the brighton marathon

It was the first Brighton Marathon yesterday and the whole city has been just fizzing with it. Everywhere you went, every cafe, every shop, there was always a comment.

"You doing the marathon?" the man in the newsagents asks when I come in red and puffy, after my three-mile run. "Twenty-six miles!" we exclaim together "Imagine that.. "

"She's doing the marathon!" the man in the vegetable shop announces about me to another customer, with great hilarity as if nothing could be less probable. I can see his point, and all the more so the next day when we actually do go and watch the Marathon as it passes along the seafront.

Up at the front it's all men, just one or two women running fast ahead with the fastest of the fast runners. After fourteen miles, some of these people don't seem to even have broken sweat and it feels superfluous to cheer them.

I walk across the lawns to see the first few runners on their last mile. I watch one bloke, he's maybe fourth or fifth, still really running, just pounding along the seafront, a space all around him. There aren't any other runners visible in front of him or behind him.

People are applauding him but I don't think he hears: he's just running, running with the sea and the sky around him, solid and straight and the way he looks, I imagine he will just keep on going, running past the final post, past the pier, the beaches, the marina, just running on forever and ever.

the repercussions of volcanic ash

surprising, isn't it?

How much we all depend on air travel now....Practically everyone I work with today, and have worked with over the last ten years, is stuck somewhere in North America following the big Las Vegas trade-show that I was frankly a bit disappointed not to be invited to this year. I'm laughing a little bit inside, because Las Vegas is such a strange and weird place and for some people it's heaven (bars, booze, gambling, women.. ).

For me it was always a strange and crazy place; there was the endless dryness in the air (it's a desert, after all); the blinding heat in the afternoons when you came out of the trade show; the fierce air-conditioning everywhere so you were always either too cold inside or too hot outside and in any case, shoes always hurting after walking miles and miles on nylon carpet. There was the disorientating jet-lag for all of us Europeans, so we'd all be bright and wide awake at 3am and then exhausted all day. There were the wild nights of course, where groups of people who were definitely old enough to know better - and I most definitely include myself in these groups, and most definitely should have known better - would go out on the town, clubbing and drinking and feeling just for an evening that we were young and free and energetic again.

I remember too the Ethiopian taxi drivers, Las Vegas their first stop after Ethiopia, deep black skin and always friendly to me, and I would wonder what they saw when they arrived in Las Vegas, what struck them. Of course, there would be the fatness of the people; there would be the lavish amounts of food everywhere. And I guess too, there would be the emptiness of the interstitial streets, places between places where nobody walks, nobody lives, where there's nothing at all.

If I was there now though, after five days of weirdness and trade-show and wild nights and early mornings, I'd be so sad and depressed and no amount of vodka, no conversations with strangers, nothing would be enough to compensate for the overwhelming homesickness that comes and hits you at the end of the stay there. I'd be howling at the volcanic ash..

we started too early with the champagne...

---and now I'm spending Easter Sunday hazy headachy and hungover.

There was the champagne at home, then the wine with dinner, then the cocktails after dinner and then - back at home - the wine after the cocktails after dinner and after all need or desire for more alcohol had in fact gone but by that point we seemed to have got into the habit of it.

At one point there was a lively and vigorous discussion about Skype's business model with three of us insisting that it was a complete mystery how Skype could ever make money and the fourth saying, with great conviction "There'll be a way, there always is".

I wanted to quote from some book I haven't even read yet. I wanted to talk about this guy who says there are two problems with society: the culture of potential which is what makes us worship the young & youth and inexperience and makes middle-aged men dress like their sons, and the culture of entitlement which is what makes people think that they really ought to be a star even though they don't have any talent and in any case have never tried especially hard at anything.

This concept seemed so brilliant and I started to share it with my friends but half way through I forgot what I was saying and lost the culture of entitlement and the conversation swooshed along without me.