Beware the old ladies at the bus stop. I first learned this as an unsuspecting 15 year and that long held knowledge may just have saved my life last week.
Summer 1984. The Los Angeles Olympics were in full swing, Prince was on the RSPCA's most wanted list and Mr Angry from Purley was racking up a fair old phone bill. Myself and a school mate spent a week lodging with my grandma in Walton on Thames, fishing the river every day and staying up late into the night to watch Zola Budd ensure the Americans didn't have it all their own way. We all know that summers past are always sunny but I have the photos to prove that this one was. Each day we would hitch our fishing kit (rods, reels, nets, seats, umbrellas, bait, tackle, lager and cigarettes... lots of it, you get the drift) onto our backs and trudge the mile or so from grandma's to the river. One day, maybe halfway through the week, we happened to be passing a bus stop at the same time as the local bus approached. It was at this point that we learned NEVER to get between a silver haired old lady and an approaching bus. In this instance there were probably twenty of them that surged towards the opening door of the bus at the exact moment we passed. Twenty eight and a half years later I can still remember the painful embarrassment we felt as we picked ourselves from the floor in time to see the bus speeding off into the distance with Hell's Granny's giving us the V's from the back seat.
I suspect that most of those dear old ladies have departed this earth, but their tradition lives on and I was nearly a victim a second time last week on a run through North End. Having been threatened and accosted by various tracksuited drunks as well as ridden off of the pavement by teenage yobesses on their Choppers (There are so many of them about that I swear a container destined for Raleigh HQ must have gone AWOL at Pompey dockyard at some point) I'm generally on my guard if my route takes me down London Road. Combine this with the knowledge of '84 and bloodshed was narrowly avoided outside Cash Converters as the bus for Southsea pulled in. Admittedly, dropping the right shoulder and diverting my course into a wall was painful but at least I stayed on my feet this time around.
Anyway, two weeks into my training plan and all is well. Nothing volume of distance wise that I haven't done before at this point but I'm back into the routine and, so far, have managed to stick to it. Last Monday did have a couple of notable firsts in that my run home from work was the first time I've ever run on back to back days and the first night run I've done. The small amount of foresight I had in bringing a rather pathetic LED handheld torch with me was probably offset by the fact that most of the running kit I own is black. It could just have been this combination that meant the speeding cyclist on a particularly dark section of the route didn't see me but as I dived for the bushes I could have sworn I saw the words "Bus Stop" on a sign beside the road.
Summer 1984. The Los Angeles Olympics were in full swing, Prince was on the RSPCA's most wanted list and Mr Angry from Purley was racking up a fair old phone bill. Myself and a school mate spent a week lodging with my grandma in Walton on Thames, fishing the river every day and staying up late into the night to watch Zola Budd ensure the Americans didn't have it all their own way. We all know that summers past are always sunny but I have the photos to prove that this one was. Each day we would hitch our fishing kit (rods, reels, nets, seats, umbrellas, bait, tackle, lager and cigarettes... lots of it, you get the drift) onto our backs and trudge the mile or so from grandma's to the river. One day, maybe halfway through the week, we happened to be passing a bus stop at the same time as the local bus approached. It was at this point that we learned NEVER to get between a silver haired old lady and an approaching bus. In this instance there were probably twenty of them that surged towards the opening door of the bus at the exact moment we passed. Twenty eight and a half years later I can still remember the painful embarrassment we felt as we picked ourselves from the floor in time to see the bus speeding off into the distance with Hell's Granny's giving us the V's from the back seat.
I suspect that most of those dear old ladies have departed this earth, but their tradition lives on and I was nearly a victim a second time last week on a run through North End. Having been threatened and accosted by various tracksuited drunks as well as ridden off of the pavement by teenage yobesses on their Choppers (There are so many of them about that I swear a container destined for Raleigh HQ must have gone AWOL at Pompey dockyard at some point) I'm generally on my guard if my route takes me down London Road. Combine this with the knowledge of '84 and bloodshed was narrowly avoided outside Cash Converters as the bus for Southsea pulled in. Admittedly, dropping the right shoulder and diverting my course into a wall was painful but at least I stayed on my feet this time around.
Anyway, two weeks into my training plan and all is well. Nothing volume of distance wise that I haven't done before at this point but I'm back into the routine and, so far, have managed to stick to it. Last Monday did have a couple of notable firsts in that my run home from work was the first time I've ever run on back to back days and the first night run I've done. The small amount of foresight I had in bringing a rather pathetic LED handheld torch with me was probably offset by the fact that most of the running kit I own is black. It could just have been this combination that meant the speeding cyclist on a particularly dark section of the route didn't see me but as I dived for the bushes I could have sworn I saw the words "Bus Stop" on a sign beside the road.
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