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.