RUNNING COMMENTARY

At the risk of sounding like another sort of blogger altogether, I am compelled to confess that last night I consummated an exhilarating new relationship.  When I add that the other party was not human, please don't switch off, as it, or they, were infact my new running shoes, which kindly took me for their maiden jog yesterday.

The feeling of freedom and lightness (not easily achieved by someone with a chronic fondness for empty calories) engendered by my brand new Saucony Jazz footwear reminded me of a story by a writer on whom I cut my reading teeth, namely, respectively, The Sound of Summer Running, by Ray Bradbury.  The story, available in The Bradbury Stories, describes the desire of a young boy for a new pair of tennis shoes and is typical of the author's brilliant poetic style and his ability to evoke the mysterious and sometimes dark wonder of childhood.

Sport has of course been the inspiration for much fine writing, viz Hemingway with various manly pursuits, Alan Sillitoe and cross country running, Richard Ford, etc.  In May Capuchin is publishing a very worthy member of this group, namely Cashel Byron's Profession, in which after pole-axing his mathematics master with a perefect right, the eponymous hero, the unloved son of a successful actress, runs away to Australia, returning to become the most famous fighter of the age, only to be floored by the lovely and impossible Lydia Carew.

I can't wait for our second date.

David

Quotation of the day:

"My writing is nothing, my boxing is everything." Ernest Hemingway