that has to rudely ignore present company in favour of watching a clock, make hasty goodbyes and do the aforementioned bit of running.
As a non-city boy, I got to experience the relative novelty of taking a tram from wherever I was to a little outside of where I needed to be. It’s the little things that create the novelty, really. After all, it turns out that a Manchester tram is really just Liverpool’s Merseyrail service on overhead strings, where the robot lady voice is about ten years younger, she rattles off unfamiliar stop names and tickets are a warm golden yellow instead of cheesy puff orange. Anyway, it stops me at Piccadilly Gardens about five minutes before my train is due to leave the ten-minute-walk away Piccadilly station.
For a while, I’ve considered running as an exercise in physical fitness upkeep. I’m in my twenties and mobile technological fitness trackers mean that running around local streets in the cold and dark is considered a normal pastime for the average human. However, for whatever reason, that consideration, that thought of actually doing something hasn’t managed to get itself up off its own sofa and do its share of legwork. As a result, I don’t run. At least not often. And evidently when I do run, I do it for about fourteen seconds before I pant helplessly and feel razor wire in the back of my throat.
Running for however short a time through a city crowd lazily strolling in the opposite direction not only involves weaving in and out of people’s paths, it also requires some basic physical energy that, it seems, walking simply doesn’t demand so much. After a burst of running, a burst of helpless panting driven power walking ensued, and the cycle repeated over the next few minutes until I made my way to the grand atrium of the train station.
Good news: you made it to the station in time to see your train listed on the screen meaning it hasn’t left yet. Bad news: the platform you need is at least another three minutes worth of whatever run-wheeze-walk cycle you’ve got going on here. Plus, in the time it’s taken you to think these words, your chosen train has disappeared from the Departures list before your very eyes.
Oh well, never mind. There are still trains going to the next town over from where you need to go. And what’s more, the slowness of these trains means they take twice as long to reach their destination, giving you more time to hyperventilate and cough yourself back into a state of natural breathing and think about how shit you are at making decisions. Also, the taxi fare back home from where you’re about to end up will cost you twice as much as the rail ticket you got to Manchester in the first place. Enjoy the rest of you month being poor and unfit.
We’re now four or five days on from those events and my shin bones still ache from the extra impact I’ve subjected them to, after constantly transferring my body weight from one to the other at speed. I’ve also only just about gotten my breath back.
Much like anybody who doesn’t maintain a lot of power in this world, I’m highly sceptical of those who maintain a lot of power in this world. I wasn’t aiming for this one to be topical; it’s a nice bit of thoughtful lyrical craftsmanship over a simple sweet melody. The world had other plans this week, however, and leaked a bunch of evidence implicating several of the world’s elite in unscrupulous activities. The sad thing is I assumed this sort of thing was going on anyway and it didn’t need a plethora of documents to come out of a Central American legal firm to confirm it (although it seems to have helped).
Not long released, this imaginatively titled poem effectively criticises the state of states, amongst other things. Perhaps it’s a little preachy to sit here and throw shade at the people with power, doing things I wouldn’t want to do, making decisions I wouldn’t want to make, so instead I’ll just sit here and offer up some music done by other, more talented people.
She Drew The Gun – Poem
Jamie Walsh 
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