The rest of September and then October

 

My shoulder is much better thanks. I thought I would carefully catalogue the improvements, and here is the result.

My shoulder's much better, so then I joined a yoga class. But at the yoga class I somehow bashed the left side of my chest. That was pretty sore - and maybe I was running funny to compensate - but whatever - somehow or other then I hurt my right hip (not the joint I don't think just like maybe my low back and side of my pelvis and bum muscles.) So I haven't been able to run for days. You're right it is a bummer. It's a shame because my last day as an NHS Hero is tomorrow, and I would have liked to have gone out and run about shouting afterwards, but I shall have to wait.

Goodbye to all that.

 

I've been missing my blog but then I never seem to find the time. There's quite a lot of things going on - in my head anyway. One is my retirement which is not a retirement but more like a retreat from the NHS - and my last day at work will be the 1st November. Do you know when you stop putting up with things that you have been putting up with for too long - then the whole thing comes up as a series of giant resentments? Maybe you don't know, but that anyway. In relation to that I kept feeling an inner prompting to re-read 'Goodbye to all that' by Robert Graves, which I knew I had read many years ago and probably in my teen years. I couldn't remember anything about it except he was in the war and that he was disillusioned in some way.

I found the first chapter hard going but after that it picked its feet up - and it's the fascinating story of someone who gets all the way through WW1, who was motivated to sign up in the first place mostly because he wanted to put off going to university. The thing that captured me is that you get the feeling that you're getting told the story by a real person who can't be bothered lying so it's full of nuance and paradox. Half his relatives were German so he never believed any of the anti-German propaganda. He somehow survives. He takes you through the experience of being up at the Western Front - confusion, madness, carnage and wet feet. Continual shocking, pointless, careless, needless, accidental death. His sadness at inadvertently killing a mouse which has crawled into his clothes for some warmth while he's sleeping. He doesn't bother with any of the slightly contrived quirkiness and humour of Catch 22 - reality's mad enough and doesn't need dressing up. The increasing sense on the ground as the war grinds on that the motives of the government are not as stated - the increasingly insipid and saccharin propaganda in the newspapers back home, at stark odds to the realities. It's all awful and also relatable. My grandad went through all that. It's not impossible or even unlikely that they rubbed shoulders somewhere along the way.

Anyway, I was in the mood for it - reading about a world where it's unwise or possibly dangerous to say what you think, and where the little people get stamped under while the power hungry follow their agendas.

What am I even talking about here? Nobody knows, which is just fine.

So anyway, September arrived with its Autumn Mists and Seasons of Mellow Fruitfulness.

I discovered that one almost sure-fire way to get far from the madding crowd is to go for a run on a tight little path edged by stinging nettles. I'm telling you it was worth it. I had bonus 'tingles' for a good 24 hours afterwards. And I found these wonderful Covid glasses on a wall.

Kids, if you find a pair of glasses on a wall don't put them on ffs. Don't be like me. They're good though aren't they?

So we're on to the next thing which is that I might be on the slippery road to veganism. I can just feel it coming. It started with wanting to clear up sinus problems that had been giving me headaches for months. As diagnosed by Dr Google obviously. One thing I found which helped and is quirky and fun is that it is a researched and verified THING that humming can help chronic sinusitis where antibiotics fail. The thinking is I think that the little hairs quivering in your face cavities create Nitric Oxide which opens blood vessels which speeds up healing. I've had quite a lot of fun with that and Peter has proved surprisingly tolerant. But you really have to to go at it for some time to make a difference and it's not ideal in every context. I have read many, many times that if you have sinusitis the first thing to do is cut out dairy, but I didn't want to. I don't drink milk but I've been living on cheese for a few years now. I'm a creature of habit and if something is working for me I'm reluctant to change it - but I was tired of the headaches so. So no more cheese. What do I eat now on my toast at lunch-time? Humous. Or however you spell it. It's good with cucumber. It's my new besty. I already had kind of a keen nose (and no jokes about the size of it thanks) but now I can smell round corners and through walls. My head is as clear as a bell. I think probably while I was wading through Google looking at diet and dairy and all that I started getting interested in the idea of food as medicine.

I listened to a thing that fascinated me about Dale Bredesen who has been working on alternative approaches to treating dementia. He says that what he thinks is happening in dementia is that the plaque which shows up in the brains of people with dementia is not the disease process itself but is the brain's way of protecting itself from a variety of different insults. He thinks that that's why treatments that have been developed which have aimed at removing the plaque from the brain have failed to help people. The reasons for the brain being inflamed and in trouble vary - viruses, toxins, heavy metals - that kind of a thing - so the way to approach it is to first of all determine what's causing the brain to react and build plaque, and then treat the underlying cause before any attempt at removing plaque. He has recently brought out a book with first hand accounts from 9 people who were in the early stages of dementia and managed to recover. It makes quite hard reading even though there's a hopeful message - because it brings home how frightening it is for people when they start down that road. He has tried to get approval for clinical trials but has been refused so far on the basis that he is not trying to treat one single disease entity - so if he's right about the causes of being dementia being various there's a catch 22 thing going on. One of the things he gets into is diet.

This led me somehow onto reading 'Your Body in Balance' by Neal Barnard which is all about how the modern, western meat, dairy, fat and doughnuts diet affects the hormones in our bodies and how he sees this as being the cause of the wide-spread rising tide of cancer, cardiovascular problems, diabetes and more. Again, it's a fascinating read - he keeps it accessible and funny but has all his references in place - and I think the strongest argument is that countries that have recently turned to the western way of eating have also shifted into the western way of becoming ill and dying. What he has to say is very damning of dairy foods - which I had thought of as being relatively benign - but he says there's a strong link with cancer - particularly prostate cancer. I've been feeding Peter smoothies with spirulina in them and he likes them - but he's not ready to give up cheese. I mentioned it but he started growling.

Okay, that's a lot. The last thing is about my frozen shoulder. I was going to go and get the thing where it gets injected with saline to distend the shoulder capsule and free it up a week ago but Stewart Kerr who does the procedure had tested positive for Covid so all his clinics had to be cancelled. I re-booked in for today. Yesterday I was off work so we went a leisurely run around Gullane and Aberlady and while there has been an absence of butterflies (which Peter has been trying to be stoical about), yesterday there was a super-abundance of them. They were all over the Buddleia which up until now had been roundly ignored by everything except passing whites. Isn't nature marvellous? They all pitched out for us yesterday anyway, including a cute and cheeky Red Admiral which landed on my Garmin on my camera hand, stuck its tongue out at me and said not to worry about getting my shoulder done because it would all be alright.

So I went through to Falkirk horribly early on the train this morning. It was a grey morning with rain clouds rolling in from the west, but a bit of a God Sky was arranged for my delectation just at sunrise.

I went and got the capsular distension done and a cortisol injection in the joint capsule and also in the bursa which was showing up on the ultrasound as a bit thickened and dense. It runs along the front of the shoulder and I think its where the trouble started. I should say that what Stewart Kerr at Life Fit Wellness in Falkirk does is uses ultrasound equipment to give him accuracy in injecting. He was happy to talk me through it all as we went - he is clearly a geek and likes cutting edge equipment and I like that he likes it. The shoulder capsule is quite small and the areas to be treated quite narrow, so being able to see in is a real boon. My only previous experience of ultrasound was assisting with  uterine scans at the family planning clinic where I was only there as a chaperone. I assumed all ultrasound scans were just a vague blurry guess of a thing where you'd have to take the doctor's word for it - but this was a whole different experience. Because it was superficial - "close to the surface' he quickly clarified, in case I was going to take the huff - there was a real clarity. I could understand what he was showing me. He had a doppler thing on it that showed colour and showed up hot areas of inflammation as tiny red fireworks. I had a lot of tiny red fireworks on the sheath of my poor biceps tendon. When he put the cortisone in it showed up very like sunlight breaking through the clouds in a God Sky, and the water showed (I'm sleepy now, so could be making stuff up) as beautiful, blue oceans.

So now I need to get rehabbing and see how I go. It'll take a couple of days for things to settle and see where I'm at. I can already do some things I couldn't do, but there's local anaesthetic to wear off and cortisol to kick in so it's a changing picture at the moment. I'm glad I've got it done and interested to see what happens next.

'So is that you finished then?' I hear you say, starting to breathe a sigh of relief. Well near at, hold your horses there - one last thing. When Peter and I were heading out yesterday we heard the news that our next door neighbour Rose had died that week. She was here long before us, we couldn't have been much more different from each other, and in over 20 years we have got along just fine. It wasn't a surprise that she'd died - she has always smoked and drank like a trooper since we moved in and was definitely at least in her 70s when we first arrived. The only other thing that we knew of that she lived on apart from vodka and cigarettes was Fray Bentos pies. We knew because she accidentally set her kitchen on fire in the first year or so we were here and we got the fire brigade for her. She was really shaken because her sister had died in a chip fan fire, and she never did it again. We were always happy to help her replace her smoke alarm when the battery started to chirrup :-).

She had had a hip replacement and managed to rehab herself from that well enough to once again tackle the three flights of stairs up to the flat on her own. You'd often meet her taking it in stages like an attempt on Everest. She called us both pet and I have been calling Peter "Peter Pet" for years because it just stuck and it was funny. She told Peter to keep playing the piano because her husband (who died before we arrived) used to play the piano and she liked to hear it. After she had rehabbed from her hip replacement, she got breast cancer, and has been slowly going down-hill for the last couple of years. She pretty much went to ground during Covid as she couldn't afford to get exposed to anything. 

She was of a generation that liked terrible sentimental ornaments and her nephew David had put them out on a table in the street yesterday saying for people to take anything they wanted and he'd chuck the rest out. We had to have a piece of Rose to keep with us. Peter nearly went absolutely contrary to type and selected an angel playing a violin as a keepsake - but it was a step too far - too much - so I chose a Peter Rabbit toy for the Berlingo and a cat in the basket for our book-case.

So Good-bye to Rose. Really the end of an era for us.

Our Best Neighbour Ever.

August

 

Well here we are again. Can you believe it? Of course you can. I just read 'July'. It is pretty bad. I'm blanding myself out. I'm just trying to keep all my monkeys in the circus until I leave work. It's not easy. Quite frankly, my monkeys are going a bit mental.

I didn't really take my good camera out in August, I'm not sure why. Too much lumping things around. All that heat. Couldn't be bothered with anything.

I haven't got much to say about running except I still do it. I've been feeling a bit shit so I've been going easy - not pushing. Maybe I've got long Covid, or tall or small or short Covid, or none of the above, or maybe I'm a wee bit tired.

I'll tell you about my frozen shoulder if you like; the potted version. Shoulder no functiona  since March at least. No worky. No bueno. Round about June I thought maybe I should do something about it so I did a lot of googling, got some theories, got some youtube videos, read peoples' opinions, got some books, did some exercises. Sometimes I hurt it. Sometimes I left it alone.

Last Saturday night it was keeping me awake in the middle of the night so I made an appointment to see a physio. The wonders of technology. I had buyer's regret the very next day because if there's one thing tighter than my shoulder capsule it's ...ah...me! That's my first ever frozen shoulder joke. Did you like it?

Anyway, I went to see Lianne Brunton at Balanced Physiotherapy today and she was bloody marvelous. Knew her stuff. Apparently ladies of a certain age are very prone to a frozen shoulder, they're not exactly sure why. There's been some research done. It can stay for a year and a half. It can go away on its own. Sometimes it doesn't go away.

I have an option, which would be to get saline injected into the joint to create space again, followed by a wee snifter of Cortisone, and then it would be free and pain-free and me and Lianne could get down to business and do some serious rehab. I wasn't keen on this idea at first but actually it's growing on me. I've got some exercises to do to see if I can get it to improve on my own and I'm going to give myself at  least a week to think about it, but...I'm kind of longing to have old Sammy the Shoulder back in the game. I'll need to go private and I can have it done in Edinburgh for too much money or I can have it done in Falkirk for half the price. Guess what I'm leaning towards.

Somebody in Leith would probably do it for a good bit less. Lol. That was a joke.

Damn it, when I get my shoulder back operational I'm going to make it beeg like Rocky!!!

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That's your lot with the FS for now.

I should tell you about the pandemic and all that for history and everything.  Well most of England is squeezed into Edinburgh at the moment and I'm finding it a bit of a tight fit. Everybody's now out rubbing themselves all over each other as you know. Nicola's said 'try not to' but without much conviction. Are the infections up or is it just that more people are getting tested? It seems like there are really more because Peter's brother's family came down with the Covid and so did my sister and her family over in the West. They're all recovering, which is good, but they said it wasn't nice, and they're all double jabbers.

The death rates went up, but I notice this week they seem to be down again. What's going to happen? Nobody knows do they? Meantime, the climate has been catching everyone's attention by laying on some spectacular floods'n'stuff. I'm finding it refreshing not to have someone called Donald trying to make out there's no problem. I don't think there's anyone left saying there's no problem. 

That's enough World Affairs.

I'm away to get my tea.

July

 

Life has been busy but I'm still not sure how more than a month went by! Getting ready to leave my job is taking a lot of thought and planning and leaving the NHS after being there for 19 years brings up many memories and feelings. There has been so much colour and drama and most of it I can't talk about or only with care because it's not just my business, it's other people's.

We had our first holiday in a long time. Well Peter's life is a holiday but what I mean is we actually went somewhere together. The Berlingo had made it through another MOT - not without a fair amount of work, but I honestly thought it would be worse than it was - and it drove better when I got it back than it has for months. Maybe 6 months.  We headed west to see my sister. Looking at old photos I think it's possible that I've not been across since 2009. Where did all that time go? My nephew Donald has sprung up from thigh height to much bigger than me, and full of fun. The younger one, Sorley, was monosyllabic. I didn't like visitors in the house when I was young either. I do want to know what's going on in that young mind but you can't force these things.

How far do you think I ran while I was away? 3 miles. Well it's been so hot and I had a bit of a heel injury. Why push and push and push for nothing? I think too much computer time is taking a toll on me. I've had a sore shoulder for months now and I finally thought I should do something about it. I came across Pete Egoscue and his books somewhere. He says we all have terrible posture and that's what eventually causes our chronic joint and back problems. It doesn't start out that way. We build a fantastic core by crawling and learning to raise our heads and turn over  and eventually getting onto our feet - but after that the rot sets in. We sit around on our arses and we don't challenge ourselves and we get all out of kilter and sooner or later something must go. I've been doing his exercises for shoulders out of one of his books - it might be Free yourself from Chronic Pain - and I still have some of the pain, but it's much better. 

His wider message is that we need to use our bodies - if we don't, we'll lose function. I try to get by on running but I don't do much else! I was better when I worked in the hospital because I had to run around all day and move things and make beds and all that, but much of my work now is sitting at a desk, more so since the pandemic. Working from home I'd nearly stopped cycling at all. And I hardly walk anywhere. So at the moment I'm making an effort to re-engage with the world physically.

Maybe I'll write my blog more. I've been missing it. The trouble is, so many things build up that there's too much to say so you end up saying nothing. Nice to see you anyway. I'll try and write more in August.

Rest of June!

 Hold onto your hats because July will be here before you know it! :-)

I thought I'd already put up this slideshow for June.

It's so class. I've just been watching again.

The rest of May and a little bit of June.

 

Here's the rest of my photos for May all packaged up with a track called Heal from Underworld's Oblivion with Bells album.

We're still in a pandemic. Maybe we're coming out. Maybe the Indian Variant will get us. I have been working in my bedroom for a long time now.

It recently came to my notice that come November I can retire out of the NHS - albeit on a down-sized pension - a down-sized version of an already down-sized pension because I've been doing a lot of part-time work and other stuff. The plan would not be not to work but just not to be a company man any more. The idea has a hold on me. But I'm trying to be sensible and look at all my options. But a large part of me is not sensible.

It's proving to be a little tricky squeezing an estimate of what I would get out of the SPPA. They have calculators but they don't fit me. So I'm waiting to hear. Maybe it's good I have to wait. That's what I tell myself. Meantime it's constantly ticking away in the back of my head. That's why I've not been blogging. Who wants to hear all that? Certainly not Peter. He has heard enough. He impersonates a parrot and says to me "Pension, Pension, Pension". He is quite right of course. Also it's a little rich coming from butterfly boy. He was talking so much in the car today on the way to Gullane I asked him if he was doing some kind of sponsored talk. He got on board with this right away. "Talker's World!" he announced. "Fuelled by Caffeine!". I had waited for ages for him to pause so I could say something about my pension thoughts, but it just wasn't happening.

We were only 5 minutes late for Nick at Gullane, which was a near miracle given what a shambles we were leaving the house. The sudden turn of warm weather is making it near impossible for me to sleep at night. That and it being nearly midsummer.

We have all signed up for the 7 Hills again and have been doing hill training but nobody was all that intent on training today - so we had a nice 6 miler round the way. Peter wasn't very pleased at the dearth of butterflies. It was a beautiful day although sticky and hot.

New gaiters and sunglasses from the new Alpkit.

So there you have it. Looking at May's photos I realise I haven't been out with my good camera much, or out in the country much. Summer is nearly over and we are not yet saved.

CRASH 2

 

There has been something dramatic in the air. I had a bad ending to my working week last week. A meeting that went badly which left me feeling I needed to get ready for a fight - to 'lawyer up', figuratively at least. I had been needing the weekend and looking forwards to being allowed out of town again but the whole work thing put a damper on it and left me pissed off and unable to sleep.

The next day I felt tired and dispirited. So much so I sent Peter off to play with Nick for the day and had a lame run around Arthur's Seat, and did what I could to help myself feel better. I had a better night's sleep that night so me and P went off to park at Longniddry and run into Gullane. I had aspirations to run 13 or 14 miles but actually felt tired and stiff. I had new Hokas on (the Evo Mafates) and they felt really stiff and were threatening to aggravate my achilles. Peter tricked me into taking a diversion along Postman's Walk at the back of Aberlady. Holly Blue Butterflies came out of the woodwork - by woodwork I mean trees - we stalled, the sun was out, Peter was in raptures. I wasn't minding standing about in a sunny corner of a field. The birds and blue skies and flowers and things give you perspective. I only had my wee crappy camera so my pics weren't great.

We did about 6 miles, not 14. Still,  it was a better day and I was more relaxed and slept better that night, although in no way looking forwards to the coming week - there was a long shadow cast over it.

But the next morning when I logged on remotely there was an email from my manager acknowledging  at least some of it. It was something. I felt better. Maybe this is going to be workable. I would still like to win the lottery - or find a new and better job, but it wasn't so bad.

I had been excited by the prospect of the coming Supermoon as I have a more super camera now and even thought if it was a clear night I might go up Arthur's Seat and capture it rising in the east. It was not to be though - it was a grey, drizzly day. Just before I went to bed, however, someone knocked on the window. At first I ignored it, but then curiousity got the better of me. I pulled up the blinds, and there, amid swirling clouds, was a big stonker of a full moon. The trouble with taking a picture of the moon is the light balance. The contrast is too much between the dark sky and the shiny moon so all the shots come out crap unless you use a tripod for a longer exposure or else zoom in for a close up. I've got heaps of these close-ups now and although they're good they don't give any context. What I wanted to show about this moon was that it was a big one. It was late and I was tired and I wasn't setting up the tripod so I snapped a few pics and went off to bed. I had to be up early because there was an engineer coming to fit us up with a new high-powered hose of internet, and I had to be up and about as PB always finds a way to dodge these things.

The next day the fitting of the new internet went fine and pretty soon we were swimming and diving in a fine, fast flowing river of sparkling gigabytes. At night we watched the film Stowaway as it was recommended by Nick. I was deeply unimpressed with the characters in the film who, apart from one, met difficulty with what seemed to me to be a resolute defeatism. They commenced the hand-wringing much too early. The next day I went out for a run and while I was running I was thinking about what bothered me about the film. I found I kept thinking back to the film Crash, which although flawed, seemed to follow the opposite arc - that there is something in people that rises to a crisis. I had a good run, and I was feeling buoyant. When I got in I had some lunch and looked up Crash on YouTube. I was looking at the 6 minute clip in which Matt Dillon, a kind-of bad cop, is making a serious attempt to rescue a woman who he has previously mistreated.  It's a highly dramatic scene in which she is upside down in a car with "gasoline" dripping down all around her - clearly the car can explode into flames at any moment. You can watch it here. Now as I was watching this I smelled hot plastic and for a moment I thought that the new, strong flow of internet was too much for my tired old PC and was over-heating it. Then I thought it was much more likely that I'd left the grill on when making my lunch so I ran through to the kitchen to see. All was well there - so maybe the neighbours were burning something - it isn't unusual - so I looked out the flat door to see.

We live in a third, floor flat in the middle, so our flat is right at the top of the stairs. I opened the door and saw that there was thick, black, smoke billowing up the stair-well. Holy Shit.  5000GHz of adrenaline flooded my system. Well to be truthful I don't know how to measure adrenaline so that will do. A run-away train of adrenaline hit me - the whole fucking building is properly on fire. I've done a lot of fire training during my time working in the hospital and been in a few fires. So you have to make sure help is coming, and then you have to have as many barriers between you and flames as possible, and it's usually the smoke that kills you. Black smoke was belching into the hall as I backed up into this room which is where I work and blog and eat lunch and watch Crash Films. I had to open the window because the room was slowly filling with smoke too, even though I knew that I was likely drawing the smoke up the stairwell and into the flat - there was just no way I could breathe it. It was that stinking, hot, plastic smoke. 

So then I'd say I spent about half an hour hyperventilating with my head out the window and taking in the scene below. I could hear the fire engines coming. They'd said on the phone "The fire service are aware" and I'd left the conversation at that. Peter remarked recently that he'd seen the fire brigade having to go round a long diversion because of the tram works on Leith Walk and he'd remarked bitterly (he hates the trams as do I) "The trams will probably kill a few more people". I saw them come up Pilrig Street and then head up the narrow section of Leith Walk which is still open and then could hear them going away into the distance. They'd have to go up to London Road and along and back down Easter Road to get to Iona Street. In the mean-time smoke was pouring past my head - a head that I was just about keeping. I was still in my running kit and my stocking feet and I realised that one way or another I'd have to evacuate so I needed to be organised. Shoes on feet. I had my duvet jacket, my Cashline, my passport and my phone in the room so I put them in my jacket pockets and put my jacket on. My keys were in the kitchen and now out of reach, through the thick smoke, so I wouldn't be leaving with keys. 

Having done everything I could to be ready I got back to cleaner air at the window and the action outdoors. By now the street was full of fire appliances and also police and some ambulances. I could see that things were happening downstairs but I couldn't hear what was being said and I didn't know what was happening. A fireman looked up at me and gave me a thumbs up which was somewhat reassuring but I didn't know if they knew how much smoke was up here. I saw some burning things dragged out from our close - the blackened skeleton of our neighbour Rose's walker and some charred planks of wood. It was looking like it was a fire in the close. The cherry picker thing on the top of one of the fire-engines had started to move and was coming up to my height. Was I going out the window? I was going out the window. It was pretty surreal. I knew Peter would be annoyed I hadn't taken photos but at this stage it just would have seemed inappropriate to be taking burning building selfies - plus my heart was still banging and I was still hyperventilating. It would have been a work out. Pity I didn't have my Garmin on. It's not easy to get out a window and onto a platform. I had to kind of roll out onto the ledge and then get a hand up from the fireman.  It was strange to be out and over the street and above the fire-engines and police and the Leith drinkers sitting out at the tables in front of the Strathie Bar watching the show. Pubs having only just opened again - all the tables were full despite it being a Wednesday afternoon.

When I landed back on terra firma I was sent over to the ambulances just to get checked over. My heart was still banging and my breathing was still fast. One of the ambulance men said to me it was "just anxiety" and not for the first time that week a sharp retort rose up in my throat, "you try getting trapped in a burning building with black smoke all around you on the third floor and no idea what's going on and see if you're fucking anxious matey." I didn't say it though.  I think he realised. He added the word "understandably".

I stood about then, on the far side of the road, in a bit of a daze. An old charge nurse, Alan,  from the Royal Ed happened along - which was fun. Talking to him kept me busy and diverted while waiting to get back in. 

I'd mentioned to the Fire Brigade that I didn't have my keys and they said they'd do what they could. I'm not entirely sure how they did it, but after a while a female fire-lady came over and handed me my keys. I think I said I loved her. Well I did. How nice was that? They'd opened all the windows wide to clear the smoke. Finally I was allowed back in. "It's worse than it looks" said the fireman leading me back up and then we both laughed - he meant the opposite obviously. The lights were burned out so the hall and stair were a black sooty hole with black puddles collected on the ground floor and the stench of a recent fire.

So after that I sat about in a trance for a fair bit and googled "Leith Fire" to see if there were any photos. Disappointingly there were none with me in so I've used some artistic licence and popped myself in the pictures.

That's me gratefully being rescued. Actually I had to stay back in case the cherry picker when through the window by accident.

That's me coming down in the picker. If you look closely you can see that I'm casually eating an ice-cream.

Okay Mary (I hear you say) that was a very good story but it was a lot and you're going to have to wind it up. 

Oh well - this. Yesterday me and Peter and Nick went a PROPER Gullane run, the full 14 miles this time. I was probably a bit loud. I had a lot of steam to blow off. Happily I think they're both used to it. In the last few miles Peter tricked us back to Butterfly Boulevard and we were rewarded with a little butt action.

And tomorrow is a public holiday, so although it is getting late on a Sunday, I do not have the end of weekend blues. And I slept like a baby last night. Hallelujah. Thanks for reading this far.

UPDATE - this has been bugging me but I think I've just found my answer. I thought that I recognised the lady fire-woman who handed me my keys. I thought it was a runner called Sarah Scott who I've seen around and Peter knows a bit better. I've seen her running hard round Arthur's Seat recently. I had a wee google to see if I could find out on Wednesday,  but I found a thing about her saying she does gait analysis for Run and Become, so I thought I'd just been a bit crazy because of the adrenaline - but then when I was out running today, she went past on her bike and gave me a big wave. She got a bit wave back and once again I was thinking "Was it her?" How do you find out if someone's a fire person? Ahah! So I googled "Sarah Scott, Fire Brigade" and it is her - she graduated with the service in 2019. If you should happen across this Sarah, thanks so much! You're a legend!