What do ‘Running’ and ‘Boogie-Woogie’ have in common?
To compete in a race or perform on stage, you have to work out and practice. But there are more comparisons, some of them even a bit off.
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“Guess who’s playing at De Meenthe* on Saturdaynight?” asked W., my colleague at ABN AMRO Steenwijk. I had to admit I didn’t know. “That piano man, XX!” “Wow,” I said, “alone? Or with a band?” “Alone,” she said firmly, “probably just a little gig on the side.”  “I’d love to go there!” I replied, but certainly not thrilled, because “but I’ve just got a running weekend in the dunes of Schoorl. And I’ve already paid for it!”  So, in desperation, I asked W., who often helped out behind the bar at events in De Meenthe: “Maybe you’d like to buy a CD for me? That’s as close as I can get!”
*
“How was your running weekend?” W. asked on Monday morning during a coffee break. “Great! Running in the dunes and on the beach along the North Sea is awesome! We also got an encore: the five minutes turned into at least twenty!” I explained: “We had two workout sessions planned for Saturday. But in the evening, J.L. suggested doing one more. I went along -there were five of us- under the motto ‘we’re here anyway’ and ‘a slow pace,’ ‘a gentle endurance run’. But it ended up in over an hour! We took a wrong turn somewhere. And it was already getting dark. At random, we rang the doorbell at a house. The lady, who opened up, said, “Oh, it’s not that bad!” She pointed: “Just go that way! Straight ahead! Five minutes at most!”

We took off. By then, it had easily turned into fifteen minutes. I couldn’t help but think of XX and De Meenthe: “If only I were sitting there, in one of those recliners!” Especially since someone grumbled, “I bet we’ve taken a wrong turn again!” “No”, another runner chipped in, “that lady probably thought we were driving by car! We’ll be there in a minute!”
“After a shower, the five of us head to the bar. Those few beers went down a treat!”
*
“The crowd was really enthusiastic at our show! XX played two 45-minute sets. Not my kind of music, though: almost all those tunes sound like the previous one. And he wasn’t even singing! We had a ten-minute encore: three extra songs.” “And,” she grabbed her purse and pulled a CD out, which she slid across the table toward me, “they’re probably on here!”
W. shared, unexpectedly, even more: “He’s a nice guy. I served him during the break and after the show. He hung around for quite a while. Luckily, he was with someone who had tuned that old piano a bit during the sound check. XX drove home with him.” “Oh, really?” I gossiped, “Rumor has it he has quite a drinking problem!” “Well,” she downplayed it, “it wasn’t that bad! He still had quite a bit of Coke in his Jack Daniels!”

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*De Meenthe is the theater in Steenwijk.