As if running a marathon wasn’t hard enough: it’s the news from Britain

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More than one person ran last weekend’s London marathon carrying a refrigerator. To be clear, that’s one refrigerator per runner, not a shared one. Admittedly, these weren’t the six-foot-tall kind that loom over a kitchen. They were the kind that fit under the counter and mind their own business, that are shorter than your average human, and that can, if you’re crazy enough, be strapped to your back and carried for long distances, although most people don’t care to do that. 

Laura Bird is one of the people who cared to, and she’s probably the one I heard on the radio. “You have to follow your dreams,” she said. Or if it wasn’t her, it was some other woman who ran the marathon carrying a refrigerator. I was driving and didn’t take notes. 

Whoever she was, she left me wondering whether as a culture we haven’t taken this follow-your-dreams stuff too far. I dreamed about scraping the side of my car on a rock the other night. Some dreams can just stay dreams. It’s okay.

Irrelevant photo: Honesty–which is, honestly, the name of the flower.

 

Daniel Fairbrother, another fridge carrying runner, stole the limelight, though, by stopping partway through the race to get down on one knee and propose to his girlfriend. With the fridge still on his back. He also made headlines during a training run, when he was stopped by the police, who thought he might have been an ambitious shoplifter.

“You do know . . . they’ll deliver it for you.” the cop said once he was convinced that he was just dealing with some innocent maniac.

I don’t know if this is strictly a British thing. Lord Google informs me that someone’s keeping track of the fastest time for completing a marathon while carrying a household appliance, which does argue for it being more than a personal quirk but tells us nothing about what country or countries can claim the quirk. So if you know whether people are carrying refrigerators in in other countries’ marathons, leave me a comment, will you? I need to know this.

And while we’re at it, I’d love to hear about whether it’s strictly a British thing to run races dressed as–oh, I don’t know, bananas or phone booths or ballerinas. Because people do that here too. 

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If carrying a refrigerator isn’t one of the dreams you want to follow, you could consider marathon wine tasting. Tom Gilbey tasted a glass of wine at every mile along the route, trying to name the vintage, the grape, and the producer. He got 4 wrong and 21 “mostly” right. He kept from getting pie-eyed, he said, by taking only small sips or spitting the wine out if it wasn’t good, but in the photo the BBC ran he looks a little the worse for wear and the BBC says his verdicts became hazier as he got closer to the finish line.

At one point in the race, he said, “There was a real trio of bad ‘uns, and then around a similar point I was overtaken by a fridge. So that was sad.”

He did raise money for charity, but it was also, ever so incidentally, great publicity for his, ahem, “wine event experience” business.  

 

As long as we’re talking about household appliances

I’m endlessly fascinated by the obscenities of an unequal society. This one comes from Harrods–a store that’s not known for its bargains–which is offering an “ironing system” for under £4,000. Exactly $1 under, because any marketer knows £3,999 looks like a lot less than £4,000.

I need to add a link here to prove I’m not hallucinating.

How is an ironing system different from an iron and an ironing board? Well, it has a cover–that’s important–and a water tank and wheels and a cable rewinder and a bunch of verbiage that may or may not mean anything. I’m not the best person to judge. Ironing’s against my religion.

What do you do with an almost-£4,000 ironing system? Why, you iron your clothes, that’s what. And your sheets and underwear and socks. And your dishrags. I suspect the system has too many pieces to carry in a race, although the wheels might tempt a creative sort to roll it.

 

Outdated literary gossip

Let’s change gears. There’s nothing like a literary trash fight to get the blood circulating, even when it’s old news.  

Very old news. Back in the 1920s, when John Betjeman (later a poet laureate) was a student of C.S. Lewis’s (best known for writing The Chronicles of Narnia), Betjeman annoyed Lewis enough that he he wrote in his diary, “I wish I could get rid of this idle prig.” But he didn’t keep his dislike to  himself: he refused to support Betjeman’s bid for an honors degree.

Years later, the preface to one of Betjeman poetry collections thanks “Mr CS Lewis for the fact on page 256.”

The book has 45 pages.

 

And the news from abroad is . . .

In the US, ice cream sales increased by 3.1 percent in areas that had recently made recreational marijuana legal. Cookie sales increased by 4.1 percent, and chip [that would be potato chip] sales increased by 5.3 percent. 

I can’t give you a link for that. It comes from Britannica’s “One Good Fact”–a daily email featuring random bits of useless information. My life is immeasurably richer for having received this one.

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Someone in Iceland is working to run a glacier for president. It seems to meet the requirements: it’s more than 35 years old and–well, you could at least argue that it’s a citizen. It needs a civil registration number, though, so the originator of the idea, Angela Rawlings, took its name–Snaefellsjokulll–as her middle name so she can be a proxy for the glacier on the ballot.

If you have a spare umlaut, drop it in there somewhere, would you? I’ve run out, it’s late, and the shop’s closed. 

A team of people is now working on the campaign, and like the fridge runners, who run to raise money for charities, they’re up to something serious.

“I come from the indigenous lands of Siberia,” Rawlings said, “and there the personhood of nature is something that is so common to the culture and the psyche in general.” The glacier is melting and she hopes its candidacy will put climate change at the center of the election.

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In Barcelona, residents are fed up with tourists.

Okay, lots of places are fed up with tourists. They price locals out of housing, they travel in hordes, and most of them are convinced that them having a good time is more important than someone else having an everyday life. Not long after they hit critical mass, all the old shops are replaced by bars and nightclubs and vomitoria and by places selling key chains and ice cream cones and overpriced food. In Barcelona, so many tourists were taking the number 116 bus that residents complained they couldn’t get home. 

Why that bus? It goes by Antoni Gaudi’s Park Guell (that needs an umlaut too; thanks), which is on the tourist must-see list.  

Now the city council has had the bus taken off of  Apple and Google maps, and that’s made it invisible–except to residents.

Local activist Cesar Sanchez (add an accent please; the accent shop has been replaced by one renting wetsuits to tourists) said, “We laughed at the idea at first, but we’re amazed that the measure has been so effective.”

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After last week’s post about the National Health Service, a friend sent me a link to FullFact‘s look at Rishi Sunak’s pledge to reduce NHS waiting times.

How’d he do? “Despite the ambiguity in the pledge, NHS waiting lists in England, for planned treatment, increased throughout the year following Sunak’s pledge.” Ditto waiting lists for Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

The NHS has other kinds of waiting lists, including ones called hidden waiting lists–sorry, no data get published for those–but the list for planned treatment is the one politicians usually mean.

Did they grow because those dastardly NHS employees were on strike so much? Well, yes, but that added to the numbers, but they’d have grown anyway, even if the government had settled with them up front.

50 thoughts on “As if running a marathon wasn’t hard enough: it’s the news from Britain”

  2. The UK is a nation of eccentrics and people slowly going Doolally Tap, so no-one should be surprised to see a fridge passing them on the streets.

    I think I may be part of the hidden lists as I need to see a skin specialist here in EWales but have been told that it will be a long time before I see an appointment as currently they’re only treating skin cancers. It seems my own doctor who requested an appointment had made a diagnosis which precludes that condition. I’m happy to give way to the more serious illnesses until, and if we employ more skin specialists, but I can’t be British and complain about NHS delays if I can’t even be seen and assessed.Hugs Ellen.

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    • When I was visiting family once in New York, I saw a guy walking a llama down Sixth Avenue at 11 o’clock at night. It was a bizarre and peaceful scene. So a fridge? No problem.

      And related, to that, I grew up in the land of Me First and I admire the way people in this country take other people’s needs into account, even when the shortages they’re dealing with have been at least in part manufactured by political idiots. I hope they’ll get you off the hidden list and onto the get-something-done list. Skin cancers can be serious.

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  6. I once got overtaken going up Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) by a man in a tweed suit, including waistcoat…he wasn’t carrying a fridge though…
    If I *had* to run a marathon carrying a kitchen appliance, I think I’d choose a spatula, or if that isn’t actually considered an appliance, a very small hand wizzer thingy.
    Not that I plan to run a marathon at all…
    Ok I just realised that my choice of strongwoman as a sport, does actually leave me open to carrying appliances. maybe I didn’t think it through!
    I also went to Barcelona, but i didn’t get the bus to Parc Guell, I walked… it turned out to be a long way from my hotel. But I didn’t have to carry a fridge so it was ok…

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  7. Checked the link … an ironing board and an iron … I wonder what the turnover is? Probably best not to know. :D

    So, some numpty from the indigenous lands of Siberia is nominating a glacier in Iceland for president, presumably for president of Iceland? … sounds about right. :D

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  9. Gentlemen walk. They do not run.
    Can’t speak for them ladies.

    To satisfy your need for Umlaute, just use this link.

    Of course that glacier is a being, sadly a dying one. I am sure that e.g. little brooks / creeks are beings, but I doubt that spiritual beings (genius loci ) can play a role in a human congregation. Humans, who take care of these beings’ needs on the other hand, should be heared, I think.

    BTW I believe that any organisation, regardless of their nature, that keeps “black lists”, is devilish.

    Yes, the price for this ironing board and the electrical ironing machine is obscene – but hey : It’s capitalism at its finest : Someone buys that crap for this price, otherwise it would not be offered.
    Love the market’s invisible hand !
    I think that my believe in spiritual entities has more substance than this. The genii are still there, and will stay – while overpriced ironing boards – ?

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    • I’m sure if I’d had just a little more caffeine this morning I’d be able to find some highly amusing link between the invisible hand of the market and the hidden (not black–sorry) waiting lists kept by the NHS. And possibly even–oh, hell, everything else in your comment: my invisible unlauts (thanks for the link; I suspect I’ll be too lazy to use it next time I need one but I will, at least, have to come up with a different excuse), the very invisible need for an overpriced ironing system, the invisible genii in the natural world–. Sadly, the connection’s just out of reach. I blame my uncharacteristic moderation on the caffeine front this morning.

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  10. Here in Australia we have our fair share of marathons all year round. People join for fun and you always get those dressed up in fancy costumes. Haven’t seen anyone do a marathon with a mini fridge on their back. It sounds like quite an effort, but a good one to raise funds from the links you shared.

    That really is so much for an ironing board. It honestly doesn’t look that fancy at all. Maybe a few extra gadgets but it is still an ironing board.

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    • If you can get someone to pay that much for an ironing board, honestly, you could talk them into anything. Thanks for the Australian marathon update. When I still lived in the US, I don’t remember hearing of anyone running a race in costume and I’ve just kind of chalked this up to the British love of dressing up.

      Maybe it’s contagious and Australia caught it from Britain.

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      • As far as I can remember, costumes have always been a thing at Australian marathons. Not sure where the idea came from. But it looks fun dressing up.

        That much for an ironing board…it should last for a lifetime.

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        • For that kind of money, it should iron our clothes while we drink tea and eat cookies.

          The costumes do make races look like fun, although some of them make me wonder how anyone could walk in them, never mind run.

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  11. Do you suppose there’s an aftermarket for the refrigerators? Or maybe they need to keep them to practice for next year. If I recall correctly, the NHS strike was partially about pay and partially about being overworked. If they fixed the former, it would go a long way toward fixing the latter.

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    • I’m not sure about the aftermarket. Maybe they could auction them off–the refrigerator that won the London marathon.

      Okay, it didn’t win, but why bother with the details.

      I don’t know how much working conditions were front and center in the strikes. They certainly came up, but my impression is, as an outsider, that they weren’t really anything the unions expected they could get solidly fixed. For one thing, fixing it would take a massive political commitment and a competent government.

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  12. I agree that following your dreams has quite possibly be one a way to beat yourself up if you are not an Oscar winning actor, or millionaire influencer (if that’s your dream). I once dreamt of running a marathon. I got as far as a half marathon distance. To be honest it was a slog! I enjoyed 10K (about 6 miles) but breaking leg put an end to all that. Yoga at home on one spot is what I do now. That was never my dream but I am happy with that.

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  13. Ellen, I’m glad I had time to read your post. It gave me a few chuckles. Preposterous things used out of context! What next? Relocations to the moon? Extraterrestrial moving vans? The mind can conjure up all kinds of weird things, under the influence of stimulants, even as innocent as caffeine. I love it. Gets me out of the everyday sameness, as a writer, banging away at the computer to finish a sequel to meet a deadline for the editor. I don’t go any further than the bathroom, then the kitchen to keep me going with caffeine, then the bathroom, then back to the computer. Not many steps on my Apple Watch, as I’m reminded my steps are notorious low. And reminders to step it up. Lost in your post, I get to see the stimulating British world as an arm chair traveler. Thank you. 📚🎶 Christine

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    • I have a category of things I can only do after asking myself, “Could you do it if you were being chased by a bear?” If the answer’s yes, then I can do it if I’m not being chased by a bear. Could I run a marathon if I was being chased by a bear? I’m pretty sure I couldn’t, even if they offered me chocolate chip cookies every thirty yards. As for the wine, could I recommend dropping into a pub instead? It’s a lot easier on the knees.

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    • I haven’t seen a breakdown by states, but–holy shit, has Minnesota legalized recreational weed? How things do change!

      Even with Gatorade I don’t see the point. You’d have to stop, unharness yourself, unharness the fridge enough to open it, reverse all those instructions, and then realize that because the thing isn’t plugged in your drink’s gone warm anyway. You might as well have used a backpack.

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    • That does sound like a good bet. Maybe the point is to set it up in the middle of the living room to impress your friends and neighbors–if not with the looks, at least with how much money you can afford to waste.

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