It’s been a good Friday alright: weather warm and sunny — just right for a few hours in the garden, tackling the grass for the first time this year. We grumble about winter, but at least you don’t have to devote half your free time wrestling with horticultural insurgents, gatecrashing your life to suffocate your idyll. Bugger off you bullying bastards — who invited you? It’s frankly unacceptable, but will anything be done about it? Will it hell. Grrrr.
Perhaps because I’d not fought the garden for six months or so, it was almost a pleasure. A kind of uneasy peace though, which could have exploded at any time. All seemed well on the surface, but a bit like the unrecognisably avuncular President Ahmadinejad bidding a fond farewell to the British sailors this week, you could sense that something wasn’t quite right, despite appearances.
Being an incorrigible geek, I wore my GPS watch — and found I covered only two miles in my horticultural circumambulations. Last time I tried this it was over seven miles, though that had included the much larger front garden. I couldn’t face the front today. We’ve carried out various operations to the front over the last couple of years — levelled it, added four large vegetable beds, dug a huge hole which will be a second pond or an exotic sunken garden — depending on who you ask first, planted half a dozen trees and fenced off that bit to be a sort of haven for wild flowers, created a long border and planted a beech hedge…. and all… and all to try to minimise the mowing needed. But it still needs doing. Just not today.
Wearing the GPS watch seemed like a good idea at the time, though I later regretted it as I noticed to my dismay that according to the excellent Sportstracks, the software I download the data to, my average pace for the week has risen from 11:15 minutes a mile to 54:57. This is something of a bad start to the month.
Anyway, the back garden grass got its comeuppance, so it’s not all bad news. I also managed to throw out a lot of junk without my wife noticing, and executed enough jobs to make me feel good about the world. So good that, when the village clock struck seven, I threw down my mattock and went for a run.
Just the usual 3½ mile round-the-blocker. I was tired, but it actually felt good to get out there in the warm twilight and stretch a few different muscles.
It’s become de rigeur on the forum recently to nominate a Track du Jour for those of us who sometimes wear an MP3 player in training. This evening, a rather strange one popped up on the shuffle that I’d not heard in a very long time — Wonderful Land by the Shadows. This was on an EP (remember those?) we bought soon after taking delivery of our first ever record player, back in about 1964. For sentimental reasons I downloaded it a while back and forgot about it. But tonight it jumped out of a crack between Lloyd Cole and Leonard Cohen. What a great track. Cheesy as hell, but strangely other-worldly. Just right for a dog-tired lope through the gloaming.
Tomorrow sees the running of the 2007 Two Oceans Marathon in Cape Town. It’s the race I flirted with before realising I was way out of my league — at least for 2007. Six or seven months of inactivity followed by a half-hearted attitude, borne out by a near-2:30 half marathon in Almeria, added up to a very clear signal. You could hear it hissing scornfully: Sorry mate, this one isn’t for losers. Some other time perhaps.
But the RC flag will at least be fluttering on Chapman’s Peak with Sweder and his two mates, Moyleman and Rog. As I write, they have exactly five hours to go till the off. They won’t read this before the race, but good luck boys. You may think you’ve had it tough, but try a few hours in my garden.
I need sleep.
