Not much to report aside from some excellent spin sessions at Bridge's House of Spin and a couple of local outings, the last of which on Wednesday proved to be a bit of a humdinger.
A cruel wind whipped in from the south east, driving a wall of mizzle across heavily sweating mud-caked hills. Despite sliding about like Bambi on ice for the first hundred metres I could feel energy and confidence seeping into my legs for the first time in a long while. I reached Black Cap in under twenty-five minutes, a useful landmark for measuring my fitness, or lack of it. The return leg, into a relentless headwind, felt easy. I even managed some high-speed Fred Astaire moves over the last few yards of treacherous slurry.
Musically Planet Rock served up an eclectic mix, the highlight being Bob Dylan's Twist of Fate. It was my first exposure to the track in a while and like much of Dylan's recent output I found myself really enjoying it. Damn.
And speaking of Bambi ... some of you may know I've been trying to adopt a brace of lurcher pups from the RSPCA. These delightful critters were destined to drown in an Irish river until a remarkable man, acting alone on information received, persuaded the traumatised owner to hand them and their four doomed siblings over. I negotiated the RSPCA fit and proper persons test in record time in an effort to secure them before someone else snapped them up. After a series of home visits and introductions (to Willow, Phoebe and a distinctly circumspect Mrs S) Murphy and Ripley have formerly joined our hitherto happy home.
They are, it turns out, hooligans. Rapacious, shameless, equipped with razor-sharp teeth, no fear and boundless enthusiasm these furry velociraptors have exploded into our lives. Quite literally following their discovery and demolition of a large sack of RSPB birdfeed stashed 'safely' behind the washing machine. The resulting pebble-dashing of our (mercifully) tiled kitchen/ dining area did not go down well with the Powers That Be.
It would be fair to say I'm in the dog house, yet I freely admit to being deliriously happy. They are magical and, judging by their early attempts around our 'secure' rear garden, extremely quick.
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
