Coastalblog

For reasons I don't entirely understand myself, I ran ten miles this morning. Well, I say "ran", there were probably a few points were "shuffled" would be more the mot juste, but nevertheless, I put one foot in front of the other for ten sodding miles without stopping and walking. Walking would possibly have been quicker, but that, for reasons that again I don't understand, but obscurely feel to be God's honest truth, wasn't the point  And Lord, isn't my body aware of it now. Most of the left side has checked out for the day, and obscure shooting pains and spasms occur when I least expect them. I am very much favouring my right side as I type this. I should explain somewhat, this wasn't a spur of the moment decision. I didn't just get up and decide to run ten miles. I've always been a runner, of sorts, but realised earlier this year that I was deteriorating quite badly in terms of form, physique and motivation. A mile was a struggle.

Not to make this sound like some portentous announcement, like a celebrity couple imagining that the wider world gives a fig for their marital status, but I have consciously uncoupled from Twitter. It's been on the cards for a while. Ever since the world's strangest man, Elon Musk, bought it in what was the  Worst Banking Decision since 2008 , the entire place has been on the slide, his model of buying blue ticks and monetising clicks meaning that the most extreme, the most controversial voices were aggressively promoted, and normal discourse was largely drowned. I'd watched in dismay as my feed grew ever more right wing, obsessed with small boats and trans issues, race and gender, and it seemed that no matter how carefully I blocked and curated, more screeching, permanently enraged right wingers were placed in front of me. As a strategy for driving engagement, it's superficially clever. The instinct is to engage, to argue and refute, even the reasonable people I follow