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Leaden legs
There are several effective ways to get the heart rate over 120 beats per minute, which is a good cardio zone for someone of my tender years: interval training is my usual way but yesterday I decided to scarify the grass.
Now, those gardeners amongst you will know that scarifying by hand is a long and tedious task, but essential to keep your lawn looking great. The combination of planting the legs, exerting downward pressure with the arms and twisting the trunk whilst pulling the rake through the grass pushes the heart rate quickly skyward… in fact after every ten minutes of rigorous work, I need a break and I’m sure that someone else could count my heart beats just by listening. I certainly could.
So, three hours and lots of breaks later and I had reached a decision… to buy an electric scarifier!
This morning my shoulders, back and arms were all (more than) a little tight and I thought a run would be the perfect antidote. The weather was beautiful and I set out on one of the short run routes. Twenty minutes was all I managed however before I was walking for five, another twenty and I had decided to walk home. My legs were heavy, but that’s not normally a problem: it was actually my mind that wasn’t in gear. They say that grass can do that.
Walking back did give me an ideal opportunity to gaze at lots of beautiful houses, either admiring them or silently assessing how they might redesign their house or garden to add value or panache… although I dare say that people passing me must have thought I was just a weirdo walking along in my shorts!
So, hardly a run this morning, but I do now own an electric scarifier. I only mention this in case anybody would like to borrow it!
One-upmanship
My parents dropped in for a cup of tea this morning and we sat in brilliant sunshine on the micro-climate of my deck, fearful of moving too far in case the first bitter breeze of the autumn discovered us.
I was reminded of Iain Banks brilliant book The Crow Road and the famous line about his grandmother that hooks you expertly into the plot. All four of my grandparents lived into their late eighties and nineties and were cogent and active most of the way. One grandmother even fell down a perilous flight of stairs when in her eighties and broke her arm: the doctors warned that at her age it was probably shattered but were stunned when the x-ray showed a neat, clean break that went on to heal in under six weeks. Good genes.
This time last year, my mother, doing her bit for recycling, was busy flattening a milk carton, by rigorously jumping up and down on it (as you do?), when it tried to escape by running away.
Alas, this left my mother suspended in thin air like an outwitted cartoon Tom. The animators made the most of the scene as her downfall moments later was accompanied by a huge CRASH and a loud THUD! In finest Tom & Jerry tradition it upset the nearby chair and table, my father, whose dinner landed robustly in his lap and my mother whose arm had, until then, managed to remain break-free for 77 years.
Time is a great healer, but I have to confess that I was unable to suppress a childish snigger when my mother announced this morning that she had fallen out of the cupboard.
Now I could leave it there and let your imagination play with this tidbit on its own, but I feel that I should add her own clarification, that she had slipped and had actually shot out of the cupboard backwards!
I should also mention that the doorway through which she so gracefully sailed is eighteen inches above the floor… I can almost imagine Tom, Jerry and all of the animators jumping visibly at the THUD! when she hit the floor!
Suffice to say that resilience is in our genes and my mother, although slightly tender around the shoulder-blades, is undaunted by the experience. I do hope that they’re not playing a game of one-upmanship though, exploding onto the pages of my blog with each new and more daring exploit!
The morning after
After yesterday, the run this morning was always going to be a slightly more genteel event! I had the privilege of being joined (though that may have been followed) by Kim as we vaguely followed Daren’s route on a gorgeous, sunny morning.
Kim looks very appealing in her running stuff and as a result we almost got eaten by a herd of growing calves who thought that she might be a tasty snack. Dai had carefully explained how to whisper to a horse yesterday and so we (sufficiently savvy to know that these were not horses) ran away. In a straight line!
We also surprised a railway engineer laying down on the job in a most dangerous fashion… face down along the parapet of a railway bridge with no safety harness, pointing the brickwork below him! He almost jumped out of his skin when I said good morning! Sorry chap!
Between our bovine escape and Kim stopping to chat up a few people en route, our time was not great, but it was a lovely run nevertheless. 9km or just over five and a half miles in one hour ten minutes.
The evidence!
September gathering
Wow! What can I say except that it was a great day: the sun shone, the beer was cold, the prams conquered, the chili was awesome, the Oyster Bay Sauvignon was a hit, no blood was spilled (although there were a couple of cracking bumps!)and the garden survived! Although I’m really not quite sure how!
Notes: Children are happy to eat chili from bone china plates if you give them the opportunity. In a contest of strength between an air freshener and a two tonne Mercedes, the latter is not inclined to yield. Children of around two have a favourite game which is wanting to do whatever you don’t want them to do. Also worth noting, they usually win that game.
Overall feeling from day: good friends are priceless!
Intolerant behaviour
Dai joined me for a really lovely run this morning, during which we apparently talked a load of rubbish… I thought it was quite a profound conversation but Dai is an intellectual so it probably just sounded like idle chitchat to him.
We pretty much duplicated my run from last week, but the superior technology of his Garmen confirmed that it was 7.26 miles in 1 hour 10 minutes and that our best pace was 5 minutes 57 seconds per mile… which can only have been the ten yard sprint down the hill at the end, otherwise the run would only have taken us 43 minutes! Statistics huh?!
Although the Garmen is pretty advanced, I would be interested to pit it against Kim at some point, who runs at exactly 6 miles an hour. She doesn’t come in a shock resistant case, but she has many more appealing features (many!), particularly as you don’t have to carry her around on your wrist. Alas, she doesn’t much care for idle chitchat so runs on her own, which makes it more difficult to gauge distances.
Which is why I have to make uneducated guesses as to the distances I’m running and how long it’s likely to take. Dai was surprisingly intolerant of this approach to estimation… as an educationalist and teacher of CDT he is used to working within very fine tolerances indeed. Give or take four miles did not impress him at all. Oh no sir!
Breakfast did though! Daren introduced me to Mooch76 and it’s fair to say that I have been more impressed with each of my, um, three visits now. Part of the reason is professional admiration, as this little cafe-bar encompasses many of the aspects of customer focus and service that I hold dear. The rest just has to do with the great standard of the food and the deliciousness of the coffee! Dai had the small, healthy option (aka big bertha breakfast), I had the ultra healthy option (small bertha’) and Kim the vegetarian delight (wails ‘they didn’t give me any bacon’) Duh!
Tenuous segway to short verse that I particularly like from Roger McGough which goes something like this (apologies, Roger, if it’s not quite right!)
‘There are fascists in the park pretending to be humanitarians, like cannibals on a health kick eating only vegetarians.’
Veggie steak, anyone, or do you have a fool intolerance?
Of genes and pools
I am reassured by the youthfulness and spirit of adventure (resilience?) present in the gene pool to which I belong.
Last week I was talking to my Aunt who informed me that she goes out walking with her various positive-minded friends six days every week. Furthermore, in order to keep in shape, she skips every night as she has done for years and eschews drugs of any form, preferring to let her body deal with illnesses on its own. She is 79 years old.
My father has a most amazing garden which is gracefully banked down into the valley behind their house and stocked with all manner of exotic plant species. Towards the bottom there is a pond where my older siblings famously experimented to see if their baby brother would float. Thanks guys. It sits on the edge of a small lawn and has a bank, rich with flora, rising steeply behind it.
Amongst other things, the job of garden steward involves tending both the pond and the bank behind and my father accomplishes this, from time to time, by laying a plank over the water and walking across. Now, it is fair to say that he no longer has the reflexes of a cat, but he refuses to let this prevent him from doing what he loves.
So picture this, if you will. He was slinging a net across the pond to catch the autumn leaves. He had one foot on the plank and one foot against the far bank and he was holding onto a small shrub for support… when he caught his foot in the net.
The shrub decided to jettison its branch under the the pressure exerted and my father looped backwards into thin air, presumably still holding the newly detached bough aloft next to a speech bubble exclaiming ‘crikey!’
In my imagination he whooped with laughter and performed a perfect back flip and two round hitches before diving into the pond… indeed, most of that must be true as he did indeed land backwards with a splash!
I’m guessing that as an accomplished gardener and having wet the, er… cutting?… in his hand, he then planted it somewhere before going off in search of dry clothes. And sympathy, aka a cup of tea, as I’m sure my mother would have just howled with laughter!
Safe to report that, at 82, he is still resilient enough to have been back out completing the job once dry clothes and tea had been administered. Which is my point entirely… I really have chosen a great gene pool!
Of Sunday on Monday
In case you’re going to pull me up for having a lazy weekend, I DID go for a run yesterday! Admittedly only 7 miles (1 hour 8 mins or so), but a run nevertheless. Down to the Royal Oak, across to Hundred Acre Lane, round to Wellhouse Lane, over to the railway and back via the station & Darens flat. The latter seems to have a tree growing out of the chimney… is that anything to do with you Debbs… smoking weed maybe?
I had this vague thought that I was running for both Daren, whose paying customers might not appreciate his dulcet steps running round the poop-deck above their sunday-morning-lay-in and Nick, who is out of action at the moment on account of having allegedly eaten a castle of cake on his own. Thus, with three-up, I felt justified in finding it hard work!
The local farmer didn’t help much by suggesting I must be mad (keen observation actually!) before leisurely driving off in his air conditioned John Deere!
Other artists of note
I’d hate to whet your appetite for art without mentioning the following:
Darren Coffield – again, if you’re not familiar with his work, you should browse his site. If you see art as a good long-term investment, place your bets here! (please note that I’m not an investment advisor licenced by the Politburo and that the value of investments can go down as well as being enjoyed for arts sake!)
Diarmuid Byron O’Connor – Diarmuid was commissioned to sculpt Peter Pan for Great Ormond Street Hospital and his sculptures and drawings are so full of movement
Chris MacDonald – sculptor extraordinaire, using flotsam & jetsam to create humorous almost-functional pieces
I’ve a few others to add, but right now their websites are proving to be elusive… silly people!