Running In The Dark

Why Women Don't Like Exercising in the Winter

Zoë Sharp

 

At the end of October, the clocks in the UK went back, from British Summer Time (or Daylight Saving Time) to Greenwich Mean Time. The mornings are lighter as a result, yes, but by about 4:30 in the afternoon, my thoughts turn to switching on the lamps in the sitting room and lighting a cosy fire.

 

I’ve been on something of a health kick of late, but I try to ensure I get any outdoor exercise during daylight hours. You can wrap up well against the weather, after all.

 

Darkness is another matter.

 

As a child, I always suffered from a bit too much imagination when it came to being happy in the dark. And now, living out in the wilds with nary a sniff of a streetlamp, walking home from a late winter event in the village can still be an unnerving experience. Things scutter about in the verges as I walk past, or take flight out of the branches overhead. I’ve encountered owls, hares, and badgers, as well as sheep and cattle on both sides of the hedgerows.

 

But one thing I have not yet encountered is other humans.

 

The chances are, around here, if I meet someone else in the lanes then I probably recognise and know them. But for millions of women, living in cities, that’s not the case when they’re out, alone, at night. And so, despite the constant message that exercise is as beneficial for our mental health as it is for our physical well-being, taking up regular outdoor exercise at this time of year can be the proverbial double-edged sword.

 

Upping Your Winter Vitamin D

If you work in an office, then getting out, even for a short period at lunchtime, when at least it’s light, can do you the world of good. It also enables you to absorb a bit more of the Vitamin D we’re all lacking here in the UK between October and March. In fact, I use the alteration of the clocks as a reminder to double up on my Vitamin D supplement.

 

The easiest way to up your daily step count and get some fresh air is either to take up regular walking or running. During lockdown, it seemed that everyone I knew was taking up the Couch-to-5k challenge. Personally, I prefer to cycle rather than run, which feels kinder on the joints.

 

I think this is because I’ve never been much of a runner. For one thing, I’m incredibly slow, which is possibly why I learned so much self-defence – you have to stand and fight when running away with any kind of alacrity is not really an option.

 

And, I confess, that having learned how to protect myself does give me the confidence to go out alone in the dark, although I would never dream of doing so with earbuds in.

 

It’s rather a shame that we don’t hear more news items about lone women who have successfully fought off a would-be mugger or rapist, rather than those who tragically did not succeed. It all feeds into the frightened mindset that somehow it cannot be done.

 

Trust me – it can.

 

I didn’t create the character of self-defence instructor turned close-protection expert, Charlie Fox, as some kind of unrealistic superhero. She’s simply strong, determined, tuned in to her surroundings, and very well trained. And she knows how to turn almost any everyday object into a weapon, from a tube of lip balm to a rolled-up magazine.

 

Barrier to Running

I read a fascinating article in The Guardian recently, written by former gold medal-winning cyclist Chris Boardman. In it, he explained that he’d been trying for some time to persuade his wife to take up running. He had not realised why she was so reluctant until she finally told him her real reason for not doing so at this time of year – she simply did not feel safe.

 

Boardman raises the statistic that one in five women is worried about sexual harassment while out exercising, and three in ten have endured it first-hand. If I’m walking along a street at night, I don’t feel comfortable if a man is walking behind me. I will cross to the other side of the road, or stop, put my back to the wall, and pretend to be answering a text while I wait for him to go past. (I would always stop and turn my back to the wall to genuinely answer a text, rather than keep walking without being aware of my surroundings.)

 

Boardman’s article asks why women have to be so hyper-vigilant, when the cause of their anxiety is the male half of the population. He highlights Sports England’s This Girl Can campaign, which encourages women to take up a form of empowering exercise. They have also written some guidelines for men to help them seem less of a threat.

 

Because I’m sure anyone reading this is no genuine threat to a lone woman – you’re all far too nice a crowd for that. But if you’re out exercising and you come upon a woman doing the same, have you thought that you might unwittingly cause her some anxiety, just by your presence?

 

If you’re closing on her, slow down, or cross the road in order to overtake, rather than gaining on her and then passing close. Boardman also quotes the advice not to make comments, even if you think you’re being complimentary. Say nothing unless you get a greeting first. Then simply return it and keep going.

 

No consolation

There has been a whole spate, in recent years, of female victims who were murdered while out running, and whose attackers were brought to justice due to data from fitness trackers. Either their own or those being used by their killer.

 

Somehow, I don’t find that information very comforting, do you?

 

This week’s Word of the Week is accismus, from the Greek akkismos meaning coy or demure. It means a deliberate and feigned lack of interest in something which one secretly desires. It was described as both a vice and a virtue in the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1823.

Safe in the Streets—Sarah Everard

 Zoë Sharp

 

On March 3, at around nine o’clock in the evening, marketing executive Sarah Everard set out to walk back to Brixton Hill from a friend’s house near Clapham Common in South London. It was a journey that should have taken her less than an hour.

 

A week later, on March 10, her remains were found in woodland near Ashford in Kent. She was identified via dental records.

 

The discovery of Sarah’s body came the day after a man was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping. He was subsequently charged with her murder, and will go to trial in late October this year.

 

The speed with which the alleged perpetrator was caught for this crime is surprising when you consider that the man was, at the time of his arrest, a serving Metropolitan Police officer with the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection unit. The PaDP is one of the few routinely armed branches of the British police, and you might expect, therefore, that their personnel would undergo psychological scrutiny that was perhaps stricter than other divisions.

 

The murder of Sarah has been a catalyst for protest about violence towards women in general. The UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel, said that “every woman should feel safe to walk on our streets without fear of harassment or violence.” She has announced new regulations are under consideration to protect women against sexual harassment in public by making it a specially defined criminal offence. At present it falls under the umbrella of ‘street harassment’, which is a cover-all term, encompassing the honking horn of a passing vehicle to everything nasty from there on in.

 

It’s a sad fact that you are more likely to be prosecuted for dropping litter than you are for sexually harassing a woman in public in the UK. A horrifying number of women admit to being the victim of this kind of intimidation and abuse, usually by a complete stranger.

 

And that stranger could be anyone.

 

Because, also in the news this week was the case of Emma Homer, who was walking home one evening in July last year when she was verbally and physically assaulted by a man who screamed obsenities at her as he tried to wrestle her to the ground.

 

Emma’s attacker turned out to be Oliver Banfield, an off-duty probationary police officer with West Midlands police. He not only admitted the charges but the court heard that he used the techniques taught to him during police training to try to take his victim down. (She escaped, by the way.) Banfield was ordered to pay £500 compensation. He was also given a 14-week curfew, banning him from leaving home from 7pm until 7am.

 

(Please excuse me if I don’t find that a very severe punishment during a national stay-at-home lockdown.)

 

Banfield’s legal representative argued against a community service sentence, apparently saying it would be ‘difficult’ for him to work with criminals.

 

Perhaps he should have thought of that before he became one?

 

Labour MP, Harriet Harman, said Emma’s experience “must have been terrifying for her but no prison sentence. This is proof, if any is needed, that [the] system fails women and protects men.”

 

When I started learning self-defence, one of the first lessons I absorbed was to avoid putting myself in a situation where using those techniques became necessary. But why does the onus have to be on the woman not to make herself a victim? Why isn’t it on the man not to make himself the perpetrator?

 

When, in the wake of the Sarah Everard tragedy, Baroness Jenny Jones suggested in the House of Lords that introducing a curfew for men would “make women a lot safer” scores of people frothed at the mouth in response. Not that Baroness Jones was expecting to be taken seriously but, as The Guardian’s Arwa Mahdawi commented, she was ‘pointing out double standards’.

 

After Sarah’s initial disappearance, the police in London were advising women “not to go out alone” and nobody seemed to think this was anything out of the ordinary.

 

(Not, of course, that staying at home is any safer, as one in three women in the UK will experience domestic abuse during their lifetime.)

 

But, as Arwa Mahdawi puts it: “If you’re up in arms about the idea of a male curfew, perhaps you should think critically about why you’re not as angry about all the ways in which women are told to adapt their behaviour in response to male violence.”

 

This week’s Word of the Week is codicology, meaning the study of manuscript books as physical objects rather than for the text they contain. It comes from the Latin codex, meaning a notebook or book, and the Greek ­–logia. Codicologists also study book cataloguing, manuscript collecting, and the history of libraries.

 

Getting From There to Here

Zoë Sharp

Zoë Sharp in natural habitat

I blame Jeff and Stan. They ambushed me in the bar at Bouchercon last month. One minute we were recounting our favourite Flanders and Swann songs, with much juvenile giggling, and the next I’d been talked into joining this illustrious little gang. I’m still not entirely sure how we got from there to here.

I don’t even drink.

But, here I am, nervously smoothing down my hair and straightening my Sunday-best frock, trying to remember my lines and hoping not to be met with, at best, a blank-faced stony silence.

And it occurred to me that I really ought to introduce myself properly to my new bloggers and bloggees. So here goes.

I took a weird path into the writing game. Is there a normal one? I wasn’t a noted student, opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve and did correspondence courses until I was legally old enough to go out and get a job. The local authority sent me to see a careers advisor when I was fifteen or so. I told him I was interested in writing. He said, “We’ll put you down for clerical.”

I’d already written my first novel by then. It still sits, unpublished, in a folder in the attic. A children’s story, but no fledgling Harry Potter. My father threatens every now and again to dig it out and see if it will fly on eBay. I have it well hidden.

A few years later I ended up at my local newspaper, selling display advertising — the ads in the front half of the paper, rather than the classifieds. A soulless job if ever there was one. Everybody suspects that half the money they spend on advertising is wasted, but they don’t know which half so they resent spending any of it. I lasted six months of impossible targets and nail-biting deadlines and picked up a temporary heart murmur for my pains. Towards the end, my manager — knowing I wouldn’t stay past the probationary period — asked the editor if there was any chance the editorial side would take me on. I’d already written advertorial copy and he knew that’s where my interest lay. The editor turned him down flat. “No qualifications.” They fired me.

I'm the idiot clinging to the back ...

I looked at getting those qualifications. Seven years of study just to become a cub reporter. I gave it up. Instead I sold pensions, delivered yachts, taught people to ride horses, and did a few other things I probably shouldn’t talk about too much. During this period I acquired my first car — a broken-down Triumph Spitfire MkIV wearing more different colours of paint than Joseph’s coat, with a six-inch nail holding one of the front brake calipers in place. Not my first choice but the best I could get for the money. I rebuilt it, worked out how to make it go round corners, resprayed it Brooklands green. And started to write about it.

Before I knew it, I was writing for the classic car magazines. In 1988, with an arrogance that frankly shocks me now, on the basis of a couple of accepted articles I gave up my job — no loss there — and turned freelance full time. It was four years before one of my magazine editors asked me what qualifications I had. By that time I could tell them they’d been sending me cheques for four years. What more did they want?

The freelance market was good, the rates reasonable, so I expanded the scope of my work. An editor asked could I supply words and pictures? I borrowed a camera and gave it a try. My fiction writing ambitions went on the back burner, until something happened to revive them.

I was sent to see a bloke in south Wales to do an interview. But when I arrived it soon became clear that the car collection I was supposed to be featuring didn’t ... actually exist. And he looked kind of shifty when I didn’t turn up alone. The bloke made some sort of lame excuse and we left, annoyed at the wasted trip. It was only afterwards that I started to wonder what he had planned. I’d made an appointment, so he couldn’t claim he wasn’t expecting me. The only thing that had thrown him was that I hadn’t come alone. And what then?

Say no more.

A couple of years previously, Brit real estate agent Susie Lamplugh disappeared after going to show a prospective buyer round an empty house. She was never found. It struck a chord. Especially when, after that abortive interview, every time my picture appeared alongside a regular column I was writing in one of the classic car mags, I received death-threat letters. Professionally done, with the words cut out of newspaper like a ransom note. Telling me I was scum, telling me they knew where I lived and my days were numbered. The police never tracked down who’d actually sent them.

As for my reaction, I learned self-defence from a little black belt karate and kyushu jitsu instructor with a benevolent smile and steel fingers. I did not, as has been erroneously stated in the past, learn to shoot in order to protect myself. I could already shoot to competition standard.

 But I did start to write fiction again. Maybe it was a form of escape, of regaining control. Maybe it was a desire to create a world where the bad guys died screaming. I wanted a strong female lead who wouldn’t buckle when she was put under threat, and one day Charlie Fox turned up on the doorstep of my mind, fully formed, with an attitude and a motorbike, a traumatic past, a failed military career, friends who loved her. She said, “I’ve got a story to tell. You might want to write this down.” I didn’t argue.

The result was KILLER INSTINCT: Charlie Fox book one. To date, there have been another nine series books, a short story e-thology, plus a novella, and this summer my first standalone, THE BLOOD WHISPERER came out. Over the winter I'll be working on book-number-the-eleventh.

And, in one of those little tweaks of fate that so rarely happen, several years after I turned freelance I got a call from the publisher of the newspaper who’d sacked me, offering me the editorship of another paper in the same group. I let them take me out for a very nice lunch to discuss the position, then turned them down. Maybe I should have told them I simply wasn’t qualified ...

It’s been my habit to have a Word of the Week every time I blog. For this one I’m going for absquatulate, meaning to leave abruptly or quickly, or to flee. As opposed to levant, which means to run off without paying a debt, or abscond, to run in order to evade capture or justice, usually taking something or someone along with you. If your dog gallops out of the house and hot-foots it down the garden, he’s absquatulating. If he has the Sunday roast clamped in his jaws while he does so, he’s absconding.