Edinburgh Days, or Doing What I Want to Do

Last Runaround

Last Runaround In February I registered for the Great Caledonian Run, a ten-kilometer road race held early in May. Training, I told fellows at the institute, imposed structure on days, a necessity when one was away from home. I said I planned to finish in the last 5 percent of the runners. “Anyone can mimic youth and bolt from the start,” I explained, adding that discipline and breeding separated a person from the brutish and vulgarly hormonal. Of course the truth was that I didn’t care where I finished and that I entered the race in hopes losing weight and lowering my blood pressure. During the past decades I’d run races in Canada, the United States, and Australia. “If I tack Scotland onto the list,” I wrote my friend Josh, “I’ll be quite the sport, a four-country athlete.” “Shuffling is not a sport,” Josh replied. “And you should fall to your knees and thank God for tweezing athleticism from your genes. The Lord loved you so much that he made you the most uncoordinated beast I’ve ever met.” To be a sport, Josh declared, an activity had to meet several criteria, “not one of which applies to shilly-shallying around Edinburgh.” When a person was young, Josh elaborated, sport interfered with studies. Later sport constricted the adult’s life, causing him to fawn over the doings of adolescents, plucking out taste buds, making him salivate over meeting lumpy people more ignorant than parsnips. Thirdly, involvement in sport led to indiscretion and scrapes with the authorities. “Most importantly,” he concluded, “a real sport corrodes morality and pits integrity. Almost as soon as an athlete dons his kit, he Last Runaround 175 becomes adept at cheating. He gouges and bites. His head becomes a hammer, and his elbows and feet bludgeons. He lies and fakes injuries. He pretends to have caught balls that he dropped. His speech deteriorates . He uses syllables not words. He swears and behaves like a roustabout. Eventually the corrupt and the powerful cultivate him and call him a role model. Not only is his development as a human being stunted, but chances are good he will someday be confined, either in a prison or in a boardroom. The latter cell is worse. Fellow inmates will shackle him with conversation about things he did decades before he wore boxer shorts, if indeed he has matured enough to don proper undergarments.” Josh douses his paragraphs with curry powder, eschewing medium for vindaloo. For my part I prefer mild paragraphs. Often I have advised him to mix sweet with his sour. “Then,” I said, “people won’t become bilious and bother you.” Still amid Josh’s seasoning lurks a peppercorn of truth. Running has involved me with the constabulary. Last week as I tacked up Queen’s Drive toward Newington breasting a headwind, I noticed a policeman on the far side of the drive. He held a radar gun in his right hand, aiming it toward traffic coming down the hill. “How fast am I going?” I shouted. He turned the gun my way, after which he jabbed his left hand down to his side and, pointing at the curb, yelled, “Pull over!” The Caledonian corkscrewed through Old Town, starting on Melville across the Meadows from the institute. Beyond the Meadows, runners turned onto Lauriston, twisting through Tollcross and winding up King’s Stables to Princes. On Princes the route meandered east until it turned up the Mound. From the top of the Mound the race bustled downhill along Market before slicing over Jeffrey to Canongate. At the bottom of the Royal Mile runners nipped past the new parliament building then pulled themselves along the cusp of Arthur’s Seat to Holyrood Park Road. At the mouth of Holyrood runners turned north and trotted downhill, bearing west on Cowgate until they reversed themselves and climbed the hill at Candlemaker. At Teviot they turned west into a short dogleg that led to the Meadows and the finish. During the race I intended to ponder a character that had recently come to mind, an activity that would straighten the course and prevent me from thinking about being tired. Tump Tump Gowdie was born in the hills of eastern Kentucky. He was named after both his father and grandfather, both of whom were called Tump, Tump Tump’s Christian 176 Edinburgh Days name...