Running Boy
I went for a run this morning. Yes, really! It’s something I’ve done once or twice in the past while on holiday (including this Christmas Eve, when Gill and I went for an 8am jog around Snowdonia), and I did it regularly in the couple of weeks before my finals at Bristol University, but never at home on a “work” morning.
I set off around 7.30am, just after dawn. Was surprised at how quickly I got knackered - when I ran with Gill, staying at her pace meant that I didn’t really tax myself, but on my own I set off far too fast uphill along School Road, and had aching lungs within 30 seconds. The iced tarmac pavement was crunching under my feet, and I was seriously hoping that my exertions would soon generate some heat, otherwise I’d not last long wearing just a long-sleeved T and tracky bottoms in sub-zero temperatures. By the time I reached Crookes I was OK.
Headed along Stannington View to the top of Hag Hill, where I walked with Lola the other day. As I meandered through the half-woods half-rubbish-tip, skirting graveyards and allotment sheds, I realised that although I often wish I were a little closer to the wilderness, there really is some amazing natural beauty just on my doorstep. I pounded the track between the houses and the woods, looking out across to Stannington, and was blown away by the dawn view. Further around, I reached Bole Hills and a huge vista, three quarters of Sheffield in panorama, opened up to me (the other one quarter you can see from the window of our living room). I’m always amazed by the feeling I get up there, having the whole world at my feet. Makes my heart soar to the clouds.
On my way home, down Bradley Street, and the dry ski slope stared out from the hill opposite, pin-pricks of light all the way up it. Later in the day, I came back to the same area, walking along Heavygate Lane, the winter sky was incredible. As complex as something from a Turner painting, the temperature had hardly made it above freezing all day, and it seemed to have made the sky lethargic. Nothing moved, it just hung in strips. The bottom was blue-gray, then washes of pink, orange and yellow. More greys lightening up towards blue at the roof of the sky, where the straggly clouds were staying to catch the heat. Below them, two pencil-thin horizontal lines of yellow-brown sulphur oxide, pollution trapped without the energy to go anywhere. And over towards Rotherham, something I’d never noticed before, there must be two power stations or something. But the smoke from them hadn’t the energy to disperse in this weather, so it just built up around the stacks making two huge agglomerations which looked like clouds turned on their sides. And they were somehow perfectly positioned to catch the sun’s rays, so that in this whole skyscape of grey-muted colours the two smokestacks shone out like newly laundered cotton wool lit with magnesium.
Down the hill, a crow clung to a church spire. It’s vertical body looked completely un-crowlike, more a giant blackbird, as it turned like the smoke-clouds through 90 degrees.