A blog in which I apparently make the case that I won at the Bupa London 10,000

As you get older you generally spend large portions of your day doing things you know how to do. At work I do things I am either double-plus-good-at, or can speak about using enough fancy-sounding acronyms to confuse people into thinking I am good at them.

So deciding to do a proper run (the Bupa London 10,000) was a bit of a shock to the system really. Because I am relatively bad at running. That is, relative to anyone else who has ever tried to run... and probably some people who have not. At school I was in the top set for Maths, Science, English... but in sport I was so bad that I was relegated to hockey, and as a result I didn't do much running after I finished education.

When I go out for a run, my brain tries to convince me it would be a good idea to stop, sit down and eat a biscuit.

Things that shut it up

1. Training, not trains

When you are going to do a run, you should apparently train for it. Confusingly, this doesn’t mean you catch a train instead of doing the run, it means you run instead of catching the train. I bullied myself into running by hiding running in my day (much like your Mum used to do with vegetables in lasagne). I can’t stand all the time that’s consumed by making a run an event in its own right, so I chopped down this time by running home from work, or part of the way. That way, I would only get home twenty minutes or so later, but fit in a 50 minute run, and then I could get on with my busy evening of sitting and biscuit eating.

2. The best things have a soundtrack

There is nothing, as far as I am concerned, as energising as a good song. I promise. Lucozade just haven’t figured out how to squish them into the bottles, but as soon as Willy Wonka starts making drinks that play your favourite song in your head, I’ll be the spoilt kid swigging them down before they’re through testing. Create a playlist of songs that make you smile and make you dance and instead of flagging at the third mile you’ll be half running, half dancing, laughing about a fun night out with your friends. It will divert your mind away from thinking crafty little things like ‘er, you could just, stop, you know?’ and trick you into having actual fun. Music is good at outwitting you.

3. Charity 

There are a lot of things that humanity is collectively responsible for which completely suck. Seriously. But equally there are some things we are actually awesome at. One of those things, in my opinion, is supporting our friends and their exercise goals by donating to worthwhile causes. Knowing that people had parted with their hard earned cash at my instruction and offered it up to help people with dementia meant I'd be pretty rubbish if I just stopped running. So I didn't.

4. Winning

Exercise can seriously take your sh*t. Seriously. You can bitch and whine about it. You can ignore it for a few days. You can begrudgingly acknowledge it for an hour before heading to the pub with your mates. But as long as you have some sort of relationship with it, however bad you might be, it does you good.

And really, if you incorporate exercise into your daily routine; have fun while you’re doing it; raise a load of money for a worthwhile cause and do yourself buckets of good, then you’re winning. Not at an actual race (where you come 10,317th), but at life.

A sort of explanation of why I am running for some people called Doris

I make a donation every month to the Alzeimer's Society. It's the first time I've ever donated without someone jumping out at me from behind a bush and speaking for so long about homeless dogs from impoverished nations with incurable diseases for so long that I handed over all my bank details. I actively sought out their donation form, and really this is an attempt for me to explain part of the reason why.

I am also running a 10k in support of their fight against dementia. I know 10k might seem like something you could do tomorrow, but it's something I have had to work very hard to hope to achieve. And actually I think it's pretty beautiful that we've developed the convention of motivating one another towards fitness and challenges by donating to organisations that make the world a better place. Well done humanity. Here is a win.

Here is my justgiving page, but please do read on also.

Inarticulately, some thoughts on why I support Alzheimer's Society

Both my grandmother, Doris, and my great aunt, also Doris, battled dementia in the later stages of their lives.


It's difficult to explain in what way this is an emotive issue for me, but I don't want to pretend I was close to my grandmother. It always seemed inevitable that I couldn't be close to her, precisely because of her dementia. He eulogy (in 2003) was a surprise to me, as my uncle remembered a family-oriented, smart, busy woman – and as much as those sorts of occasions don't elicit criticism or judgement, I felt that it was a shame that I didn't know in any depth, the character of this woman who people tell me I remind them of. Who makes up, in part, who I am.

What I did experience, second-hand, was the struggle for my parent's generation. My aunt once explained that she was on the phone to Doris, her mother, when Doris suddenly remarked 'anyway, I must go and check I have put my children to bed'. Stories like this become anecdotal – they encapsulate the confusion; the absurdity; the sometimes momentary and sometimes extended alienation from the world people with dementia face; and I'm sure every family who knows this disease has a similar story. I'm sure those people have far too many similar stories.

How much of what you are is shaped by your relationships? The person you were before you became a parent, the person you were before your parents split, the person you were before a painful break-up or divorce, even just the person you were a few days ago before you met a new friend... that's not the same person as you are today. In some way you are changed by those relationships and those relationships become important to you. My grandparents, on the other side of my family, have as much as said to me that the best thing about their lives, now they are not as mobile as they'd like, is seeing their children, seeing me and my brother, learning about our lives and sharing in our joys and achievments (and blog posts).

I can't imagine the impact, for both my aunt, and for my grandmother, that dementia had on their relationship, but exploring that anecdote in any real detail is like falling down the rabbit hole to not-so-Wonderland, it's the window to a world of dementia.

Just think, you speak to the woman who you spend your whole life knowing as your mother – who has guaranteed to have been there when you were born. Who has shaped her days, months and years around your life, your desires, your future – and you can't guarantee that she'll know who you are. Sometimes I can't buy a dress without wanting to check my Mum thinks it's nice. Sometimes I bake a cake and I just want to tell my Mum what it looked like. I can't guarantee she'll have any interest in what I have to say, but I do know that when she answers the phone she'll know who I am, and that by the end of the conversation she'll still be aware.

To be frank, it seems like a long-winded teaser-trailer for death. That person you love is sort-of there. Sometimes you'll show up and they'll be there, and sometimes they won't really be there. It's magic. It will look and smell and feel like them, but the trick is it won't really be them. Not always. Not anymore.

On the day my grandmother died her children noted they didn't feel some extreme pang of grief because it felt like they had slowly lost their mother over the past ten years, piece-by-piece.

But for her, for the grandmother I never really knew, well, this deterioration happened across the bredth of her life, to all her relationships. Every person was removed, forgotten, confused. One-by-one or all together. And really, she was alone. Not for the lack of a family, not for the lack of good-parenting, of working on those relationships over time, but because of this disease. In a conversation with someone she'd loved and nurtured there was no guarantee of those feelings, that history, that person, being remembered...

I think it's important to fight this illness, to conduct research into cures and medications. But predominantly I think it's important to look after and care for the people for whom dementia is inevitable, for whom it causes day-to-day confusion and isolation. And to help their families cope with these issues too.

Here is my justgiving page.

In which I feel like an idiot for getting my phone stolen, and then remember I am not the idiot in that situation

On Saturday I leave my boyfriend's house and start walking to the station, doubling back within a few seconds to retrieve my new iPhone from his bedside table and then, a few minutes later, to collect my wallet from his desk. (I am pretty good at forgetting things I need to take with me when I go shopping.)

As I'm walking past the Hoover Building (former Art Deco factory, now massive Tesco) I decide the facade would make a great addition to my budding instagram album-come-diary.

At this point, over my shoulder reaches a hand.

Firstly, knowing my boyfriend planned to follow me into town a little later, I assumed he changed his mind and headed out behind me. But there's a logistical problem with this explanation. My boyfriend is black, and therefore has two black hands (and no white ones), and this is a white hand, so that's out.

Secondly I assume it must be someone else, messing with me, making fun of me for taking a picture of a Tesco. But, again, flawed reasoning - no-one I know lives out in this banal and obscure warehouse-dominated pocket of West London (perhaps for obvious reasons).

Third, I reason this must be someone I don't know grabbing my phone.

Fourth I realise someone I don't know is grabbing my phone.

Now, the whole process from thoughts one-through-four took only a matter of seconds, if that, but by then the villain of this piece had a definite advantage. His hands gripped around my phone, and my attempts to grasp firmly at the device were by that time, futile.

It turned out this man was riding a bike, which he inconveniently decided to accelerate on, and the few seconds for which I instinctually gave chase were an additional useless contribution on my behalf to retaining my phone.

Luckily, still being near my boyfriend's house, I headed back - a journey of barely two minutes in which I repeatedly became worked up, reached into my pocket to call someone and let them know how I was feeling only to remember the whole phoneless aspect of having my phone stolen.

The police managed to track the phone to a house in Acton, but were unable to make an arrest as I had no description, and, realising the phone had lead the police there, it had been switched off, or wiped. My parents discovered I could claim for the phone on their home insurance.

I felt 'shaken-but-fine' as you do after these events. Outwardly, I lamented certain details: forgetting my wallet; taking that picture; telling my boyfriend to follow later; anything that would have put me in a slightly different situation at the time of the event. Inwardly, when I was in silence, that hand just crept over my should again and again like an annoying gif, and I felt betrayed. Betrayed by my own brief expectations of friendly mockery, of flirtatiousness even, which turned out to be so inaccurate. These assumptions seemed to have been my downfall. Besides the obvious things, like not going out late at night to somewhere desolate, you can't predict when these things will happen, you can only react. And my reaction had been inadequate.

Having spent Saturday night in London and Sunday indoors cooking and watching football, Monday found me out on my own for the first time since the incident. At lunchtime I went to the local Pret, which was typically bustling, complete with predictable shoving and bashing. As a London, hell, even a Pret veteran (a Preteran?) I'm more than used to that scramble for an egg bloomer, but something about it was making me jumpy. Were all of these people trying to take something from me? How did I know that they were what they seemed most likely to be - regular business types buying lunch? Should I forever question my assumptions? A woman, perhaps a distant colleague, waved some popcorn under my nose as I queued and asked me to pay for her so she didn't have to join the back of the line, and it terrified me. I hastily made my excuses, thrust my card in the reader and grabbed my bag. I could feel it coming - a crying and shaking that's normally reserved for, well, I don't know what really. I sobbed a little, and then headed back to the office. I just wanted to be somewhere where I felt secure.

If I'd reacted faster, if I'd assumed the worst, if I had been a little less naive about the situation maybe I would still have an iPhone. Maybe. It wouldn't change the fact that someone had attempted to steal it I don't imagine, or the fact that there are people out there who steal things. Maybe I would even have been accosted by the thief, knocked over or punched if his first attempt had failed. Maybe it would have turned out better, maybe it would have turned out worse.

But it happened how it happened, and I'm actually glad. To react faster I would have to inhabit the world that I walked through Pret's swing-doors and into on Monday at lunchtime - where everything is not quite as it seems, where I see the possibility for secret danger. And that's not the world I choose to live in.

I will keep using my phone (once it's been replaced). I will keep shopping in busy eateries. I will keep assuming the best of a situation... And I will take out some proper insurance.

'You spent the evening doing what?!' Er, drawing people in the naked nude (they did the nudity, not me)

My parents are not particularly conservative people. When I was young I was always allowed to stay up past ‘the watershed’, whatever that means, and watch whatever was on television. I don’t think it even occurred to my mother that this might 'scar me for life' (and I definitely don’t think it scarred me for life).

When I started dating my first boyfriend at the age of 17, my Mum gave me permission to invite him to come and stay (he lived quite a long way away… not in Ghana mind). I’m sure my Mum has seen me drunk on a number of occasions, and has heard me swear, and is more than aware that I was a teenager in the 'noughties'. It’s not some sort of hippy commune where we strut about naked, and it certainly isn’t that my parents are irresponsible – promoting or encouraging reckless behaviour, but there has always been an attitude in my house of acceptance. In the process of growing up and trying new things I have felt a certain amount of autonomy, uninfluenced by parental disapproval.

But a couple of years ago, so when I was 25, when a friend suggested we attend a life drawing class, I remember my Mum’s shocked reaction:

‘You’re doing what? With naked people?!’

Well quite. (Of the things I’ve done with naked people, this one of the more sterile.)

I’ll admit that I too had my apprehensions. The first was that, while I’d consider myself ‘artistic’ in some way or another, the actual drawing thing doesn’t come naturally to me, and Art, capital-A, was never an area of school in which I excelled.

The second, provoked by my inner twelve-year-old, was the repetitive thought process ‘What if I laugh when they take their clothes off? What if I laugh when they take their clothes off? What if I laugh when they take their clothes off?’

But nevertheless I decided to go along.

For anyone who thinks it all sounds a bit 60s, and would turn into some sort of sexual pleasure-house, I’ll stop you right there. The only comparison between life drawing and sex is: if you’ve never done it before, you’ll have all the tools and feel slightly uncomfortable about what to do with them, probably end up stalling, making awkward jokes and taking a little longer than everyone else to get started.

After five minutes of pen on paper action, with ‘at what point shall I draw genitals?’ being pondered in your mind, you forget. You forget everything you have come to think about naked bodies, your 'training' to feel awkward and uncomfortable, how 'private' you believe them to be. I think you start to see what artists throughout time have realised – they are interesting, beautiful, and some sort of law unto themselves.

I start drawing lines to denote the edge of a breast, the curve of a knee, but I also notice that in real life those lines are not there, black and conclusive. In real life the way that light plays across skin is completely perplexing to me, and the people by my side who seem to capture what is front of them with a reasonable accuracy are literally magicians. I do not understand how they have done that.

I was lucky enough to attend a quieter session in which the organiser, an artist himself, gave some one-to-one advice regarding shading and light which transformed my pictures from tiny inaccurate line drawings to extravagant smudges of colour, which represented something not disimilar to a body. I emerged from the class feeling a genuine sense of progress, as well as feeling largely relaxed by the quiet contemplative two-hours, whiled away listening to ethereal music and sipping wine.

I write about this now, having returned for more nudity in charcoal this week. My boyfriend had suggested we go life-drawing on our first date, an idea I poked holes in straight away, pointing out we wouldn't be able to talk to each other, but it's been on our to do list ever since. Our 'hippy to do list'. Staring around the room contemplatively, he announced 'of all the hippy things I have done in my life, this is right up there'. But to me, well, if you peel off all the 'hipster' labels with the clothes, it turns out it's a pretty natural thing to do.

For reference: I attended life drawing classes first a few years ago, they are the classes run in various London locations by Morris - details on Art More's facebook page, although when I returned in recent weeks the classes were exceptionally busy, and the advice to artists was sparse.

I am my daft father

After two months, I have apparently reached that relationship milestone where my boyfriend sits down for lunch with my parents. I’ll hasten to add this happened a little faster than a normal precedent might dictate, because of my living arrangements – post financially-ill-advised move to Berlin, I live back at home. I’m 27.

I’ll say it went well, it certainly didn’t go badly. In fairness, I can’t see what the issue could have been, as both parties are particularly easy-going. However, the alarming part came later, in my boyfriend’s post-event analysis:

“I like your parents, they’re nice people. Does your brother take after your Mum? Because you are exactly like your Dad.”

Oh dear.

I mean, I’ve known this for a little while now. You start to notice the little things that creep into conversation. For example, that big event happening in Stratford this year has always been referred to by Clarkes as ‘the Plinkits’ – an appropriate name, I think, for the five-ring logo. Then there are those jokes you hear yourself making which you know would only get a laugh in your own living room.

My Dad recently recession-retrained as a Maths teacher, and has struggled a little to find the right job. While waiting, he’s subbed for teachers with limited success in Secondary Schools and with great success in Primary Schools.  My oldest friend, who has known me and my family since we were both 7-year-olds, summarised why:

“Don’t you remember when we were 10? Your Dad was like, the best thing ever!”

And he was. He was the right amount of completely bizarre to be novel and funny without going so far out of our realm of understanding that we didn’t get it anymore. He seemed to live just outside of the 'rules' of normal adults. It was amusing and compelling.

But parents are like fashion really, and what was great in the 90s seemed pretty lame and embarrassing by the time I turned 15. I had come to that crushing realisation, I had been duped: my father was not the most intelligent person in the world. And, actually, the fact that you’d heard the jokes and the stories didn’t stop him from telling them. It was official. My Dad was not cool. He was boring.

I don’t think it helped that this probably coincided with a time when my Dad himself was not particularly happy or fulfilled by his life. Bored in his job, working long hours, and returning home to be mocked or snubbed by his teenage daughter.

But like hot pants and fun-fur, what seemed like a disaster came back into fashion. As with clothes, I was more of a sheep at the point of reinvention, looking on as my new friends met my Dad and laughed, genuinely laughed, at his jokes. They would exclaim that he was ‘mental’ but with a tone that implied the brilliance of this eccentricity, and slowly I started to see it all again – the funny (both ha-ha and peculiar), intelligent and sometimes repetitive, but brilliant man who raised me (and transferred money to me whenever I was in trouble).

I observed as a child the strange vortex in conversation created when my father and his brother were in the same room. Some sort of innate script to their conversations which made it seem they were telepathic – when in fact they just knew the jokes so well they finished them for each other. And like it or not, I know the words too; I get the jokes, even when they stop being funny; and, well, I’m a Clarke.

My Dad would say ‘I am your daft father’, which I thought, and still think, is genius, being the double play on words and quote that it is. Well Dad, it turns out, so am I. And looking at you, I figure it's a pretty good thing to be.

The possible consequences of an office sweepstake (are that you end up living there a bit)

I’m sure you’re familiar with the process. Some major football competition comes around and someone in the office (who is typically disinterested in football for the rest of the year) whips out a little bowl with lots of tiny folded pieces of paper, asks you for £2, and offers you the chance to win big. Well, not that big, but normally enough to cover a round at the pub.

What’s the harm? Worst case you spend £2 engaging yourself in the action. You support another team, you have a small vested interest in some of the games that you wouldn’t have noticed, and you can join in the chat around the water-cooler. (Three things that actually happen at water-coolers: 1. getting a glass of water, 2. waiting behind the person getting the glass of wishing you’d timed your trip better. 3. No chats).

Well my friend, if that is all that can happen, play the sweepstake, play away. But beware.

In 2006 I was working in an office as a summer temp between my first and second year of University. If you have a memory, or are capable of doing maths, you will know there was a World Cup in that year. It was held in Germany in fact. Good stuff.

I wanted to have something to chat about with the predominantly male team. Partly because it makes the days go faster, partly because the work was a bit dull and entirely because I thought one of them was very cute. So, innocently, I paid my £2 and put my hand in the hat.

People talk about incidental, seemingly small decisions, noting how they can affect your life. “If you’d taken the stairs rather than the lift you would have bumped into John and he would have invited you to a party where you met your future husband.” That sort of thing. But it’s often hard to locate those exact moments.

For me, in this instance, it is not. That moment when I put my hand in that envelope, and closed my fingers around a small scrap of paper changed my life. I like the random element to it to. Like in some way I was electing to leave my future to chance. But I say this with the poetic notions of hindsight, at the time I was probably just trying not to pick Iran.

The paper proclaimed that I would be supporting ‘Ghana’. I think this was probably pre-sporcle, and my knowledge of exactly where everything is in the world was incomplete, but I had a rough idea that this was a country in West Africa.

Over the course of the world cup I was actually fired from the temp job (that’s another tale for another time). However, my keen sense of loyalty kept me supporting the Ghanaian national team. I was enthused by their story and the passion of their fans. This was their first World Cup, an ordinary African team with no hopes of winning, just happy to be playing football. I found it refreshing. Every goal was a bonus, every win an inspiration.

I started to ‘we’ like a proper fan. ‘We scored’, ‘we have to play Brazil’, ‘we have some strong young players’. I didn’t play any part in the scoring, or the preparation to play Brazil, obviously, but that’s the strange linguistic convention sporting fans engage in. It’s very odd when you think about it. You wouldn’t hear a Coldplay fan saying ‘we sold out Wembley’ or a Harry Potter fan saying ‘we’re opening a Theme Park’. With sports you’re somehow involved though.

Sharing in the glory of my adopted team, I was pleased we qualified from the group stages. And my behaviour had been noted by a close group of friends who duly and appropriately ripped it out of me for talking about Ghana as a ‘we’. ‘You’re not Ghanaian Helen!’

The joke stuck around longer than the Ghanaians, and even the World Cup, and Ghana was on my radar. On my birthday a friend bought me a travel guide to Ghana, and a Ghanaian flag.

I have that ‘I want to go to there’ disease where knowing about a country isn’t enough. I’d say it isn’t anything in fact. I don’t want to read too much about it or look at pretty pictures. I don’t want to watch a documentary where someone else gets to explore it. I want to go to there. I want to see it around me, and notice what I notice, and think what I think.*

Put two and two together. I like going places, Ghana is on my radar. I like going places, Ghana is on my radar. I like going places… I went to Ghana.

I selected a volunteering project for the summer of 2007. Staying in “Kumasi, no, wait, Accra… hmmm, no, you’ll be in Kumasi. Ah, actually, Koforidua” with a “young family… no, a big family… no, a small family” I helped in an orphanage and got used to how to make infirm plans, African style.

I came to ask myself whether this was a volunteering agency, or a dating service. I was 23 and my fellow traveller was 19. She was placed in a house with many children, including a 20 year old son. My family consisted solely of Emilia, the mother, and Mark, the 23 year old son.

Mark and I dated for a year and half. I visited Ghana three times, staying for about two and a half months the last time I went. I can’t say the relationship was all good, or all bad. It was what it was, a relationship that didn’t work out. But it’s an experience I’m glad I had. In some ways it probably ticked the boxes of all the clichés of a white girl dating an African, and in some ways it was no different from other relationships I’ve had with people in this country.

Ghana itself is an interesting place. Sometimes I hated the heat, especially at night when I stuck to the sheets. The mosquitoes weren’t very friendly, or were too friendly depending on how you see it, and they gave me some malaria, which is unpleasant. I spent my days dreaming of cheeses, there seem to be no animals which produce milk. It’s certainly not used in any Ghanaian cuisine or found in any Ghanaian shops, and the prevalence of chilli didn’t agree with my digestive tract.

On the other hand the country is beautiful. In terms of the colours you see in the cities, the landscapes, the simple architecture in the North, the sprawling greenery and National Parks, the elephants in lakes, the tumbling waterfalls. In terms of the people who wave at you as you pass and ask you how your day is going, while respectfully keeping out of your business, it was never a place where I felt hassled. In terms of the relaxed atmosphere, of ‘African time’, of lazy days in the sun.

It was a whole different world, and I can say one thing for certain, I don’t think I ever would have been in that world if it wasn’t for that tiny folded piece of paper.

So you don’t know where that hand in a hat will lead you.

That said, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re not completely insane, and that in fact it won’t lead you anywhere but a world where you have £2 less to your name. As for me, I'm safe. For Euro 2012 I delved into my destiny and picked out 'England'.

*I’d like to temper that paragraph with a massive ‘within reason’. And obviously wouldn’t go somewhere without knowing a lot about it. I’m mainly not an idiot. Although this post suggests otherwise.