There is a series of footpaths through the farmland behind my house which are public rights of way. You have a right to walk down them. You can’t cycle, or drive a car. They are used by people walking into town, by myriads of dog-walkers, and by runners. On one side are the meadow lands, ancient grasslands which are a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and on the other hand, playing fields for a few of the Oxford University Colleges.
I ran down some of these most days last week during the quiet first week of January. Some days I saw no-one, other days the occasional dog-walker. But term has almost started, and the enthusiastic sports person in particular is already back. I was running, at shall we say a moderate pace, along the public footpath today when I heard the noisy thud of footsteps behind me and a ‘Watch Out!’ I turned and stepped out of the way just in the nick of time as two six feet, fourteen stone parcels of muscle zoomed past. They did not slow their pace one jot, nor did they show any sign they might deviate their path or that they were considering stepping out of my way. I had no option but to shift quick, hoping the undergrowth did not conceal the canine hazard the horrors of which mere words cannot describe.
‘Oi!’ I yelled at them, after a nanosecond’s thought. ‘If I can get out of your way, why can’t you get out of my way?’
They stopped an turned back to look at me, jogging on the spot as they did so. ‘What are you saying? We just warned you we were coming past so we didn’t startle you.’
‘No you didn’t, I had to step aside so you could get past. Why didn’t you get out of my way?’
‘You were going so slowly!’
‘Well if you were going so fast, you could have run around me.’
‘I’ve been running for twelve years, you know. That’s how running works. The slower runners get out of the way of the faster runners.’ And with just the faintest whiff of testosterone left hanging in the air warmed by their sweaty wake, they were off.
The thing they had failed to notice, however, was that we were not anywhere where any ‘rules’ of running applied. We were not on a playing field. We were on a public footpath, where you have a right of way, not a right of jog. Cocooned in their own inner world in which youth, speed, and sheer bulk of muscle forms the basic building blocks of the universe and the rules by which it operates, they failed to notice that their little world existed inside a bigger world, consisting in little old men with their terriers, and little old ladies jogging ever so slowly – pardon me for breathing. This world has existed for centuries, far longer than the amazing ‘twelve years’ upon which the authority of the jogging rules were premised.
Faster, stronger, ruder.