On kickstarting Saturday

Sloane Square, Battersea Park, Albert Bridge over the Thames, Chelsea Physic Gardens. These are all places I know from postcards, but they look best under a Saturday sky already ablaze at seven in the morning, with not a tourist or a taxi to mar the picture. The majesty of London's monuments soar into an untroubled sky and her manicured gardens lie replete with hot flowers. My ipod was on shuffle and God put his finger on Springsteen's Born in the USA, an excellent choice which served to remind me that it was indeed the 4th July, and that even when running through the streets of London, you are never alone. It looked like being another beautiful day. I paused in Duke of York Square, just off the Kings road, and beside the Saatchi Gallery, where a solitary Polish waitress was laying out cutlery at Patisserie Valerie in the square beneath the trees. The coffee she brought me was strong enough to strip the paint from my nails, and I lingered over it, watching the shopgirls, groomed like champion racehorses, throwing back lattes and girding their loins before unlocking the doors of their glass cages, preparing for another day of sweet-talk and sneer. I used to be one of them. As I ran back along the glinting Thames, I was thinking of a girl I saw in a dance class at Pineapple this week. Its a difficult class; unlike the nurturing, gentle encouragement of other classes, this teacher fosters an atmosphere of competition and adrenalin. Its a class you need attitude to survive, and girls wear bikinis and hot pants and more make up than on an average Saturday night. But this girl stood out from the crowd not because she was beautiful or scantily clad, but because she danced like it was the last day on earth. Every movement was a word, and her dance became a language that any other human being could understand. I saw the floor on fire. I saw her soul pouring into the air. It was a defining moment in my understanding of what it is that I'm striving for. And I felt burned by the shame of knowing that I have wasted so much time being doubtful, half-hearted, afraid. This was a very powerful lesson, and I'm still reeling from it. I know I have no more time to waste. As the early risers of Chelsea and Battersea began to emerge, they may have noticed a girl who kept breaking off from her run to dance snatches of a routine to an invisible audience. Luckily, I didn't notice them! And then I went home and pulled my husband out of bed for a breakfast picnic on Clapham Common...