Winter falls quickly

YOU don't hear the waves until you listen to them.
Then you can't hear anything else.
It's a roar and a hiss, and it comes from far over the horizon.
It was grey and brown at Goodrington in the late afternoon, and once you had cleared your mind and started to listen, the sound of the waves was intense.
They came quickly, one after the other, stroppy grey one-foot waves with foam on the top, racing in from the east and then laying themselves out on the soft, flat red-brown sand, pushing foam like the head on a bad pint.
The sky was grey, the sea grey and the coastline grey all the way to Brixham, where streets and shops and houses were lit up for the late afternoon.

Reg and I did the South Sands down and back, turning at the closed kiosk. Then when we got back to the middle we did the North Sands up and back, turning where the grumpy sea rolled against the concrete steps.
The easterlies have pulled the sand out from the bottom of the wall and replaced it with shingle. Winter storms will make great troughs in the beach where the waves hit the wall, but next spring the sand will be back again.
Winter falls quickly on seaside towns.
One day you are out in your short sleeves and sunglasses. The next you have your collar up against the scuffing grey wind and your dog has his ears flat and his eyes squinting into the wind.
Kiosks are closing for winter.

Minutes to Movember

I have just had a shave.
I wouldn't normally share such intimate personal details. It's not that kind of blog.
But reaching midnight on Halloween with one's face clean-shaven is one of the rules of Movember.
For the next month I shall be joining many thousands of other chaps up and down the country growing a moustache.
The idea is to raise awareness and, if possible, a little cash in the name of men's health. We are becoming more aware of men's cancers in particular.
Hence I shall be attempting to grow a recognisable moustache for the next 30 days.
It is all TE's fault. TE did it last year while he was working in Korea, and this year has challenged me to join him.
I have picked up the gauntlet, and I think about half a dozen people from the office are going to join it too. The running club has yet to respond to my email, but I hope some of my fellow athletes(!) will join in.
I have posters and stickers and a brown wristband proclaiming my involvement.
There is no backing out now, and I have just removed the week's growth which, I thought, made me appear bohemian and interesting.
Who knows what the next 30 days will bring...?

Aching

I ache tonight.
My old bones and joints are feeling the strain.
Alan's choice tonight was the hill between Roundham Head and Cliff Road.
It's only 168 metres long. We know this because Alan measured it.
It isn't even that steep, but by the time you are seven climbs into your set of ten, it feels like Kilimanjaro.
The idea was that the three quarters of a mile to the location would be the warm-up, then we would sprint up the hill 10 times, jogging back down to recover.
Then, Alan being Alan, we would do it 10 times more.
Thanks to Flyin' Ryan, who swore we had done 10 when I am sure we had only done nine of the second set, I think we got off the 20th sprint.
All the usual suspects were there, but there wasn't much time to chat.

House guests

OUR house is normally home to two people, plus Reg, the Jack Russell.
This weekend Reg has had nine people for company, and it has been wonderful.
We have been joined by, in approximate order of height, TE, DW, KW, Younger Daughter, Older Daughter, EW and IW.
All of those with initials ending in W are members of the same family from Chard in Somerset. DW is married to KW, who is TE's sister. TE is Older Daughter's significant other.
EW is the two-year-old daughter of DW and KW, niece of TE. IW is EW's practically brand-new sister, and also a niece of TE.
It's complicated when you only know people by their initials.
A little more detail. TE is a Spurs supporter, DW is a paramedic, KW doesn't do public toilets, EW eats crackers and loves Reg, and IW makes peculiar smells and smiles a lot.
She is only a couple of months old, so that's socially acceptable. When I do it, it isn't. This isn't fair.


It being DW's birthday, we celebrated with a ride on the steam railway down to Kingswear. DW likes railways.
Then we took a ferry over to Dartmouth for a stroll in the sunshine and a pint.
After the train ride back, we wallowed in the joys of seaside Paignton, strolling Torbay Road and the pier. EW ate ice cream and went on the trampolines. IW made peculiar smells and smiled. The other Ws took the chips proferred for tasting by the nice chap outside Scoffs.
Back at ours, they ate Mrs H's wholesome homity pie and pasta, then as suddenly as they had arrived, they were all gone again.
They all but left the door swinging on its hinges and a few displaced leaves of paper fluttering gently to the floor.
For two days the house has been full of noise and shoes and people, damp towels and still-warm cups, a toy tiger upside-down on top of a radiator, bubbles still settling in the empty bath.
And it hasn't half been fun.

Metronomy - The Look

Titanic Struggle

GUINNESS and Twiglets were offered at the pit stop this time, and it would have been churlish to refuse.
We were out hashing again with the Haldon H3, who don't seem to mind who shows up as long as everyone chips in for the grub and everyone eventually takes a turn at setting the run.
There was a good turn out from SDAC because the chosen starting point was the Smokey House at Marldon, which is nearby for us. People called Scoop, Bigfoot, Fixit, Teararse and Whoopsy-Daisy made us feel very welcome.
Coach Alan has been given the nickname Sicknote because he was dragged out of his sick-bed to set the last run, and Lynda is called Florence because she nursed him and did the dragging.
There was a nautical theme to this hash, although we never found out why. People were wearing life jackets and nautical hats. One runner turned up wearing a full captain's uniform.
We went through Marldon and out through the lanes and paths towards Berry Pomeroy for a bit. Sun God followed a false trail all the way across a ploughed field before he had to turn back.
Mrs H with Reg(2), DIY Dave with Baxter, JP with Half-Shaved Honey and Dodgeball joined the walkers.
At the halfway point, where the walkers turned for home and the runners ploughed on for another couple of miles up over the hill with the TV mast on it, there was a parked car with a pasting table set out in front of it and a little cardboard model of the Titanic alongside.
From it you could have Dom Perignon or Guinness, Twiglets and canapes. This is truly my kind of running.
Nanna and I pressed on in the gathering gloom as the sun dipped behind the masts, careering down narrow lanes with high hedges. We were only a mile as the crow flies from the centre of town but a world apart on a night like this. One day they will try again to build a bypass through this valley and we will have to fight to stop them.
The hedges are so high that you are insulated from the sound of traffic just a few yards away on the ring road up on the ridge above. You can hear blackbirds and pheasants, and occasionally crows giving a poor, keening buzzard a hard time.
Bonfire smoke hung in the hollow just before the big climb back up to the village.
Back in the pub as darkness fell we reunited for pints of Bombardier and handfuls of chips.
Half-Shaved Honey, with whom Reg is profoundly in love, was so tired she rolled right off the seat and hit the floor with a bang.

Slash has left the building

TO Marldon Village Hall for Mr Fangio's send-off.
In his capacity as a medical man serving Queen and country he is heading out to somewhere hot and dangerous for a few months, so the village primary school's fundraising night served a dual purpose.
A band called Eventine played songs old and new, from The Cult to Sister Sledge and all points in between.
On the way we dropped in on Mr Morrison's four-real-ales-for-£5.50 offer and equipped ourselves with various Brains SAs, Edens, Doom Bars and Spitfires.
The only epic fail on the beer front was a bottle of Cocker Hoop that smelled as if a dog had farted in it.
Dancers getting all unnecessary on the parquet floor included Mr and Mrs Skoda, Nanna, DIY Dave, Sun God, Redwine and, of course, the Fangios. Jamie the Legs is way too cool to dance, Elmer and the Caerphilly Kid are nursing injuries and Rachel was in the zone ahead of the Taunton Half the next morning. She went on to run a personal best, so the decision was clearly the right one.
I had on my shiny dancing shoes, and was in a zone of my own. Redwine was rocking out like a heavy metal chick, whatever one of those is, and the Fangios showed as usual that they are far too good at this kind of thing.
Sun God and I got our timing all wrong and were on a visit to the gentlemen's convenience to rid ourselves of some of Mr Morrison's ales when the band launched into 'Sweet Child o' Mine', as played by Mr Axl Rose and his Guns n' Roses (their abbreviations, not mine).
Fortunately we made it back out on to the dance floor in time to see Mr Fangio pick up one of Eventine's spare guitars (they didn't seem to mind) and leap up on stage to give it everything he had.
It was, we thought, a defining moment in rock music history.
I nearly celebrated by drinking the dog-fart beer, but it wasn't that defining.
Later we said our goodbyes to Mr Fangio and advised him to keep his head down and work on his sprinting.
We'll just have to do it all again when he comes back.

And then this.....

SOMETIMES I despair of Paignton.
Our 'flagship store' is now a 99p store, and the only new business to open in the town centre recently is a pawn shop that does payday loans.
It can be a very depressing place indeed.
And then this....
The morning sun hangs over the bay, framed by a few wispy clouds. The reflection blazes a path across the water.
It's warm again, and there are daffodils, just like in the Enchanted Village.
I get to drive this road to work every day or, if I take the sea-front road instead, the view is even better.
Yesterday I ran six miles with Nanna in the early morning sunshine, including a stretch along the beach. I had a bad boy breakfast with family and friends, met the gentlemen of Fire For Effect, watched a bit of rugby and took Reg and Baxter for a long, muddy walk on the coast path.
The robin was back in Speaker's Corner in the late afternoon sunshine and then we stood in wonder as the International Space Station crossed the cloudless night sky over our house.
Twitter told us it was coming from due west at 7.01pm and, sure enough, Mrs H was first to spot a bright spark coming straight up out of the glow of the street lights. It went silently over our heads, then faded and disappeared over the horizon out across the water.
Ain't that a wonderment?

Energy

A thick mist hung over the houses and wrapped itself round the trees.
The cars were going nowhere as the roadworks slowed them to a standstill.
Reg and I didn't need to use the crossing lights to navigate the main road on our way out or back, and I'm not sure the same cars weren't stuck there on the return journey anyway.
A long line of headlights faded back through the mist.
The air smelled heavily of cigarette smoke and the sickly tang of Red Bull, a sure sign that the trudge to school had begun.
The garage shop does a roaring trade in fags, energy drinks and Haribo sweets.
Doesn't anyone go to school on Ready Brek any more?

Grey

PAIGNTON'S not looking at its best today.
From the dog walking field up above Clennon Valley the sky is battleship grey all the way out to the horizon where you can just about make out the shapes of the tankers waiting out there for the price of oil to rise. Or is it fall?
The wind is picking up and there's a dusting of snow on the ground.
It's not enough to disrupt anything, but it looks nice enough. The hills out towards Totnes look like a Christmas card.
It was hard to see Reg at times, He is predominantly white with bits of black and brown, so he's difficult to pick out in a field which is predominantly white with bits of black and brown.
He behaved in a most ungentlemanly fashion towards an elderly lady labrador, then got asaulted himself by a tiny beagle puppy who just wanted to climb on his back and bite his ears.

The Long Weekend

FRIDAY night was quiz night over at the cricket club, where they kindly hosted a gaggle of runners without a social home of their own.
The rain poured down and gales swept in from the sea, over the headland and across the outfield and the square to hurl drops at the glass doors.
But people came despite the rain, and we were snug and warm inside with pints and Terrys Chocolate Oranges to give away.
The Caerphilly Kid and I set some tough questions.
They were no problem for the finest brains of the running club though, and the scores were high. The chocolates went to the right people, and Bazza did heroically go to the wrong runaround corner on purpose so one of the youngsters could gather the prize.
The big winners were Help For Heroes, who get nearly £300 as a result of the club's generosity.
On to Saturday. An old mate of mine once said there was no such thing as a bad football match as long as you were actually there. The atmosphere, he said, made up for any shortcomings on the field. He was wrong, because Torquay United v Barnet on Saturday afternoon was dire.
Nigel the Magician led his Sunday morning running group out into the wet and windy lanes through the deep puddles and the leaf mulch, and over the course of six-and-a-bit miles we ran off our hangovers and actually started to enjoy ourselves quite a lot.
We must have run right through the 11am silence. We said we would stop when we heard the maroons go off at Brixham but the wind must have been in the wrong direction because we didn't hear a thing.
No disrespect was intended.

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.

Good running

GOOD running last night, with laps of the 460-metre loop in Youngs Park as darkness fell.
It's never easy, but having nearly 30 runners there made it better, because there was always someone to chase, or try to stay ahead of.
Rowdy Robbie made the night's headlines when he encountered a collie dog up on the prom. Rowdy Robbie was going flat-out when the collie crossed his path, and he went flying.
Fortunately the dog was unhurt, as was Rowdy Robbie, although he and the dog owner were both mighty cross.
We were pleased there was no repeat of the last time someone got in Rowdy Robbie's way on a fast run. Then, he barged past two gentlemen of the fairground, picked up the mobile phone one of them had dropped and threw it across Paignton Green.
The two gentlemen of the showmen fraternity would have killed him if they could have caught him, and Rowdy Robbie's likeness still hangs on hoopla stalls the length and breadth of the land so they can get even with him if they ever do see him.

Where do tea huts go in winter?

They wind up in the corner of a car park, waiting for another summer of fun.

Autumn Armagnac

I was going to blog about the end of summer and the onset of autumn, but it doesn't seem so bad.
Ray Davies said tea, and toasted buttered currant buns, can't compensate for lack of sun, and he was right of course.
But this evening I drove home along the sea front with the window down, sunglasses on and 'Harvest for the World' playing on the car stereo.
I exchanged waves with Moses at Hollicombe, too.
Autumn seemed all right, really.
The picture above shows the Gulf of Morbihan, as seen from the campsite on which we spent a very happy week. it seems a long time ago now.
Since then we've had a marathon, Goodwood, various university trips, races, beer festivals and all sorts.
More of some of those later, no doubt.

Man the lifeboat!

THE Torbay lifeboat looked tremendous in Paignton Harbour tonight. coming in on the rising tide just after the Paignton ARC youngsters had brought Wave Dancer in after their training row.
Coxswain Criddle brought the Beth Sell = standing in for Torbay's regular lifeboat which is in for a service - alongside after Ken Lane had moved the Dart Princess out of his way, without the use of any bow thrusters, as he pointed out.
A queue of people went on board for a look at the impressive lifeboat, and hopefully Mike and his collectors got a few coins in their buckets.
Elsewhere the stamp collectors had a busy day on the Green and the allotment garden is finished, complete with Anderson shelter.
There was dancing and singing, and moving to the grooving, and some impromptu ballroom steps from the committee.
On Tuesday it's fireworks, with the first firework a little after 9.30pm. The fun starts well before that, however, so come down and see us.
Don't forget, the quizzes are still being sold, you can still win a tandem sky dive with the Red Devils, and the fairground is still in full swing.

Over here

AS expected, it's getting busy at the regatta. I'm over here right now.
Why not come down to the Green and join in the fun!

The Ballad of Dodgeball Turoczy

So, I turned 50 with a whole week of revelry.
We did the air show at Yeovilton, then came home to a night at the pub.
Then the following day we did beach games at South Milton.
At one point there were 44 people there, all playing rounders, British Bulldog or dodgeball.
It was all very dangerous from a health and safety point of view, and great fun.
Elmer got so enthusiastic about the sports that he couldn't run for a couple of days. Jamie the Legs flew his giant stunt kite and Mrs Fudd rugby tackled the Caerphilly Kid so hard that his eyes are still watering now.
Dodgeball Turoczy earned her nickname with a bravura performance in the game and Jimmy Green Shorts took a tennis ball full in the eye from nephew Declan, overarm and intentional from a range of about three feet.
Brave lad, he hardly batted an eyelid, and later kicked a football at me very hard in what can only be described as the 'gentleman's area'. I still gave him a lift home.
Lizzie's Dave, who probably hadn't played British Bulldog since Bill Haley and the Comets were in the charts, showed some neat footwork across the sand but was caught trying to sneak up behind the row of tents.
Cricket started with a lot of poor shots, but then DIY Dave got his eye in and started hitting missiles. It's a big beach and we had a big area to ourselves, but it didn't stop DIY Dave from seeking out and hitting some people sitting nearby.
They were very good about it.
Picnics ranged from sandwiches and Pringles to Nanna's full-on tagine mounted over hot coals.
No-one seemed to mind too much that I had led an eight-car convoy in completely the wrong direction getting there. We found it in the end.

Speaker's Corner

There is a twig at the top of the tree at the bottom of the garden that is like a kind of Speaker's Corner for the local birds.
They hop on and off in turn, say their piece, hurl abuse at the black cat from over the back, and move on.
I sat there in the sun the other day taking their pictures. They aren't the prettiest of birds, just the odd sparrows and garden finches that pass by. None of them is an oil painting come to life but I like them just the same.
I wonder what they're saying?

Waxing lyrical

COULD there have been a better night to run up to the mast?
We started at sea level and griped and grumbled our way along the sea front, legs aching from Saturday and Tuesday and feeling our age.
JP appeared from behind a parked car and took a picture.
Up over Manor Cross we were still grumbling, and Occombe Valley Road didn't help, but then we climbed up through the woods and everything got better.
At the top the group had the option to cut back through Preston, go a little further down by Top Shops or go the whole hog and climb over Beacon Hill.
Nigel the Magician made the decision, and we headed for the big hill.
It was perfect. The light was low and the air was still and heavy.
To our right the moors seemed within touching distance. We could see Hay Tor and Hound Tor, and way out beyond them.
To our left as we reached the high brow, the soft South Devon cattle let us pass. They were silhouetted against a silver sea without a single ripple in it.
A tall ship sat in the middle of the bay, and oil-heavy tankers waiting for the world petrol markets to move seemed to hang in the stillness where you couldn't tell sea from sky.
To the east we could see right along the Devon coast to Dorset and Portland Bill rising in the distance. To the west more ships hung on the mirror of Start Bay.
We waited for a moment at the top to take in the view. Even Jamie the Legs and his fast group following behind looked up from their fast feet for a moment to enjoy the view.
Then we clattered down through the lanes again to Great Parks and Waterleat, St Michaels and the Big Tree, and a final, joyful sprint back to the car park.
Nigel the Magician consulted his wrist-mounted Goonhilly device and it said 8.5 miles.
It was a tough one, but I don't know a better place to run in.