Haiku for the week

Gloom and decay rule

At the turning of the year,

Not hope of renewal.

Jeez, the crappy light levels get me depressed at this time of the year. Not even this week's snow has brought me any cheer. February seems unimaginably far away. I think I need to treat myself to a tropical break somewhere.

The weekly haiku

The wind, like a wild dog,

Howls and snarls, strips flesh from bone,

Sucks on your marrow.

Damn, it's been cold in Beijing this week. And having dropped 20lbs in weight in the last few months seems to have greatly increased my sensitivity to it. I have broken out the thermal underwear already. And I'm still suffering.

Haiku for the week

Darkness inside grows

Dread inertia grips the soul

At least the sky is blue

My seasonal doldrums are setting in early this year. The short hours of daylight usually afflict me with a paralysing depression for much of December and January - but it's not even December yet, dammit!

And it's looking like today might be the first time the daytime temperature fails to break above freezing. With the wind whipping down straight out of the north, it certainly feels well below freezing.

Haiku for the week

Stress of the unknown;

Excitement of novelty;

Three weeks on the road.

I am somewhat uncomfortable, ashamed at the relief I feel at the prospect of returning home after a period of travelling. 'Home' is too confining, a disengagement from the world; I would prefer it to be a journey's beginning rather than its end. But I am getting old; I exhaust easily.

Haiku for the week

The spirit revives,

Breathes calmness in solitude.

Clear skies, mountain air.

Or so I hope. I'm 1,000 miles away from Beijing, and 1,000 yards - at least - higher up. Even if the weather is lousy, that distance will be refreshing.

Haiku for the week

Repeating cycles

Sometimes reassure, refresh;

Sometimes wear you down.

I finally managed a full practice marathon at the start of this week, 8 laps around the nearby lakes.

Well, I finished - that's something. Especially considering I've been suffering badly with allergies recently, so my breathing wasn't as easy as I would wish. And, amazingly, I didn't feel too awful the next day - although I would not have liked to have attempted another long run. But at least I didn't injure myself. And my pace - at least, at first - was pretty good, not too far short of what I was running 5 or 6 years ago: just inside 2 hours for the half-distance. But man, the second half was much slower; and I hit 'the wall' bad at around 18 miles. It was a real struggle to get to the end after that.

Still, quite a promising result, all in all. I'm still 5 weeks away from the marathon I had planned to run in Shanghai (but am now boycotting), and 9 weeks away from the one I still hope to run in Xiamen (if they ever get their act together about registrations!); so, I still have time to build up strength and stamina some more, get myself more fully prepared.

Ah, but.... I just rashly entered myself in a race next week. That.... that is going to be PAINFUL. Wish me luck.

Haiku for the week

Last warmth of autumn

Brightens streets, won't reach indoors;

Chill October blues.

Thick-walled Chinese apartments are great for staying cool in the summer, but they soon become bloody freezing with the approach of winter - particularly if, as with my current place, you're on a low floor in a tall building and have only north-facing windows, so that almost no sunshine penetrates the walls at all at this time of year. It's still quite pleasant outdoors, afternoon temperatures getting above 70 Fahrenheit; but I'm shivering inside.

These last three or four weeks before the central heating gets switched on in mid-November are the toughest of the year. I'm having to wear pullovers and sweatpants indoors to keep the vicious chill at bay.

Still, I shouldn't complain. In much of China, they don't have any central heating, and the entire winter can be like this. People in Shanghai - much further south than Beijing, and cool rather than cold, but with a pervasive damp - tend to complain about their winters more than those of us up here in the icy northern capital.

Haiku for the week

All touched with amber,

Year's end longer golden hours:

Autumn sunshine joy.

It is the best time of the year in Beijing (if the skies stay clear). Not just by comparison with how shitty it is for much of the rest of the year, but good in absolute terms. It could almost make a chap regret leaving. But it only lasts a few weeks.

Haiku for the week

The want of a woman

Returns on the autumn wind:

Blanket against the cold.

Yes, rather than in Spring, traditional season of male randiness, I find that it is often towards the year's end that I find myself starting to pine for female company. Is it really something so primitive and basic as seeking warmth and comfort, protection against the sharp chill - both physical and psychological - of the dark winter months? Perhaps so.

Haiku for the week

Before the crowds come

Light on water, wind in trees

Early morning run

Oh, it's lovely when it works. But this week I have been sidelined with yet another calf muscle tweak. I have happy memories of many great dawn Houhai runs in the past; and hopes of some yet to come.

Haiku for the week

Autumn comes early,

Bringing samples of winter.

Wind whispers warnings.

Damn, the chill has set in early this year! The temperature has dropped more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit in the last week or so, and I woke to a howling wind this morning. I have a hunch we might be in for a brute of a winter.

Haiku for the week

Blue skies taunt and tease,

So soon giving way to fog.

A brief week's bliss.

The summer swelter hung around a bit longer than usual this year, but for the past week or so the weather in Beijing has been absolutely gorgeous. Well, except that an autumnal chill seems to have been injecting itself into the air a little prematurely over the last few days. And I awoke this morning to a dense smog. More mist and fog is predicted in the coming week - which means the air quality will be atrocious. And my lungs are in meltdown already, from some virus or other. Oh, it's grand to be back, to be sure.

Haiku for the week

Time equals distance,

Weight equals time. Road seems longer

For the fat runner.

I am - slowly, hesitantly, painfully - getting back into an almost-daily jogging habit. But I am finding it difficult to 'zone out' for extended periods as I used to be able to do, to run without fretting about the energy expended or the distance left to cover. I am so overweight at the moment that I am made acutely aware of distance. Even stretches of my regular route that used to seem negligible, mere hundreds of yards, now appear rather daunting; the longer sections batter my spirit with their endlessness. Familiar pieces of road actually look longer to my eyes now; and it is depressing, strength-sapping.

It is going to be mighty hard to wrap my head around the idea of undertaking a marathon again.

But such is my ambition. I'm just going to need to shed 10 or 12kg first.

Haiku for the week

Numbering the years

Reminds us not how much is gone

But how little's left.

Gosh, yes, Froogville is SIX years old today (well, OK, tomorrow).

I have for some time been planning to terminate my blogs at the end of this year. My recent hassles with Blogger have reinforced my commitment to this plan. We are living through the last days.

Haiku for the week

Small consolation -

Nothing now left to go wrong,

Broken-backed camel.

That's been my week...

Haiku for the week

Always on the run

Avoiding the hard questions -

But they run faster

One foot on the platform, the other on the train. I'm going back to old Beijing, to wear that ball and chain...

But - hopefully! - not for too much longer. It's supposed to be just a 'farewell holiday' this time. 

So long as (oh, god!) no-one offers me a job....

Haiku for the week

War zones and deserts

The hard reality of maps

On which dreams founder

I had been trying to get 'serious' about the crazy plan I hatched at this time last year to walk home from China to the UK, following the ancient trading paths of the 'Silk Road'. Tracing the route on Google Earth, however, soon becomes deeply dispiriting. For one thing, it's hard to determine a single definitive route, since there have been numerous variations over the centuries. And then, of course, the terrain is pretty extreme: one tries to skirt the deserts and mountain ranges, but they can't be avoided altogether. Even more importantly for me, the most commonly followed parts of the route have usually evolved today into major highways, which don't make for very pleasant walking. (Hitch-hiking might be a more realistic way of approaching the journey; but I had my heart set on walking, dammit!)

And then, of course, on the 'home stretch' the last three capitals you pass through are Tehran, Baghdad, and Damascus. With luck, the Syrian civil war should be over long before I'd be attempting this. And Tehran, though challenging, should be survivable, I think. Iraq, however, is likely to remain a death-trap for the solo Western traveller for years to come.

I haven't completely given up on the idea. But finding a route that is actually walkable - 'cross-country' rather than on the hard shoulder of busy roads - is a big problem. Finding a way across Iraq without getting mugged, kidnapped, or blown up is, strangely, a slightly lesser concern at the moment. If the rest of the trip starts to seem doable, I might just take my chances there. After all, attempting to traverse Asia on foot (apparently, it's 4,311 miles from Beijing to Damascus, as the crow flies - probably rather further, as the Froog limps) is in itself recklessly self-endangering, just in terms of the physical challenges posed by geography and climate - without the additional risks of the human violence one might encounter along the way. Recklessness is exciting, invigorating, up to a point; but I'd draw the line at 'suicidal'. I don't mind facing danger after a rational calculation of the risk, but I wouldn't want to be putting myself in any situations where the chance of death is starting to look more likely than not.

[Unfortunately, it's the first leg of the journey that would probably be the biggest hassle of all. China is very safe for foreign tourists, but it's not amenable to extended solo travel. Outside of the major cities, foreigners are still a rarity, and apt to provoke suspicion and panic in the local authorities. There are many areas of the country where it is still supposedly 'illegal' to travel as a foreigner; and many more where that is de facto the case because the local policemen aren't comfortable with the idea. The physical hazards waiting further down the road may start to seem appealingly straightforward after a few weeks of trying to progress through the bureaucratic minefield that is China.]

Haiku for the week

Cruelty unintended;

It seems a natural question - 

"What have you published?"

I dined in an Oxford college with my old friend The Egregious Dr P recently. I have done this several times over the years, but not for quite some time; and I had forgotten how demanding it is. I wouldn't call it an ordeal exactly, but it can be quite mentally and emotionally taxing. We don't often find ourselves in a situation where everyone is very bright, and where cleverness in conversation is the default position rather than an occasional option to be deployed tactically, and tactfully. I can keep up pretty well on history or psychology or the philosophy of mind or whatever it happens to be, but I do find a lurking sensitivity in myself to the fact that these chaps have all written books. You know, weighty academic tomes. I don't think I've ever aspired to such a thing myself, and yet I still feel oddly impressed or intimidated by it. (I did correct a footnote once, but I didn't get a credit for it.)

Haiku for the week

In childhood we cared:

Sport seemed noble, inspiring.

Now, an empty show.

I got quite excited about the Olympics as a kid, and watched avidly in '72 and '76. But the enthusiasm was already waning by the time I got into my teens, and the competition in '80 and '84 was compromised by boycotts (I approved of the Americans' stand over the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and was disappointed that Britain hadn't followed suit). I haven't given it much of a thought since then. I made the effort to take more of an interest when the Games were being held in Beijing four years ago, but the atmosphere then was rather subdued by an oppressive government and an almost complete absence of overseas visitors.

And, as I observed after the last Olympics, the event has now become ridiculously bloated, overhyped, over-commercialized, raddled with nationalism - completely divorced from the original ethos of the Games. It's supposed to be about the individual pursuit of excellence; I'm not even too keen on the relay events in running, and certainly wouldn't include any team games. I'd strip the event down to the a few core sports, closer to the original ancient Greek template: basically just the athletics, and maybe swimming; no team games, no adversarial games, nothing that requires apparatus (other than the long-established throwing sports), and nothing that requires subjective scoring (diving and gymnastics, though they are fascinating to watch, are not proper competitive sports). There might be a case for some of the combat sports (the Greeks had boxing and wrestling), though I would resist them on moral grounds (trying to hurt someone shouldn't really be a sport or a form of entertainment). There might be a case for cycling (not a very complex piece of apparatus; and I can imagine the Greeks very easily might have invented it in a slightly different universe); but it is a very boring event. No, athletics and swimming would be it for me. All over in a week. If only...

The Olympics have become a colossal bore. And, if you happen to be caught in the host country, the host city, a massive inconvenience.

Haiku for the week

Rules they won't tell you,

Questions that have no answers:

Kafka seeks a visa.

I always knew getting back into China was going to be tough. The knowledge has been of little avail in strengthening me to face the ordeal. 


This is a case where forewarned appears to be only pre-depressed.