Born to run – or possibly not?

Unlike Joe Biden, I don’t have a running mate. But then, I haven’t run since around – oh, 1986 – and nobody has been waiting around for me to join in.

I liked running – but then I liked sport, even if I had limited opportunities to engage in it. For my first five years at secondary school, we’d only run around a field, since we were near the middle of Manchester. With my second secondary school – in semi-rural Lancaster – I’d missed cross-country PE (though I loved volleyball and particularly badminton). In terms of running, I was inspired by the 1984 Olympic Games.

It almost goes without saying that I was stopped from playing football, which I wanted to do so much that, in my pre-teen years, I prayed to God to make me be a boy so that I could play the game.

I have always been competitive. I can’t resist it. I want to win. I remember playing non-competitive pool in a lesbian bar in Amsterdam in the 1990s and finding myself wondering how you even begin to do that! I mean … how do you endeavour to not pot the ball?

That didn’t win me any friends.

So inspired by top athletes, I bought shoes (Reeboks) and ran circuits around central Lancaster, where my family lived at the time. There were comments from passing drivers. ‘Don’t give yourself a black eye!’ was the wittiest that I remember. Because some people are fecking idiots and I had always had big boobs, irrespective of weight and BMI.

But I carried on running.

I registered for a race – can’t remember how long, but it was the sort of race that saw you sent An Official Race Number to attach to your shorts.

God, I was so proud when I got that, propping it on a shelf to be in view. I wasn’t quite at the distance for the race, but I was on the way and it was an incentive to pump up my training.

And then, in a sporting competition between the Lancaster Footlights (for whom I was the captain that night), the Duke’s Playhouse and the local leisure centre, I tore the lateral ligaments in my left knee: a full-blown ‘Gazza’.

I completed the night’s competition – in agony – and the next day, dragged myself to A&E, where my leg was encased in cotton wool and lots of plaster, and I was given crutches.

I got over it enough to be thrown to the floor by Salieri in the Footlights’ award-winning production of Amadeus that spring (I was playing Mozart’s missus), but I had issues with the knee for years (particularly in damp winters) and, when I moved to London to find work in 1988, discovered that running on uneven London pavements was not fun.

And there my running career ended.

Until now.

For reasons about which I have no clue, at the beginning of this year – before COVID-19 – I started to feel an itch.

Could I run again? For some reason that I don’t particularly understand, I wanted to.

The lockdown intervened and I didn’t do so until 6 August, a day or so after I’d signed up to a charity fundraiser.

Step Up September will raise funds for There for You, a charity from public service trade union UNISON, which helps members in need. In recent months, that’s been affected hugely by the new Coronavirus. Members who clean hospitals, care for the elderly and the vulnerable, and carry out myriad other essential tasks have found themselves struggling too – and There for You is helping.

My running can hopefully help those who have been helping us all.

Because of the pandemic, Step Up September doesn’t carry specific targets. But as an overweight woman of almost 58, who hasn’t run in decades, then if I can manage, by the end of September, to run more than five minutes, it’ll be an achievement built on bloody-minded grit and really quite serious, regular training.

My first session was on 6 August and saw me using interval training: I could only run for 30 seconds at a time. Two weeks later, I am hitting two minutes regularly, with a maximum time of two minutes and 24 seconds.

Look – I know it’s not exactly Olympic standard, but it requires genuine effort (believe me!), and my own GP is delighted.

And if you can manage to make a donation to a really good cause, then I thank you in advance.

Please help me fund-raise here – it you can, it will be fantastic.

Charity challenges and mental health

It was 6:55am on Monday 1 July – day one of the 2019 Diabetes UK One Million Step Challenge.

With a few minutes left before the bus for the first half of my journey to work was due, I stepped into Haggerston Park and walked to the next stop via the avenue of young oaks that had been planted 18 months earlier.

The sun was already beaming down and my shadow stretched out ahead as I headed west.

Stepping off the bus in Islington, I continued my journey to the office on foot, along the Regent’s Canal, via Granary Square, King’s Cross and more.

Day two: I began my journey the same way. It was sunny again and there was longer before the bus was due, so I contemplated walking straight through the park, then on down a couple of streets and estates to catch it later on its route. Picturesque for part of the way, but not for the rest.

At the oaks, I stopped: why was I going to do it this way?

The first thing I knew of the step challenge was seeing a poster on a train as The Other Half and I headed to the RSPB’s reserve at Rye Mead in April.

Caledonian street art

But I only made the decision to sign up for it last Friday, registering the following day. Too late for my intro pack to arrive from the charity – though that doesn’t stop me getting underway. It runs from 1 July to 30 September, effectively meaning you need to take 10,869 steps a day for 92 days.

Inasmuch as I’ve planned anything about it, the aim is to go well over that daily total for the first couple of weeks at least.

My first instinct was to treat it as utilitarian: the easiest way to rack up steps is to walk at least half of my journey into work. That can take me along a canal towpath, so far from onerous – apart from the cyclists who treat it as their personal superhighway.

But then it struck me that, if I stop doing that – if I cease to see it merely as a matter of getting from A to B, a question simply of transit – what else can it hold?

As some who has struggled over the past couple of years with mental health issues (both parents dying; having to deal with cancer myself) I was realising that the challenge itself held value. But what beyond the health benefits of walking more each day?

On day two, I decided that, instead of zooming through the park and back onto the road, I’d make a circuit of part of the park, then exit and catch the bus right outside. It was blissfully quiet – apart from a trio of ring-necked parakeets who flew over, a beautiful flash of green against the blue. They’re migrating further and further into our neck of the woods; this was the first time I’d seen them below Acton Lock.

Pied wagtail, Francis Crick Institute

Leaving the bus in Islington, I continued on foot – ignoring the canal and trying some side streets for a change, giving me the opportunity to slip into Joseph Grimaldi Park for the first time.

Cross Caledonian Road and it’s busier as you head to King’s Cross, but after that you can slip through St Pancras station and then across to the Francis Crick Institute, thus avoiding Euston Road (always a plus).

By the institute – a not entirely-successful example of modern architecture in my view – a small bird was hopping around. New to the birding malarky, I didn’t recognise it, but took mental notes and a quick snap. Online research later revealed it to be a pied wagtail.

Treating this challenge as more than just adding a few daily steps could prove to be more enjoyable than I imagined.

Stay tuned – and, if you can, please donate via step.diabetes.org.uk/pages/amanda-73.

Thank you all, in advance.

Making sure your diet has gotta lotta bottle

If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to have you looking again at your diet and wondering if it’s nurturing you or killing you, then it’s something such as a heart attack in the family.

The Other Half is now attending rehab sessions after his recent Event and these include a weekly talk.

Recently, one on nutrition provided the news that no, locally-produced honey does not render you immune to local pollen. It also included a call for those present to drink more milk, since there’s a risk of an osteoporosis timebomb and they need their calcium.

It’s probably already far more of a problem than most of us realise.

According to Guidelines for diagnosis and management ofosteoporosis (1997) by JA Kanis, P Delmas, P Burckhardt and others, which was published by the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and Bone Disease, in “women over 45 years of age, osteoporosis accounts for more days spent in hospital than many other diseases, including diabetes, myocardial infarction and breast cancer”.

And that’s just women – osteoporosis affects men too.

Of course, the milk-drinking advice included stating that the milk should be skimmed or semi skimmed, and noting that, while calcium can also be found in cheese, you should only to eat a matchbox-sized amount of that in a single day because of the mortal threat of fat.

Look away now – this could be the death of you

Bad luck: today’s lunchtime salad – made at home – included about two Swan Vesta-sized matchboxes worth of feta (together with chick peas, broad beans, sultanas, a little couscous and a ‘dressing’ of plain, Greek-style yogurt).

Having had a small glass of apple juice before leaving home, my breakfast had consisted of a hard-boiled egg, a little poached salmon, some edamame beans and a squirt of teriyaki sauce, with an espresso on the side.

Thank you Itsu: tasty, healthy food, and actually cheaper than the far more conventional breakfast fodder I’ve been having recently.

There was a mid-morning ‘snack’ of a few dates.

Oh dear – never mind the cheese, am I in danger of eating too much fruit, given how it all sugars?

The point, though, is that my rule-shattering amount of feta for lunch should be considered within a wider context of a fairly healthy diet as a whole.

But back to osteoporosis and calcium intake.

I recall reading, approximately 15 years ago, that women on a  diet had a bone density deficit of 22%.

This should surprise nobody, given that one of the first things that goes out of the window when you start dieting is dairy produce.

And on this subject, let’s take a little look at figures for osteoporosis in France and the UK, since the French notoriously eat more cream, cheese and butter than any other nation on planet Earth.

In 2010, there were approximately 377,000 new fragility fractures in France. The number of people aged 50 plus, with osteoporosis, was approximately 3,480,000.

Bone – healthy and not-so healthy

The economic cost of new and prior fractures was estimated as €4,853m each year and it is further estimated that, by 2025, that figure will have increased to €6,111m.

In 2010 in the UK, there were approximately 536,000 new fragility fractures. The number of people aged 50+ with osteoporosis stood at approximately 3.21m. The economic cost of new and prior fractures was £3,496m (€5,408m) each year; by 2025 burden will increase by 24% to £5,465m (€6,723m).

These statistics are from A Svedbom, E Hernlund, M Ivergard, et al, Osteoporosis in the European Union: A compendium of country-specific reports, 2013.

It’s worth noting that calcium deficiency is not the only cause of osteoporosis, but that alcohol consumption and smoking both also increase bone fragility.

In which case, given levels of smoking and alcohol consumption in France (and given that it has a higher population), the lower number of fragility fractures is even more remarkable.

But then again, the French have not – thus far – lost any sense of a national cuisine; of the traditional and largely seasonal food that has sustained them down the centuries.

We have. We expect asparagus and strawberries in December, and are faced with a dizzying array of culinary styles in shops and restaurants.

And in a way, the culinary snapshot from our recent trip to Rye is indicative of that: poor versions of a ‘national’ dish – fish and chips – cooked on the basis of pre-prepped, largely-frozen ingredients, while local gems such as Cromer crab were noticeable primarily by their absence.

That’s not to say that there is no place for culinary evolution and global influences – or that the French don’t have these (see couscous as an example of the latter), but merely that we have gone to an extreme.

Subject to the whims of British culinary fashion

We fall out of love with genuine British ingredients – and then it takes a celebrity chef to bring them back into fashion. See cooking apples and cauliflowers as but two recent examples.

Sainsbury’s summer TV advertising campaign, “tigers don’t eat quesadillas”, also illustrates the current climate, starting from the perspective of a family where the children get to say what they will and will not eat.

I know it’s not hip parenting these days, but what was actually wrong with ‘Dinner time! Come and sit down!’ followed by (if required) ‘that’s what’s on the table – if you don’t like it, there’s nothing else’?

The idea of giving small children a choice about what they eat is nonsense: they need to be able to make an educated choice before being given a choice – and that means a food education first.

Nor is that an education where you make pronouncements on what’s good or bad for health. It’s a question of educating the taste buds.

Okay, it’s still probably going to be something of a battle, given the amount of high-processed, industrialised junk around the place for children to be tempted by. And Big Food spends an awful lot of money working out precisely how to get children hooked on that junk, so it’s not an evenly-matched battle: this is classic David and Goliath.

But getting home in the evening and asking your pre-primary school child what they want for dinner – and then responding with “you can’t have dippy chips every night” because they regularly have that because you don’t want to cook a fresh meal after a day at work, is not the answer and not the way to a healthy diet.

And why quesadillas? What’s wrong with a salad? It doesn’t have to be limp, tasteless lettuce and cucumber, with flavourless tomatoes.

Take some broad beans (in season at present). Pod and cook for 3-4 minutes, in unsalted water, depending on size. Allow to cool before popping the little green gems out of their skins.

Hull and halve some strawberries (also in season).

Broad beans. In season now. Yummy

Pop on a plate together with some feta – the natural saltiness of the cheese is a fabulous foil for the beans, and works well with the fruit too.

Dress with some Balsamic vinegar.

If it’s a main meal, have some good bread on the side or a few new potatoes (also in season).

Colourful, tasty and healthy – and not complicated.

The media doesn’t help – producing scare stories about health and further confusion about diet.

I freely admit that I find myself wondering if I’ve got it basically right: am I getting enough calcium, for instance, or do I need to start guzzling a pint of skimmed milk every day?

Indeed, am I really getting it all so badly wrong that today’s second matchbox of cheese will ensure that I won’t live long enough to get osteoporosis?

Cultural outings after a bit of a shock

It was a relief to see the back of June, a month that had not started with any sense that it would produce a major ‘event’, but took only a few days to announce that it was going to be memorable.

The event in question was The Other Half having a heart attack. Don’t panic – it sounds more dramatic than it actually was.

There was no clutching at chest and/or keeling over.

And the first responder, the London Ambulance Service paramedics, the medical, ward and support teams at Bart’s were all absolutely magnificent and have my (our) eternal gratitude and appreciation.

I've not personally seen the NHS in action like that, but it makes you very aware of just how valuable it is.

After four nights, he was discharged and is now doing rehab stuff, practising being a cat and feeling faintly embarrassed at having been signed off for two months, because he feels okay in himself.

If we both needed an urgent motive to quit smoking, that was it.

So, it’s all been a tad distracting – hence no posts on this blog for over a month.

Panorama from Queen's Promenade, Ramsey

And in the middle of it all, I had to fly out and back in a day to the Isle of Man for a family funeral – an experience that was more enjoyable than expected, but quite surreal at times.

It’s 40-plus years since I was on the island and, since I was so young then, I have limited memories of it. I had forgotten – or perhaps I had never fully realised – just how rural it is.

The taxi ride from the airport at the south of the island to Ramsey in the north took me over the mountains.

Fog was clinging to the bleak hills, which made one appreciate the dangers of the TT racers who had only recently been speeding along the narrow roads. There have been 243 deaths at TT and Manx Grand Prix races since they were first staged in 1911 – one this year.

'You has chips. We wants chips'

By late afternoon and my return journey, the cloud had lifted, leaving a view from the mountains down to the sea, which also serves to give one a sense of just how small an island it is.

Having arrived in the rain – stepping down onto the tarmac from the plane at Ronaldsway to the smell of manure – I found myself in Ramsey just as the drizzle tapered off. Wandering around in the damp, I recognised elements of the harbour, where my grandfather had taken me to buy fish fresh off the boats when we holidayed on the island.

I had chips for lunch – from a chippy where the menu board advertised “posh coffee” for £2 – and found myself feeding seagulls who had swooped in at the mere smell of chips. It was entirely apt, since my love of gulls stems from those childhood holidays in Ramsey, when I would wake to the sound of their shrieking.

Anyway, all of this means that you won’t be getting lengthy reviews for a number of things that we have seen since ‘The Event’ (as I feel like to euphemise it). As the medical staff made quite clear, rehabilitation does not mean enforced 24/7 bed rest.

Pirates of Penzance – left, Alex Weatherhill 

But I’ll start by mentioning the all-male Pirates of Penzance that we saw at Hackney Empire a couple of weeks ago.

We had booked not knowing that it was be an all-male production, simply that it was G&S, but it was an absolute hoot.

Particular mentions should go to Alex Weatherhill as Ruth and Alan Richardson as Mabel.

Watch out for future productions by Sasha Regan’s company – they’ve done similar productions before and hopefully will do so again.

It’s also worth noting that the Tate Britain’s Barbara Hepworth exhibition has opened.

Not helped by my inexperience in looking at abstract sculpture, I didn’t find it earth-shattering.

Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy it. The guarea pieces, carved from “great logs” have a beauty that seems to radiate something very tranquil.

Corinthos by Barbara Hepworth

Hepworth talked of ‘tunnelling’ through the wood and you can let yourself get lost in the curvaceous channels into and through it.

But in general, the exhibition really only surges into life at the end, with a room that aims to recreate a pavilion where some of her bronzes were displayed in the Netherlands half a century ago, and which the artist herself considered as a perfect way to show them.

Indeed, more generally, Hepworth commented on the link between a work and where it is displayed when she noted that “one of the functions of sculpture is to fulfil the demands and conditions of a given site”. The two should not be divorced if the culture is to fully work.

Suddenly, in this final room, you have the sense of what influenced Hepworth so much – nature: and how much better her pieces work in a setting that reflects that rather than a more sterile room.

Ham from the 'ultimate black pig'

And as if that wasn’t enough cultural hijinks, after a 16-year gap, we were finally lured back into the cinema last Friday.

I say “we”, but I’ve been the particularly reluctant cinema goer over the years; dischuffed with the actual experience of going to the cinema and also with the amount of Hollywood tat aimed at an adolescent male audience.

Don’t get me wrong, that audience deserves being catered for by the industry as much as any other, but not to the exclusion of others.

And with the UK having largely binned our own film industry and decided simply to import whatever Hollywood churns out, I felt disengaged from the entire enterprise.

Admittedly, I then ‘discovered’ foreign-language films – and a present of a DVD player allowed me to watch quite a few.

Where there is tapas, there are pardon peppers

While more recent years seems to have brought some improvements in what’s being made, I’ve waited for the DVDs rather than going to see them on cinema release.

Well, finally there was a film I didn’t want to wait any more months to see.

It has French origins and is the epitome of charm, sophistication and erudition.

I speak, of course, of Minions.

Having booked for the Vue at Islington, we needed to eat first, so tried La Farola a short walk away, where we enjoyed very pleasant tapas.

The Lomo iberico de bellota is apparently the “utimate black pig” and, seasoned with smoked paprika and sea salt, delicate slices are an absolute taste delight, with a good deal of complexity.

Green Gordal olives were huge and tasty; the padron peppers were fine (if not including any surprise hotties), while mushrooms were good too: the boquerones might have been Calabrian, but were a reminder of sunny Collioure, and the pan con tomate came on a scrummy, wafer-light, chargrilled bread.

Hurrah for silliness

Anyway, Minions was also our first 3D film – and that itself was rather enjoyable.

The film itself was great fun – utter silliness, but there’s a place for that. Some critics have been rather snooty about it, complaining that the plot is a bit thin.

It probably is, but it was not the sort of film where that bothered me. I didn’t want to see it for the ‘plot’, but for what it does very effectively, which in essence is a series of gags and sketches.

The opening – marvellously dryly narrated by the wonderful Geoffrey Rush – sees the eponymous yellow characters going through a number of bosses as they seek an evil being to serve.

Not only is that an establishing sequence in terms of giving us the minions’ history, it also establishes the sketch-like nature of the film.

No complaining from me – it provided plenty of laughs.

The initial smell of popcorn was almost overpowering when we entered the foyer, but the seating was as comfortable as anything I could remember.

So perhaps it won’t be another 16 years before I enter a cinema again. In fact, I think Ted 2 has just opened.