As a poet, there is no doubt in my mind that I have a tendency to over intellectualise. This often entails looking on the dark side of life. The beauty of existence is, for me tempered by the knowledge that our time here is brief. As I put it in my poem, “Passing”:

“The sun comes and goes on a cold Autumn day
And I think on fun and how quickly it passeth away.
The flower that bloomed
Is soon entombed,
Or if it blooms still
A rill
Of tears
Marks it’s all too tender years”.

None the less life is for living. I love walking in the great outdoors and have recently taken to running with colleagues during my lunch hour through St James’s Park in central London.

We writers have a tendency to live too much in the mind. “I think, therefore I am” is undoubtedly true, for to think makes us human. However the intellectual side of life needs to be balanced by physical activity.

While running one is acutely conscious of the animal nature of man. The pleasure of stretching one’s legs and enjoying the purely physical side of existence is one which I wholeheartedly recommend.

While there is conversation with my running partner, which enhances the pleasure of the activity, I do, none the less leave the intellectual aspect of my nature behind when exercising and lose myself in the physicality of the experience.