Sue came over from Italy last weekend for a get-together in Brighton in memory of our friend Keith Ramptahal.  We stayed in Littlehampton in a tired B&B and on Saturday I went for a run along the coast to Angmering-on-sea. It was a very English scene on which to reflect about "Brexit" and this very peculiar little country that I come from.  There was a strong breeze behind me as I ran past neat semi-detached houses, across meadowlands and into secluded private housing estates.  Lots of tidy white people were walking their dogs plus the odd man in a cheap tracksuit nursing a can of strong cider. The return run was hard work in the face of the wind and I began to resent it as I plodded on with a forward lean.  Bloody wind, bloody Littlehampton, bloody country, bloody brexit.

For Christmas we decided to drive down from Miri to Kuching and stay at one of our favourite hotels - the Basaga.  It's an old colonial house away from the touristy riverfront with beautiful gardens which make it a green oasis amid the mouldy concrete of Kuching, which oddly means "cat" in Malay. On Christmas day morning I went for my customary run, which took me along the riverfront as far as this culvert and then inland back in the direction of the Basaga.  On the way I passed St Thomas' Cathedral, Anglican I think.  It was packed with worshippers, including an overspill standing on the steps outside, all singing carols.  All these people devoted to a church that originated in England made me feel a little embarrassed to be an English atheist.  If they had known I guess most of them would have been terribly shocked. Mostly in this society I keep my beliefs to myself, not because I feel scared or intimidated by people's faith, be it Christianity, Islam...

Sue left yesterday afternoon for meetings in Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, leaving me with an empty apartment and a new car to explore with.  I started my day with a run in the opposite direction to my first run two days ago. I headed towards the bridge that links the peninsula to the centre of Miri, passing en route a large and completely deserted housing estate owned by Shell.  I ran into the estate, saying hello to several patrolling "auxiliary" policemen en route.  None of them challenged my right to be there - old white blokes seem to have a free pass. The estate is in idyllic pine woodland next to a palm-fringed and empty beach and is perfectly maintained - roads swept and hedges trimmed, although no one lives there anymore. Shocking when I think of how many people in Sarawak live in tumbledown shacks.  But then multi-nationals like Shell have the money to do what they want and they always look after their assets. On the return leg I ran into the Boa...

Seventeen days after getting a dawn bus for Rome in Locorotondo I finally arrived in Miri with Sue yesterday. This morning I pulled on my running shoes and went for an exploratory jog around the strange peninsula where Sue's apartment is located.  You can see from the map that Miri has a river which snakes inland and creates a long tongue of land between the main city centre and the sea.  This tongue is home to a bizarre combination of smart apartment complexes, like Sues, a golf course, a fishing village, an idyllic but rubbish-strewn and sandfly infested beach and the moorings for literally hundreds of oil rig service and supply vessels, some the size of largish oil tankers. I ran around the edge of the golf course to the tip of the tongue, where I spotted a couple of paunchy expats finishing a hole while a tanker the height of a four-story building slid slowly down the river behind them.  Then I turned around and ran back up the tongue before stopping to take t...

When I go out running in a strange place water draws me to it like a magnet.  On our last full day in Phnom Phenh I got up at 6am and headed for the Tonle Sap, a tributary of the Mekong.  After two days in the city I'd got used to the traffic, which behaves more like a crowd of people than vehicles.  When we first arrived we took ages waiting for a clear space to cross the road, until we realised you just have to launch yourself into the flow and vehicles weave around you like water in a rocky stream. Dawn is a good time to see the city as lots of people come out in the cooler air to stroll, run or take part in group exercises to pop music, doing a kind of cross between yoga, tai chi and line dancing in slow motion. When I reached the river embankment in the city centre I ran along the wide promenade and headed for the pleasure boat dock.  I carried on along the river back out of the city centre, past increasingly grubby workshops and shophouses until I reach...

We've been over a week in Cambodia now and my morning runs have taken me to some special places.  In Siem Reap, waiting for Sue to arrive, I ran five kilometres up the Siem Reap river, which was used to transport stones to the Angkor temples, and stopped at this bridge. En route I ran through the outskirts of town travelling against the tide of morning commuters on cars, bikes and motorcycles, many, disconcertingly, wearing face masks.  One woman sweeping the streets was concentrating so hard that she didn't see me and thrust her broom in my path, causing me to jump and at the same time let out a very audible fart.  We both laughed heartily as we went on our way. After Siem Reap we flew down to Sihanoukville on the South Coast, where we are staying at the fashionable Otres Beach.  On my first morning there I trotted down the beach and at about four kilometres found this river which a young guy was paddling across. Although it's the height of the season th...

Sometimes when I'm travelling I get up early, put my running shoes on and just jog for fifteen minutes or half and hour, stop, look around at where my legs have taken me, then run back the way I came.  This habit has taken me to some interesting places.  If you start in a town you'll often end up in some quiet, out of the way spot in the country.  Some of them have really stuck in my mind - a rice padi on the island of Langkawi, a misty rural canal in Northern France.  Now I take an iphone around with me I can even take a photo and spot my exact location on a map. I'm staying in digs in Lincoln for the next three weeks and this morning, before dawn, I put on my running shoes and headed out of the city down the Nettleham Road.  Even at 6.30am there were lots of commuters driving into town.  It was colder than I'm used to in Italy and so I ran a bit faster than usual, trotting through the outskirts of town past cut-price gyms and Pizza Huts in modern in...

It's the dog days in Saratok after the Chinese New Year and I had to drag myself out for a run this evening. As usual I went to the running track a couple of kilometres out of town where the car park was full.  Several people were walking or running around the track and a football match was in progress in the middle.  I did a slow warm up, nodding every now and then to one of the regulars, then launched myself onto the track for a five kilometre trot, which my GPS watch tells me is just under eleven circuits in the outside lane. Whenever I begin a run I have this anxiety that my body won't carry me, that this is the day when my old legs just refuse to budge and I stop immediately or fall flat on my face.  It never happens, muscle memory kicks in and the body just goes through the motions.  People seem surprised that I don't get bored, running round and round in circles, but there's a surprising amount of stimulation.  I have my MP3 player, on which I listen...

What on earth am I doing running long distances in this heat and humidity?  I'm an old man for God's sake!  After fifteen minutes of jogging you are bathed in sweat to the extent that your socks start squelching inside your running shoes and everything is ringing wet.  In these conditions the body behaves  like the engine of a car when the air conditioning is going full belt.  Because the air is so humid the sweat doesn't evaporate, but drips uselessly out of your pores making your heart work hard just pumping blood to your extremities to keep your temperature down and diverting more and more effort away from actually running, so you get slower and slower and wetter and wetter. Anyway defying old age and common sense I ran the Sibu half marathon on Sunday in two hours and nine minutes.  It's an interesting place Sibu, our nearest largish town with maybe a couple of hundred thousand inhabitants and shopping centres and supermarkets that wouldn't look too...

A couple of kilometres up the road from our house is the Saratok running track.  Three or four years old I am told and a really nice and well-drained surface, essential in this climate.  People go there in the morning and the evening when it is cool enough to run or walk round the track.  I am now a regular a few times a week. Sometimes there are thirty or forty people of various ages making their way round at varied speeds from a slow stroll to a fairly gentle trot.  Sometimes, for reasons I haven't yet worked out there is just me ... and the dog. The dog likes to keep an eye on what is going down at the track and likes to go for a snooze in one of the straights, usually in lane two.  Sometimes he raises an eyelid as I stagger past, panting and bathed in sweat.  Sometimes we exchange a glance which may or may not mean anything to either of us. Normally I do ten kilometres during which time the dog will shift his behind a couple of times and maybe g...

I got up yesterday morning for my constitutional run and decided to make it a “farewell to Cordoba” tour. The sky was grey and bloated with water and as I crossed a bridge over the Guadalquivir the rain began to pour, making my running shirt stick to my chest. The rain stopped as I ran around the cloisters of the cathedral/mosque, watched by a couple of bored security guards. Later I puffed and sweated through the narrow cobbled streets of the old city and up to the running track in the orange grove, before doubling back to Sue’s apartment via Cordoba’s social housing estate. Like everything else about the City the estate has a “toy” quality, social deprivation on a contained and picturesque scale. The balconies are full of washing, old bicycles and caged songbirds, while amongst the oldish cars a dilapidated horse drawn carriage is parked. Outside the “Hunters Bar” there is a knot of not too threatening drunks in stained open-necked shirts and trainers. Now I am back in Italy ...

I'm back in Cordoba visiting Sue. Among the delights of Sim City is a jogging track which snakes for two kilometres around a small orange grove not far from Sue's school. I visited it almost every day when I was here last and now it's like coming back to an old friend. It' s reminiscent of a snakes and ladders board and at almost any time of the day or night it is dotted with a variety of people, including runners, dog walkers and older folks taking a constitutional stroll. Because the grove is actually quite small the track is packed into it in a series of tight curves and sqwiggles which makes it a peculiarly sociable place. Another runner could be a kilometre ahead of you but still only be fifty metres away as the crow flies. I try not to be too competitive but I still get a sense of triumph as I slowly reel in a fellow runner then overtake them. Similarly I do my best not to feel a sense of defeat as a young or not so young athlete lopes past me as I lumber ...

Today I am fifty five years old. I got up early, put on my running kit and drove out to the Ridge. The weather was like in this picture, except I didn't take Milly today. I ran fifteen kilometers. It took me eighty six minutes, a personal best by nearly a minute. There was a cool breeze when I began, but by the time I was finished the Sun was high and the temperature was in the middle thirties. I finished with a sprint to the car, my fist in the air shouting "yes!" As I stretched my tired legs the Sun made the sweat on my arms glisten and the breeze began to cool me again. When I get home Sue has tied balloons to our gate. Our builders are working on our new outside kitchen and all three wish me "happy birthday". I go inside and there are three presents on the table. I greet Sue, shower, change and boot up my laptop. I enter my time on a spreadsheet and note that the World record for a man of my age to run fifteen kilometers is 56% of the time I ran t...