OK, it isn’t strictly true. Weasels didn’t rip my flesh. Nettles did, but there isn’t a Frank Zappa album called “Nettles Stung My Legs Quite Badly”. The closest Frank has to offer me is his 1970 album “Weasels Ripped my Flesh” as an accompanyment to this awful run.
I was trying to squeeze in a long run before setting off on holiday so I hastily planned an extension of a route I’d already done, in a loop from Pentrich at the south to Wheatcroft at the north. I chose my running clothes with equal haste and put on a pair of shorts which I should have left in the 1980s where I found them - legs are best covered up when heading into uncharted undergrowth.
After the initial easy detachment of running over familiar ground I became lost whilst looking for paths buried beneath new crop growth. Power-drizzle soaked me in a way that an honest downpour can’t. I reached the threshold where I wished I’d brought something to eat. The path steepened through cowshit and mud, towards Wheatcroft. Just before Wheatcroft the path weaved into a sea of nettles, with a clearance broad enough to allow only the passage of a slim snake. Turning back was way further than carrying on and I’d had enough, so I ran through the 100 yards in my short shorts, whimpering as I was stung. Several lessons learned.
The route then swung close to Crich Stand - completed in 1923 as a memorial to the 11,000 Sherwood Forresters killed in the first world war. I kept my head down in the drizzle, looking up occasionally to see where Crich Stand was. It doesn’t just look like a lighthouse, it is a navigational aid to distraught runners.
Frank Zappa stumbled across the name for his album on the cover of the 1956 magazine, “Man’s Life”. The other stories inside the magazine don’t disappoint either:
Zappa commissioned Neon Park to produce the Weasels album cover, challenging him with the magazine, “This is it. What can you do that’s worse than this?”.
The album is categorised in Wikipedia as “Jazz fusion, Experimental rock, Avant-garde”. Never mind; leafing through the 1956 magazine amused me instead.
Nettles
Crich Stand
