Go for a run

You can’t sit and wait for Krystal to turn up. You need to do something. Your mind keeps wandering, primarily to the women you’ve met and what they’d look like naked. The fact that some of your students slip into that parade of nudity worries you. You’ve never been much for exercise but maybe a run will take your mind off such thoughts.

You wear an old pair of trainers from back at university when you were trying to be cool, shorts and a light t-shirt. You program a route into your phone, one that takes residential roads you haven’t walked in years, away from the town centre, the opposite direction to the school.

The streets are empty, nothing to distract from the veneer of shabbiness. Initially they are detached houses, the bigger ones clearly divided into flats, many surprisingly showing signs of lack of occupancy, dark windows revealing unfurnished interiors, drives with the growth of summer leaking through gravel or brick. A couple of the streets almost feel apocalyptic, not yet descending to ruin, just heading that way.

You pass an abandoned church, its stained-glass windows boarded up, its notice board bereft of encouragement or damnation. The only life in the small encircling graveyard; birds, insects, rooting animals, and vegetation aplenty among the tombstones.

Further out, and the houses gain occupancy and defensiveness. The drives acquire gates. The gardens surround themselves with high fences and high hedges and barbed wire. Through gaps in the fences you see pristine gardens, with elaborate hedges and a wealth of flowers. You scent swimming pools and ornate ponds. You see well-maintained buildings. You spot CCTV cameras and warning signs about guards and guard dogs.

You reach a large park at the outskirts of the town; a children’s play area, a couple of football pitches and a rugby pitch to one side, bins for dog mess swarming with flies, a small overgrown pond, with ducks and geese and one dejected looking swan. The path around it is interjected by dog walkers and lovers lost in each other. The other runners are encased in headphones so they might as well not be in the park at all.

You make one circuit and head back. About halfway back you realise one circuit was too much. Your muscles ache, your breath is laboured. The fat you had only weeks ago might have mysteriously slewed off you, but it hasn’t been replaced by muscles. You have gained energy but not endurance.

You don’t run the last few streets. You can barely walk them. It’s a relief to get back home and slump for a while on the sofa, gasping for breath, drinking glass after glass of water. It takes half an hour before you’ve enough energy to have a shower and wash the sweat and stink of your exercise away.