Blue Moon Fever

...is a song by Nine Below Zero, but that's not important right now.
It was my turn to work in the office on Sunday afternoon.
No problem there. There's a rota. It's all fairly shared out. Besides, everything went smoothly and on time. It couldn't have gone better.
It's just that the best afternoon of the whole autumn was going on outside. It was crisp and cold and clear, with the sun burning down from a cloudless sky.
Earlier in the day when I walked Reg it looked like this.


There were a million things we could have been doing out there.
So by the time work was over the for the day I knew I had to go for a run.
So I did the Churston Flyer route in the dark. A great yellow moon rose out of the fields and at the far end of the course, at Battery Gardens where the road careers headlong towards the clifftop before jerking to the right at the very last minute and opening up the whole of the bay and Brixham harbour to view, it was just breathtaking.
Strictly speaking it's a blue moon, of course, because it's the second one this calendar month, but it was a honey yellow colour when it rose out of the hedgerow.
I suppose they call that kind of moon a hunter's moon, but I like my wildlife alive and kicking, so let's say it's a runner's moon.
You could see lights all the way up the coast and tick off Dawlish, Exmouth, Sidmouth, Lyme Regis and various other clusters of lights all the way up to Portland Bill.
Three red lights stood up high above the coast - a mast of some sort, probably Stockland Hill over by Axminster.
I didn't stop to admire the view, though, and carried on through the streets and back into the moonlit lanes.
Some dog walkers were lying in wait for me. I didn't see them until I was right on top of them, while they must have heard me coming from a mile away. How they laughed. How close I came to soiling myself.
I finished the whole course, right down to a sprint through the underpass and a dip across the finish line in the school car park. No-one was looking, and I hadn't even bothered wearing a watch, but I had to do it.
After that, I felt like we had earned a chippy tea.
It's nearly Halloween, by the way, and Dracula has taken up residence in our chip shop.