Exercise, Reading & Coben

 

Howdy there, I pray that this reaches you in good spirits today. I’ve not been up to much myself. One positive thing I did do was start exercising again during the weekend, in the guise of dribbling with a football. It’s so much more interesting than jogging up and down the local field. I’ve always admired scintillating dribblers, like Gascoigne, Giggs, Maradona, and the like. My favourite was a little known fella from Brazil called Denilson. When he beat players down the flank, he twisted and turned them inside out so much that they fell over their own feet. He used to leave a wake of bodies down the line! Exceptional to watch…

Another change to my routine is that I’ve been enjoying a couple of beers in the evening to accompany my reading sessions. I just find reading so much more comfortable with a lager in my hand. It used to be the same for writing. I’ve been reading crime fiction lately, an anthology of short stories, but last night I moved onto Clive Barker’s timeless Books of Blood, which I found in the cubbyhole. The crime was entertaining and well-written but crap in a way I can’t quite define, and certainly not like Barker. With the beer though, I tend to be in a very receptive mood, and take something from everything I read.

Harlan Coben, my new favourite writer, suggested that I word-pinch from writers whose books I am reading. This involves a simple highlighter pen to underline the tasty nuggets I particularly like. I use it to highlight words I have never heard of too, and the difficult ones I can’t pronounce. Not to learn them, because if I have no recollection or knowledge of a word than frankly it can stay unrepeated by me. No, just to familiarise myself more with the broad sweep of the language. It’s becoming a habitual exercise now, so much so, that I wouldn’t like to read without a highlighter pen. Just as I wouldn’t like to read without a beer, at the moment…I swear I’ll have to cut that out pretty soon…

Why Coben, you ask? He only writes fair detectives. Well, it’s the man behind the writing I like. His persona. It’s not just the type which makes up the master wordsmith, it is their image, how they come across, their beliefs, all of that. And for me, atm, he’s my fav. Plus he’s tall, like me, and he has a shaved head. That’s something I can relate to. I imagine his 6’5 avatar roaming around my neighbourhood in Second Life. He’d look a very powerful and intimidating character, like Hitman from that game series. I wonder how he sees himself as a computer game personality in his mind’s eye. How do you see yourself? Interestingly, I see myself as either a child or a space cadet. I’m just dancing there in grey with my five little angels kicking out galactic dust. Or I’m one of them with a skateboard. I’ll talk about my five angels more as time goes on, I think. It’s a very healthy issue to discuss.

ATM we’re talking about exercise, reading, and Coben. Well, I definitely want to keep the dribbling up. It’s such a beautiful art form. One of the most satisfying spectacles in world sport, I believe, to watch a man (or woman), drift by defenders as if they’re not there (especially if the defender falls over!). Other things which come to mind are the 100m sprint, the pole vault, full-lengthers in rugby, and 3 pointers in basketball. F1 over-takings aren’t quite the same, although the crashes are very spectacular. What are your favourite moments in sport?

There was a time in the Manchester derby going back some years when Craig Bellamy was dribbling into the heart of the Utd defence with such vigour deep in the limbo of Fergie Time that I erupted into fits of laughter. He had them all in a panic then yeah that’s correct he scored!

Reading is hard to concentrate on. It’s a real skill to sit there doing nothing with a book in your hand and be patient, letting all the words soak in. I wanna get up and stretch my legs after every five minutes. I imagine it’s impossible with ADHD so from now on I’m going to really value it as a gift and a treat and most importantly a time for education.

And as for Coben – well, speak to you soon buddy!