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stopped racing around, I
could feel the air had the slicing chill of a cloudless October night.
    Some of my friends don't like living
alone. It's what they're doing until they no longer have to. But I do. I like
the feeling I get when I close the door behind me and go upstairs and
everything's quiet and waiting. I don't need anybody's permission to lie in a
bath for two hours or go to bed at half past eight or listen to music late into
the night, or pour myself a glass of wine and watch a trashy quiz show. I even
like eating alone, though I'm not like Troy. I have a very limited and conservative
repertoire. Sometimes I eat the same thing several nights a week — for a bit it
was scrambled eggs on very buttery brown toast. Then it was Greek salad, which
I've perfected: not just tomatoes and cucumber and feta cheese, but avocado,
fennel and sun-dried tomatoes as well. And there were a few weeks when I would
add a tin of octopus chunks to a bowl of tinned chickpeas. I went off that one
quite quickly. When friends come round I either cook chicken breasts with
garlic, rosemary and olive oil — you just have to put it in the oven and wait
for half an hour — or we get a takeaway. Usually it's a takeaway.
    Maybe one of the reasons that Brendan had
got on my nerves when we were going out was that he had so quickly made himself
at home in my flat. As if it were his home too. But I told myself not to think
of Brendan any more. Things were going to be different now.
     
     
    At a shop called Run Run Run in Camden
High Street, I bought a rather lovely silky blue singlet, a pair of white
shorts, black suede shoes and a book called Run for Your Life, It
was written by a man called Jan who appeared on the back of the book wearing a
headband, like a member of Duran Duran. Then I went to the off-licence and
bought a bottle of white wine, cold from the fridge. Nothing that was so
transparent could possibly contain a significant number of calories. And I
bought a packet of expensive crisps that the packet said had been fried in an
especially healthy kind of sunflower oil. I fastened the chain on the inside of
my door and lay in the bath with a bowl of the crisps and a glass of the wine
and read my running book. It was very comforting. The first chapter seemed to
be aimed at people who were even less fit than I was. It suggested starting
your running schedule with a brisk walk for ten minutes and then running very
gently for a hundred yards, followed by another ten-minute walk. It said that
the training runner should never get seriously out of breath. At the first sign
of any kind of discomfort, just stop. The fatal thing was just to set off and
go for a run. 'Better to start too slowly and build up,' said a piece of text
in italics, 'than start too quickly and give up.' That sounded fine to me. I
flicked through a few pages. It looked like I could skip a few stages and still
avoid breaking into a sweat.
    The writer recommended the aspiring runner
to think of all the exercise they do in the course of their normal working
life. According to him, even getting up from your desk to go to the water
cooler counted for something. I did far more than that. I carried ladders and
planks around. I painted ceilings while holding myself at contorted angles. I
held cans of paint for minutes at a time. This was going to be a doddle. I set
my alarm clock half an hour earlier than usual, and the following morning I
ventured out in my new singlet, shorts and shoes. I rather wished I had bought
a mask as well. I walked for five minutes. No problem. I ran hard for about a
hundred yards and then the pain began, so I followed Jan's advice and stopped.
I walked for a few minutes more and then started to run again. The pain began
more quickly this time. My body had started to realize what was being done to
it. I slowed down to a walk again and headed for home. Jan said the important
thing in the early stages was to avoid causing sprains or pulled muscles