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For some reason yesterday's Park Run destroyed me today. It had felt a struggle in the first moments.
I'd got Paul McCartney singing "Maybe I'm Amazed" in my ears (I asked him to stop but he kept up with me shouting at me - remarkable fitness for a man of his age) and it filled me with energy and power, until I'd hit about 300 metres when I thought I might not be able to breathe any more!
I'd pushed on through it once I'd shaken off Fake Paul, and then got my energy back as I saw Ringo Starr coming up on a Sinclair C5 singing Octopus' Garden and I had to escape that.
Some of this is not true. But Maybe I'm Amazed is my absolute favourite song at the moment and having it on my headphones did fill me with love and joy at the genius of
Billy Shears.
The Beatles really lucked out with finding someone who looked so much like Paul and who was a better song writer than him and that Jane Asher was still happy to date and who clearly had no family or friends who would miss him. It's almost unbelievable. And the Beatles would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for themselves insisting on putting loads of clues in their songs and artworks. Sometimes I think they wanted to be caught.
Maybe I'm Amazed is just so raw and honest and vulnerable. I realised as I ran that great art not only has to come from a place of truth (even if it's entirely made up), but also be received by an open heart in the viewer. If you're not prepared to be as vulnerable as the person laying out their soul then you can never hope to be affected by their work. Both windows need to be open.
Which is my way of saying, if you don't like my stuff then it's your fault.
I am now wondering if I might have been on drugs, which would explain the tiredness, the Ringo Starr hallucination and the awful sixth form philosophising.
But whether it was the LSD or running too fast or just being 58, I was feeling the run today. I was stiff and bone tired and I couldn't really understand it. Was I ill or is this just what happens as you career towards 60 (I'm going to get there a lot faster if I insist on running).
I have sometimes felt tired and achy after a half marathon or Marathon, but not a 5k, particularly when I've been exercising regularly. I was pleased to have taken two minutes off my time from last week, and even more pleased that I hadn't stopped after 2km like I did the week before. Phoebe pointed out that as I hadn't finished the run a fortnight ago that it actually took me 7 days and 31 minutes to complete it, so getting it down to just over 29 this week was remarkable.
Anyway check out Paul McCartney if you haven't heard of him. He does some good stuff. Though my run did end with him singing "The Girl Is Mine" with Michael Jackson and if that was all I'd heard of him I might feel differently. Sometimes you have to close the window for everyone's sake.
I don't know if I should be hoping that my weakness today was down to age or illness. Obviously best case scenario is I'd bravely fought through some low key virus to do my run and now I was being punished. But what if it was something more serious? Or worse, what if that is just what happens once you hit 58 and a half. Maybe this will happen every time I vainly attempt to keep myself vaguely fit.
I will have to start writing about ageing over the next few months, as I am going to be start working on my next stand up show, Oh Shit I'm 60! so need to consider all that is happening to my body. My mind is still stuck at 35 or 25 or 5 and it feels genuinely impossible and ridiculous that my age will soon begin with a 6 (for the first time in 54 years). I am no wiser. I am if anything more stupid, but I still feel like the old me. By which I mean the young me.
So far all the stuff I've got is (unusually for me) about my penis. There's definitely 60 minutes in that alone. Of material - it can't do anything else for 60 minutes any more, unless getting up every 60 minutes for a wee counts. Oh yeah, this baby can still wee. It wees better every passing year. As long as better equals more and doesn't equal as accurately. If better equals covering a greater surface area then it's way better than it used to be.
This isn't the stuff I've got on it for the show. The stuff I've got is, I think, better than this. Let's hope so.
I am interested in how little I have changed inside my head and how I am able to largely ignore the changes in my appearance. If I had to guess my own age based on how I feel inside and piecing it together from stuff that's happened to me, then I'd probably think I am a very young-minded 43 year old. Even that feels a bit old. No way can it be about 19 years since I started work on Oh Fuck I'm 40. That's crazy. It's about 3 years. Which means I must have done Oh Frig I'm 50 two years ago and then last year was Covid.
I do not like this bunching up of years, or the fact that somewhere along the line I have skipped a decade or two without even realising. By the time you've realised you're 40, you're 60. So I wonder what age I actually am now.
Maybe I am already dead and I just haven't caught up yet.
Anyway, hope you're enjoying the slightly stream of consciousness blogs of this weekend (and the last 23 years). Sometimes it results in something good.
Not always.
I am really just saying that, as usual, the blog will be a playground for ideas for the next show. And I am sorry that most of them will be about my old man cock and my refusal to accept or act my age and my attempt to act my (continental) shoe size.
