Today I saw my grandad..

Today I saw my grandad. Which is weird because he's dead. He died about seven years ago. It was gut wrenching, a sharp dagger inserted and twisted, a cold blade piercing my abdomen.

My running habit has taken on a new life this year, kilometres are being piled on top of each other like my pancakes on a sunny Friday morning. My feet are feeling the side effects, I have blisters the size of two pound coins appearing all over my feet, in places I've never seen them before. If the kilometres are pancakes the blisters are the raspberry topping.

I'm feeling a new pain pustule beginning to crater it's way on to the bottom of my right foot as I turn the corner of Springbank Road in one of London's south eastern suburbs. I looked up and there he was. It's morning and it's early spring and a mini heatwave is dowsing the pavement with beautiful rays of sunlight and I can't really remember an April morning feeling so good on my skin. There's a cool breeze blowing down the streets and through the passageways of the victorian conversions.

He was wearing a bucket hat but not the kind teenagers wear to booming techno festivals. The bucket hat of a man in his early seventies, Khaki in colour with a few sweat marks staining the top and seeping in to the drooping brim.His hair was grey and his scruffy beard matched it, falling down his neck but not quite in to his chest. He had a short sleeve plaid shirt of reds and greens and chino coloured shorts that ended at the midpoint of the knee. Long white socks were scrunched just below the calf and walking boots, doubled knotted, graced his feet.

I'm in to my third kilometre, my body entering the flow of mid run, little to no effort required. I'm soaking in the the sun and the tuneful birds are chirping a melody that matches my heart rate. The breeze is sliding past my ears and my arms and this is my first run of the year without wearing a jumper, without the safety blanket of layers covering my body that I'm usually so ashamed of. He was with a woman.

My grandfather and grandmother took me from the arms of my parents who worked tirelessly to support our family and raised me with mashed banana and jam and Countdown in the afternoon. Their sofa was my refuge when the Churchill dog, Oh Yes, the Churchill dog would frighten me whilst I worked on my anagrams. My grandad would take me to the garage and pass me a mallet, whilst he held some rusty and bent nails he'd salvaged from god knows what. I took the mallet to the classically paved area in front of the garage and collect stones to smash, observing the dusty sediments of colour that they left behind. After school he would be waiting dutifully for me, my small scooter slung over his shoulder in preparation for the short ride home. I didn't run.

I'm taken aback, but I need to keep running if I'm going to beat my personal record. She was not my grandmother. I decide to take my chances and go for a good morning. I'm not a good morning type when I'm running. I don't like to interrupt my flow or steady breathing that takes what feels like an age to enter. I'm not an athlete, I smoke heavily. Before I get the chance my grandad opens his mouth to speak to me. He said something I couldn't understand, he said something about the closed road I had just sweated down, with orange clad construction men vigilantly watching my every stride. I mutter something back about the pavements being open and he glared at me. My not grandmother pulled him along and I continue to run.

The wind is still blowing and the perspiration is sticking to my body with every gust. The bird's are still humming to my beat, and my feet are pounding the hard pavement beneath me. To my left is a what looks like a child's drawing on a driveway, a multicoloured chalk creation smashed in to the ground in the image of a rainbow with carefully drawn letters under stating the two words: thank you. I am not feeling very thankful.

My grandad had treated me with disdain and I am still running. He had never done that when I was a child. He was the most gentle man who cared for me with great love and affection and I was happy to spend my time with him. He let me buy Hubba Bubba from the newsagents as I scooted and he walked me home from school. We sat on the bench outside the part time post office and chewed the gum and the fat about the day that was then behind us.

I loop round at the end of the street and begin on my way towards home. The same route home I always run. The wind is behind me now and despite travelling up a moderate incline, my pace is increasing and so does the rate of my heart. It feels like I can hear the deep red blood inside me travelling all over my body, like the M25 that surrounds me with commuters taking different avenues to reach their destination, only to return to the pulsating ring road once again.

He was not there on upon my return. My grandad and not grandmother were not on the way back up Springbank Road. Maybe they'd decided my instructions weren't up to much, that I was directing them to a troubled path that they decided not to take. The double knotted walking boots on his feet and they were walking away from me, leaving me to my run without their presence.

I am running. I am approaching the five kilometre mark and I am forgetting about the encounter with my grandad. I beat my five kilometre time which is supposed to be the end of my run, so I add another pancake to the stack and keep going. I run passed the point where I met my grandad again and I am still going. He was not there. I reach six kilometres and I amble home, scooter-less, without a stick of gum or any fat left to chew.

My legs are trembling. They are trembling in the same manner as when I held my grandad up at my grandmothers funeral. Every vibration moving through me with the force of a speaker at a booming techno festival that teenagers wear bucket hats to. They are trembling like they were at my grandads funeral as I was seated on a hard wooden pew, listening to my dad who was giving a speech, the tremor intensifying as his voice broke.

I'm sitting down on a wooden chair at home and my girlfriend brings me some porridge to replenish my shaking legs. Frozen raspberries that are sat underneath the steaming oats being to melt and break down. I notice a new raspberry on my heel. The banana that is on top of the oats is soft and old and I mash at it with my spoon.

He was there but they are here. And to realise that, I just had to stop running.

Maybe today I didn't see my grandad. It would be weird, because he did die seven years ago.

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@pascalkempson