7-Up

Trees don't blossom in the Autumn.

I write with reference to the dream described in my entry of 31 March. It was when this minor revelation struck me that the fraudulence and naivity – indeed, the sheer witlessness – of my imagined version of running a half marathon began to become clear. A beautiful sunrise? Happy runners? The difficulty is this: if I was assuming there would be tree blossom in October, perhaps there would be no limit to my self-delusion. Will there even be trees up there? The course winds its way along a motorway somewhere outside Gateshead, doesn't it?

I felt like a greedy young boy who, perhaps just after reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, had been taken out to the country by his parents and thought he'd stumbled upon a field filled with the stuff. Only to discover he was in a cowfield. And it was, well, yes.

In truth, this sudden feeling of pessimism probably has less to do with running in general and more to do with the black dog that's been pursuing me over the last week or so. Don't panic, though, non-existent readers. It's okay. It happens sometimes. Is twenty-eight too early for a mid-life crisis? Depends how old you live to, I suppose. I hope I'm not at the middle of my life already.

I think my mid-life crisis started about the time the adolescent crisis finally, somewhat apologetically, petered out.

How did people get by without Wikipedia? I now know that the black dog was a term coined by Winston Churchill, not to mention a "ghostly dog in British folklore" (perhaps an inspiration for Hound of the Baskervilles?), a 1998 film starring Patrick Swayze, a Led Zeppelin song and a fully self-containing Linux computer with a built-in biometric fingerprint reader. I guess it can refer to an actual dog that's black, too.

The point is - even in times of listlessness, Wikipedia can provide some interesting trivia.

In case this entry wasn't already too unfocussed for words, there is one other thing that's been bothering me today. That thing is 7-Up. I was reading a book today that mentioned the stuff, and right at the same moment a song came on the radio that mentioned it as well. It was actually a bit of a moment. It made me stop and think – not clearly, clearly, but it made me think. Is 7-Up lemonade, or is it something else? I wasn't sure. I expect an American would know immediately. Would they order a vodka and 7-Up like we'd order a vodka and lemonade?

So, what did I do? I looked it up on Wikipedia.

It's been that kind of a day.