"Don't go running", she says over the phone. "It's wearing you out." But not running around grinds me down to a complete stop, a little like an unsuccessful retirement, I might imagine; you need to keep going! Obviously I did go out, and almost immediately regretted it. Not because of anything my mum said, nothing to do with the fact I'd been ill in the week, spending all Tuesday night in the bathroom and consequently all Wednesday in bed. No, nothing like that. I was pretty rough, though...even for a man.
I couldn't move, and if I did, I seemed to tip some kind of finely balanced internal scales that preceded an immediate and desperate lunge for the bathroom. When I was little and got ill visiting my cousins farm, I remember being taken to the coast, to breathe in the fresh sea air. Fresh air, that's what I needed, so I had to get out. Up to the Edge. Lying on the rocks at the top, sucking in the air...and the smell of dope from giddy teenagers on the ridge underneath. Nature's high? Long walk home, mind. Never was a good listener.
