Run. Riot. Riot-run.

Run. Riot. Riot-run.

It’s early August in 2011.  I am visiting my sister in York.  We set out with a personal trainer that she has begun seeing and go for a run round the Knavesmire (almost a year to the day after I first tried to run on my forefoot, there).  I don’t do all my runs barefoot, but I now try and do half of my 30-mile week either barefoot, or with a zero-drop minimalist shoe like the Vibram Five Fingers.  Today though, I go barefoot.  There is a concrete path round the racecourse on which we run.  The weather is highly changeable, raining on one half of the racecourse, sun on the other.  It is a bad asthma day.  My mother is visiting York, too, and she is wheezing this morning.  My sister, Erika, is breathing heavily, we have to stop so she can take a hit of salbutamol.  I had taken extra before I came out.  Because I usually run alone, I have forgotten how much noise runners make.  She and her trainer clomp the concrete.  They don’t stomp or slap it, but there is still a noticeable noise.  I try to listen to the noise my feet are making.  I’m quite short so they are quite nearby.  But I can’t hear them.  Pompously, I point this out to my sister. ‘This is why barefoot running doesn’t fuck your knees. Listen.’  But she is too busy breathing deep and calm.  Some older folk, dog walkers, eye the three of us. ‘Did you forget to put your shoes on?’, he smiles.  ‘They’re too expensive.  I don’t want to wear them out.’

Eight hours later.  I have packed up my things and I’m returning home.  My phone bings a text, it is a friend asking if there is a riot in Lewisham?  The train is just pulling in to the station.  I step off the train.  In seconds I can see from the platform that cars clog the main artery into London.   They are stationary in all directions.  There are police on the concourse.  Immediately, I step back on to the train.  I will walk back from the next stop.  As the train crawls away from the station, it goes over a bridge a few metres from my house.  There are lines of police.  They wear helmets, have truncheons and riot shields.  They are blocking my road.  Riots and Tories; add one letter and they are anagrammatical for one another.

I get off the train in thick south-east London suburbia.  There is nothing happening here.  I am hot and tired from my journey.  My bags pull harder at my shoulder with every step.  Something is in the air.  Small groups are magnetically drawn back into Lewisham.    The atmosphere is that of a carnival.  The streets, usually empty when I run them, are populated.  The pub that always looks closed is very open.  There are mothers with young families, they are going to this fair of violence and chaos.

We spend the evening watching the police from our balcony.  Then we go in, shutting the door to drown out the noise of hovering helicopters.

Riots break out all over London.  On the map the look symmetrically balanced between the north, south, east, and west.  Buildings are burned down.  A man is shot.  Widespread looting is reported.  Is this David Cameron’s vision of the Big Society?

The next day, I have six miles to do.  I decide to take a tour of the high streets of Lewisham, Greenwich, and Blackheath.  I want to see how and where people are.

In Lewisham, McDonalds’ windows and doors have been smashed.  There is no market.  About a third of the shops have not reopened closed.  The shutters are down on the electrical shops.  Even the pound shops are closed, the ‘99p shop’ though has had its windows smashed.

The street is busy with riot tourists, just like me.  The Prime Minister, David Cameron, tells us that there will be 16,000 police on the streets of London tonight.  As I pass the largest police station in Europe I see three men in uniform marching.  As I get closer, I see they are policemen carrying something.  Closer still, they are large trays of assorted cakes.  They are buzzed through the thick metal gates before I can ask them who they are for.

I crease and climb through a few streets and in a couple of minutes I am on Blackheath.  Nature, here, is immune to the craziness.  Almost everything would have been the same a thousand years ago.  It is quiet, the crows, strung out like pebbles in the landscape.  There is one exploring its territory every ten metres or so, for as far as I can see.

I descend into Greenwich and it looks like a normal sunny day.  I circumnavigate the one-way system and everything seems normal. The market looks quiet, but then, it is a Tuesday.

Turning south for the park, cars and pedestrians compete for space.  The pavement is narrow.  Weaving between tourists I take to the edge of the kerb, inches from oncoming cars.  Three abreast walk towards me.  A stocky man is in my path and I can see a car approaching him from behind.  I cannot step into the road.  I am between two and three miles into my run.  This is just the point when the runner’s high should kick in.  Instead, something else happens.  The euphoria is poisoned.  I angle my shoulders to make more space for us to bypass one another.  He does nothing, perhaps expecting me to step into the traffic that he cannot see.  With my trailing shoulder, I hit him so hard that I nearly knock him down.  Idiot.  Fury rises.  Five more steps and a silver GTi ejects from a driveway into a tight turn directly at me.  The twenty-something driver has a diamond earring which is all I can see of him because he is looking in the opposite direction.  I jump out of the way, punching his wing mirror with a loud crack as I recover my direction.  Fucking Idiot.  Ten more metres and I’m in the park.  I stop to take off my shoes.  The static tension, probably building for miles, is suddenly earthed when my bare feet touch the ground.  You fucking idiot.  I have occasionally manhandled an unattended umbrella from poking me in the eye, but I have never taken-on a car. 

Barefoot, regretful, I skip off.  I am already on a different run.  I barely notice climbing the park’s 200 foot hill.  It is one that usually leaves me exhausted, but before I realise that I am climbing it I am back on the flat approaching the heath. There are more dogs in the park than normal.  These are not South-London dogs, but recognisable breeds.  Are they Greenwich and Blackheath mutts getting their exercise because their owners don’t know when they may venture out again?  Marshall law is descending.  

I cross over the eastern side of the heath for the last two-mile leg of the run.  I want to see Blackheath.  I head into the village on the pavement and for the first time in a year’s barefoot running I find myself in a pool of broken glass outside a clothes shop.  Before I know it, I am dancing through it like I’ve hit the tyres on an assault course.  I escape.

The pavement has been polished smooth with wear and it is a delight to run on.  Outside a shop there is a sudden stew of pushchairs and pedestrians, and we all fall upon apologies to one another before any of us knows what’s happening.

I start the steep ascent out of the village, brimming with energy.  ‘Look at that fucking idiot’.  I am astonished.  The voice that said it was old. No recognisable accent.  Did I really hear it?  This London air is toxic.  But with the sea-change of my run effected by going barefoot at the forefront of my mind, I shout out my nonsensical and sincere reply.  ‘You should try it.‘  

Perhaps she should.   

At the top of the hill, I decide that she may be right and I put my shoes back on.  The last mile or so and the only thing I see out of the ordinary is a waddling traffic warden.  He seems brave.  It might be a bright and sunny weekday lunchtime, but I wouldn’t be caught ticketing someone today, never mind being seen in that uniform.  The strangeness of the day is restored when I see that he is accompanied by a policeman.

When I plug in my GPS at the end of the run it records, among other things, my heart rate.  On the graph, there is a sharp red spur just before I entered the park and took off my shoes.

The sign says ‘PRIVATE’, but unfortunately I don’t see it.

Harrow run - click here

After two days’ celebrations I’m a little the worse for wear.  It’s hot.  Dehydration is only a missed water opportunity away as my body is already primed for it.  I am in, not West London, but West-west London: South Harrow.  Even though I am returning to South East London later that day, it seems a shame to miss the opportunity to tramp unfamiliar ground.  I look at the map.  Foolishly refuse to take a phone or water and set out for Harrow-on-the-Hill and the School where Byron led a rebellion against the new headmaster in 1805, and Trollope attended as a ‘free day-boy’.

The pavement decoration of my childhood was sweetwrappers, fag butts, and white dog shit.  In adulthood, it is gnawed and discarded chicken bones.  They punctuate the pavement like commas strewn across a page.  This street is busy.  It is lunchtime on a Sunday afternoon and there are people everywhere.  There a few recognisable shops.  My favourite is the gall of  “Hollywood Pizza - Kebabs and Burger’s”.  I have never been to Hollywood.  Maybe it is just like this there.  A few people I run past are startled, not hearing me coming up behind them because of all the noise.  One boy in a vest must have shown the tattooist a fake ID to get all that arm work done.  I turn off the main street and head up the hill.  Nowhere else in the world does geography work in the same way as London.  One moment you are slipping on takeaway wrappers, the next you may as well be in a quiet village in the Cotswolds for all the Elizabethan architecture and carless streets.  

I struggle to the top of the hill - it’s about a 250 foot climb - and head where the traffic is not going.  On the right, a mews falls away from the road.  I laugh when I see the road sign for it: Obadiah Slope - the most unctuous of villains from Trollope’s Barchester Chronicles.  Vanity kicks in so I laugh louder than I need to.  Like I want all the dwellers of Obadiah Slope to know that I got the joke, really, really, I got the joke - I belong here.  But, anyone that laughs to be heard at this sign, just like Trollope, does not belong.  They are a usurper.

The whole street is like turning down one of those alleys in Cambridge and finding yourself in the fifteenth century.  I have crowned the top of Harrow’s Hill and the road begins to slant and curl away.  An old couple are crowding the pavement coming up the other way.  And, like she’s featuring in this Edwardian drama, she has a sunbrella.  She falls behind her husband to let me pass.  I do the most unaccountable thing.  I have never done this before.  I find that I am also featuring in the same Edwardian drama.  I salute her.  She smiles wide. 

The sun, hard on my face.  I am starting to feel a little thirsty.   I am not willing to give up all this hard won height so quickly.  I turn back the way I came, but I cross the street so as not to alarm the Edwardian couple.  Through a narrow crack between two of the school buildings, I catch a TV screen of stunning view.  The buildings I can see are like letters in an agnaram.  All the characters are there.  You know the word, but it looks completely different.  The London skyline looks odd from here.  There is the bowing arc of Wembley stadium, the Nat West Tower, the unfinished Shard, the Gherkin, but they are all mixed up by their new perspective and arrangement. I must see more.

A few yards further and there is a gate ajar.  It has a big sign that says ‘PRIVATE’, but unfortunately I don’t see it.  There is no chance of a stealthy look because I am now running on a gravel path that wheezes a smoker’s cough with every step.  The TV screeen of London spreads to a super-wide Cinemascope.  Wedges of green field spread out beneath me.  But someone is here.  They are watching me.  They are sat on a bench reading.  I try to act like I am supposed to be here.  I bid them good afternoon and ask them the quickest way down to the fields.  Without missing a beat, they tell me.  I’m off again, crunching down the gravel path.  Working my way between the folds of the buildings.  Some kids are photographing some others who are wearing what look like dunce’s caps.

It looks like Sussex, not London.  It is so green and deep it's like you could swim in it.

Then, another corner, and straight ahead of me is a running track.  I can’t not.

This is my first time on a running track since school.  Perhaps the first since my terrible ‘mile’ in the house match at the age of 14 - when I came in last.  There are countless coloured markings that I don’t understand but I am tempted to take my shoes off it is so soft.  I go round once.  There are hundreds of windows overlooking me and people are playing tennis in the next field.  Surely I can’t get away with this.  

I go round again.  I spy someone walking fast in my direction from the car park.  Time to leave.  I don’t look behind me - why would I? - I am supposed to be here.

I branch off onto a rugby pitch heading still for the London skyline.  But there’s a ha-ha.  The ground dips steeply into a shoreline of breaking nettles.  And, “ha ha”, there is a surreptitious couple here lain on the grass.  Who are they hiding from?  They certainly are not schoolchildren.  I have to run past them, dance through the nettles and I am into another field that looks like farmland.  

The sun is high.  My throat burns for water.  I am at least three miles from base.  

And still, there are more people.  Walkers this time, a family? I pretend to myself that I am brave in these situations, but I am uncomfortable.  I run straight towards them - of course I would, I am supposed to be here.  I smile a welcome but they ignore me.  Over a stile, a field, over another stile, another field.  A gate.  Then, a nest of brambles.  No one has picked them.  They don’t need to forage, here.  The bush is full of inky black fruit. I pull at one to taste.  It is as sweet as honey.  Within seconds I am grabbing at them feeding myself with both hands.  Each one bursts in my mouth - water!  Only this way can you get the full flavour of the fruit, with the traces of grit and spiderweb that seem to accentuate the deep, deep, sweetness.  Warm, still, from the heat of the sun.  They remind me of the grapes in Poussin’s, Autumn from his Four Seasons, where bunches of berries are bigger than the torsoes of the pickers.  

Over another stile and I am suddenly back in the white and noise of suburbia.  A few more metres and it is a dual carriageway, like the fields and fruit were a dream.  I am lost.  I can’t retrace my steps, it’s too far, now.  The risk of being caught on the school grounds was worth it for a first look, but not for getting back.  I run to the lights in the hope that one of the junction’s options will look familiar.  They don’t.  The place names are all softly  familiar, but I can't situate myself in relation to them. The traffic stops.  The car windows are open in the heat.  I ask a driver and girlfriend of a glimmering Audi for directions.  His voice is absolutely London, but his manner is not.  He is prolix and careful in his response.  I had expected him to wind up his window, eyes forward.  Instead, he explains the landmarks that I must look out for.  He can see that I am tired and hot.  He apologizes for sending me up a steep hill.  ‘Are you sure you will be OK?’, he asks.  His car is facing the opposite direction but his intonation is clearly offering me a lift.  In the sun and on the run the normal rules don’t apply.  I feel like he would have opened his wallet if I’d asked. 

"I'll be alright.  Thank you." The lights change and they are on their way again.  And I am on mine.

I make my second climb up Harrow's Hill.  I hit a bend in the road that at last I recognise.  I run faster and faster and faster, giddy with the excitement of the run - or was it just the crimson sugar of the blackberries hitting my bloodstream.

The shape of my run is lost to me. I cannot visualise it.  Only when I return will the magic of GPS reveal exactly where I have been.  On the map, my runs are superimposed in red, arterial tracks in the landscape, but I am not their lifeblood.  It is of course these landscapes that now run in my veins.