OH Blog, why have I forsaken thee?

Well you know, it's partially about working a full day on a Monday now. The weekend is so short. I finish on Friday at 6pm and it still takes time to get home.Then it all kicks off again before you know it come Monday morning.  I told Peter the other day, "Here comes the weekend. Friday night is the best night. By Saturday I'm already grieving that it'll soon be over." He says it's the same for him.

Look. I've devised a way of doing a massive photo dump. I realised the other day when I was flicking mindlessly through my photos for November that I liked whizzing quickly through all the photos, not just the ones I'd chosen and cropped and straightened. You get more of a sense of being there. If there's anything good, there tends to be more photos of it from different angles as I've tried to figure out how best to capture it. So I wanted to find a way that I could see that without wearing my mouse finger out.  I found some cheap software on-line and Hey Presto. I have also stolen a little bit of Underworld's music to sweeten the medicine. I haven't got their explicit permission, but I feel they would just want me to go ahead.

Okay, I've been thinking about this thing for some time now. It's called the theory and practice of running but it is really the theory and practice of everything. I have noticed - especially in the winter when it takes a lot of thought to get outside, that I'll imagine my run is going to be one way and then it is entirely different. I look out the window, it looks cold and miserable, I dress up warm, I make a plan based partially on what the Met Office says the weather is. Out I go. In a few minutes, or half a mile, I am too warm, it's fine, I wish I'd gone out earlier; the birds are singing, I wish I'd given myself longer. It feels nice to get some fresh air. I promise myself I'll get out sooner tomorrow.

At the start of November there was relentless rain, and then it got cold and things started to freeze. "Here we go" I thought, "Winter until April". I battened down my hatches. I started wearing tights. Then it got warmer again. Warm enough for shorts.

I keep having approximately this thought.....You think a thing is a thing, but it is only an average. So winter - in my mind it's quarter of a page of A4 - it's the part with grey skies and large flakes of snow falling from the sky on a wind-swept field somewhere....and then you go outside and the birds are singing and the sun is luke-warm and it feels like spring. Things aren't as thick or as concrete as they are in our minds. Well my mind.

But I feel I haven't explained this very well. Here's the same thing again but on wheels.....I'm trying to leave for work in the morning.... many mornings I get out there and I wish I'd left just a bit earlier and taken my camera because when I get out, there is something good to see. The other morning it was frosty and there was a pink sunrise. I was huddled indoors with the heater on putting off the evil moment when I would have to go outside. I used to always be 5 minutes early for work but these days I am generally 5 minutes late, a kind of foot-dragging I disapprove of but am somehow trapped in.

1 mile into my journey on the bike, crossing St Mark's Park, the grass was all frosty and the sun was flashing pinkly on the last of the golden autumn leaves. But I was 5 minutes en retard and only had my shit camera.
I know it's wrong to call myself en retard, but I can't help it. Sometimes I just get angry. (Lol).

Another winter thought I've had a few times. Might as well leave it here too. It takes me markedly longer to leave the house unless I have to, not just because I'm hunkered down against the imagined cold outside, but also because it is somehow easier to get lost on the internet. I battled this for a few weeks and then questioned it. I quite like my semi-conscious excursions into internet world where you start off somewhere and end up somewhere markedly different. There are often unexpected delights - same as going outside for adventures. Today's treasure was a set of photos put up by a lady on one of the many fb groups I belong to. They were by a photographer called Erwin Olaf. He takes very staged photographs. I was particularly intrigued by this one depicting the controversial Greta.

I don't know what his take on Greta is but I like that the men in suits are tarred and feathered, or have they been in a sea polluted by an oil slick? Are the feathers left over by dying birds? Don't get me wrong. I'm not a Greta fan. When she arrived on the scene, telling the world what's right in a very teenage, black and white, self-referential way, I thought she was possibly a creation of people in the Trump camp seeking to further polarize the left and the right, to divide and rule.

Just to be clear. I don't like any of them. It's all wrong. I shouldn't be here. I should be in school.

But just to finish the original thought - maybe winter is a time for drifting and I should let it happen - the lights on the inside are brighter than the ones on the outside at the moment.

I'll leave you all with a story. The other night, Peter said to me "Are you going to do the Marcothon?". "I wasn't going to.", I said, and left the conversation. But then I started to think....Maybe I should. Maybe it would be good for Peter too. He, like me, is struggling a bit with the coming winter, with the reluctance to do anything, with the desire to eat. The pounds roll on, cabin fever sets in. He starts to talk in angry speeches. The latest one; "Scotland is a shit place". Uh-oh, I've heard it before. I try to stem the tide. "I know, I know. Scotland is a shit place. People say it's the best place in the world. It's because they don't have the imagination to go anywhere else."
I hope since I've said it, it will stop, but it's as if I have said nothing at all.
"People say it's the best place in the world" he says. Glarg. It's that time of year. We could probably call it depression if we were so inclined.
So I get to thinking, maybe I should do the Marcothon. It would spur Peter on to do it. And that would get him out. If I do it, I'm pretty sure that he will do it. Maybe he would feel better. Maybe there'd be less angry speeches. It would be mighty inconvenient for me to do the goddam Marcathon. I work 2 nine and a half hour days in order to claw back some free time during the week. With travelling time they are pretty much 11 hour work days. Fitting in runs there would be hard going. It's not just the running, it's the having a shower. But maybe I should.
So I say to Peter, a day or two later. "Did you want to do the Marcothon?"
"No!" he says. "Marco can't tell me what to do! I'll run when it suits me, and if it doesn't suit me I won't go!"
Oh.
I told you I shouldn't be here. I should be in school.