The Loneliness of the

Updated fictional story inspired by Alan Sillitoe's short story Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Tweets by @TheSpaceLathe

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

As soon as I got furloughed, I became a lockdown runner. It was either that or learning to bake sourdough bread.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

The only thing I’d run for before then, was to catch a 99 from the whippy van. Bastard always parked at the top of our street.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

But now I’m stuck inside home schooling the kids, lockdown running is what keeps me sane.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

The governor has given us one bit of exercise a day, but when I set off and leave the wife with the kids, I want to run as far away from the place as I can get on a bellyful of slumgullion.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

You cannot meet other people you do not live with, or have not formed a support bubble with, he says. But I’ve been so busy grafting these past years I don’t have any friends left anyway.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

You must not leave or be outside of your home except where you have a ‘reasonable excuse’. This is the law. What I think is reasonable and what the governor thinks is reasonable are two completely different things.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

They don't see eye to eye with us and we don't see eye to eye with them, so that's how it stands and how it will always stand. And if I think it’s reasonable to leave my house more than once so that I don’t go mad, then that’s reasonable.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

They sit there like spiders in that crumbly press briefing, perched like jumped-up jackdaws on the roof, reeling out their statistics, telling us to stay inside to save lives. If I stay inside much longer, it won’t be safe for anyone. That I do know.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

Because when on a raw and frosty morning I get up at five o'clock and stand shivering my belly off on the kitchen floor while the kids are snoozing I feel like the first and last man on the world, both at once, if you can believe what I'm trying to say.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

I feel like the first man because I've hardly got a stitch on - even the first poor bastard dropped on to the earth in midwinter knew how to make a suit of leaves, or how to skin a pterodactyl for a topcoat.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

Now all the shop are shut, I’ve got to run in whatever I find lying about the house.
https://t.co/vXcKfS85kc

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

But there I am, frozen stiff, with nothing to get me warm except a couple of hours' lockdown running before breakfast, and a furlough update from the boss on Zoom.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

I’m training to run so I can see me dad in the care home. I promised the wife I wouldn’t get the bus because now public transport has become more dangerous than plodding through a mine field. https://t.co/KGSmkiyEx8

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

Lockdown running makes me feel fifty times better than when I'm cooped up in the house with the kids doing exercise videos with Joe Wicks.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

Sometimes I feel like the last man in the world on my early morning run while the other 9.9 million furloughed are curled up in bed.
https://t.co/ESlnTtx73m

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

The furloughed sleep so well I think that every scruffy head's kicked the bucket in the night and I'm the only one left, and when I look out onto frozen ponds I have the feeling that it's going to get colder and colder.
https://t.co/v5uYoTuLK7

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

“We can turn the tide within the next 12 weeks and I’m absolutely confident that we can send coronavirus packing” he said. "And if you follow restrictions you can be sure we'll do right by you and send you back to work." Well, I could have died laughing.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

There are thousands of them, all over the pox-eaten country, in flats, supermarkets, cars, houses, waiting to phone the coppers as soon as we break lockdown rules.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

I haven't finished making all my false moves yet, and I dare say I won't until I kick the bucket.

[The Loneliness of the @Lockdown_Runner]

If they’re hoping to stop me making false moves, they're wasting their time. They might as well stand me up against a wall and let fly with a dozen rifles. That's the only way they'll stop me, and a few million others on furlough. https://t.co/JIbp0srXa9