The Good Life

THE shallots are in. The sprouts are sown.
All is well in the garden.
It's hardly a 10-acre field, but this little plot has the aforementioned veg in it, along with some peas.
Elsewhere in the garden chitted potatoes are forcing their way through the soil above them, ready to burst forth. I can practically hear them.
There are peppers, and chillies, and tomatoes on the go, and soon there will be beetroot and beans.
Don't tell her, but under Older Daughter's bed a darkened box of potent compost is about to burst forth in a flush of mushrooms.
Mrs H (pictured in the spotty wellies) and I have been tending the soil, with a little help from Reg, whose idea of assistance is to drop his ball in the path of the spade and keep doing it until you stop what you are doing and play.
Blackberries and raspberries have been planted, too.
We got the grass cut and even got the shed tidy.
We even went to Trago Mills, a place we had both sworn never to visit again the moment the girls got too big to want to go on the Pirate Ship. We bought things in their garden centre.
It must be the sudden onset of spring.
Mike the gardener hasn't been in touch yet, and all down the cul-de-sac people are beginning to fret.
Bowling George is about to succumb and mow his own unruly lawn. I had to do the same.
If Mike doesn't get in touch soon, we are all going to have to up our game this summer.
We spoke nicely to the big spiders in the shed, by the way. The one guarding the golf clubs must have been out doing whatever spiders do when they aren't just standing there. The one in the other corner, behind the box of golf balls, ran first one way and then the other when we moved the box and exposed him.
Mrs H was reassuring, and leaned a piece of wood into the corner to give him a shadow to hide in again.
Good karma.

Return of the blog

It is high time the blog made a comeback.
After all, if Maddie Grigg can pick up the reins again after going halfway round the world, I really should make the effort.
Tonight the spring has brought gusts of wind tugging at the velux windows again and splatters of raindrops the size of 2p coins.
It is good to be indoors, warm and full of pasta and coffee after a training session in which the Hocking brothers ran me ragged. I got moved up from the remedial group into the big boys' group for the second part of the session.
I asked Coach Alan if it was promotion or punishment, and he just smiled. My legs were like jelly come the end.
I have so much to do. The regatta programme is still unwritten, the England Athletics affiliations will have to be done on Thursday when April 1 signals the start of the new membership year, and I need to start writing some quiz questions.
Then there is a playlist to put together for Friday night on the wireless. Click the link to listen.
Tonight the gas bill arrived by email. Getting it electronically doesn't make it any less painful.

Through the pain barrier

AFTER almost a month of non-blogging, it's time to resume.
Much has happened.
Mrs H is recovering well from her knee op and should soon be running again. The Caerphilly Kid is wincing from cracked ribs and damaged legs, but he still beat me by (literally) miles at Hestercombe on Sunday. He is smiling through the pain with a little help from the two bottles of Jail Ale he won for being Man of the Match for Hookhills at the weekend.
Every time he laughs he goes a little pale and flinches, so we make him laugh as much as we can.
We were joined by Nanna for the Nightrunner, a modest eight miles or so round bits of the Grizzly Cub course in the pitch dark complete with flurries of snow, swooping around the deep, deep valley at Branscombe, splashing through the ford, crashing across the shingle and finishing with the scramble up the Stairway to Heaven before a welcome pint and a bowl of cheesy chips in Beer.
The Inca Trail at Ilchester was a seven-mile mudbath and the nine-mile Hestercombe Humdinger did exactly what it said on the tin.
It was at Hestercombe (a rather pleasant country house near Taunton) and its hills were indeed Humdingers. Here we are afterwards.

As you can see, the fast ones are already changed and ready to adjourn for refreshment. Some of us, on the other hand, have not long arrived at the finish.
I don't know what The Cardinal is looking at. It's probably something on the back of Macanory's head.
After so many miles in such a short space of time, my right hamstring feels as if it is constantly just a little bit on fire, and there is a point on my back that feels like an electric shock when I touch it. Like the Caerphilly Kid, though, I am wincing through the pain barrier.
There is news, too, of a return to the airwaves for me and Mr Hedge, but more of that later.

Quality

It's nearly February and there is still Christmas food in the house.
It's all bad, too - Quality Street and chocolate orange.
All the good I am doing with running and walking and working out is being undone by Christmas food.
Tonight it was six times round the 660-metre loop on Paignton seafront with rests in between. Mine went 2.52, 2.45, 2.47, 2.48, 2.48, 2.50, so if you take the first one as a 'sighter', they were pretty consistent. I finished ahead of a couple of people I would normally finish behind, so I was happy.
Then I went and spoiled it all by eating something stupid like Mrs H's fabulous risotto and a fistful of Quality Street...

Walk Home Wednesday

I HAVE started a new thing, a thing which will probably last all of a fortnight.
I am going to get a lift to work on Wednesdays, and then walk home.
Why?
I have no idea.
Maybe it's something to do with my carbon footprint, maybe it's to do with fitness. Certainly I need to get some miles in with some long races coming up this season.
So I ducked out of the office door at 5.05 and stepped it out for the six miles home. I made Torre Station at 5.22, then the Grand Hotel at 5.37. I made up a bit of time up over Hollicombe (5.50) and was at Manor Cross by 6.00. A couple of shortcuts through town saw me at Conway Road for 6.15, then a final push up the hill brought me through the door at 6.27. Not bad going. A benchmark of 1h 22m is set, and I'm not sure I could go much faster without breaking into a trot, which I'm not going to do.
I never even put on the iPod, which I had carefully pre-loaded with inspirational tunes.
It will be more fun when the evenings are lighter, I reckon.

Winter Wonderland 2

Well, it's been a while.
It did snow that night, but not all that much.
Mrs H, Reg and I went out walking in the morning and it looked like thisTitter ye not, that's a lot of snow for Paignton.
Then, over the next few days, it all turned to compacted ice and slush, and it wasn't so much fun. Mrs H was just waiting for me to fall over, but I just about stayed upright.
Her car still won't start, though. It's a mystery, and one we hope to get solved with a bit of expert intervention this weekend.
Both daughters have gone back to Bristol now, Older one on the train and Younger one thanks to a drive up the M5 through the blizzards yesterday.
Blizzards might be going it a bit, but it was certainly snowing pretty hard around Bridgwater, and Bristol itself had a good thick blanket of the stuff.
The drive back was pretty grim, but brightened somewhere around Wellington, where the grey motorway stretched away into the fog, with white banks on all sides. A heron suddenly appeared from the side of the road and flapped lazily across six lanes of traffic, about 12 feet off the ground, in brilliant detail against the gunmetal late afternoon sky. It was just high enough to avoid everyone and treat us all with the disdain we deserved, and as it crossed the hard shoulder it spread out its great curved wings ready for landing.
OK, it's not a herd of wildebeest crossing the Serengeti plain, but it was a bright spot in a dull journey.

Winter Wonderland 1

SNOW is falling, all around me.
Outside the cul-de-sac is quieter than usual, because no-one has ventured out much tonight. We made a slippery dash to the Spar shop about nine, but there's no sound out there now.
Someone has spread grit across the road, which is nice. I have put a couple of shovel-fulls on the steep sloping driveway in the hope of being able to get the car out tomorrow.
Mrs H's car is refusing to start at the moment, so we are a one-Mazda family for the time being.
So, the big question is this. When the alarm goes off in the morning and we look out of the window towards Collaton and the green hills beyond, how much snow will there be?
At the moment you can just see a handful of tiny flakes fluttering about under the orange street lights. A dusting has settled on the ground, about the thickness of icing sugar on a mince pie.
The weathermen say much more is up there in the clouds, waiting to fall. How much will there be?