I'm a tiger. A tiger. Rrarrrg!

So here I am, back in W12 - at home during the day, with the children, the elderly and the chronically ill.

Not all in my flat, although I can hear the happy cries from the playground down the road, which makes me feel like a Victorian child with TB.

Really need to work on my self-concept.

No, no. The idea is that I'll be freelancing from here and also starting an interesting MA in about a week's time.

So if you need a freelance writer, do get in touch. I'm available about two days a week. I discharged some of my remaining advertising duties yesterday - requesting work for my portfolio and going to run in the NABS Interagency 5k with the last place I worked at.

That was a weird event now wasn't it? I particularly liked when we were led in physical jerks by a woman with a Bobby Brown radio mic and the voice of Barbara Windsor, flanked by her two silent aerobic cronies.

Overall, it was fine.

Only it was a bit like we were acting out a metaphor for advertising for the entertainment of a spiteful tribal monarch wasn't it? Maybe an socialist African warlord. To wit:

• No one knew why they were doing it. I asked several people, those that would talk to me muttered something about their agency, when pressed a few confessed to a desire to crush their enemies underfoot.
  
• Onlookers stood back as we passed, observing our sad straining faces with blank incomprehension. 'It's clearly painful, it looks meaningless, so why are they doing it?' That's what they were thinking.
  
• Before the race everyone knew everyone and chatted awkwardly, and during it, we ran silently, each one of us alone with his own pain.
• The few that streaked ahead seemed to be made from something more rubbery and nerveless than flesh and bone. After a while the idea of ever catching up became frankly laughable.
  
• Everyone else ran in a dishevelled pack - sneakily overtaking one another over grassy corners.

GC came in around 200th. There were 700 runners, but you have to try pretty hard to be pleased about coming in 200th in anything. Maybe I should have thought creatively and elbowed my way to the front of the funnel - which was pretty clogged, as per the above, by the time I got there.

In other news Dan Germain, chief beard at Innocent has posted about the interview I did with him for Athlete's Foot Magazine. Nice bloke, but he swears like a thin, bearded, alive version of Bernard Manning. Here's a link, straight back atcha Dan.

Haven't heard a peep out of Gary Garnczarcyk at Malmaison. I liked him, as you will see if you read the piece.