Low Life | 29 August 2009

I inserted my earphones and stepped up on the treadmill. I kept my finger on the treadmill’s speed-control button until it showed 11.5 kilometres per hour, then I pressed ‘recently purchased’ and ‘play’ on my MP3 player. The first track was Albert King doing his version of ‘Honky Tonk Women’. I was up and running.

If I’m in the right mood for it, I go a bit mental when I run on the treadmill while listening to music. I mouth songs, or dance and run at the same time. I get a few looks, but let them look. Running’s the governor, as boxing trainers say, and I enjoy running more than anything else at the moment. The novelist Haruki Murakami put me on to it. Last year he published a meditation about running called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It’s hard to read his book, even in your 50s, without wanting to take it up.

At our gym, the treadmills face four flat-screen televisions fixed to the wall at eye level. They are permanently tuned to the four terrestrial channels. You can plug your earphones into a socket on the treadmill, select a channel, and watch telly while you run. I never do this. Once I’m into my stride and sweaty, I’m far too deranged by endorphins to concentrate on a telly programme.

But on this particular day I was facing the ITV screen and the ITN lunchtime news was on. Gordon Brown and Ed Balls were visiting a secondary school. They were shown seated side-by-side on a sofa in the school library. You could tell they were devoted friends. A group of pupils were kneeling in rows on the carpet in front of them.