Another day. Another run. The only window I had to go running today was at lunchtime, which also coincided with the sun coming out. Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something?
I’m not going to lie - running felt a lot more difficult today. I departed from “the programme” and repeated the long run from the weekend. Maybe I paid for it a little.
Perhaps I will slow things down a bit after all. Follow the plan. Let my body get used to running longer distances before launching into it. The good thing? My pace throughout was pretty good - the same kind of pace I used to run years ago.
I just need to stop pushing it.
Enough about that.
We’re off to the cinema this evening. “Asteroid City” is playing. I signed up for some kind of “membership” last week, which gives us a number of free tickets every month. It’s a Wes Anderson movie, if you know about such things - he made “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. I think you have to be in the right frame of mind to “get” his movies. The cast list is essentially a “who’s who” of anybody that’s anybody.
Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Steve Carrell, Tilda Swinton… the list goes on. I loved Scarlett Johansson in “Lost in Translation” - probably one of my favourite movies. In a strange sort of way I saw myself in her character - just sort of finding her own way in-between everybody else having a life.
While at the party at the weekend I ended up talking to a pretty stranger for some time. Huddled in the dark next to the fire pit as midnight approached, we explored subjects that only a bottle of wine and a stranger seem to unlock. We talked about fitting in, not fitting in, being on the outside looking in and all manner of other things. It was a moment, I suppose. We never even learned each other’s names. Eventually others joined us, and the conversation turned to “how is so-and-so still standing up?”, and “who’s your celebrity shag?”.
Marilyn got volunteered for me before I started to answer quite boringly that I made the mistake of reading about her life, and ended up caring too much to reduce her to a fictitious “you’re allowed, should the situation ever occur” card in my wallet.
While watching Elton John’s final performance at Glastonbury late on Sunday night he sang “Candle in the Wind”, backed by footage of her I’d never seen before. You could have heard a pin drop across the two hundred thousand people in the crowd. As a tear fell down my cheek, the camera cut to a huge guy with a thick beard in the middle of the army of sequin covered festival glitterati - tears streaming down his face.
I smiled and tried to hide from my daughter that I wasn’t far behind him.