Late at night....

Due to a mid-afternoon visit to the local ear, nose and throat clinic with Cian, I had to work late last night in the university. It was after 11.30 before I finally finished for the night. As I was walking home, I heard the slap-slap-slap-slap of feet coming up rapidly behind me. I spun around and one of my students, oblivious to the classic 'preying-mantis-primed-to-attack-with-a-quickness' stance I had instinctively adopted, huffed and puffed his way past me. A minute later, more slap-slap-slap sounds and here comes another student, heaving his way up the hill towards me. In the 12 minutes it took me to walk home, I encountered six runners. All this fitness at close to midnight.
Nocturnal athletes - my university seems to be full of them. I don't know if this is a particularly Japanese thing, the result of too much rice. Back in the day (when, yes, I was the otoko), the only running I did late at night was a kind of drunken, lurching stumble down O'Connell Street to try and catch the last 68 bus home. Back then, running at night, sober, was for wide-eyed, skinny-limbed loons who howled at the moon as they jogged. Real Irish men were in the pub drinking and talking shite.

Though peversely, drinking actually made me fitter. On those heady nights of Guinness and chat I often lurched a little too late for the 68, and by the time I got to Fleet Street it would often be gone. And well, then, well, I'd just have to take my chances on the 51 to Neilstown.

Yes, Neilstown, on the last bus.

You want a rolling preview of the apocalypse and the end of civilization as we know it? Then take the last 51 on a Friday night. And sit up stairs. Down the back. If you dare...

Though I always got off in Clondalkin village before we got taken into the badlands proper - even drunk my survival instincts were still working. Then I'd spend the next two hours or so walking the five miles home. If I didn't fall, and fall asleep in a ditch somewhere on the back road to Baldonnel. (And yes, it happened dear reader; more than once. I'm not a proud man).

But all said and done, definitely much better in an affirming-my-innate-Irish-manhood-sort-of-way, than going for a jog at 11:30 at night.

Friday night, apocalypse now.... da dan da, dan, da, dan da, dan daa, daaa (or however you write 'Ride of the Valkyries').