I meet a man from New York who tells me he did not go to Woodstockin 1969 because it was raining and he knew there would be a lot of mud. He says it was 80 miles from where he lived.

This revelation comes soon after Bob Dylan is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and he and I are waiting for the Dublin marathon to start. The man and I; not Bob Dylan.

Without any preliminary he asks my age: straight out of the playground playbook.
I say it's my birthday in six days and he says he's already that age.

He says we went through all the same things.
Not wishing to be rude I say yes and wonder when our wave will be called to the start line. I've trained enough, I am ready to be away.
I enjoyed my twenties, yes
I enjoyed the thirties, yes


A woman walks by with a pair of creepy-looking dogs and I hope their leads don't wrap around my bare legs or I will be mown down by the hordes of hopefuls behind me.

Forties were rough. Huh? yes.
I lose interest.
I hear him saying flower power, yes I say.
Vietnam, righto.
Free love, for sure.

I say we are the generation that changed things: he says I hear you, man.
Man?
I still go on demonstrations I say, we're not finished yet.
This was before Trump fell into the White House and Leonard Cohen stopped singing in the same week.

He says I gotta go somewhere else.
I say, yes.

He walks away, still tied to his age.
I wonder how to loosen my new trainers so my feet don't bleed so much into my new white socks while I walk those 42 kilometres for the third year in a row.

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