No aimless exercise

I wake up on Sunday morning to a dusting of snow across the back garden. Not that it’s my back garden, you understand, so perhaps I should say the expanse of occasionally green space that can be seen out of the kitchen window and belongs to the man who lurks downstairs. But that’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? Snow is pretty rare in the urban heat centre – I don’t think we had any at all last winter – but there is was; just a little sprinkling that clung twee-like to the mock Roman plant pots.

“Hmrph,” I thought, switched the coffee machine on and took the four steps back into bed with the Sunday paper I’d confusingly bought on Saturday night.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. On Sunday morning I should have been waking up in a sleeping bag on a Swansea floor, feeling twinges in the backs of my knees from climbing a mountain the previous day.

Except I never made it because my car broke down. At least the bastard had the good grace to conk out in Chelsea rather than, say, somewhere in the no-man’s land of the M4 in-between Swindon and Bath. So my rescue by the RAC was comparatively straightforward, but I mean, come on! What else can go wrong for me at the moment?

And, as later on, I rang up various people and moaned I suddenly realised that I was dangerously close to becoming a rather pathetic figure of self pity.

“Oh, woe is me. It just isn’t fair.” Etc, etc.

So, I resolved to stop moaning and try to get something constructive done. After checking the car into a garage for futile attempts at resuscitation, I cracked on with writing – after all I can’t moan about not having enough time to write and then reject opportunities when they arise.

In a single seven hour stretch I managed to rework a twelve thousand word chunk of the novel. I trimmed back reams of stuff that didn’t work and tried to push forward the bits that hopefully did what I intended them to do, but it’s getting tricky.
I’ve now been redrafting for longer than the original first two drafts took (although September and most of October were write-offs) and the damn thing still isn’t working and I’ve spent so much time with these words that they’re becoming like the old friends’ whose failings you forgive all too easily. I think I might have to fall out with my words; get to the point where I hate them and can therefore be more merciless.

But anyway, after four-hundred-and-twenty minutes the tips of my fingers throbbed and the skin under my nails stung. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. “If it hurts,” I thought, “it must be good.”

An odd moment of Hemmingway-lite delusion.

I was determined to still find a way of getting some exercise and never being one for the aimless rigours of sit-ups or jogging, I like my excursions to have purpose. So, I decided to walk the seven or so miles into the centre of London whereupon I would meet a mate for a less healthy beer.

I walk briskly so whilst it didn’t exactly have the grandeur of the walking I’d expected to be doing it did get my blood pumping a little faster. I missed the sweeping valleys, the spring of damp grass beneath my feet, the camaraderie of walking with friends. Instead there was just the relentless trudge across concrete as I marched through some of the less salubrious parts of London. In particular I’d never noticed before quite how dark the quarter of a mile or so between Camberwell and Walworth is, nor how it seems to be solely the preserve of the Wyndham Estate. For a few minutes it was as though the city was abandoned for the dead. There were no cars, no-one on the streets, the lights flickered as though the electricity supply was about to be cut. There was just me and the eerie echo of my own rapid steps.

Then a number twenty-one roared round the corner in a mess of steaming pistons, bedraggled diesel and general bendiness.

By Sunday morning, though, my resolve to be productive was being tested. I was struggling to build up the enthusiasm for yet another day at the computer, but thoughts of doing anything else was nipping me with guilt.

I looked back through the work I’d done the day before and despaired. It still wasn’t working. It still wasn’t as good as it should be. I considered writing this blog, originally about Woolworths but David Mitchell beat me to it.

Pouring yet another cup of coffee I glanced out of the window and saw that the snow had evaporated already. It had hung around for about thirty minutes before realising it had better things to do, a place to go where it might be appreciated more. A little later I walked down the road to get some milk and passed the burnt-out wreckage of an old Escort that had mysteriously appeared earlier the week. It’s blackened and charred husk looked like something from twenty years ago displaced to here and now.

And then I thought that things aren’t always what they appear. Maybe the dark last night had only seemed so invasive because it fitted my mood. Maybe it wasn’t snow in the garden that morning, but ash drifting in the breeze. Maybe I should go home and beat some more words out of my brain.