Guest Post: IF ...by Pat Walsh

 ** IF **

Weird week, weird times, weird post. Blame it on a Padnemic.
Sometimes only music makes sense, other times poetry. Running always makes sense. I may be going half daft but that is relative to the starting position. I wasn’t great anyway.

Playing around with Rudyard Kipling’s ‘IF’ ( 1910 ) which was once voted best Poem of the 20th Century. I’m trying to bring perspective on the situation and save myself from going mad.

I have been injured so walking gives more time for thinking and taking photos. 

RK: If you can keep your head when all about you ,  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.  
Pat: If you can ignore 20K+ cases per day  And believe in yourself.

RK: If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,    But make allowance for their doubting too.  
Pat: If you can be take assurances from fellow runners that we are in this together,        And know that we’ll see free road in front of us soon.

RK: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies.
Pat: If your head is in the right place,         Then the NPHET lads can take a hike.

RK: Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,     And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.
Pat: If you can put social media in its correct position,   And don’t be reading or listening to shite.

RK: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;       If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim.
Pat: If you can just be yourself,       And not a version or what someone thinks you should be.

RK: If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,     And treat those two impostors just the same.
Pat: We are runners        and have faced every emotion under the Sun

RK: If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Pat: No reply to one of the great Poets and Poems.

Obviously I have a lot of time on my hands 😃

Hope you are all well and forgive me for this indulgence
#PWR