We are such stuff as dreams are made on...

Though if that's the case, Dawkins knows what stuff I'm made on.

So, don't remember falling asleep last night but it was before 7. Woke at 3am after this bizarre dream. Was living? renting a room? anyway, on board a house boat owned by ex-pupil, now lesbian and very happy with civil-ceremony partner. Very narrow single bed next to a window (lots of cobwebs and dead insects, needed vacuuming I thought) looking out over Putney Common and the river with Big Ben in the distance.

The two girls had a friend over, wearing fur hat and trousers that made her look like she was actually hairy all over just wearing a sweatshirt. Anyway, she was making delicious pink & brown chocolates which she was bringing me to taste. Then the boat started to drift on the river current, it only being moored from the bow. It drifted until the rope was taught then it sprang back upriver and diagonally across, hitting the smaller boats on the other side. I asked if that happened often and she said yes; the landlord had offered to teach them how to drive the boat but they didn't want to. I said I'd be game to learn to drive the boat.

Then her mother appears telling us a story about how she'd once been scared by the (quote) "poing" bit of a landmine (poing being a springy noise and referring to those landmines that jump up out of the ground when activated) to which I replied "well someone has to test the 'poing' bits".

Finally my mate Phil appeared on the other side of the river with a plate of leftovers from our breakfast last week (we met for a weekend catch-up and drinking session) which he wanted me to come and eat - I insisted on hearing the end of the landmine story first. The leftovers had been reheated & looked like burger patties, on a plate but in a paper bag, and there was a box of eggs? but dark brown and with coloured patterns on, a bit like posh easter eggs - the sort where you can get your name written on them in icing. This was on a bench outside a pub, where a man I didn't recognise but who had mad hair like Uncle Andrew in C. S. Lewis' 'The Magician's Nephew' and was a friend of my mate Phil told us to grow up. We said we didn't want to.

End of dream. Moral of the story, don't fall asleep with two pillows and a cat on your chest, possibly. I ate a vegetarian lunch at 2pm and had not been drinking. Where this one came from I do not know.

All good things...

Well here it is, but it isn't Merry Xmas, no sirree. Tomorrow is the first day of the new term, and as usual it's likely to be a big shock to the system. I'd like to complain about how quickly the 6 week holiday has passed, but if I'm honest a 6 week chunk of school goes by just as quickly so I can't complain.

When last we chatted I'd just come back from the Lake District; since then we've had a weekend in Salisbury so Anna could run the 5-4-3-2-1 marathon, gone to Paris as usual, Anna's run another couple of (mental) ultras (this one, and another here), we've watched a lot of tv (not all bad, a week of it was the Athletics World Cup, another 2 days was a Pixar movies marathon), drank a fair amount of wine, had many lie-ins - altogether it's been a fab month-and-a-half.

Low point, though, was the sudden death of one of my external hard drives; although I have this laptop backed-up to an external drive following the loss of all my data about a year ago, I foolishly decided to move all my music and photos to a different external drive as the laptop was getting full. And no, I didn't have a back-up of the external drive. So, after about 2 weeks of faffing I now have all or most of my music back (10,000 tracks), but still have no photos. If I can't get them back, that's 7 years and about 5000 photos gone forever - Paris trips, Pakistan, camping, Frankenfinger - everything. It's not life-threatening I know (perspective!) but boyoboy it's annoying. It's no use me entrusting my precious memories to my wetware onboard memory, that's notoriously fallible. Not all hope is lost yet, I'm trying to find a data recovery firm to get the data off the defunct drive. How much that will cost has yet to be discovered.

Anyway, that's also the reason this blog is photo-free. For those of you who like your reading matter to have pictures, here's a link to some archived photos of mine on Picasa. Enjoy.

Water, water everywhere...

I beg forgiveness, gentle reader, for the dearth of blogs lately. Stuff has, as it is wont to do, continued to happen; but the stuff wasn't very interesting, and I used up my hilarious 'tumbleweed' gag blog a while ago.

End of term finally arrived, frenzied and disjointed as ever. The kids finished on Thursday 19th but we had 2 training days after that which made it all very anticlimactic. The first week of the break was spent watching the end of the Tour de France (and finally, very good it was), and eating far too much.

So, vegetative phase over, here we are in the Lake District for a few days. Herself is running the Lakeland 50 - half of the Lakeland 100 trail ultra. It promises to be a bugger, potentially with a 14-hour running time and a 3am finish. So while that's been going on today I've been walking about Cumbria; specifically I took a bus from Keswick to Grange then walked up and over Cat Bells, one of the many local fells (? I think it's a fell, anyway).




This is the view from the top of Cat Bells. It was quite a climb, though it's only a medium hill. Certainly got my heart and lungs going. Luckily the howling wind at the top dried off the rivers of sweat I'd created slogging up there.

So it's Saturday evening and Anna won't be home till 2/3/4am, fingers crossed not by £60 local taxi; I thought under the circumstances it would be downright churlish not to go to a Keswick pub for a couple of pints before bedtime.

Oh, and aren't iPhones wonderful? This blog and photo are brought to you courtesy of that fine gadget, with a little help from the free wifi in the local pub.

Next week; camping in Salisbury for the 5-4-3-2-1 marathon, then off to Paris for August and Paris Plage. The hairy kids are going throw monster sulks...

Fur coats for everyone!

Having just spent 3 weeks watching a very enjoyable 'Springwatch', I was in a pretty good mood about all things wild and wooly.

Not any more.

Happily cycling along to work last Tuesday morning, through the calm leafy loveliness that is the Hampstead Heath Extension, I came past a parked car and startled an urban fox snurfling through a black bin bag. I assume it was surprised because the bike is virtually silent and its head was inside a rustly bin bag as I approached. Anyway, when it clocked my imminent presence it went mental, panicked and shot out across the road towards the greenery - right in front of my bike wheel. I caught a glimpse of its face as it passed me, it looked like this -

and it may have had a knife. Can't be sure about that last point but I wouldn't discount the possibility. It was definitely a wrong'un though, no doubt about it.

Now, I've criticised Roadrunner's caliper brakes in the past, saying they're not as powerful or effective as discs, v-brakes or cantilevers; well, dear reader, on this occasion I can safely say they were. I instinctively grabbed two big handsful of brakes and flew Superman-like (and rather gracefully, I like to think) over the bars. Landing on my outstretched right hand I wrenched my shoulder muscles/tendons/ligaments (dammit Jim, I'm a teacher not a doctor!), and had to wheel the bike home with my arm hanging ragdoll-like from my shoulder.

Two days off school, and it's now (Monday) only just getting back to normal. I can ride the motorbike but not risking cycling yet.

As a result, I'd to propose a new national policy - fur coats for all. Free. Fox fur, ideally. Or Davy Crockett hats, or gloves, or those giant single slippers for your granny or grandad in the winter. Your choice, my treat.

Jurassic Lark...

Another weekend, another marathon or two; Anna ran the South Downs marathon on Saturday 13th and then the Portland Marathon on Sunday 14th, so I booked a room for two nights in Weymouth and headed down on Friday evening. Anna was b&b-ing in Petersfield on Friday so she joined me on the Saturday evening.

After managing to ignore Dorset for many decades, this was my chance to go and bash at rocks with a hammer on the Jurassic Coast trying to find fossils. I took Anna's Fazer as Hellboy is off the road waiting for his MOT on Tuesday. The Yamaha is fun to ride on long, straight roads (ie A-roads and motorways) thanks to its speed and monster acceleration. I confess to accidentally finding out what the wrong side of 115mph looked like - purely for research purposes of course. Fun, that's what it's like. As usual when I'm riding on my own, it was iPod on full tilt and I rode straight through from NW2 to Weymouth in one go - 140 miles, took about 3 hours. Even with my sheepskin seat cover I was numb-arsed when I arrived, and it was a while before my legs would work properly.

The guest house was really good - run by a very laid-back and friendly young chap, and with lots of little facilites that other places leave out - proper Freeview TV so at least I had a choice of what crap progammes I wanted to ignore, and radio; plenty of coffee and biscuits, a duvet instead of sheets, a mini fridge - they were small touches but really made a difference. I parked and locked the bike, changed then went out to experience Weymouth Friday night-life.

Weymouth, it turns out, is an odd place; very typical regency seaside town in some ways, predictably a bit like God's Waiting Room - but it had its own strange twists, eg it looked like the town was in the middle of a full-on smokers' convention, and everywhere there were roaming bands of young men (perfectly amiable) all wearing flip-flops, all looking for a bar to drink in but not apparently ever actually going in one and having a drink.

I, on the other hand, after a vigorous fish-and-chip supper, went straight into the nearest 'real' (ie not a 'gastropub') looking pub for a couple of Guinnesses, then headed back to the b&b for an early night. I was up early on Saturday and on the advice of the guest house owner, I headed for Lyme Regis. Never been before, and although it wasn't quite as picturesque as I'd been told ('better than St. Ives' indeed - pah!) it was lovely. Scouting out the local fossil shops, I bought a rock hammer and headed off to the beaches to try to find some long-dead creatures. First small problem, the tide was full in and the best fossil beds were about half a mile along the coast, so I walked as far as I could over the groynes and then spent an hour or so just looking around the shingle for any fossils lying about. There's lot of evidence embedded in the bedrock, so it was fun anyway. After a while I lost patience and the tide wasn't going out as fast as I thought (Canute, anyone?), so I rather ill-advisedly and perilously scuttled ankle-deep in the sea across the base of the sea wall to the next bay.


A happy couple of hours bashing rocks with a hammer ensued. Not strictly necessary, but fun and I did turn up some reasonable ammonites, although in rock that was slightly too soft.


I headed back to Weymouth at around 4; Anna arrived later after her hot and hilly trail marathon. We hit the town for dinner and a few drinks, followed by a walk on Weymouth beach before turning in. There are lots of dodgy characters in Dorset, it seems - I was accosted by a friendly drunk on the beach. Her face has been concealed to preserve modesty...


On Sunday Anna headed out very early for her second trail run, I breakfasted and packed the bike then set out to go to Kimmeridge Bay for a last fossil-hunt. The ride to Kimmeridge was lovely, lots of small swooping country roads and super countryside. The Bay itself was good and I could see there was much more chance of finding proper fossils there, but a) it was too crowded, b) covered in too many annoying flies, and c) I think I really need to go back after a good storm so more suitable rocks have been washed onto the beach. Still, it's a spot I'd like to return to.

All in all another great weekend, even if Anna and I only actually saw each other for about 8 hours...

Why should marathon runners have all the fun..?

So, Anna's been running the Edinburgh marathon for about 2 1/2 hours now. Because of the location of our b&b (about 2 miles away from the start), and the finish miles out at Musselburgh racecourse, I'm not on photo duty today. So my task was to walk up to Arthur's Seat and take in the view. Pretty sweet gig, I hear you say? Well yeees, but I'm lumbered with my weekend's luggage, and a stupid amount of camera gear - and I'm wearing wholly unsuitable footwear too.

Anyhoo, off I set at about 9 and it's now 11:30 so I'm relaxing in a Grassmarket pub with a pint. The walk was lovely but rendered pretty arduous thanks to the extra weight. Still, the views were lovely and the weather continues to be extraordinary. Maybe too hot for a marathon though...

You might be asking where the illustrative photos are? Well, I'm blogging via my phone (which to me seems like Twitter but less f*€king pointless) and I can't post photos this way. I'll do that tomorrow.

And now it's tomorrow so as promised, a small selection of photos. For some reason the piss-poor Blogger software isn't letting me do even the rudimentary arranging of the blog layout, so you're stuck with the photos in a heap at the bottom here.

Starting with the near-mandatory 'ooh look, I have a macro lens' shots; I found this wee creature sitting on a blade of grass after I'd walked down from Arthur's Seat. He's about 10mm or less long.

This is grass seed, made much more attractive for being shot in extreme close-up I think?

One of the places we visited was the Scotch Whisky Experience, where we were told some of the history and current state of whisky distilling in Scotland; and got to taste some as well. I tried a lovely, smoky Islay single malt. 

And a photo or two of Anna standing in front of some Edinburghy things.

For the record, Anna's marathon time was 4 1/2hrs , give or take a few minutes.

Hoots mon!

We're in Edinburgh, Anna's running the marathon tomorrow. As usual our charmed lives have arrived before us to get things ready, so we've had incredibly hot cloudless sunny days, lots of mooching about eating, drinking, sightseeing and photo-taking, and tonight after dinner we were lucky enough to see the first of the 'Nocturne' series of city criterium cycle races. A hellish 1.2km cobbled circuit hosting various levels of competition including a folding bike fun race then the Elite Race with, among others, David Millar. Bloody hell pro cyclists ride fast! Sounds obvious but you need to see it to really appreciate it...

It's probably supremely ironic (or not - who knows what irony actually is these days? We know Alanis Morissette doesn't but that still leaves 6,000,000,000+ beings in the dark) that, having struggled Sherpa Norgay Tensing-like to Eenbra under the weight of my camera gear, I chose to leave it all at the B&B on the night of the Nocturne. Hence this superb shot of David Millar (no, it really is him) taken with Anna's camera phone.