What was I running from? The humdrum of the working week, that growing sense of existential dread, a realisation of the divided self? Or did I simply want to carry on eating crisps while watching Match of the Day and not worrying about fitting into my trunks when I took the wee one swimming at Leith Victoria on a Sunday morning?

If poetry was a means of expression, of writing to think, running became a way of escaping the words and thoughts and the low-level buzz that was either tinnitus or, as I liked to think, Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music album playing on a loop in my brain. What’s that, Lou? You gotta run, run, run, run, run, take a drag or two. Run, run, run, run, run, gypsy death and you. Helpful, thank you, but I hope you’re not offended if I don’t take a drag or two. It’s not part of my warm-up routine.

When I’m not running, whether through injury or inertia, my mood is noticeably lower. I still walk everywhere but it’s not the same. And I must be on my third or fourth couch-to-5K but above the electro burps of Metal Machine Music I still hear the encouraging words of Sanjeev Kholi as my choice of coach from the NHS Scotland app. Not that I imagine hearing him as Still Game’s Navid but as one half of the two Toms from Radio Scotland’s long-ago Shredded Week. A Scots-Asian character actor doing an exaggerated Northern Irish accent in homage to the grouchy and hyper-pretentious poet and academic Tom Paulin from BBC2’s defunct Friday night arts show being all that’s required to have me lacing up my tatty running shoes.

Don’t run too fast now is the usual advice from Her Outdoors as I head out. This, forgive me, is our little running joke. I’ve never been blessed with pace and once came last in the 800 metres at Iffley Road, the track where my namesake broke the 4-minute mile. I ran the 4 minute half-mile and to add to the humiliation felt by my 14-year old self, my mum, a PE teacher at another school, was at the finish line to put an arm round me and say with parental sincerity, well done, boy. These days I can be overtaken by pensioners on mobility scooters or tots on tricycles. I do have a limit though. A few years back I was running up the hill from Portobello prom, the bit near the outdoor pens of the Edinburgh Dog & Cat Home, and could sense another runner over my right shoulder.

Fair enough, I thought, I’m on the last stretch of my run and they’re probably just started, or it could be they’re 20 years younger and fitter and faster. But then I saw from the corner of my eye that not only were these conjectures correct but this person was running and pushing a pram. No way was I going to stand for this and somehow finding a new gear I accelerated up that slope back towards Leith like the Road Runner crossing a cactus-strewn cartoon desert. Meep meep! There were scorch marks on the pavement and Pram Man? Nowhere to be seen.

What I think about when I’m running is everything or nothing. The latter is the best, a near Zen state, the hubbub of the world reduced to the rhythm of my breathing, the thud of trainers on tarmac, and the chittering of a magpie. There are cyclists and folk walking their dogs but these are merely obstacles to be navigated. Here comes the masked Uber rider hurtling down the middle of the footpath followed by the two dog walkers with, between them, five German Shepherds, all off the lead, and before you know it you’re in the furry midst of what could be a David Hockney late work of dark wintry colours.

What am I running from? The past, the present, all the futures that may never come to be, vaping 14 year olds who shout the c-word, only they add the word auld in front of it, the tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator Rolling Stone described Metal Machine Music), pram-pushing Lycra dads, disputatious Oxford dons, and a gypsy death. Most of all a gypsy death.

Roger Evans