Coronavirus stops play.

I can't believe it's so long since I've blogged. I guess I've been busy, but things have changed so much and so quickly over the past month that it's hard to keep up.

The chain of events might look something like;

1. Booking a holiday in Tenerife
2. Signing up for the Edinburgh Marathon
3. Beginning Marathon training.
4. There is a virus in China
5. There is a virus in Italy and it's nasty - wash your hands.
6. Laughing on social media about washing hands.
7. Large groups are banned, but my course in Sheffield is still allowed.
8. Last trip to Sheffield. Part 3 of my course.
9. Half the people on the course disappear off to where they came from. (Hawaii, Florida, Denmark, Ireland.) - but reappear on Zoom the next day!
10. The marathon is postponed to September.
11. I get back to Edinburgh by the skin of my teeth. The train is two-thirds empty and there is no buffet cart and no-one checks my ticket.
12. People have been hoarding toilet roll.
13. In Edinburgh the streets are weirdly empty and there are skaters skating down the pavement.
14. There will be no holiday in Tenerife.
15. "Oh well" I think to myself, "maybe we could take the bikes up North in the Berlingo and do stuff"
16. There will be no travelling, everything is clamped down
17. I'm grateful I'm still allowed to go out for a run every day
18. I'm grateful I work for the NHS and I have to travel to work, which means extra time spent out with the birds and the green shoots
19. I think I might do extra house-work now, and I do a bit, but not as much as you might think.
20. It turns out I'm still busy.
21. I obsessively watch the coronavirus numbers on the Scottish Govt web-page. I haven't been there today and I think I'll go there now.......oh we're up to 25 deaths. They have been climbing more quickly in the last few days - I think it went 10...16 and today it's 25.
22. Everybody is fighting about what we should do on social media. 
23. I am no lover of Tories but I like Bojo being calm. I didn't like him pretending he was putting his arms round the whole country. That was too far.
24. Fear doesn't help. All news that shows distressed people on respirators can go straight to hell. Do you know how many anxious people I talk to in a week? People can't function if they're too scared. Fact.
25. People with secure incomes judge people with insecure incomes for still going to work. You can die of lots of things people, not just coronavirus. The word "selfish" is over-used.
26. I quite like individuals but I have a low tolerance for people.

Let's have some pictures.

 This was an epic day. Peter and I came up with a stupid marathon training plan. We took a train to Longniddry and 'ran' to North Berwick where we met Nick and ran on to Dunbar. All of this sounds much slicker than it was. The skies were grey and there was a low chance of butterflies, so Peter lost heart a bit. I was finding it hard work. The wind blew and blew.

If we hadn't said to Nick we would meet him in North Berwick we might well have hopped on the train home from there - but we had said it and now he was there so we just couldn't. I liked my other plan which was to have a chip roll and then a pint of beer before going to Dunbar.

This worked well, for me anyway, in terms of confusing my brain so much it forgot to give me all the reports about being sore and all that drama. Peter and Nick were toiling too which was simply a relief for me because the feeling of holding everyone up on top of being a slo-mo is very demoralising.

This is how fast we were running! Chuh!!!

TF it's the micro-pub at Dunbar Station. "Unfortunately" we had just missed a train and had to sit and get gished and eat bar snacks.

Well look at that! Everything's fine after all!

Back in Sheffield. Up for my 6am runs.

Sinkhole selfie

This was in the lift.

It was actually light for my runs in Sheffield for the first time.

It was rainy, but also spring-like and I found the woods and the parks and the rivers at last.

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Back in Edinburgh the sun came out and Peter and I went for a run around Gullane. I was sooooooooooo glad to be out in the sun and the air again I was high as a kite and running well.

But at the weekend it was grey and wintry. I had a sore knee and we skirted around the wilder bits of Gullane. Apparently there was a huge crowd of people at Gullane beach causing alarm all round. We saw Dr Neil in his Tesla but Peter has the photos of that.

And then on Monday came the clamp down. Since then I've been running around Arthur's Seat....

and we met Nick, but on Skype. It was a bit like being in the Berlingo going for a drive. I quite like just listening, and putting my oar in sometimes.