Jamie Dobson

About ten or twelve weeks ago, I was sick. It was what my mum would call a baddy. I got a sickly feeling, muscle pain, and soreness through my testicles – I hate the testicle ache. I thought, hurry up then, but there is no rushing these viruses and it took a full week for me to become feverish. At one point, my muscles where so cramped up that I played a light game of touch in the hope it would unstick me.

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.