Benjamin Evans - Author

‘Nick Clegg is a whore – and the Conservatives were the only party who would pay for a whore.’ It’s been a depressing few weeks for all those who believe in the principles of politics. From standing on opposite ends of the Television podium and apparently seeming to represent complete polarities in most of the political spectrum, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have somehow jumped into bed together to form a united front against the evil that was New Labour and Gordon Brown. They have formed a fellowship of previously warring factions, Cameron the would-be-king Aragorn and Clegg as his archer-in-chief Legolas, against the despotic Brown, who has been looking over them all with his great ego and his...evil eye. Okay, so the combination may not entirely work, but it is working to the right ends, to help all us back to fiscal harmony, where hard times will lead us one day into a new, brighter world. Or perhaps the ring has tempted all of them – Cameron a wide eyed hobbit and C

A few days ago I was sat in the pub with my friends. It was the first really hot day of the year and because of this all the babes and the hunks were able to shed their winter cloaks and get their shapely, toned bodies out on display. Here was where all those hours down the gym would pay off, where they would get the return for sweating out the merest ripple of fat on their arses or hammering out those biceps until they were ready to burst. Here is where a stranger’s eyes would divert lustily towards them, affirming of all the hard work they had put in over the winter months. They were attractive! People fancied them. They had a power over the opposite sex and, more than likely, they would get a shag at the end of the night. They had succeeded in the one thing that is most important to all of us, whether we realize it or not. Over the same dark, winter months, I have been running. Six days a week, fifty-sixty miles, rain, wind or shine. Okay, so these guys or girls had been down the gy

How wonderful it is to be a runner. How fabulous we feel breathing in the fresh air on a sunny Sunday morning, working our taught legs, expanding our capacious lungs, feeling fit and happy with the world. What pleasure we attain. How blessed we are to follow this path. This is why we do it and this is when we wonder why everyone else doesn’t do it too. Running makes you feel fantastic, who could not want to take it up right now? And yet I hardly know anyone who runs. In fact, almost no-one I know does. So why? If running is such an innate human capability and so ultimately pleasure-inducing, why doesn’t everyone do it? Why was it only me, a seventy year old man with a beard and a chubby Chinese woman with headphones who were out in the park this morning? Reason 1: Lethargy The human body operate on momentum. Left to its own devices it will happily sit on the couch doing nothing and to convince it towards physical exertion is not an easy thing to do. At first it will resemble a stubborn

A rather wistful tale by Zadie Smith, literary wunderkind of the chattering classes, as she tells the story of Howard Belsey, an English academic, and hi African-American wife Kiki, as they deal with adult affairs, teenage romances, intellectual rivalries and most importantly, trying to forge an identity amongst the traditional, middle class milieu of Ivy league American North East. The story is predominantly concerned with the actions of Howard as the details of an affair with a fellow teacher begin to unravel around him. At the same time he has to deal with the highly strung opinions of his talented daughter Zora, as the joins his class and the class of his previous mistress, and the temptations of a stunning new student in his class, who also happens to be the daughter of his rival, the right wing moral mouthpiece Monty Kipps. This is something of an ensemble piece for Smith, a mix of clear and clever characters who interact in amusing and believable ways as the scandal erupts aroun

This is why we do it right? This is why I run every evening over and over, day after day, rain wind of shine. This is what it all builds up to – to be the fastest, the strongest, the toughest...the winner. Victory is the answer to all the questions I have been asking of myself over the last few months, and to which I haven’t been certain of finding until now. I’ve done it. I’ve done what I set out to do. This Saturday morning I am the best. This is the way that victory makes you feel. The fact that you have beaten ‘him’ or ‘her’ is of no matter, but the fact that you have beaten your doubts, your uncertainties, the constant wonder as to the point of it all, is. There are numerous facets to running that make you feel good – the relaxation, the sense of achievement, the endorphins – and all are good enough reasons to do it on their own, but none of them give you the same sense of definitive, unequivocal justification as winning. There is something innate in running that causes you to tes

Its May bank holiday. It’s 10 o’clock in the morning. It’s raining torrentially. Being England, the majority of the population are still in bed, hangover, watching TV or in church. They are certainly not standing in the centre of a park wearing shorts and a vest, stretching their calves against the side of a tree. No, there must be something very, very strange about these people. However, as I look around at the competitors huddled together on what we assume to be the start line, one thing crosses my mind. These people are all so normal. In proper, serious running races everyone is a familiar breed – lean, muscly individuals wearing club outfits, all looking very serious sand focused on what is ahead of them for the next 45 minutes. These are not normal people. These are elite athletes. There is something strange about them. But in the race today – the Randolph Featherwood memorial 10 mile – these athletes are conscious by their absence. It is a much more…human affair. The field is com

The more perceptive readers amongst you may have noticed that there is a constant theme running through pretty much everything I write. Characters reach dead ends when following the promises of capitalism, traumatised individuals realise the limitations of relying on a permanence of ‘self,’ cyclists muse spiritually about the transcendent nature of riding up a hill, yep, this is all very much born out of the ideals of the Buddhist religion. However, I’d like to make myself perfectly clear – writing came first. I’m not here to sermonise. It was only recently that I came to these ideas, which I thought were fantastic and original, and realised that a portly man under a tree had thought of them thousands of years ago. Rather than feeling aghast at my lack of originality, I took great solace in knowing that so many others had the same feelings about the world as I did. There were certain questions that had been playing on my mind almost every day and which i had previously thought that I w

As a runner I have a funny conception of pain. While a normal human being will understand it in a sane, rational way, e.g: ‘If I cut my hand with a knife it will hurt. Because it hurts I will stop cutting my hand. I will try not to cut my hand with a knife again.’ A runner welcomes it. ‘If I run really fast it will hurt. I want to run really fast to get quicker. I want to run so it hurts.’ Pain is there to be felt, it is the yardstick by which we judge our improvement, it is not something to be avoided, but overcome. However, every so often there are come a point where we are reminded what pain is like for everyone else. It is when injury strikes. The regular supply of endorphins mean that runners have a general feeling of invincibility about them, but ironically it is this that can make them weak. Run too much too quickly too hard, feel too invincible and the muscles will start to become as fragile as a new born baby’s skull. Run again and they will break. ‘Ow.’ ‘Ow.’ ‘Ow...shit, ow.

Rhys Thomas’s book slips neatly into the angsty affluent youth genre that has been milked to so much success on Donna Tartt’s A Secret History, and shares some of that books success and much of its failings. Our protagonist Richie is a typical teenager, concerned with girls, his reputation and his parents and they constantly seek to complicate his life which had only previously been troubled by the late delivery of the new My Chemical Romance album. However he has a deeper side as well, witnessed in the first few pages of the book, where he visualises ‘Worst Case Scenarios’ for those he knows, putting seemingly meaningless actions into a frame of dramatic awfulness. This has come from a mysterious past of manic and violent actions, that may or may not return. At the same time an effervescent new student ‘Freddie’ has started at school, and after saving a depressed loner from suicide becomes something of a cult leader to Richie and his peers. After sermonising on the emptiness of adult

‘So why are you standing out here today?’ a man in an anorak asks me. ‘Do you know someone who is running?’ ‘No’ I say. ‘Are you supporting one of the leaders?’ ‘No,’ I say. ‘Are you working for one of the charities?’ ‘No,’ I say. ‘Oh,’ my inquisitor shrugs. ‘So why are you down here today then?’ ‘I just like it,’ I tell him. ‘I just like watching.’ I’ve been coming to watch the marathon for five years now. I did it first on a whim, in the same way one catches a last minute flight or buys a new top, and now I won’t miss it for the world. I’m not really a running fan or anything. I don’t know who any of the leaders are, unless it’s Paula of course, and I don’t know how fast they are or what a good time is. Only twice have I known people who are running in it, and neither time did I actually see them go past, or even look for them if I’m honest about it. That’s not why I’m here. I watch the marathon because I like the way it makes me feel. The world is a pretty miserable place 364 days a

It’s the first meet of the season and things are not looking good. Darren, our sole hope for the 100m, 200m, 400m long jump, triple jump, hurdles and pole vault, is out injured. ‘I don’t know how it happened,’ he tells us, hobbling up the finishing straight. ‘I jogged trough the park to warm up and something just went. It’s never happened before.’ In the three years I had been with our club this had never happened. According to legend Darren hadn’t missed a meet since his twenty-fifth birthday, two decades previously and running without him just didn’t seem possible. I did the 5k and the 1500, Tim did the 800, Aaron did the high jump, Mike did the discus and shot put and James did the steeplechase and Darren did everything else. We didn’t always show up – I ran marathons and Mike was frequently in jail - but we knew he would cover for us. He was always there. Always. James immediately saw that we had a problem. As an ex international 400m runner his day – for The Falkland islands – he