A red kite has been spotted in Hackney, the first seen in London for 150 years, so naturally I have been hot on its deeply forked tail. (You know middle age is closing in when you read in the paper about a rare bird and find yourself genuinely wanting to see it.) Up the River Lea I went, pedalling hard to the marshes, binoculars at the ready; not that you’d need them, kites boasting a fully five-foot wingspan. North to the reservoir, west over to Murder Mile, back east to the edge of the Olympic site, squealing to a halt every so often in a flutter at something biggish overhead, bungling the bins out of my fleece, tracking through the dank January sky, engulfed in dejection as a gull or a pigeon or nothing at all leapt into focus. “Five foot, eh?” said a man I met walking his greyhound. “Big f*****, innit?” I said, sir, I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Back home I had a bright idea. Why don’t we, I suggested to my wife, release the hamsters on the roof? Flat, bare, enclosed, high up, surely the ideal kill zone to tempt a nearby raptor into taking three antisocial Russian rodents off your hands. She wasn’t having it, though; thought it might upset the children or the RSPCA, or both. Come on Nicola, I urged, don’t be squeamish, it’s nature’s way, you don’t like the vicious little so-and-so’s any more than I do, we could bet on which one survives the longest, my money’d be on Sooty, he’s a got a fair turn of pace for a big fella, what d’you reckon? “No, we can’t do it,” she said. “Besides, I’m funny about birds.” Fair enough, I said, remembering the time I had to stalk some dopey woodpigeon round our living room with one of the children’s fishing nets while Nicola hid upstairs. The hamsters were reprieved to bite me another day.
Chasing the elusive kite around the borough had put another 12 miles on my odometer; everything helps now that the bicycle mileage contest with my colleague Tony is getting serious. My problem is that Tony lives in Notting Hill, so he can rack up 16 a day simply by coming into work and going home again, while I, Hackney being a lot nearer to Wapping, am having to cycle around in circles for hours just to stay in contention. This extra effort is taking a terrible toll. I fell asleep at my desk just now, 4pm; admittedly the classic low point of the day, but I felt like I’d been hit by a tranquiliser dart. The lights in here are on a motion sensor so I woke up in pitch darkness and didn’t know where I was. I’d been dreaming about Tony on his bike, covering hundred of miles.
It’s not just the cycling. I’ve been sprinting too, against my cousin George. OK, it was just the one sprint, on a straight stretch of path outside our house, yet it’s staggering how even a short distance flat out can cripple you for days. Funny business, cousins: George and I, same sense of humour, same competitive streak, same facial hair in precisely the same one-in-a-million patchwork pattern, nothing on the cheek, Fu Manchu on the top lip and chin. Genes, eh? Unfortunately for me, whatever chromosome our mutual grandparents passed on that tells you to run like the wind between two designated benches on a rainy Sunday night in the park, George got that to himself.
I should have known something was up when he started doing these weird knee lifts as a warm-up, like Harold Abrahams in Chariots of Fire. He’d told me he still held a schoolboy sprint record from 1978 and also that, back in the late Eighties, in one or two of the many seasons we’d been out of touch, he’d played on the wing for Wasps RFC. I had chosen to overlook this information, or rather, not so much overlook it as offset it with the fact that I had much more recently won the school fathers’ race (lower juniors category) in 2004. (Couldn’t defend my title last year. Broken toe. Gutted.) Even so, I took the precaution of cheating by mumbling three-two-one-go very quickly and setting off before George was ready. I got about ten yards before he hunted me down. By the time I’d finished, he’d had time to sit on the bench, get his breath back and start laughing.
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Still, I don’t bear a grudge. George turns 40 later this year. My plan is for us to enter some veterans’ races, which George will win easily while I play an invaluable role as coach, confidante, chronicler and comic relief. And then I’ll get a video camera and make a heartwarmingly low-budget Brit-flick about George cutting a swath through the professional ranks and becoming a shock pick for 2012 at the age of 46. Good plan, eh? I think it’s a runner. We’re going to start by joining the local athletics club. They’re called the Victoria Park Harriers, a name which I can’t help but notice provides a tenuous and yet satisfying bird-of-prey link for those of you who like their lightweight columns topped and tailed in the traditional fashion.
robert.crampton@thetimes.co.uk