A Letter From The Post Office

The post office send me a generic letter acknowledging my ‘enquiry’, nowhere in the letter does it mention the missing package I reported.

Things go sort of well at today’s dog show at Scunthorpe. Two clear rounds for MD, which is a rare thing in one day. We do a really scrappy jumping run and get 7^th, which is a nice surprise. Then we do a really controlled agility run and get 8^th, which is disappointing... and confusing, as to how our scrappy run was better than the controlled one. His other runs aren’t too bad either, just a pole down in each. Doggo is also clear.

L does the Park Run at Forest Rec again but nearly a minute slower than last week. Oh dear.

She asks if I’ll be AF tonight before hobbling round, and it will a hobble, the 10K tomorrow. No but I guess we ought to keep it LA (low alcohol). Then we go down one of our locals, the Wheelhouse, for some pasta and a few Abbots. So it turns out not very LA at all.

(Saturday 13^th April)

A Worrying Precedent

A worrying day and a worrying precedent set.

After doing the park, L and go out to look at some flooring. Only we can’t find anywhere in Nottingham that is open on a Sunday, so we end up in Mansfield. Nottingham’s loss is Mansfield’s gain and hopefully we have found someone who will fit us a wooden floor in our lounge, to complete the scruffy, I mean rustic, look started with the slate tiles we have pretty much everywhere else.

Then oddly we end up buying a settee, which we only saw this morning, plastered across an advert that fell out of the paper. Then we add a footstool and coffee table to it. All on the never never.

I’m off to lie down. I feel faint.

Thankfully L takes me for an evening pint at the Wheelhouse; clearly she can see I need it.

(Sunday 21st October)

Mid-Life Crisis

I cycle again and get away with it a bit weather wise. There’s a bit of drizzle in both directions but it never comes to much.

L is having a mid-life crisis. So she says. She reckons she needs a new ‘me’. Although I quite like the current one. I hope she isn’t planning on running off with someone in lycra with a ponytail. She says not, reassuring me that the male mid-life crisis is different to the female one and then tells me she’s put in for a part-time job at Waterstones. Yep, that's different. Where I’m sure she’d work for free as long as there’s a staff discount.

L skives off the whole day; that is unless she’s moonlighting in Waterstones.

In fact she ends up at the cinema with Son, watching ‘Ted’, which is not a film that was on my radar but may have had its moments and Mila Kunis.

A night out at the Wollaton pub with some friends tonight and then a night cap at the Wheelhouse where the ale is better.

(Friday 17th August)

Hobble With The Herd

I won't forget Milton Keynes Festival Of Running in a hurry. For starters it was a miserable day, raining and cold. The event was well organised, although with a rather small and soulless event village at the Xscape Centre.

We walk the dogs around for a bit but then as the weather gets even worse we shelter in the car until start time when we will 'Run with the herd', which is the race slogan. A reference to the legendary concrete cows of MK I assume. The race starts off on coned off sections of the main roads, which are dull and narrow but flat. Congestion is quite bad due to the narrowness and this gets worse when we catch the 10k runners who started twenty minutes ahead of us. A bigger time gap is required here.

They divert off our route at around five miles, so from there I could get some space and get a good pace going. So far so good and I’m on a 1:38 pace, which would be very pleasing for this stage of the season. Water is in bottles, which is good but often left unopened which my, by now, cold fingers struggle to deal with.

Then things go spectacularly wrong. My calf becomes quite tight, probably due to the lack of warming up and perhaps I should have stopped to stretch it. Then though it clearly tears and that is quite simply race over. Only problem being that I’m over six miles into a half marathon, e.g. around half way and therefore pretty much equidistant from the start and the finish.

A marshal confirms there are no short cuts and no prospect of transport back to the finish, so it’s basically time to walk to the finish. At least I’ll get my medal I suppose. Problem is I’m now really starting to feel the cold and have to jog sections to keep warm. I hobble along with the herd, more than likely doing further damage to the leg.

So a nice mixture of pain, disappointment and annoyance as I get overtaken by a lot of people I didn’t want to be overtaken by. Then it started to snow. Not the best of days.

I have to say everybody, both supporters and runners, are very encouraging when they see me walking and struggling but it wasn’t really what I wanted. Somehow I still manage to come in a little ahead of L due to my good start and she still does a good time.

She finds me hiding in the car, trying to get dry and warm which I’d just about managed. So at least I can help her do the same.

It all means for me that the Liverpool Half won’t happen, nor Stafford and probably not Reading. Woe is me. It’s a good job I don’t have a voracious spreadsheet to feed. The biggest problem is that somehow I have to attempt to ski next week.

L drives us home, where we decide to skip our usual Sunday film and limp down to one of our locals to get drunk instead.

We’ve been avoiding the Wheelhouse since it was refurbished and rebranded as a ‘Hungry Horse’. Which isn’t a name that even whispers the word ‘quality’ to you. It sort of bellows the opposite. The menu has indeed been dumbed down and it was hardly high brow before. It actually seems to have been copied wholesale from Wetherspoons and they have no Sunday lunches at all but at least the Abbot Ale is on.

(Sunday 4th March)

It Would Make A Nice Bookshop

I was hoping today would start warmer than yesterday so that I could cycle. Nope. -3 yesterday, -5.5 this morning. Ouch. Cold. Nothing for it but to run. Later. I'll run after work. I put on my kit and go for the bus but I end up running to the bus stop because I was late. I still missed the first bus, the second one was late and then it got stuck in traffic, so I then had to run to work from Derby and I was still late. So I’ve had quite a workout today already.

Nottingham’s ‘Tales Of Robin Hood’ which has been closed for some time is to become a Tescos.



Wonderful. Just what we need is another Tescos. As L is fond of saying, ‘If I stood still for long enough I'd become a Tesco’ or a Sainsburys... The old Dillons/Waterstones building in the centre of Nottingham is now going to become a Sainsburys. It’s a lovely old building. It would make a nice bookshop.

I run home, partly, and then walk up with the dogs to meet L from the gym. Then we dump the boys and revisit one of our locals, the Wheelhouse, that we ventured into for the first time for ages on Boxing Day. It now has bouncers on the door. Odd for a suburban local, though it’s clientèle perhaps aren’t the most salubrious. Well, we're in there for start. Pleasant evening, even if the Special Reserve is no longer on. At 6.5% it was probably for the best.

(Friday 21st January)