Wet weekend

Saturday was the beginning of a long-awaited week off work for me. I still had some things to do, but at least there would be no early starts and more time to get outside. It seemed a bummer then that Saturday was forecast wet. When the sun refuses to come out it's hard to get the people moving in our house. We reduced our plans from Gullane - no point - to Arthur's Seat - and then remembered we had unclaimed parcels at Telferton. Peter revealed that his parcel was his book-group book and it had already been at Telferton for 2 weeks. So off we set with IDs and rucksacks. I had no idea what was waiting for me. It's usually a book which seemed essential for the length of time it took me to look it up on Amazon and press "buy". I'm not going to give myself a hard time about this though - especially because the book in question turned out to be "Working with the inner critic". ( Lol.)

As we ran along the street and I waved to the Berlingo, I spotted something wrong. The back door was open!!!. I called a halt and we went to investigate and saw that there had been people in our car. People in a hurry. People emptying glove compartments, throwing all the carefully accumulated rubbish from the....bits for rubbish in the car door - you know what I mean. Do they have a name? From there onto the floor. There was a strong smell of screen wash. The cover was off from over the fuses behind the steering wheel. I ran back up to the flat and got the car-key to see if the car was still running.....
I turned the key, the car burst into life. Hallellujah. But shit. But hallelujah.

They'd taken all my carefully saved change from the ashtray. There was probably £12 in smash. The worst thing they'd done was pour engine oil and screen wash around in the back. And I think they took my radiator fluid. And I think they took my shorty wetsuit which I'd been keeping in the boot for about 2 years "just in case" I felt like a sea swim....

But there was no substantial damage. So hallelujah. Strangely they hadn't touched any of the mixed tapes we had in the glove compartment.

The run to Telferton is grim in the best of weather and it was a damp, airless, grey fucker of a day. A dead rat on the cycle path sang a song of better days while the fallen autumn leaves scattered all around.

We came back from the sorting office a different way, just to add in some novelty, and went to Sainsbury's on the way back. It was a ho-hum, work-a-day, low grade kind of run and a reminder of what a downer the winter can be and how hard you have to work just to get out.

Here we are at the automated tills in Sainsbury's.

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Sunday had been touted as a sunnier day and we had high hopes. To be specific I thought it might be nice to drive out to the Lammermuirs and set off past the Hopes reservoir there and maybe go all the way out to the windmills and back which is about 15 miles. The forecast kept shifting however and I tried to stay ahead of it with planning. Half an hour before setting off it was looking like it was going to be nicer in Edinburgh and we considered that, but then it was saying rain in Edinburgh and sunny weather in the Lammermuirs. So off we set for Gifford in good faith even as the skies opened and chucked it down all around us. We went into The Lanterne Rouge for the kind of courage that only coffee and cake can give and had huge slabs of cake and filter coffees. Honestly, I can't believe we didn't take pictures of our cake to torture you with but our brains had switched from the picture taking part to the consuming part. We didn't even talk until we had dealt with the business of cake. And coffee. And then we had coffee refills.

We drove up to the car park just beneath Hopes Reservoir and sat for a little while. There was little supporting evidence for the predicted sunshine. I have this persistent idea in my head about the Met Office - or at least the Scottish Branch - having been down-sized, so that now it's just a guy with a beard and DM boots which he keeps up on his desk as he swings on his chair. He builds his predictions based on what he sees out the window from minute to minute and also what mood he's in. Sometimes he flips a coin. As I look closer I see he looks something like my cousin Grant. Well now there's a thing.

Back to the Hopes (dashed). There we are in the recently burgled Berlingo hopped up on coffee and cake.

I wanted to run more than 13 miles just to get my mileage for the week over 30 miles but apart from anything else, it was going to get dark soon! So we let go of that. Why didn't we just run up to the top of Lammerlaw? So off we set

Cleverest picture of someone having a pee!

As we climbed higher we tuned into the immense variety of autumnal colour that was spread, albeit muted by the rain, all around us.

This, we discovered later, was a snow bunting, and it kept its distance but it wasn't scared. It accompanied us down the road for a good distance.

The top part of the run was mostly clagged in and we got cold ears. It was good to get back down from there. As we were heading back down we met a guy (called Ryan, as it turned out) coming up. He had misjudged the distance and  asked us if we had any food. He was obviously shaky with low blood sugar and relieved when we said we did. Happily Peter had a Stoats Bar in his pack so we handed it over and all shook hands.

We were much better tempered and happier after our run than before it. Getting out in the air and getting a bit of space helps everything. We are reluctantly strapping on our winter mindsets. "Just get out the door".

It was hard to leave the Berlingo in the street. We were extra careful to lock up before we left it. It looked at me all like #metoo and I was all like #Iknowbutthere'snoroomintheflatforyou and it was all like #couldhavebeenworsecouldhavetriedtohotwireme. 

Thus endeth the wet weekend.