Duck Attack
Once you’re off and running, you disappear into your own little world and so it becomes very good thinking time too. The result is that, when a passing car toots or flashes, you always reply with a cheery wave. I’m never quite sure whether it’s a friend, an Olympic selector, a football manager talent-hunting, or someone hurling an insult. Autumn is marked by a change in the running gear as the temperature starts to dip. In our long summers, it’s just a case of proper running shoes with a comfy t-shirt and shorts. The shorts are not there to encourage lust in female Hartlepudlians (although us runners have to suffer that for our craft), but to aid mobility and comfort. I always shout at the TV when they show soap characters jogging in loose clothing. As any runner will tell you, that always ends up hurting and can lead to the dreaded JNS - jogger’s nipple syndrome. Picture me then late one Sunday afternoon in my attire based on the seasonal cusp – getting cooler but not yet cold enough for the thermal gear. The result is that I’m entering Ward Jackson Park, near Hartlepool Cricket Club, dressed in people shorts, comfy top – and traditional blue-and-white Pooly dut (for culture starved southerners, a woolly cap). The dut (a word unknown south of the Tees) not only conceals the walkman headphones, but keeps the head warm. I’m told that most body heat is lost through the head especially when, like me, your insulation was stripped years ago. There I am then, two miles into the run and home in sight, with Alice Cooper’s Poison in my head, and going like a train – more Thomas the Tank Engine than Inter-City. You learn to watch for things in the park – kids on bikes, fishermen casting into the lake, dog droppings and so on. What I wasn’t watching for was a maverick runaway duck. This one, dark brown and therefore near invisible, shot out from behind a bush in his sprint for the park pond. Surprising us both, I fell over him. I now have grazed knees, a more bemused than normal expression, and the sight of an equally bewildered duck flapping about on his back with paws in the air. I didn’t know that ducks couldn’t right themselves after a bump (it’s educational this isn’t it?), and I could hardly just leave it there as a suffering fellow creature. Then this chap from the council comes round the corner to see a chap wearing shorts and a woolly hat apparently interfering with a struggling duck which is quacking and flapping like crazy. With years of brilliant training behind him (the council chap not the duck), he asked “Can I help sir?” “I’m just trying to turn this duck over” I explained. “Fair enough” he replied and departed at some speed. His job description probably doesn’t cover coping with the bewildered and confused. Having righted the duck, I eventually got home covered in mud, blood and feathers. It’s great when you want sympathy and all you get is shrieks of laughter.
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As any dedicated jogger will tell you, it’s odd running around town at the best of times, but as the days get darker it becomes stranger still.