The Ego of Finn

New Zealand 2006
Once upon a time, I woke up at 5am.  Got dressed and quietly let myself out to walk under brilliant stars and sodium arcs.  The rest of North Island slept with the exception of the wild dogs that silently roamed alongside me.

I walked with them, not really seeing them, not really listening to their langauge as I quickened the pace and began to jog.  They joined in, half heartedly, then went off to investiage some day-glo scent that still lingered under that cold night. 

I jogged, then ran, found the beach and the sand, ran barefoot with the moon at my back and the thunderous applause of the ocean to my left. 

Ran faster, sand biting into each footfall, heart thudding , blood alive with some wildness reserved for 5am runners.

Cornwall 2008
Once more upon a time I woke up at 5am.  My brother slept next to me in the ice cold tent, snored and grumbled like some drunken animal, butt naked and somehow restrained and entwined by his sleeping bag.  I got up quietly, tiptoed out and shut the tent flap.  The rest of the campsite sat still in dew.  Random rabbits patrolled the alleyways and streets our tents had created, yellowing squares that would remain after we'd left.  From inside each tent came the nasal, contented snores of kind hearted strangers who had eaten, drank and laughed together.

I walked past the tents, past the cabins past the receptions, the shops, the streetlamps, the trees, the river, all traces of civilisation, until I was knee deep in salt water. 
The tide was in, and always would be for the likes of me.  I was the first one awake. I was the last one alive.  My footprints were the only ones that scarred the cold wet sand from town to water's edge. 
I walked, I ran, I climbed over rocks and crawled into tunnels.  Stood under giant walls of granite, laced and bleeding with prehistoric copper, listened to schools of mussels gasp in their tidal absolutions, jet black hands pressed together in prayer.  Lichen and moss hung like garlands, celebrating my arrival, like some inspecting stranger.  Walking on, past the cove and its rocks, hip deep, trainers tied together and hung around my shoulders, then on to some forgotten corner where a lamb had fallen into the sea, drowned and washed up, it's eyes thankfully closed  Seemingly asleep.

I went back, this time the water chest high, trainers wet, regardless of where I had tied them.  My back to the sea, the dawn, the cold air cut into ribbons by sharp rocks.  Went back to sleep and eat, to shower and shave, to talk and laugh, to seek out and avoid.  And all the time, a corner of the world held a lamb that looked like it slept.

And at some point the sea would reclaim it and whatever industry of consumption toiled within its pure white wool would go out again, burning in salt as the Vikings had burned in fire.

With steel cold waves rushing onto and through the shoals of pebbles, she sat down on what remained of the grass and looked out over the water.  It stretched away to the horizon, one that for me had always held hope.  I don't know what she said, what she saw, how long she stood there looking across the sea, only what she did.

My mind’s eye won’t let me see what happens next, it pans up to the grey steel sky which looked down with cold indifference at that unspeakable act.

I don't remember the months that followed.  The world within me grew like some physiological defence, taking me in, alternatively shielding and exposing me to what had happened. Life and death had never been so close, so interchangable. 

Even now, when I am alone, silent spaces fill with the metallic tang of the sea, the sound of waves rushing through cold, lifeless stones and cover me in an indifferent sky.  I think of her, what she would be if she hadn't been lost.

Jolted and displaced, I ran away, reduced my life to a backpack and roamed towards the horizon, still naively sure that whatever hope had been buried behind me, would be waiting for me ahead. 

I walked, I ran, I flew and sailed.  My feet cut the earth of mountain tops , I stood knee length in tidal drifts staring up at an upside down moon, I sat on the edge of Icelandic cliffs, staring out over jet black seas or braced in valleys with a branch in my hand fending off wild dogs. 

And in each of those times, when I was truly alone, with no one but God to answer to, I said her name out loud. 

Now and then I would see her getting onto a bus, going into a store.  If I fell asleep on a bus, she would be sitting next to me, and without opening my eyes I would know.  Without substance or pain, without judgement or guilt, without language.

There is Hope. I want to tell her.  There is Hope.  Her name, my words, still linger and vibrate in every place I’ve said it.  In case she ever returned, I would point to them, to prove that there was Hope and that they all pointed to the Horizon. 

Horizon

Everyone did really well on Sunday, I thought a combination of heavy
rains, hailstones and terror would have scared the team off but people
still turned up albeit wearing three to four layers each. I don't really
think they knew what to expect and there were a few shocked faces when
I started screaming and pointing in my army training uniform.
The warmup got rid of those extra layers quick enough but I had to
punish everyone for one person not tying their shoelaces properly.  The
team had a bit of a sadistic streak I didn't see coming and three more
people confessed to having to retie their laces ending up in about 20 to
30 pressups whilst people stopped (rested) to tie their shoelaces whilst
everyone else sweated and swore around them.
One thing that really impressed me was that no
one cried off or stopped outright, everyone put in 100% effort, no one
gave up and no one let the team down.  If they can keep to that level of
commitment and intensity throughout their training for the 10k they'll be making leaps
and bounds.  I was expecting excuses and pussying out but
everyone made a fantastic commitment to the session.

A few team games later people were barking order at each other, and I
just smiled and watched the ordered chaos as people screamed directions, stop-go
commands and encouragement to ensure a winning time.

Great work, impressive effort and a great photofinish.

Next week, cage fighting.

DSC00619

Yesterday my mate and I went to the local council offices to give free health checks.  Office workers filtered into the canteen, saw us on one side and the chip tray on the other, were momentarily torn and went for the chips.

Height, weight, bmi, body fat%, peak flow, bp, relative HR, the works. Those brave souls that ventured across to us seemed very nice but more part of the building itself then actual people with lives outside.  I think its like talking to prisoners defined by their walls.

Most of them came in alone, carrying files and folders with both arms, sat with work and ate whilst reading reports or looking over forms, dropping chips and salad onto their laps.

As we set up one of the dinner ladies rushed over and admonished us loudly that we weren't to take two tables as there wouldnt be enough space for everyone to sit and eat (the canteen never got halfway full).
I nodded and smiled and did my Ender thing to placate her and took a third table when she stormed back to her till/perch, satisfied her version of pissing on our legs was done.

What bugged me the most about yesterday though, and why I'm writing this now is 'Clive'. Clive had to get through the door sideways, a giant zepplin of a primark shirt slowly thundering towards us.

Just sitting there and asking him to answer simple questions made him sweat.  Asking him to take his shoes and socks off make him gasp and wheeze.  Clive had had a lower back operation 18 months ago and since then the weight just piled on. He got a 240 on his peak flow reading, his bp was 190/110. We had to take it twice because we thought the monitor was wrong.

'It isn't lads. Doctor's always told me I had high blood pressure!' he explained cheerfully, smiling unabasedly at ur faces of horror.

I asked him about his diet ('Oh my diet's fine, I eat realy good stuff, just too much of it!") and then measured his bf%.

'Please treat results with caution' the machine beeped.  Shit, I didn;t even know it could say that.

It flashed twice before revealing a body fat percentage of 55.2%

In my head a dozen Finns gasped that more than half of him was fat. I sat down next to him, give him as many free passes as I could and prepared to tell him "You're going to die within a year."

Would he freak out?  Get angry? Punch me?  Cry?  Nod and smile? 

I couldn't. Looking back, shock tactics like that might have worked, might have offended him. Instead I just stressed to him to get to the gym tomorrow, today, tonight. Hell, I would have driven him myself if he could fit in a car. I would have called him every day like I do with my pt clinets to check if he was eating right and exercising and cutting out the shit.

Basically I wanted to slap him, hard,  across his flabby jowls and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing.

I've got his number on my file. i'm going to call him today.

He scared the shit out of both of us. Like speakng to a ghost or a man on deathrow, days before his execution.  An execution he thought was miles away.  

I have memories close at hand, to help and hurt me.  To cut and heal. To force me to rest or push me to fight;

Sitting on the edge of the bed reading and looking up at her, arms slung overhead and snoring like an enraged baboon and still
devastatingly beautiful

With my brother, backpacks slung over each shoulder

Feet smashing through the curling leaves.

He says something funny

The other laughs and punches him on the shoulder then hugs me

Waking up at four am, philotic connections, like golden wires to my family still asleep spreading out in front of me

Being able to be thankful for everything I have, without plan or purpose, just gratefulness I’m able to experience it.

Drunk and buttnaked in Birmngham, throwing furniture at each other and wondering what housekeeping will say if they come to the door.  

A superspeed litany of ‘shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit’ under my breath while gripping wall-holds with just two fingers and trying not to fall to the ground

Making her laugh so hard we ended up holding each other close so she wouldn't fall over, my arms around her thin waist and kissing her while people walking by couldn’t help but smile.

(Apparently) shouting at a pt client that she could do it and don't she dare give up, being unaware of everyone else in the gym watching this hyperactive ethnic with a vein popping in his neck.

Being able to answer questions that start with ‘Can you help me with this…’.

Legs and feet dangling over a cliff face in Iceland,

Whole body trembling under a barbell knowing if I don't get the fucker up I'll be pinned under it...

again.

Broken sunlight and blood in salt waters

Broken locks and keys that snap in half

Being asleep while she knocked on my window in Dead times.

The past couple of weeks have been hectic. The usual kid icarus stuff as well as organizing the handover from two of my jobs as well as preparing for the other two I am going to keep.

Next Wednesday, from working four jobs I will only be working two and it didn’t really hit me until today when I got my shit ready for the upcoming week.

I know its hard to believe, especially coming from this online persona I posty under but I am a shit hot teacher. I know it sounds big headed but in every school I have ever worked in I have always been the best. It meant getting the extra classes, teaching kids with behavioral problems then being sent to other schools and training other teachers. Not once have I come across a better teacher than me.

And on and up kid icarus goes until he’s an assistant director of studies then director of studies and on until he’s teaching and running extra curricular departments as well as running the school website and all that jazz as well as cycling like a mutherfucker to local universities and highschools and writing and writing…

Then, in the frst two weeks of spring, I go a little nuts. The classroom is driving me crazy, I keep the windows as wide open as they’ll go, I’m bouncing off the walls and spending the least amount of time indoors. Slowly, slowly I shave off the hours of sleep I get until I get by on four or five. I study fulltime, do exams, race from Irlam to old Trafford to Chorley and every moment outside, at a speed faster than a walk, every time I’m using my hands and bellowing out commands over fields and hills a totally new person appears and grows.

Coming back to England is like stepping out of a timewarp, everyone I knew is either in prison or married or living with their partner and they whisper, guiltily, in starbucks to me that they wish they hadn’t rushed it. And ask me for stories of torn mountains and being chased by gangsters through shanghai and where I got all my different scars.

I know I should be settling down, and when people ask me what I do I give them a different answer/job depending on who’s asking.

And last fortnight, when I got the job, better money, doing what I love, all the naysayers came out of the woodwork.

Its as if I have made some personal affront by changing careers, the new Finn that snuck into the room with them quietly and secretly is a sudden stranger to them.

‘What do you do again?’ becomes the start of another confession, that they hate their jobs, their places, their ruts that they’ve dug for themselves. The idea of making such a bare ass leap into the unknown scares me but terrifies them. And I;’m not even thirty!

My contemporaries are older than their years. They dress in shirts from next and ties for topshop, they look forward to tiger tiger on Saturdays and fryups and sleep-ins on Sundays. At 5am I’m racing through empty fields, weights strapped to me like ammunition, covered in cobwebs and dew.