September ... why isn't it Nontember?

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

I well remember in technical drawing classes at high school the intense frustration of our teacher as he attempted to teach a bunch of unruly boys how to properly draw a septagon. As I struggled to come to grips with the concept of 'simply dividing each side of a hexagon into six equal parts by using the same methods you use to create the hexagon, then at the fifth sixth of each side use your compass to inscribe a mark...' by which time Fuzz or Johnno would have lost interest and distracted our attention by surreptitiously throwing things around the room whilst Sir wasn't watching ... and well, you get my drift. By some miracle I became one of the few people in my class actually able to create a reasonable representation of a septagon using only a compass and some other piece of gear long forgotten and lost to time, but I also recall (apart from my smugness as I attempted to explain during the recess break to my bemused classmates how this was actually achieved) my confusion as to why September is called that when it is in fact the ninth month of the calendar. Well apparently it has something to do with the Romans only being able to count to ten and not twelve, which I don't believe for a moment, but I read it in The Guardian, so I guess it must be true. Whatever the case, it was just one of those insignificant pieces of trivia somehow trapped in my memory like so many others that came to mind for no particular reason.

Anyway, I told you all that in a desperate attempt to distract your attention from the fact that I've been very quiet of late, which as you probably have guessed, is because I haven't been running at all. I know for certain that I haven't been running because when I did attempt to run up some stairs recently at the train station in a vain attempt to catch the 6:29 for home that I was late for, I found myself alarmingly short of breath and long of pounding heart. It was, you might say, a wake up call.

I of course have excuses. But these, as valid as they might be for me personally, are of as much interest to a collective of runners as quiet discourse is to a rabid mob of drunken fascist skinheads. So I shall refrain from citing them.

The good news is that the long promised first volume of my running diaries is now only a few days from genuine publication, i.e. available for purchase from recognised outlets which I shall nominate once officially and demonstrably on stream and ready for action. To say this has been a long journey would be an understatement. What I thought would be a simple tidy up, convert to a commercial format and hit 'publish' affair was far from it. I've proof-read that book so many times and found (and more importantly, corrected) so many damned mistakes that I am really quite weary of the whole process. However, a worthy pastime it has been, and the process is now 99% complete. So, very, very soon I will be pointing you at the correct websites and humbly asking you to consider purchase of a copy, the proceeds of which will of course go to a very worthy charity. And in time for Christmas!

But I really must get back into the running shoes. Especially as a couple of southern England types that I'm rather fond of are really cooking up a storm in the Sussex Downs and putting me to great shame. 

Soon, baby, soon.