Like every morning of my life, which I love so much, thank God, yesterday I went out for a run.
(I also did it today and I will do it tomorrow too, but today I’m sticking to yesterday).
Yesterday I ran around London, as the newspaper sent me to cover Wimbledon, and I’m here, I follow Alcaraz and Djokovic, and in my free time, in the morning, I go for a run.
When I travel and go for a run, I usually look for a park, the seafront or the river course (I like to go flat and fast), but the other day a colleague had told me about Brompton Cemetery.
– There are people who jog through the cemetery, and who pedal, and even who walk the dog – my friend said to me when he saw that I arched an eyebrow.
“Well: let’s try it”, I said to myself.
Because in my dear life I have trotted on snow and thick forests and highways and airports. But in a cemetery?
I had my doubts too, I won’t deny that either.
I was wondering: is this possible? Is it ethical?
Isn’t it a disrespectful act, isn’t it an offense, to sing a song to life and start running among the tombstones of those who have abandoned us?
Curiosity got the better of me.
Baffled by the bookings, yesterday I walked a mile from my hotel in Earl’s Court and entered the cemetery at the pass, wondering what the visitors were doing, whether they were running, pedaling and letting the dog play, or rather standing in front the grave of a loved one, they changed the flowers and mourned their absence.
(They explain that Beatrix Potter used to sit on the benches to write the Peter Rabbit stories).
It’s true: the runners ran and the cyclists pedaled and the lawnmower napped, he was resting on a flagstone, so I glanced at some of the gravestones, all stone, with names and inscriptions chiseled by the carvers – dozens of soldiers killed in the two world wars rest there – and then I started jogging like any Londoner would.
And, as I ran, listening to the silence, just the sound of my footsteps, I began to feel my life speeding up.
And I immersed myself, I remembered the beings I have lost recently (my father-in-law, the dog, even my friend Sergi, who was also about to leave after a motorcycle accident, but he has dodged the chess), and in his memory I left my life in a fast-minute-slow-minute fartlek, saying goodbye to all of them and to you too, as I close the columns here, see you in a few weeks, when I’m back from vacation.
(Although I will still spend more days at Wimbledon, and admire the tennis players who are still alive in the tournament table).
