The Dublin Marathon looms this weekend, and sadly, my invitation has failed to appear. There is a tiny part of me that holds on to the memory of a punishment run back in 1842 when I had to run twice around an airfield, measured at some two miles carrying two medicine balls and full kit with my musket on my back. For the first time in my military career, I actually did it and within a time, that did not require me to either do it again, or to return to the guardroom at 0300 in my swimming kit and remain for two hours guarding our base. My memory says my time was under 30 minutes, but memory is a wonderful thing and as Mark Twain observed “A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.”
Next year, perhaps. By that time, I’ll be able to wonder at the marvellous new society that Andy Burnham will have created. There’ll be