Oxford Parkruns - By Kit Villiers

As I live close to Cutteslowe Park, one of two Parkrun venues in Oxford, I always leave it to the last minute before dashing over to the start line; in fact by last Saturday I'd done this last minute rush 99 times, and the organisers asked me if I was going to show up next week for my 100th run, to which I, rather wittily I thought, responded that I'd be too shy to have to step out in front of 200 or so other runners to get my fancy new 100th run t-shirt, and would come again on my 101st.

Anyway what I wanted to say is that on this particular Saturday  - and it has taken me the 3 years since Oxford Parkrun began to reach the dizzy heights of being almost a centenarian - while I was chatting to a couple of cronies just before the start, I suddenly caught sight of a familiar face. And yes, you've guessed it - it was Sam, late of OISE Oxford office fame, and who I think were her two flatmates. All had chosen this chilly November day to make their Parkrun debuts. I had been joking with Sam for ages (i.e. virtually the whole of the 3 years) about running Parkrun - after all she lives even nearer than I do - but 9am has to date proved a little too early for her and her household. It transpired though that this time an alarm had been set and the three athletes from Jackson Road were - at last-  assembled on the start line, ready for the 'off'.

For people who don't know, Parkrun is a relatively recent phenomenon. It began in a London Park a few years ago, and the format is so simple. Runs are always in a park, they're always 5k in length and always start at 9am. I believe this means local time, so runners in Melbourne will have long finished before we even think about starting in the old country. The other feature is that it's free: you just get a bar-code which gets clicked as you finish and so there's no nonsense about wearing numbers either. And it's very welcoming. We always give new runners a welcoming clap, and of course this time this included Sam and co., together with quite a few others. After the run Cutteslowe Park's kiosk is now open for a coffee (this is quite a new feature as the number of participants has gradually built up - I suppose 200 runners means quite a bit of potential business).

Although a few fast people show up, a really nice aspect is that nobody can be too slow for Parkrun. We have a lady who simply walks all the way, and we all give her a clap when she finishes. There is a tail-runner who always brings up the rear, and makes sure nobody gets lost.

Parkrun is apparently the 'in' thing at the moment - everybody is doing it. A second venue opened up in Oxford, at Harcourt Hill, only a few weeks ago, and there are runs at Abingdon-on-Thames and other nearby towns too. Each Parkrun depends on volunteers. These include timekeepers and marshals, as well as the tail-runner.

And how did Sam and co get on? I think the 3 of them were all safely back home in Jackson Road before I crossed the finish line.....

Christmas Letters

I'll have to leave my account of my voyage along the coast of Japan of so many years ago for a bit as I've been a bit preoccupied over the last few days in gathering the various bits of ammunition you need for my annual Christmas card assault on the post office. OK, I know it's a bit early to be in full Christmas mode, but I've just got to get on with at least the overseas lot to be in time, or so they tell me. Actually it's sod's law: if you think you'll save money by sending the cards by sea they in fact send them by air and they're far too early, but if you dally then 10-to-1 they'll be late. You can't win.

I've got the cards (with the usual nautical flavour) and amended last year's stick-on label list by deleting the sadly deceased, the people whose cards were returned last Christmas with remarks such as "Not at this address" or "Return to sender", and those I've managed to fall out with during the last 12 months. Very few seem to get added - perhaps I'm  too old to get any new friends.... The one thing I haven't got yet are the stamps. This is firstly because they are now so expensive that I'll need to discuss overdraft terms with my bank manager first, and secondly because the suggestion has been made that I enclose a typed Christmas letter this year giving all the family news. You know the kind of thing. "Little Frederick won the top scholarship to Eton in September and Fiona continues to represent England at beach volley-ball following her gold medal at the last Olympics..." Have you noticed how brilliant other people's offspring always are? It's quite sickening.

Anyway, if I do decide to go down this particular route, the additional weight of the said letters will make the postal bill even more astronomical.

Although I have to admit quite a high proportion of people who send cards to me enclose letters, I've resisted sending Christmas letters up to now. This is why.

In the first place I'm too disorganised to get them done in time, and this isn't helped by the fact that my printer seems to have packed up. Secondly have I really done anything so exciting that all my friends and relations can't wait to read about it? Well, of course, as avid readers of this blog may recall, I did run in the Angkor Wat Half Marathon last year; but that's nearly a year ago now. That's another of the problems - that race was actually before last Christmas, but run after I sent my 2013 cards. So it's pretty historic now. Of course, if you have a large family you can fill up the page (most people seem to write about an A4 page) with their doings. "Dad's turnip won first prize at the local fete in July" or "Mavis and Bert are planning to come over to England in February - they hope to come and see you when they're back in the old country." The trouble with this is on the one hand you wrack your brains trying to remember who on earth Mavis and Bert are, and do you want to see them anyway?

Anyway I haven't got any kids to my knowledge, and even if I had I don't suppose they would get up to anything too exciting. While penning that, it suddenly occurs to me that you rarely read any bad news in these letters. I've never seen, for example: "Despite trying to turn over a new leaf, regrettably Ernestine will be enjoying her Xmas in prison yet again, this time for fraud, embezzlement and working for a large bank." Perhaps this kind of news isn't regarded as suitable for the season of goodwill.

You get other problems when trying to compose a letter which suits all recipients. You would baffle your friends in America, for example, by mentioning the test match, but perhaps a bigger problem is that not all the addressees know all (or any of) your relatives or other people you might like to mention. I receive one letter each year from an old colleague from the Japan days who can't even agree on his own name: we all knew him as Paul, but it turns out that the folk in his home always called him John. So he has to sign his Christmas letters "John/Paul."

As you can see, in short I'm not totally convinced that I'll be changing the habits of a lifetime and penning a letter for Christmas 2014. 

'Japan at Last!' - By Kit Villiers

We finally arrived at Haneda Airport, Tokyo, at about 2am after what turned out to be a 6 hour delay in Hong Kong. In those days of prehistoric communications we'd failed to notify Robin Pocock, who'd been designated to meet us, of our late arrival, and he didn't therefore welcome us with exactly open arms when we finally emerged at the old Haneda Airport terminal building at something like 3am.

We were to stay for what remained of that first night in the New Grand Hotel, Yokohama. As we drove through the silent streets my fears were somewhat confirmed as nothing whatsoever was written in English; there was nothing even in western script. Robin warned us that we were so late getting to our rooms that we'd probably enjoy a sweaty night as the air-conditioning would soon go off. I'm not sure quite why. It's possible that the hotel wanted to save money and thought nobody would notice if they went to bed at a normal hour. Of course if he hadn't told us this I wouldn't have given it a thought as I was so tired. But as it was I found myself wide-awake waiting for the dreaded switch-off  moment and hardly slept at all - not the best start to my new career!


The year was...well I won't tell you exactly, but it was precisely 100 years after the Meiji Restoration. That is, 100 years after the Emperor, who had been dozing for a couple of centuries in Kyoto, the old capital, found himself recalled to 'power' in Tokyo when the Shogun proved unable to deal with the sudden invasion of 'foreign devils' who had penetrated Japan's isolation about 15 years earlier.

One of the first things the Japanese did was to isolate the foreigners into three what might best be called compounds, the most important of which were on the sites of what have become Kobe and Yokohama. It is perhaps no coincidence that these two small settlements of 100 years ago have grown into two of the world's major ports, and hence P & O, together with other old British companies such as HSBC and Jardine Matheson, still kept their Japan head offices in Yokohama a hundred years later even though with the opening up of Japan after the 2nd World War everyone else was moving into what had become the world's biggest and most vibrant city, Tokyo.

Japan was a strange mixture of old and new. John Farmer, the other newcomer and I, were told we'd never find the office and that we'd be picked up at 9am sharp by the office driver. "He'll be late, I'll bet you" said John, who had had experience of the Third World. He was wrong - the driver came spot on time. That was the first surprise; the second was that that Japan had no street names! No wonder we wouldn't have been able to find the office. Addresses without street names were very strange, and appeared to be based on a system of concentric circles. Taxi drivers never seemed to know where they were going, and I found later that you had to give them a map to have any chance of getting anywhere; even then you never really knew if you hadn't gone wrong. "Was that really the 4th turning on the right?" you would wonder. Without a street reference you had no way to check. On the other hand if you liked Bach or Mozart it was quite pleasant getting lost - taxi drivers seemed to love western classical music and played it all the time. Mind you, even in those days you could clock up quite a taxi fare so you didn't dare relax too much.

Anyway the driver knew where the office was, and so began our new life. The staff bowed deeply to the 2 new expat managers, although I was a bit disappointed that nobody was wearing a kimono. John was assigned to some frightfully important position in Yokohama almost immediately, while I was to be transferred to Kobe, and next time I'll relate how I got there. Meantime I was stay in the hotel: John told me later the street name thing bugged him for days: he and his wife could never find their house without help, and goodness knows how they coped with shopping. There was almost nothing recognisable in the shops, and, incredibly polite and charming as the shop assistants were, nobody spoke English.  I expect a few other of the British wives were roped in to help. We had around 6 British managers in Yokohama and 2 in Kobe, out of a staff of several hundred.

I'm sure you're wandering what happened to the poor old Shogun. He was called Mr Tokugawa and the Tokugawa Shogunate had ruled Japan for centuries. I'm sure in most 'emerging'  countries there would have been bloodshed at this sudden change of regime, but not in Japan: apparently the Shogun just quietly retired to private life. Took a house in the suburbs, I expect, and lived happily ever after....