I went for a run around the back park, at 5am, as the eastern clouds turned red, silhouetting the trees, young in leaf. It’s strange how, after that first brilliance has dulled, but before the sun has appeared, the ground takes on a faint russet flush. How is that possible? Is it seeping out of the ground?
I startled a man in the slob-wear of someone who thinks, at this hour, he can nip out and walk his lappy rat-dog without being seen: ill-fitting trackie-bottoms, Cuprinol-stained fleece, old woolly hat, ancient, unlaced caterpillar boots. “I thought I’d be the first one in here!” he called after me with mock-cheeriness, but I heard the undertone of resentment.
Surely, though, runners are less annoying than the other great hazard of the Lock-Down Daily Walk: blokes wearing sunglasses and headphones, entirely absorbed in ham-fisted, clumsy-thumbed texting, thuddering blindly towards you, down the middle of the path, wildly vectoring their infections in all directions. Bastards.
How fastidious we’ve all become!
Middle-aged Male Anorexic 