THE OFFICE SUMMER PARTY 

In an organisation made up in equal measure of French and English employees an evening, social event has at least one reliable outcome. At midnight the Brits will be on the way to an unselfconscious drunkenness, collected in small vocal clumps nowhere near the dance floor; the French will be centre stage, in full-ceroc swing, on orange juice.

I work in such an organisation. Last Thursday was our party. 

Large-scale ‘get-togethers’ are not my preferred context. There is too much in them of what it was like to be 16, with fewer of its possibilities; too many of the disadvantages of the snapshot, rather than the cumulative. I am better over a contract than an evening, better through the tired and energetic shared space of the day-to-day than in a studied formal moment. 

Special moments adhere rarely to ‘special’ occasions or those of collective banter. They fly to unmarked days and shine. But I wait for the night to produce the core within the core, those with who lines can blur and truths surprise.

As cigarette smoke crept above the gathering in the London Courtyard of a Piccadilly club a magician ‘transformed’ Iraqi dinars into £50 notes and removed single facet Rubik’s cubes from unknowing pockets with the whisk of expert deception while guests stood in feigned or genuine comfort side by side. 

Three young Frenchmen I had never seen before and who work on my corridor engaged me in conversation. Today they are smiling faces; tomorrow they will have retreated to the segregation of the electronic security passes that prescribe our encounters. At work we don’t know who we don’t know and strangers are across the corridor. 

My workplace houses corridors in which English humour either dies or is over appreciated and Gallic chic lives. Careful or careless, it is never discordant. And neither does it reveal the individual. A Parisian woman once told me it would be unthinkable for a French girl to walk down the Cours Mirabeau in a pair of pink sunglasses. It is not so much that it wouldn’t go as that the thinking would not occur.

I am reminded that I seem, for the moment, to have chosen this office life. But how can this be? We are rarely entirely ‘true’ at work. Such is the face of professionalism. I have, however, never proceeded along those lines but instead sought roles in which the self and the expected face would recognise one another.  But does the fact of the rather wonderful colleagues in my small department and how relaxed I feel with them mitigate the power of the context?

On further musing it occurs to me that I have developed an unhelpful crush on the boss. Related scenarios and images have stolen into my workaday moments. I nurture the crush, then dismiss it, then carry it home.

A THAMES SWIM
HAMPTON COURT PALACE TO KINGSTON BRIDGE

(CHIP TIME 1:24 MINS)

The river was brown in the morning light. Viscous water, hostile and wide outside my window.

A few hours later I was one of 1000 people to swim just over two miles, in the Thames, from Hampton Court to Kingston Bridge; a fleet of bodies making solitaire patterns of Surrey waters.

Open water swimming is a passion for me. It is my way to feel 6 years old, not so much again as still; touching the surface by stealth, pushing beneath the waterline, lifting my face to breathe is what it feels like to be a child.

In recent years I have had the gift of this being possible, as a holiday.  A dear friend, perusing magazines in a dentist’s waiting room, found one advertising ‘swim treks’ in which, for me, all the best components of the elemental are combined: the romance of being allowed to cross the sea, energetic undertakings after which well fed laziness is at its sweetest.  The Greek islands, Schinoussa, Koufonissi; Croatia, The British Virgin Islands, a second trip to Greece (it being in my view the most beautiful) followed. The novelty and oneness of being able swim ‘from ..... to’ has never worn off.

But I had not considered being among the rushes and tales of the riverbank, the unexpected joy of slipping through thin, green glass water. (The muddy opaque look of Hammersmith currents must accompany the over confident boats trying to pass under its bridge, the teenagers exiting its pubs.) This was the same river, beside which I live, framed by the windows of my home.

The Thames begins in the west of England near Cirencester. On its journey, of just over 200 miles, it runs through Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and on into Middlesex and Surrey before entering London. It reaches the sea, its end, at the Thames Estuary near Southend-on-Sea.  It had passed through Pangbourne, Henley and Marlow before I joined its journey.

The starting point for the swim, the fabulously named Cigarette Park Island, is opposite Hampton Court Palace. The palace was built in 1515 by Cardinal Wolsey, Henry the VIII taking it over in 1529 following Wolsey's downfall. Ancient and literary souls must have bathed in or travelled upon these waters. From Kingston upon Thames Jerome K. Jerome and Harris and Montmorency began their "Three men in a boat" journey. I was in cream paged company. I was a nymph sliding through history.

But I was wet-suited. The rubber outline between my body and the water was unwelcome. The pleasing zip and knowledge of how to put it on are no match for the discomfort of attempting free style in such encasement. And breaststroke becomes ridiculous.  The month ahead was geared to training for a second and more iconic swim, across the Hellespont. I had understood it (as it turned out, incorrectly) that wetsuits were compulsory. I felt stifled and made the mistake, five minutes into the novelty of the start, of contemplating removing it. I have learned my lesson. Viking that I am, cold waters and no wetsuit would be my way for the future. 

Crowds made photograph line-ups of the riverbanks; a mix of those who had known of this and others surprised in their weekend walks by flanks of splash and coloured caps interrupting the skyline. 

The finish line is a somewhat surreal large white Nokia cube, seemingly suspended about 400m from Kingston Bridge. Among large chestnut trees in the parkland and towpath photographers waited, alarmingly at the ready, to capture the exit moment. On reaching the cube, I was semi-hauled from the water, via the incongruous stepping-stone of carpeted wooden decking. 

Post race moments in which the hug of the hat makes a post forceps look of the face are not the best. But the elation was there. 

Breakfast was a feast. In a month book-ended by open water swims, my mind settled on the achievement of a first race in fresh water and then leapt ahead to the Hellespont. I had almost covered its distance but it is ruled by greater currents, between Europe and Asia, where seas meet.

THE BRITISH 10K LONDON RUN
(Chip time 00:57:58)
Yesterday I ran 10 kilometres, in the mutually supportive company of 25,000 others. It was a personal first.

‘The British 10K London run’ does exactly what it says on the tin. It celebrates its city, and there’s queuing at the start.

For a first-timer, the weeks of technology preceding a major race day are pleasing. A fat pack arrives in the post. In tandem the related website displays a 3D route on which a turquoise disk whisks its sleek way between historic landmarks, along the roads to be run. It is the stuff of hypnosis. It comes close to precluding the need for participation.

The day came. At a Sunday morning hour at which, ordinarily, I would not be conscious, I was at Embankment tube station. The area was a configured star of veteran and one-off athletes replete with sport-top water bottles and mobile phone wielding relatives, dividing at tangents in the quest for loos and coffee stalls.

Safety-pinned sheets of A4 (on the reverse of which emergency contact details were penned for the event of collapse) displayed race numbers while red electronic chips sat proud of trainer laces, ready to register the time at which each person passed the start and finish lines.

The runners did not come in a standard shape. For every sinewy biology drawing physique there were angry curves. Charitable causes painted the crowd fluorescent: OCD and Alzheimer Society text alongside the somehow more emotive photographs of lone individuals in whose name the race was undertaken. A weather warning (extreme heat) had stipulated no fancy dress, tempering that very British need for the hairy to put on a tutu.

It was not, for me, an altruistic enterprise. The instances on which I have asked my friends to show their support for a selected cause with money seemed too recent and too many. I am stowing brownie points for a Channel crossing. This was a question of whether I could do what I had set out to do.

Ploddingly slowly, batches of people were ushered towards the arched start on Piccadilly. The ‘gun’ and we moved. A shot of elation carried me along Pall Mall, an element of nodding to the crowds, inner dialogue telling me they were there for me. The relatively small proportion of their time which would be spent with their runner in view lent this credibility.

‘Muscles have a memory’, my pacer had told me. Did mine know, half way along the Embankment, on the return lap, that this was distance unremembered? We were in a tunnel which swallowed the available air. 7k and my legs were buzzing with the need to stop but not enough for me to fail to appreciate the novelty of throwing an empty water bottle to the side of the road. In a society in which anything thrown is known there was a freedom to this. The discarded plastic crunched underfoot.

As we approached Parliament Street 'Chariots of Fire' blared from unseen speakers. 'I vow to thee my country' segued into a more buoyant 'Land of Hope and Glory', confirming this as an event neither for the nationalistically self-conscious nor anyone who can picture Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams.

Where did the final sprint come from? The finish in view, something in me remembered.

Much red, white and blue razzmatazz at Trafalgar Square and Horse Guards Parade. I felt proud, the 'goody bag' and primary-coloured medal small beside the achievement.

At the post race meeting point, my wonderful mother met me. She thinks I should be a year younger than I will be on my next birthday and doesn’t know where the time has gone. I don’t know where it went either. I trap morsels of it in hours in which I do as I did yesterday.

This is my year for sporting feats in which the muscles remember and the memory follows.

TUNNEL VISION

Londoners are perhaps never more so than on their daily tube journey.

On entering an empty carriage, newcomers target the seats at its extreme ends, a strategy meaning that only one side of each individual risks physical contact with another person, the other being boxed off by the non-flesh, glass partition or solid end shelf.

I too strive to maintain my separateness. I sit, mind in the Aegean (a beloved spot on one of the larger Cycladic islands), bottom on the bald burgundy cushion cover of the Hammersmith & City line and wonder if each of my not so fellow passengers is housed in a small, impenetrable world.

A woman sitting opposite me posts a small square of milk chocolate into her mouth and makes a vigorous action of rubbing and cleaning her fingers, hands outstretched, as if to dissociate herself from the eating. It is vaguely irritating.

Someone I can't see is battling with a mobile.

I put on my make-up. Is doing this acceptable? In a recent newspaper article its author mourned the loss of mystery that has seen women frowning into small square mirrors, fluorescent mascara wands in hand, in the public arena of the London Underground. I applaud mystery and on the occasions when I have risked eyelash curling, have wondered whether this risks ‘too much information’, but mystique has been a necessary casualty of my early alarm. 'Women should just get up 10 minutes earlier', instructed the writer. Well, 'no'.

As the pink line passes from media to finance, the satchel journalese bags are fewer and the recently shampooed heads of the city boys are many. They rarely look up. I often fall in love on the tube. There is ample time for it.

My free paper tells me that someone 'with tastes entirely compatible with my own' could be opposite me, now, the way to him being a simple matter of a two way ‘app’ on our mobile phones. It seems, equipped with this mutual technology, we would recognize each other. I don’t think the man I am looking at needs apps.

Stance is everything on the underground. For pre-accepted intervals we duck and wedge ourselves in the knowledge that for those 20 minutes we will be nearer to another’s armpit than is likely to be a choice. We see pores up close, are forced to overhear conversations about how ‘Sandra is doing my head in’ and we hold our collective breath.

Within this, however, the ‘same book’ instance runs as a gentle thread. The second novel of a cult trilogy is balanced on my lap. The first in the series is in the hands of the man two seats down. It's the boy wizard all over again and can be called a phenomenon. I adjust the way I am sitting so that the title of my book is visible. It produces a shy smile and I am saddened for the late Swedish author who cannot know how he populates the Hammersmith & City line.

My upward glance lands on a poster. A London university that could change your life, another asking that you change it yourself, a third letting you know of the natural disaster whose duration matches your journey time. ‘By the time you’ve reached…..another…..will have contracted..’. There is the journey you are making and the many you are not. I am at a lonely moment in things, 43 and seeing ‘ahead’ unpunctuated by what people call life events. On a second glance I think I will give the charity a call.

My neighbour is now reading my paper, by stealth, over my shoulder. I offer it to her. “No”, she says, “thank you, but don’t you find it leaves print all over your fingers?”.

RUNNING SOLO

Last summer I joined a running club.

Given my long-held view of runners as vaguely irritating individuals with a habit of bouncing up and down at traffic lights, the move was something of an about turn.

I wasn't in it for the unsmiling lycra and the triathlon chat. I am half jewish after all. But I liked the idea of the wind at my back and of exercise under the sky in the removed stillness of a London park. At the very least it would be putting one foot in front of the other.

Admittedly, as for many of my undertakings of recent years, there was the 'this may be a way to meet a man' angle, which is at the heart of my ventures and which stops them from having a heart. It has found me scaling the rocky terrain of Patagonia (courtesy of a TV personality who someone told someone met her husband on a similar venture), trekking in Thailand (because I didn't know better) and was a part of what had me signing up to swim between islands. But that is a different story.

'The key is to do what you enjoy', I am told. But I enjoy lying on my sofa holed up watching the kind of Bette Midler schmaltz I can admit only to close girlfriends (and selected ones at that). I enjoy staring at the white light over my river, from my sitting room. I enjoy McFlurries and the hollow tubular long spoons that come with them. Somewhere along the way my tastes and my goals fell out of sync.

'Plenty of men run...', I am assured, by those in and out of the know. And so they do. They are varyingly serious about their endeavours, one end of the scale having 'done the 5th tri.. Box Hill?', the other tending 'to come along when work permits'. With both it can feel a little as if, faced with a flattish stretch of ground, there is a male-perceived need to cover it and then do something that is not as much fun.

There are those who talk the entire route. So far, flirting opportunities do not abound. A commitment to engage 3 men in conversation didn't produce optimum results: the first taking a call to his mobile in which he described a recent marathon as like the (even more) recent birth of his first child, the second seeking only to explain how a severe injury had brought him to my speed and the third..well the third was a woman. I think she may be a new friend. But I can't run and talk. It does justice to neither.

Gingerly, I've started to use terms like 'shin splints', not knowing quite what they mean but feeling that bit closer to legitimate in adopting them. Stylistically I vary. At best I am streamlined and running towards a future. At worst I complete the entire route with tracksuit bottoms back-to-front and a nagging sense they may be dragged down entirely at any stage. I still wear the t-shirt of the uninitiated and I look around me.

But I now count the shared Wednesday evening hour of the thwack of trainer on pavement and of the pat of shoe on grass as a happy one. Breathing in unison brings back the tandem of mountain walking and distance covered by small steps, side-by-side.

Saturday mornings are another pace. The meeting is at 9.45 a.m. sharp and it's fair to say a degree of humourlessness hangs in the pre-lie-in air.

'Chariot versus baby jogger' has just appeared among my emails..courtesy of the club's discussion forum of which I am unwittingly part. I rest my case. It seems I am not entirely in the club yet.