one more

It's cold in old England, and not only here. The entire island is under a nasty spell. Today, many newspapers carried on their front pages the same satellite image of Great Britain, showing an unbroken white surface, a blanket of snow stretching from Land's End to John O'Groats and from Margate to the undiscovered north-west corner of the land.

London is a bit of an exception. Winter has moved in, but the white stuff in the parks and gardens lacks the fluffiness and playfulness of snow. It's harsh frost, as unforgiving as a public-school headmistress, that covers the lawns and bushes. The paths, streets and sidewalks seems clear, but beware. They are covered with an inch of treacherous ice that hasn't melted in five days.

I haven't been out running, but that's not the New Year's resolution that I've broken. I'm still taking the preparations for my third marathon very seriously indeed. I haven't been out because I've had a bit of a cold, conveniently befalling me right before I embark on my training. Next week will see me back to form and on the planks of the university sports center. I have scheduled circuit training and spinning classes (and am dreading them).

Not eating meat of dubious provenience is also not a resolution I have broken. Outside a little bacon rasher that was part of my New Year's Day's breakfast, I've haven't had dead animals' body parts on my plate. The consequences cannot be estimated yet, but I expect them to be dire. I'm constantly hungry and in danger of losing weight. While some might rejoice at this prospect, I'm concerned about having enough energy for a three-hour marathon and keep eating chocolate to make up for lost calories. At some point I'll have to go to Whole Foods and buy a piece of wholesome hand-raised cow; otherwise I might not last long. Anyway, at the moment I'm still going.

I have failed in a different regard, in a resolution of passivity that proved to hard to keep. Last year, I acquired some 25 books, of which I read a good dozen. I read also a few I've had for a longer time and some I had borrowed or planned to give away after reading. Overall, that roughly evened out. My bookshelf has become heavier, but the books don't just sit there gathering dust. Still, after buying Orchid Fever and getting In Patagonia, my wish list had been whittled down to one. With the exception of one, my bibliophile desires were fulfilled, and I had resolved not to add to my collection this year.

The book that was destined to be ignored was The Black Swan, a piece of socioeconomic heresy that explains how the world is shaped by the highly improbable. Statistical outliers several standard deviations from the expected and freak events off the scale can have potentially earthshaking consequences; yet human nature tends to suppress the very idea of these events. Nassim Nicholas Taleb gained instant notoriety for publishing his thesis at exactly the time that highly improbable and entirely unforeseen events threatened to pulverize the financial world.

On two occasions, I had borrowed the book from from the library, most recently just before Christmas. Both times I started reading with wild enthusiasm but had to realize quickly that the book required more thinking than I could fit into the three weeks the library accorded me. Each time I got intellectually stimulated by the introduction but then ran out of time. Last Sunday, I returned the book for the second time, unfinished. Then on Monday, on my way to lunch, I saw it in the window of the Oxfam store. I couldn't resist and bagged it, breaking my first resolution when the New Year was less than a week old.

I don't feel too bad about it. Given that I have twice failed to read the book when taking it out from the library, the only way of succeeding was by owning it. Well, owning it and reading it, and with the weather expected to stay arctic for at least another week, I'll have plenty of time to do that. But I'll do so anxiously, checking the forecast periodically to see when I can finally go outside and run.