Smoking Runner

I am walking along, determined to be a better person than I am when I meet a smoking runner coming towards me.

She has just completed a 5 kilometre course with others wearing the same pink shirts that proclaim they are all individually members of a group dedicated to some common cause.

Either the word women, or, ladies is printed among the other words on the shirts; but I am too polite to stare to see which, for I may be perceived as a predatory male walker.

I smile at the sky above their collective heads, instead.

There is a 10 kilometre course up ahead to complete for those who did not want to go home.

But since that is the same course run twice it hardly seems to count as a longer distance.

More of an instant action replay of the previous distance covered, I feel.

The smoker carries a plastic two-litre bottle of Coca-Cola from which she swigs in between puffs of the fag. I can't help noticing she is a little overweight for a runner, but resolve not to stare.

She is walking towards me and I step aside, breaking my own training pace.

She takes this as her right for she is a veteran now, having chased the others around five kilometres of tarmac, for a while.

They sweep past me with the determined step of the righteous achiever.

The solitary smoker is on the outskirts of the group; a weak member to be left behind by the fitter members of the pinkshirts, when her time comes.

She does not know this as they pass me by, unnoticed.

I stopped smoking twenty years ago; but am overwhelmed with desire when her trailing smoke reaches my nostrils.

Jezebel I think, unfairly, as I resume my own pace.



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Getting dangerous in a hoodie

Buying and wearing a hoodie should not be taken as an act of aggression.

I walk now with more determination than a gardener seeking a site for a new rose bed; so, I buy some track suit trousers to allow for faster movement without chafing my legs to death.

While in the giant shed of a retail outlet I purchase a grey top with a zip front and a hood atop the whole thing. This is known as a hoodie, much loved by the criminal with a bad hairdo.

I buy it for the weather, not as a criminal disguise.
However, I cannot fight perception and find it more practical to wear this top with the hood down, a contradiction in design if ever there was one.

Solo walking takes application to the matter in hand, so when I first step out in the hoodie I seek a walker in the distance to pace.

I see a young woman in street clothes who is, I begin to believe, related to Superwoman. She walks with a measured gait that seems to set the universe spinning beneath her feet. She moves across distance at a pace a winged steed would find emotionally satisfying.

I lock in to her moving form with determination and she drags me along with her. It is a while before I realise she is fleeing from me.

For, I am wearing the hoodie with the top up against a vicious breeze that seeks to separate my ears from my body.

If I call out to say she is safe; her apprehension will be confirmed and she will phone the police to arrest me. For wearing a hoodie.

I take a less travelled path at the next junction. I put my hood up. For hoodie walking can be dangerous.

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