Doesn't look very World Cuppy to me
Sporty things mostly
A flimsy one this week as it turns out trying to write a book and train to run 42 miles is exhausting. Last night was my club’s — North Leeds Fell Runners — race, the Kettlewell Anniversary race. Someone once told me what the anniversary was of, but I have forgotten. As to why a club in North Leeds hosts a race a 95-minute drive away (if you’re lucky) in a remote village in the Yorkshire Dales, well, dunno that either. It is though a beautiful village in a beautiful setting. I’d arranged to do a 12-mile-ish training run with Liz in the early afternoon, so we set off on the race route, me using poles for the first time and finding them really bloody weird. Also, my god, what a start to a race: 1000 feet straight up, and at least three blind summits. It was a warm afternoon, and a delight to be running along the ridge, along the Great Wall of Kettlewell. We got back to the cars, changed, headed to the village hall for registration then within 15 minutes or so had to set off again, because we each had a marshalling post at the farthest section of the route. I set off in my dry clothes, up another 1000 feet and two and a half miles, and by the time I reached the gate I was stationed at, I was soaked with sweat, and it was blowing a fierce breeze, and my sweat chilled and I only slightly warmed up when I put on a hoodie and a puffa jacket and drank a flask of ginger tea. Why does that matter? Because at race registration the race organizer had blithely told everyone that no kit was required because it was a warm summer’s evening.
So here is a hypothetical scenario. A runner coming towards me who has just climbed for about half an hour, and has tired legs, and is running over rocky tricky terrain, trips and falls. She twists or breaks her ankle. She can’t run. She is carrying no kit because none was asked for, but she is wet with sweat from the climb. What does she do? She gets extremely cold very quickly, and it’s a two and a half mile walk back to the finish, or she has to wait hours for Mountain Rescue. I had a space blanket and emergency bivvy shelter in my pack, and I would of course have given them to her, but that’s not my job. It’s odd how hard it is to convey to experienced runners the wisdom of foresight. Just carry a bloody jacket.
Here is what it looked like from my marshal post. Glorious. Sound on though.
Update from North Yorkshire County Council, about how a trod can be a road.
So I did as he suggested and checked on the map:
The thick green line is an unclassified road; the thinner green line is a path. Those motorcyclists were on the path. I have no means of telling them or reporting them or getting any other satisfaction other than YOU WERE WRONG. YOU LIED.
Reading corner
I once wrote to the columnist Gene Weingarten, because he had written a column about publicists and the nonsense they peddle, and it was the funniest thing I’d read and I still think it was genius. He wrote back, and I am forever grateful that he bothered to write to a 23-year-old fan in an office in Paris working for a magazine he’d never heard of. I didn’t know that Gene could also write pieces like this one, which Helen Lewis had in her Bluestocking this week. Astonishing.
This marvellous woman, Yvette Yaa Konadu Tetteh, swam down Ghana’s Volta River for 40 days to highlight how many microfibres are in it, from all the used clothing that the rich world sends to the poor world, thinking it is doing good, but it is not.
A piece by me, a rare occurrence. This one has taken a long time to edit: three months for a 1000-word book review. That’s new. Anyway here I am writing about how period positivity doesn’t mean much if science about women’s bodies is still drastically behind, which it is (see copious laments from me about the mysteries of my menopausal body).
Animal hero of the week: Pickles
It’s 1966. It’s the year that England will win the World Cup. The World Cup is actually the Jules Rimet trophy, named for a French FIFA bureaucrat, and four months before the World Cup tournament began, the hosts Britain — actually the FA — put it on display in a glass cabinet in Westminster Hall, alongside £3 million worth of stamps.
And someone nicked it.
Remarkably, the FA didn’t seem to think it was their fault. Instead, they blamed
a suspicious-looking man […] seen in the building at the time of the theft. He is described as being in his early 30s, of average height with thin lips, greased black hair and a possible scar on his face.
A possible scar.
It was all very confusing. Dr. Martin Atherton, who wrote a whole book about the theft — called, pleasingly, The Theft of the Jules Rimet Trophy — pointed to the difficulty faced by police.
"There were two separate descriptions of two clearly different people - a tall person and a short person," said Atherton.
A tall person and a short person! What were the police to do?
Never mind! Here comes Pickles.
On Sunday, 27 March, Dave Corbett took his mixed-breed collie, Pickles, for a walk in Norwood, south London.
From the BBC:
"Pickles was running around over by my neighbour's car," explained Corbett.
"As I was putting the lead on I noticed this package laying there, wrapped just in newspaper but very tightly bound with string.
"I tore a bit off the bottom and there was a blank shield, then there were the words Brazil, West Germany and Uruguay printed.
"I tore off the other end and it was a lady holding a very shallow dish above her head. I'd seen the pictures of the World Cup in the papers and on TV so my heart started thumping."
Corbett went to his local police station to present the trophy and was initially met with disbelief.
"I slammed it on the desk in front of the sergeant and said 'I think I have found the World Cup'.
"I remember his words: 'Doesn't look very World Cuppy to me, son'.
Pickles became famous. He was awarded a medal by the National Canine Defence League, the TV loved him, he starred in a film with Eric Sykes called The Spy with a Cold Nose, and he was Italian Dog of the Year.
Four months later, when England beat Germany 4-2 after extra time, Corbett and Pickles were invited to a dinner to celebrate with the team.
"We went into the hotel with all these celebrities and Pickles walked over to the lift shaft and did a wee.”
We love you, Pickles.