Another easy Sunday run with a swim in the sea afterwards. I'm trying to swim in the sea once a week all the way through the winter, just as a thing to do, like the Marcothon, but less intense, and for longer, and more wet. It's called the Submergathon. I'm hoping Julia Henderson of Helensburgh R.C is going to do it too...
It was decisively Autumnal today. The temperature had dropped a few degrees, the skies were grey, the berries were out, there were toadstools in the woods. The beach was delightfully free of people. When I went to get into my wetsuit I discovered that I had let it lie, wet, in the boot of my car for a week, so it was damp and smelled damn fishy.
The water was a bit rough, so quite exciting, but also exhausting. The waves rolling in made me lose my bearings and to my embarrassment I "beached" in shallow water, right near a child who shouted "go deeper, go deeper" excitedly. I muttered "fuck off" very quietly under my breath, and getting up and turning around swam off with great dignity.
I was recently reading a paper by a Barbara Almond, about the psychoanalytic underpinnings of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. She said that Dracula was a monster baby, unfed by an un-attuned mother and therefore powerless and furious, feeling he must feed from others using mind control, magic and coercion.
I was obsessed by Dracula as a child, not in a magazine collecting way, but more in a having-to-wear-my-snorkel-parka-with-the-hood-up-indoors kind of a way. I was scared to look at the window in my bedroom at night in case I saw someone floating there, three flights up.
Reading about it made me want to re-read the book, to see what I thought of it now, being an adult and all, so I ordered it second-hand and dirt-cheap off Amazon.
Yesterday I waited in for the Postie before I went out my run, just in case there were any parcels for me. There often are, because I've got a bit of a 2nd hand psychoanalytic text habit now and I honestly couldn't tell you at any one time what's coming for me. Especially since I order things from America and forget about them. Who knows when they'll turn up.
So the postie did come yesterday and he did have a parcel for me. I ripped it open with anticipation and then my blood turned a shade cooler. The horses became restless, snorted and pranced. The postie got into his black carriage and then hurtled away down the cobbles as if pursued by the very devil himself. It had arrived...Dracula. A terrifying tale if ever there was one. I couldn't actually bring myself to read it. I put it in the sitting room and avoided it. Peter is away running in Tiree so it was just me in the flat at night. I tried to relax, doing things on the lap-top in the bedroom, but every little noise made me jump...
There was no way I was going to start Dracula at night in the flat on my own with a nearly full moon outside, staring in the window. I don't know just when I am going to read it. First thing in the morning doesn't seem the right time either. It would appear I'm still afraid of Dracula.
Anyway, so, I did a bit of googling and discovered to my surprise that Bram Stoker was an Irishman (I had assumed he would be Transylvanian to be honest with you.) Bram stands for Abraham. He spent the first 7 years of his life with a mystery illness and bed-ridden after which he recovered completely. I'm sure that must have warped his brain. I'm off for a stretch and to get a shower, and wash out my wet-suit this time too, before the shadows lengthen and the darkness falls....
