This ain't something else.

• Smollett in Nice – The Riviera Times Online – My dad writes about Tobias Smollett in Nice.

• ilovecharts:

  Where the world’s population lives by latitude and… –

Seven weeks ago I ran for one minute. That’s all I COULD run for without getting out of breath, so that’s all I EVER ran for. So that’s ALL I could run for.

I was advised against running because I had asthma and it makes running difficult, but the pattern of the above paragraph kept playing over in my head. If I didn’t do something, I wouldn’t be able to do it, so I wouldn’t.

I can, and people do, apply this to other parts of my life. I’m bad with numbers so I rely on electronics. I have To Do lists because I err towards the flighty.

I don’t like crowds because I tend not to make an impression and until then worry how much of a matter me being there makes.

When my job determined I did a lot more driving and far less walking, I became really unfit, even to the point where common colds became battles for breath.

A few people tried to warn me off running because of my general health, and when they did it came from the right place, but this encouraged me even more. And now, two months on, I can run three miles without stopping. That’s twenty five minutes flat.

I don’t want to gloat here, but if I can’t gloat here where can I? I am really pleased with this. And I’m not saying you can’t, because I’m sure you’ve got your thing that would help you. There must be an obstacle that may seem more of a bet than an investment.

They always say that with investing you should never put in what you can’t afford to lose, but with personal matters you probably have nothing to lose.

I can run for twenty five minutes without stopping. And in two weeks I’m going to make that half an hour. That’s more than I have been able to run for the last twenty three years.

In France, I ran between cornfields through valleys past war graves while tractors passed me. I was someone more than myself. Churches pulled closer with footfalls. FOOTFALLS.

I hope you’ll do some things. Not for anyone else, but for you – although they could benefit if you do. Sort out your photos. Stop biting your nails. Learn your seven times table – you don’t REALLY know it. Read in the evenings. Write in the mornings. Ask someone to recommend an obscure favourite band. Complain where you should have. Drink more water. Get some rest.

This one’s for you.

Take care of yourself.

I started writing this post about something else. I was writing about a book I’d been reading and how I gave up today because it was taking more out of me than I was getting from it.

It was about a man who keeps the time at the Bureaux de l’Heure in Brussels. From his office, literally on his watch, all the clocks fall into line or go out of sync. Without this guy, trains wouldn’t meet connections, satellites wouldn’t hook up, cats and dogs living together, etc.

It was worthy, and it was in French and it would have done me a power of good had not been for the fact that it was boring me.

My view is that there are so many things to read that if you something and it doesn’t start working for you in the first seventy pages, then move on. Cut your losses. You’ve lost £7.99 maybe, but you’ve saved some time. There are tons of good books for you out there. Reading a book is a relationship, not a marriage.

Anyway, I’m straying into the exact opposite of the point of I was trying to make in this post. I started writing about why I didn’t like the book, but that wouldn’t have done any good at all, for either of us.

I have come up with a few posts about blogging on here, and this is something else I’ve learned over the last five years or so:

Don’t write the posts you can write, write the ones you can’t not write.

This isn’t a one way conversation. We’re not in 2005 any more. The stream of consciousness was dammed up and there’s a boating lake there now. Most of the people floating around on it are too busy checking their RSS feeds to even realise daily posts ran through what was once a valley.

People use the internet in different ways now and they don’t wait for one blog to update.

Back in the day, bloggers would go on holiday and readers would wait for the next update. And by bloggers I mean me. It was flattering and validating but that’s not how it works anymore. It’s not just you and me now. The party’s still going on but there are people in the kitchen that I don’t even know, no one has touched the coffee and there’s a taxi outside for someone called Jill or Jillson or some such.

Now blogs only exist when they are updated – just because it’s live doesn’t mean it’s broadcasting. It’s always open mic night on the internet but you don’t always have to show up.

What I’ve lost in frequency of updates, readers have gained in variety, because more people are reading more things. And even they are not reading what they can, they’re reading what they can’t not read.

• FORA.tv – Six Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization – I’ve just discovered David Eagleman. He’s brilliant and deserves more time than I would normally ask of you.
• Why A Brush With Death Triggers The Slow-Mo Effect : NPR – Here’s a smaller dose for you. Great speaking voice, smart and engaging – also funny and interesting.

• 01.08.10 | Flickr – Photo Sharing! – Another great picture from Janice
• Tomorrow's News, Tomorrow's Journalists » Blogging: The skill that begets all others – If you’re a young journalist sitting around wondering what you can do right now to make yourself more attractive to potential employers, here it is: blog.
• The Secret Histories of Those @#$%ing Computer Symbols | Gadget Lab | Wired.com –

I’m happier and I will communicate easier – will I really have to stop caring altogether before this happens?
The diaries of Nina Simone

I’ve been in France and I was renting out a place which didn’t have enough sheets.

I tried to call the landlady but I couldn’t get my phone to dial out so I left the family and drove over to her house. All the way on the road, through the cornfields, over the hills and under water towers I ran through a list of what certain words were in French. I’m a little rusty with the old parlez-vous and I had been in the country for an hour and a half.

“Excusez-moi Madame, on n’a pas assez de draps a la maison.” Draps. Boom. I remembered the French word for sheets. If I ever need sheets in a Francophone nation, I’d be fucking set. I could travel the world, too. I’d go to Ile de la Reunion, Indochina, West Africa. Senegal.

“Aussi,” I add, clearly nailing it, “il n’y a pas assez de couvertures…” Arse. Duvet covers. I’m pretty sure the French for duvet isn’t duvet.

It sounds French, but then marmalade sounds French and it’s not.

So I’d be fine for sheets, but I’d be stuck for duvet covers. I wouldn’t need duvet covers in West Africa anyway. I’d be just fine.

I say duvet cover in English, defeated. “Ah,” she lights up, “douvet coveurs.”

“Oui,” I return, ” exactement.”

“Entrez, entrez,” she says.

I peer at her dog, which has been barking at me throughout the whole stilted conversation. She assures me he’s not going to bite me as she turns and disappears into her house.

Now, reader, I know I talk a big game but sure as oeufs are oeufs this is how it happened, word for word. It’s a big game anyway, and talking about it or not isn’t going to change a thing.

I walked through the gate into their garden and the dog runs up to me. His tail is wagging and it almost belies the fangs he’s bearing at me. Her husband walks out of the house and sees me trying to make nice as the dog runs around me.

“Un chien Anglais,” he says.

I don’t know the word for duvet or many dog breeds. I might need that in Northern Quebec. I know Berger Allemand, but that’s an easy one. Is it still huskey? And do they pronounce it “oo-SKEE”?

I could end up on an expedition to explore the Northern Passage with little more than sheets and labradors.

“Setter?” I say.

“Exactement.”

The dog goes to get me a slipper and teases me with it while he circles and bends around the birch saplings.

“Viens voir ce que j’ai tuer.” I don’t know if you speak French yourself, but literally, this means “Come and see what I have just killed.” I don’t think there is a figurative meaning in either language.

But I know that if anyone says this to you, you will look.

I poke my head around the doorway he has just walked through and he is pointing up at the wall at a pair of antlers about three and a half feet across.

I make an impressed noise. It’s like an intake of air, but with a whistle. I throw in a raise of the eyebrows.

“Where do you hunt?” I ask.

“This one here,” he says, “was in Normandy. I got two. This was the biggest.”

“How much did it weigh?”

“One hundred and sixty eight kilos.”

I’m terrible at small talk at the best of times, but I make more of an effort with killers.

“Quel sorte de pistolet?” I ask.

“Une carabine,” he says. A shotgun.

I realise I have just asked him what kind of pistol he used. As in a handgun. Like he put a cap in a deer’s motherfucking ass. Right after he pistol-whipped a boar.

What I meant to say was “fusil” – rifle.

“Did you eat it?” I ask.

“No, you don’t eat BLAHBLAH. You can eat deer, but not BLAHBLAH.” BLAHBLAH is the name of the animal I didn’t know, but can’t remember what it is. It had antlers.

His wife emerged with the sheets and her husband asked: “Was there some kind of problem?” He said it to her quietly.

“No,” I say. “It was my fault. The kids changed their sleeping arrangements and now we need more sheets.”

“Ah,” he says.

“I would have called but the number didn’t work. I think it was my phone.”

Right now I just want to get my sheets and go before he invites me to go hunting with him.

“Your phone?” he says. “Try it now.”

“How do you mean?”

“Try it here and call. We’ll see if they phone rings.”

“It’s probably me dialling it wrong. It’s OK.”

“No, really. Go on. If the phone rings, we’ll know that it works. Try it.”

I get my phone and dial the number but it doesn’t go through.

“You know what?” I say, ” It’s probably me. Actually I got no signal in the valley anyway. It’s fine.”

They look at each other and one says “Ah, OK. No signal.”

“There’s no signal in the valley,” says the other one.

“That’s why,” they said.

“Probably that,” I add.

They look satisfied and I thank them for “all this” (raising the sheets I’m holding) I pocket my phone and head back to the car.

I’m happier and I will communicate easier.

I am feeling a little better and have appreciated the break almost as much as I needed it.

Every time – every fucking time – I have a break coming up I’m just about hanging on by the time it comes up. I start craving quiet and the thought of unwinding with a good book. Or even a bad one. Or just unwinding.

But I’m back now, my heart a little less hard and my feet a little less tender, both in a more natural balance.

Will I really have to stop caring altogether before this happens?

Maybe, Nina. Because when you’re depressed, nothing matters at all. When you’re sad, everything does.

The entry continues:

Maybe I’ll have to get so hard that I don’t care at all. Then there’ll be NO hope for me and I don’t want to reach that point.

• sergey_larenkov – Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov took some old photographs from World War 2 around Leningrad and Berlin and got the angles right before doing some photoshop stuff and the results are excellent. This page takes a while to load, but I wanted to link to his blog instead of all the news organisations who are covering it. Google his name if you want the news item in English.

My daughter thinks she might want to be a writer. She’s eight. Whether you bless and curse your kids in equal measure, or Larkin had it right, this was a hard thing to hear.

I suppose in a way I’d always known.

Writing as a career is tough. It doesn’t pay well and it takes discipline. But mostly the first thing.

I wanted to tell her that she needs to love it and to make sure she was following her heart and it wasn’t about the F word that the kids keep talking about. Famous.

I see people on TV every now and then, or in bands, or people who write for newspapers and I mention in passing: “I know him” or “I went to school with her.”

They are usually impressed, until I answer their next question: “So, were YOU ever famous?”

I needed to tell my daughter that you have to want to write because it makes you happy, rather than on the slim chance it will lead to fame or fortune.

“The thing about writing, daughter,” I say, “is that -”

She says: “You can’t press to hard otherwise you break your pencil?”

Me: “Um. Yes, that’s right.”

I nearly add: “Then you’re ready. You’re ready to be a writer.”

I don’t of course, but I wonder if an early shot of rejection might stand her in good stead.

Not too much has been happening with me lately. There hasn’t been tons of creativity from me and water runs slow through flat land.

I’m doing ok though. I’ve been living like a god, actually. By that I mean no one was sure if I existed or not.

I’ve started some therapy for depression. I’ve kind of kept that quiet, but it’s been under the surface for a while.

I could lie to you, or joke around it. I could joke away from it. I could tell you I’ve been working on a hybrid pleasure cruise and pets magazine entitled Motorboat Those Puppies.

Not that I’ve hidden it away or anything, but I keep parts of myself to myself. Secrets, see, are like arseholes – everyone’s got one and they’re seldom pretty.

I am a high-functioning depressive and like asmtha, it’s something I’ll always have. You can acknowledge it and take steps, but you’re somewhat defined by it, although doing your normal every day stuff is the best response. It’s a condition more that an illness. In fact the two are very similar. You’re not sick, but you’d feel better by not having it, thanks.

One thing that always gets me about therapy is that when you down the that route they treat you like you might be suicidal, because they can’t take any risks. The psychological assessors asked me questions that I would answer like: “What??? No!” and then they make a face like it’s standard procedure.

No, I’m doing all right, thanks, but I’m less convinced lately that all right is good enough. I’m worried I’m going to get to 40, or 50, with the kids grown up, only to look back and say: “You know what? I could have been happier.” I can’t let that happen.

• Noticing the notice –