The wicked wind, the miracle tree and a dream of a damp christmas.

Christmas Eve there was a wicked wind blowing. There was also only a small weather window in which it wouldn't be wet, so I took Peter up Arthur's Seat for some hill training. Regrettably, despite my having worked out a fine programme of hilly challenges, Peter complained quite a lot. A frequent refrain was "We do this on a Thursday Night!".

Unusually, there was only a handful of people at the top of the Seat. The wind was doing what it liked without reference to whether humans could stay on their feet or not. It was kind of fun. It was also nice to get down lower and out of it. We ran down onto Whinny Hill.

I'd had a good surprise recently when I'd run up to the top of Whinny Hill and happened upon a fir tree with Christmas decorations on it. It had golden bells. At the time I thought I'd take Peter up there nearer to Christmas and surprise him....but then I'd been back just a few days ago and all the decorations were gone, so I told Peter about it.

This time I took him up just to see the tree that had had decorations on it - and someone had decorated it again!!! And then a rainbow came out! And Peter stopped complaining for a while.

Until I told him we were going to run down to Duddingston Loch and then up the steps and all the way up to the shoulder of the seat in a oner.

I thought it was a marvellous run and very impressive to squeeze nearly 2000 feet of climb out of a city centre run.

On the way home we went past Scotmid and picked up two bags of potatoes in case we were too lazy to go out again and get something better to eat for Christmas. Peter loves roast potatoes. I do too. So nobody was that worried when it turned out we couldn't be bothered to go out again.

It wasn't the best of evenings though. We've nearly used up Netflix. Mindhunter was great. Dexter was pretty good, but required loyalty to stay with it. Ozark kept our interest in a 'this series is going to give me a stomach ulcer' kind of way.  It comes down to the compromises you're willing to make. I've been watching Homeland but Peter doesn't like it. We've both been watching 'The Good Place' because it's quite clever and funny at times despite many obvious flaws. But we've finished it.

It's getting harder and harder to find something we can both tolerate. Peter wanted to watch  The Lake because it's "handsomely mounted". Handsomely mounted doesn't work for me if I hate everyone in it or if it seems meaningless. We both watched Limitless last night because it's easy watching. A guy takes a drug and it makes him ever so clever. It borrows freely from other films and series - the film Limitless, the Matrix and Sherlock just for starters. The main actor thinks he looks like Ryan Gosling. How can I say that? He just does.

Maybe we have to accept that our drug is running out. Eventually we'll have to go cold turkey.

Tonight we're going to go hot potato though.

Back to Christmas day. The day dawned just as rainy as predicted. Through the night it was raining. Predawn it was raining. There was a brief pink fanfare of dawn and then the day settled down to being dark and wet.

I was going to drag us round Inverleith Park just to get us out. But then it occurred to me that this would be the day to run along Princes Street - because the shops would be shut. The whiff of a bit of novelty cheered me up.

There were more people along Princes Street than I would have expected - a fair few homeless people lying in shop doorways in sleeping bags too. Still the city is vastly improved by there being a bit of space. 

We ran along to the West End and then past St Mary's Cathedral, then down onto the Water of Leith.

I think someone left the flood gates open by mistake. It was the fullest I've seen it in years. It was flooding under the path at the Dean Village and Peter felt compelled to go and see what was happening at the weir. I didn't feel like climbing over metal spikes and then down a slippy, mossy wall so I let him get on with it.

I was thoroughly enjoying this run even though my feet and arms were wet. The weather perfectly suited Leith's grimmer aspects. There were glue-bag philosophies daubed on weedy, mossy walls. Closed faced men out for a walk with their attack dogs. There were some very jolly ducks who came straight over to see us. Obviously, everybody feeds the ducks.

I was kind of hoping there might be a shop open which would sell me Christmas puddings and ice-cream, but the only shops that were open seemed to be selling primarily cans of beer and bottles of spirits. So there will be no christmas pudding and ice-cream for me tonight. There will be more roast potatoes. If I can fill Peter up full of roast potatoes and wine, he might fall asleep and then I can watch Homeland.

Merry Christmas Blogfolk.