The passage that spoke to me was on page 171, where he compared his life as a 17 year old businessman to that of a writer.

The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure wether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing leave this particular author absolutely drained. (Dahl, p. 171)

He goes onto say,

The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does this to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it. (Dahl, p. 172)

The only freedom any of us have is the freedom to think, it’s the one place that ‘they’ – other people clustered into varying sizes of organisation – can’t get us. Sure, they will try, play a sport and you know that groups are naturally coercive; without norms a group can’t function. Writing’s hard because you have to go to funny places, have to touch on your emotions, which can be draining. It’s hard because it’s time consuming, and exacting, and is only any good when a mountain of energy has gone into it. It requires you to expose your ego to the thoughts of others; to expose things normally private, the mental equivalent of giving people bullets to fire and claiming boldly, ‘take your best shot’!

I think the only freedom writing really offers is freedom from convention. A man who studies the human race and all it’s peculiarities is liable to understand it and, if he’s lucky, he may suffer a smidgen less, or at least suffer on his own terms with whisky glass in hand, the burden of conformity a memory.

Maybe Boy’s big idea is that of personal freedom and its changing shape, from corner store to East Africa. We are free at each point, before awareness catches up. Boarding school freed Dahl of his family; Norway of England; whisky of his doubt. And so, with each new freedom, new awareness is never far behind, and with awareness comes piece of mind and a prison with different bars… the questions that Dahl proposes then, could be, what you going to do to get out? Do you want to get out?

Dahl, R. ((1986 [19824]) Boy, Penguin.

Fast forward about six or seven weeks and I was recovered, the training for this run just started. Every time I ran, my throat was sore. The next morning, I was fine. Then I had pain in my lungs. The next day, fine. I put it down to pollution, thinking I’d be alright. I also read that your fat cells stored toxins your liver can’t deal with, which is where beer bellies come from, and so I thought if the running was causing me to burn fat, I was bound to feel awful; there’s nothing good to be found in the fat that was six Amsterdam years in the making.

Last Saturday was a bit mad – 16km run, interviewed Ben Elton, and then in my post-run post-interview high drank two bottles of wine, ate a Madras, and watched License to Kill with Timothy Dalton. It all proved too much because that virus, which had being trying to re-infiltrate me, like the 16 year old me once tried to re-infiltrate Silhouette’s night club with a three pound bride to the bouncer – total wanker he was, actually – came bursting through my line of defence like a rubber cock flies out of a squeezy bull you buy in Spain. On Monday, I was wiped out.

I checked the internet and all the evidence was pointing to either 1) pulmonary pneumonia due to advance stages of the acquired immunity deficiency syndrome or 2) lung cancer. Since I always sleep with a virgin after I’ve shagged an AIDS ridden crack whore, it had to be cancer. The doctor said it was a virus, maybe the one from earlier in the summer. I said, fuck you, the internet’s never lied to me. She told me to take some rest. I restored my sense of world truth by going over Tony Blair’s memoir. Honestly, top bloke him, and anyone who wears a poppy, you can trust them, you really can, you know, the poppy wearers. Nobody could ever deny Blair was always right behind the troops. Four thousand fucking miles behind them.

I spoke to my mate at work and we decided I should take it easy. I managed to read Love is the Killer App and wrote a short note on it. Then I made bit of headway into Presence, which was interesting. I had to go to the hairdresser yesterday. My beard and hair were long, in the afternoon I had to attend a graduation ceremony, I said to the dude, do what you want. The hair is nice, the beard in the mode of a serial killer, Blackadder meets Peter Sutcliffe. On the way home and I found Naipal’s – he won the Nobel prize for literature, I’ve never heard of him – A Writer’s People, which is a memoir about seeing things as a writer. I also found a load of Roald Dahl’s books in the bargain basement. I bought six, for presents. I am going to read Boy today.

Long one short. I have done no running this week. I get the feeling when I run again, well, it’s going to hurt. Going to hurt even more than when I realised Happy Days was made in the 80s and set in the 50s. Hurt more than that time I beat my nephew for his own good. Hurt more than when I first inhaled a Regal.

In 140 Characters
4 th rdo shw we hve a ftre tuesdy tries & i sd lts do a hlf-mrthn, I sd ny cnt cn rn a hlf-mrthn ts a pce of pss. Nw we r trng & tryng 2 gt ft & rn am*dam mrthn in oct.

Radio Show
Simon, as you know already, the English Breakfast Radio show was started by Andy Meredith and a rag-tag bunch of volunteers some five years ago. I am not 100% sure what his goals were, but to me the show was always about connecting the expatriated community to the Dutch one and vice versa. A pet hate of mine is moaning ex-pats, and in fact Mike Berry, of the Friday show, has a nice feature called ‘Angry Ex-Pat’, which is a satirical take on moaning foreigners. The show is, then, at the very least, a way for optimistic ex-pats to counter balance all the moaning fucks. A noble goal, I hope you’d agree.

The show grew from one broadcast on Friday to a show each morning. Recently, it started broadcasting in The Hague as well as in Amsterdam. And this year we started broadcasting during Friday’s drive-time (17-19). For the last year, I’ve been helping out on the Tuesday morning show. The Tuesday crew have a feature, ‘Tuesday Tries’, where one of the hosts has to do something like speed dating or get a pipe put in their bottom. Mark had the idea that we could run the dam-2-dam, a 16km annual race between Amsterdam and Zaandam. That was going be our Tuesday Try. Mark organised a Dutch trainer, who came onto the show, and off we went. Unfortunately, it turned out I’d double booked myself and am on holiday that week. So, not wanting to renegade on the deal, I said I’d run the half-marathon.

The Training Story So Far
The training, to begin with, was simple enough. We had to run, three times a week, for 20 minutes, followed by a 1 minute rest, followed by another 20 minutes. On a Tuesday, straight after the show, we do gym work, to strengthen and stretch our muscles and tendons.

Although I’ve done a bit of moaning – and I dare say it was justified, I have spent a lot of time in pain or with toxins flowing through my body – we’ve slowly made progress. The second week was 25-1-25 + gym work. The third week, last week, was 30-1-30, in which time we covered about 11km, which has a marked improvement on the first week. My mate, Willem, you know him from touch, said something like this, ‘boet, you’ve got to do one long run a week’. With this in mind, Mark and I decided to take the train out to Schiphol and run back. Unfortunately, he’s pulled a muscle in his arse, and I had to do it yesterday on my own. I couldn’t believe how long it took me to get away from the airport… it was just there, constantly. I’d ran for 30-60 minutes just to get around the perimeter. For the last 50 minutes, I was just making sure I put one foot in front of the other. I stopped briefly to stretch, but I did it, chopping 16kms, about 10 miles, in 1hr 50.

The Two Hour Goal
In the beginning, I just wanted to get round the race, that would have been an achievement. But, as we’ve moved on, and we are seeing what we might be capable of, I’d really like to do the race in under 2 hours. I’ve spoken to my father twice about the race. The first time I heard him draw breath, which means he’s stopped listening and is awaiting a break in my voice in order to air what’s in his brain. He said, ‘you can’t run, you run like a giraffe’. The second time we spoke, he said, ‘I did it when I was 40, without training’. He did it, he thinks, in 1:59. Obviously, I am not having the 40 year old version of my father beating the 34 year old version of me. No way Jose (Gonzalez).

Yesterday was a landmark because I wanted to know if could keep going for about 2 hours. Now my training will be simple, to keep going for 2 but covering more distance as I get towards the 22km mark.

Why?
When my brother was at school he climbed up the curtains during registration, I don’t know why. The teacher asked him to get down. The next time she looked up from the register he was up there again, hanging from the top rail. It’s a famous story, that teacher told it all the time. It seemed to me, when we did things wrong, the teachers would ask, why did you do that? And I think our answer, maybe implicitly, was, why not?

I think Mark and I are quite experiential, I think we just wanted to see if we could do it, to see how our bodies would respond.

Why Blog?
As a writer, I have, over the last few years, come to despise blogs. They are the most restrictive form of writing I can imagine, and they make me think that being a journalist is the shittest job on the planet.

As a writer, there is something deeply satisfying about crafting a piece of text, essay, or novel. Keeping a lid on your creative tin is like masturbating – you get to come when you want. The problem with blogs is that they blow the creative load too early. Writers tend to forget what they’ve written and shared – which is why I think writer’s workshops are to be avoided, too – and so blogging is a stupid practice if you are a serious writer. (The biggest mistake I made, as a fledgling writer, was to share my projects with other people.)

Secondly, blogs are usually badly written. They do not give a writer a chance to showcase their talent. What people care about, people, relations, etc, cannot be explored deeply in a blog. For those who try – I’ve tried – the result is clumbsy and hurtful. We write fiction in order to protect others but also ourselves. Blogs lend themselves to a cathartic release, but that’s the most indulgent form of writing, and that’s the reason why diaries are private. And so, that’s the pickle: the juiciest stuff is the stuff we can’t talk about.

However, with all that said, this running thing, with the radio, is already in the public domain. Therefore, this blog is a way to accompany the show, is a way for those who are interested in our progress to keep up. I suppose it’s scientific too, a place for us to record times, progress, pictures, etc.

I was cruising through my second lap of the Vondelpark when something changed in my lower right back, just a touch above my bum near the middle. I walked for a while and tried to pick up the pace again, now I was starting to register pain.

I stopped and tried some stretches, got up and things felt better, ran for another 500m or so and there it was again. Not quite painful, but definitely not good. I walked home and tried some more stretches, no good.

This morning I had to roll out of bed. Tomorrow we were planning to take the train to Schiphol and then run back. Like I said, oh fuck..

HOW

IS

THIS

POSSIBLE?

It was an accident. I’ve never, ever, looked at the nutritional value of crisps. How do they pack such goodness into such a small amount of space? And why are you still hungry afterward? What kind of world are we living in? I am drunk. Cuba.

In years of getting shit done, I’ve learned that you must surround yourself with inspiration. Read, watch, sing. With this in mind, I am off to watch the ultimate story of not giving up. I am off to watch the Expendables. Sly, you are the man.

My friends Hamish and Norma are in town from New Zealand. This trip back is their honeymoon. They arrived on Friday, which was my birthday. My day started with a nutty existential dream. I was at Gatwick with my friend James, I hushed him because I suspected one of my exes would be making the trip back from London. This shushing – so my actions – drew everyone’s attention to us, including the girl I was trying to avoid. Thing is, she was really happy to see me and, therefore, must have forgiven me and herself, what is more commonly called ‘getting over’ someone. The next thing I knew a plane was crashing, and I had to get my camera, this time I was with a different ex and we were like team mates, like Face and Murdock, and, as before, we were pally, the double forgiveness complete. The day before I had seen a third ex in the park, when I was running. Taken together, it was like that movie, The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

What I put it down to, then, was that your birthday’s a significant memory anchor. I can remember the yellow doughnut my mum bought me to float in the sea at Bridlington. I remember the curb at the front of the Anne Frank house where I spewed on my thirtieth. I remember not getting sung ‘happy birthday’ at assembly at Endsleigh primary school because my birthday was always in the holidays.

The dream woke me up with a start at 5:30 and I thought, fucking hell, I am thirty four. A few hours later, we were at a spa near Amsterdam’s ‘bos’ (forrest). The central pool, which was half inside and half outside, was surrounded by saunas, deck chairs, whirlpools, and mother and daughter combos. That seems to be a thing Dutch women like to do, hang out with their mums at the spa. Seeing mother and daughter combos in the nude is like a real life before and after experiment. Some men had fully shaven private parts, others were like giant bears. All the young women were properly preened, the over fourties seemed to care less. Which, is interesting, because I cared much less about my own appearance – the appearance of my willy, at least – around them but became a gibbering idiot when any girls in my age bracket were around. I remember seeing a documentary about Oliver Reed. In Women In Love he had to wrestle, in the nude, Alan Bates. Apparently, before the camera was on, they both pulled their penises to bring a bit of life to them. I felt like that at the spa, felt the need to nudge my tadger into life. The good thing about penis-self-consciousness is that it takes your mind off your fat-belly-self-consciousness, which can only be a good thing.

The spa worked, though, because we were fully relaxed by the time the evening came around. Andrea had arranged a surprise drink on a posh boat for me. Hamish and Norma and some my other dearest friends made it. We got through a load of Marlboros and Coronas and Tequila and Havana, our drinks having a South American feel. The next day, we went to the park and did it all again. I was rough today. But, rules is rules, and I had to run. After Sunday lunch I stuck my backpack on, put my wallet, keys, phone and Shipler’s The Working Poor: Invisible in America in, and off I went. The first 30 minutes were uncomfortable. My belly ached, I needed to be sick. My lower back was not in pain, but it throbbed like a decaying tooth might. As I got closer to the library, the promise of getting The Last Boy Scout keeping me going, I picked up the pace a little, running with a bit more confidence. I rounded some road works, some tourists, I zig-zagged the lights at the top of the Damrak. Up the Prins Hendrikkade and stop. Bag off. Stop on stop watch. 35 minutes. I was gutted. I have to run for at least an hour. I went in, had to settle for the Last of the Mohicans, and turned the fuck around and reluctantly got cracking. Coming home, I went behind the canals and through the Westerpark, running in parallel with the train lines that bring so many grateful tourists from Schiphol into town. The park surrounding the track narrowed, leaving me with reeds and wetlands and Tampon wearing roller-bladers. I tried to be mindful, but my back was heaving and keeping my head up was tiring. I came out of the track into an office complex, crossed the car park, and hit the Bos en Lomerweg. This was my final stretch. I should have had the runner’s high. Should have had a spring in my step. But, all I was left with was aching legs and a sick stomach, the Havana swishing like water on the deck of a rowing boat. Up, and down, and swish, and swoosh, and grumble.

I ran for 1:16. I covered just over 12 kms, about 7 and a half miles. According to the internet, that’s 1000 calories. Which is 6 beers, or 10 rums. To burn a kilogram of fat, that’s about two pounds, I’d need to not drink at all and do the same distance run as today 7 times. To get to a healthy running weight I need to lose about 6 kilos. In other words, if I don’t change my diet, don’t drink, and do this run 42 more times, I will hit my target weight. This is no good, I need a montage.

This morning a friend texted me, asked how I was, I replied, ‘It’s my birthday on fri. 34, achieved nothing, I am a right cunt me’. Funny thing is, I am not in that bad of a mood. But, what I am in, is a sort of, wow-this-running-and-being-fit-thing-is-really-quite-hard mood. I have a new found respect for people who run marathons and triathlons.

On Tuesday we had our gym session. The next day, as I think I could have predicted, I was half sick, full of toxins, and my chest was heaving, like, well, like I was getting sick. Any-woo-hoo, it turns out that I am: 96kg, which is 15st 1lb, I have a Body Mass Index of 26 and am a full 29.9% fat. If you wrapped me up in cling film and sold me in Tesco, I’d have a health warning on me. I’d be 25% saturated fats, 4% the other fats no one cares about. Per serving you’d get 40g of sugars, 2g of protein and 40g of hair. I’d basically be a bucket of deep fried chicken.

With all this in mind – all the pain, all the belly fat, all the aches-and-fooking-pains, all the optimism – you might be surprised to hear, I was surprised to do it, that Mark and I just chopped 10 kilometres, about 6 miles, in the park this morning. On the last leg, we were pretty battered, and we chit-chatted that the race would be more than double what we just did. Yet… yet. Last week we could barely drag ourselves around for a couple of laps. Does this mean next week we’ll be doing four? A voice in me says, ‘do you know what, we could’. Then a moment later, another voice says, don’t you think you should do some work, twat? And I think, yes, I probably should.

*

Mark runs a music label. A small one. He uses the Jerry Maguire model; you get him, not a machine. Mark and I both run small businesses. Since success is relative, it’s hard to say how we are doing. We are not rich, we wish, we are both poorer than when we clocked on. But, we change things. Him the music scene in Amsterdam, me the software scene. These changes may be small, again depending on your view point, but they are changes nonetheless. I think, for both of us, this started in childhood. Two or three miles north of Endike Lane is the Ghost Estate. The houses are little boxes, semi-detached, with drives and posh cars; X-reg Fiestas and the odd Grenada. I wanted a red Ford Cortina, a good job, a foreman or summut, and one of them modern houses. Somehow, I think it was the confidence of the kids at school and the way their parents looked like they would never apologise, I equated that lifestyle to happiness, to stability, to an end-goal that was worth aspiring too. (Ironically, my mother thought the same, moving from little Beverley Road to the little private houses that form the periphery of North Hull. Somehow we want to do just a little bit better than our parents. For council estate kids, these ambitions rarely lie beyond the suburbs). The source of this aspiration, I think, starts with a feeling in your belly that says, this isn’t quite right. That’s how you end up running a music lable when you are 28. I think it goes like this. I am not thick or weak, yet so-and-so lives in a posh house on the Ghost estate. You aspire to that, work hard, achieve it, and boom, the voice comes. This is not quite right. I am not thick or weak, yet so-and-so runs the factory. You aspire to that, and boom, the little voices comes. Every progression pushes us towards a level of freedom our parents only dreamed of. The freedom to travel, the freedom to be the boss, etc. And yet, you lose freedoms. What was acceptable as a child, to punch or kick as a form of self-defence, is not allowed. Society equalises us as adults, dealing equally with the viscous and the strong. What we are left with then, the people who run things, are those who are extremely good at navigating a given set of rules. That’s why lawyers make all the money and artists starve. (Hatred of lawyers is always really misdirected hatred – it’s the system that’s shit.) The law restricts freedom; ideas pushed on us, like monogamy, restricts freedom; responsibility restricts freedom. Some of my mates back home could have spent all day in the pub on Saturday, I had to work. When I go on holiday, it’s usually for three months. Here in western Europe, I think we all have the same amount of freedom, it’s just that what it looks like changes from person to person. I think this is the source of social jealousy. The grass really is greener. But, you can’t go to the pub every Saturday and write your new business plan.  You can’t be happily married with children and rake around like you were 18.

You can’t go to the pub to watch a band you are trying to sign, get battered – that’s an occupational hazard – and then meet me the next morning for your training run.

A House On The Ghost Estate
This is how I remember Hull, with huge skys and puffy clouds and lots of space.