I did a very short-feeling six-mile ‘long run’ this morning…
…and it was a lovely day for it, with bright blue skies and buds on the trees and daffodils everywhere. Spring is most definitely here… not that anyone’s really thinking about it at the moment, understandably. Years ago, Geth and I would probably have celebrated a sunny March Sunday like this with our first beer garden visit of the year. I’ve been avoiding beer gardens for over a year now since getting sober, and anyway they’re all currently closed by government order. Life is very different to what it used to be, especially in the current strange situation.
Instead, we are in the house as usual, working our way through our videogame and boardgame collections. For once, I’m hopeful that I might make a bit of a dent in my gaming backlog this year!
Back to work tomorrow.
Daffodils growing in our garden, looking extra yellow in the sunshine.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Koichi Sugiyama – ‘Unflinchable Courage’ Duran Duran – ‘I Believe/All I Need To Know’ Take That – ‘The Flood’ Levellers – ‘What A Beautiful Day’
Geth and I chose a local route for the first non-parkrunday this morning…
…and I was pleased to find I could run at a similar pace to last week’s parkrun! We also did the online parkrun quiz at 9am this morning, which had a nice community feel to it.
Have gone around the house changing all the towels and bedding to make the place feel a bit fresher, and am now looking forward to spending the rest of the day videogaming.
Same again tomorrow (slightly longer and slower run planned though!).
On the start line of what I expect will be the first of quite a few non-parkruns over the coming weeks/months. I didn’t realise I would miss parkrun so much already.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Paul Dukas – ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ Take That – ‘The Flood’ Sacre – ‘The London Marathon’ Sesame Street – ‘The Pasta Song’
…because I needed to visit nine shops before I was able to find any pasta, and so I thought I might as well get my run in as part of the search! Our wee Sainsbury’s Local had a few packs of macaroni left. It transpired that they’re now limiting them to two per customer, which is probably why!
I also (miraculously) managed to find some toilet roll in a pound shop that I never normally go into. Everyone in there was being really great about only taking one pack. I now feel confident that Geth and I have enough to keep us going, even if it takes a couple of weeks before I manage to find some again.
I spent the rest of the day working on a paper for a client – I’m very grateful to have some work at the moment. I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend, including a ‘non-parkrun’ tomorrow and a ‘not nearly as long as in marathon training’ long run on Sunday.
Being in the house means I’m running out of stuff to take photos of, so I made this slightly existential upscaled pixel art self-portrait.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Koichi Sugiyama – ‘Unflinchable Courage’ Badly Drawn Boy – ‘Once Around The Block’ The Beatles – ‘Michelle’
…and then I went with Geth to the nearby Sainsbury’s Local, hopeful that we would be able to find some of the supplies that weren’t in stock earlier this week. ‘Some’ being the operative word.
Supplies we actually found:
Face wipes! I can now take my makeup off again without having to scrub with soap and water.
Milk – semi-skimmed rather than our preferred skimmed stuff, but it’s milk.
Quorn mince and chicken style pieces. As a veggie I absolutely rely on these in cooking, and I managed to find a couple of bags that were well hidden on the top shelf of the freezer section.
Pesto… well, the last jar in the shop, anyway.
Biscuits. We really shouldn’t be eating these, but they are definitely not in short supply.
Supplies that we are still lacking:
Toilet roll. I wonder if that particular shelf will ever be stocked again.
Every type of pasta that isn’t lasagne sheets. I’m a pasta obsessive (I literally eat it every day) and this is extremely worrying to me. I’m certainly going to be making a lot of lasagne this week.
Rice. We drew the line at buying the manky microwaveable stuff.
Passata and chopped tomatoes. Basically, you can forget about anything tinned right now, which means I’ll be making meals with jars of Dolmio and the like instead (which is not as healthy, but unfortunately we have to make do).
Fresh fruit and veg. We managed to find workable alternatives in the fridge section, but it’s alarming how low the stocks were today.
As such, I’m going to be venturing out into the wastelands of larger supermarkets tomorrow to see if my luck is better.
On a positive note, work is finally coming in again, which suggests that academics are starting to get comfy working from home and writing their papers. Hope we can all make the best of a bad situation and have a productive few months.
My current complete pasta stock, which is worryingly low by my standards.
Today’s earworm playlist:
The Rolling Stones – ‘Ruby Tuesday’ Demi Lovato – ‘Confident’ Badly Drawn Boy – ‘Once Around The Block’ Duran Duran – ‘First Impression’
We’re still on Mum and Dad’s Welsh trip, and this week sees a second/third (see update to last week’s post) phone box from near the village of Mynachlog-ddu!
Red phone box, Main Road, Mynachlog-ddu, 11th September 2019.
This box was very tatty and weathered, and sadly, like many of the Welsh boxes that Mum and Dad found last year, it contained a notice informing the locals that the box would soon be going to the phone box graveyard. I’m sure it did valiant service while it could.
After the kind of interval session that just a week ago I could not have imagined fitting into my training until at least the summer…
…I came back home for a fairly unplanned afternoon. Work has been quiet for the last couple of weeks; I was (and still am) hopeful that because most academics are now working from home, they will have more time to write papers and hence more papers to send to me, but I suppose that everyone will be trying to negotiate a new normal at the moment before they can settle back into their work. However, I have had some constructive feedback on my most recent text adventure game, so I was able to spend most of the afternoon working on the next update for that.
Normally I’d be at ukulele class tonight. I’m not, obviously; it’s cancelled like everything else. As such, while it’s not a normal Wednesday, it’s now a ‘new normal’ day: the same as yesterday, and the same as tomorrow.
Windback Wednesday: Braidburn Valley Park, April 1987. Mum is pushing a two-month-old Malcolm in the buggy, and I’m standing to the left of the photo in my ‘puddle suit’. I last ran up and down that path a week ago today, before I left Edinburgh; it has not changed in the slightest in thirty-odd years. In these uncertain times, that is extremely comforting.
*I decided two weeks ago that Toto’s ‘Africa’ would be my handwashing song during the coronavirus pandemic. I have now washed my hands so much that it is also starting to become a frequent earworm.
…and since then we’ve just been in the house, hiding from the cancelled world outside. Geth went to Sainsbury’s, and came back with approximately half the things I’d sent him out for (panic-buying has officially set in here in Newcastle), but we’ll manage. I also went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription – the outside world feels a bit odd and apocalyptic at the moment.
It’s felt like a long day, but I’m not about to complain, because extra time is my most treasured thing and suddenly having a lot more of it is a real silver lining. Sage Gateshead has now closed, so my ukulele classes are not happening for the foreseeable future, and I don’t know when they’ll be rescheduled. The UK Games Expo confirmed this evening that they are postponing the event to August; parkrun will make an announcement tomorrow.
The North Tyneside 10k has also postponed to October, so that’s the last of my spring races fallen by the wayside. I’m amazed and grateful that none of my postponed races clash with each other (or with the GNR), and also feel quite lucky that I hadn’t booked any of my planned autumn races before this all kicked off. I had wanted to run the South Shields 10 Mile and the Great Scottish Run this year, but they’ll be there for me in the future.
Keeping in touch with family as the daily situation changes is my main priority at the moment, along with keeping myself and Geth safe and sane. Running is a big help with the latter, and I’m really glad I have that in my life at the moment.
I was able to try out my new running shoes from Inverness this morning. They’re super bouncy and did give me a slight but noticeable boost!
Today’s earworm playlist:
Lightwood Games – ‘Link-A-Pix Theme’ Ollie Wride – ‘Back To Life’ Mesh and Mechanical Cabaret – ‘Born To Lie [Duet Version]’ Koichi Sugiyama – ‘Unflinchable Courage’ EMF – ‘Unbelievable’
…and since then I’ve been spending the afternoon getting a bit of admin done and thinking about possibilities for the weeks and months ahead. All but one of my spring races have now been postponed to the autumn, resulting in a packed autumn race season that I wouldn’t have chosen myself, but it is what it is, and I am grateful that I will still get to run the races. Newcastle University are asking staff to work from home from tomorrow onwards, so I will have Geth home with me for the foreseeable future. The Social Run Group are no longer holding gatherings. I’m still waiting to hear about parkrun, my ukulele class at Sage Gateshead, and the UK Games Expo at the end of May, but I fully expect that all of them will go the same way, especially given the new measures that the government have announced today and the fact that things seem to be getting worse every day at the moment.
I am an introvert and a homebody by nature, so I have absolutely no problem staying in my home for a few weeks (if we get fully locked down and I have to run on the treadmill, I may get a bit grumpy, but at least I will still be able to run!). I appreciate though that not everybody is like me, and that some people are really dreading these measures and/or will feel really lonely. If that’s you, I’m thinking of you. I hope we can all get through this sooner rather than later.
Tomorrow, other than running in the morning, I’ll be at home, getting work done and playing videogames. I expect that will be the case every day for some time.
Hello, 3DS, my old friend; I’ve come to play with you again.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Richard Marx – ‘Right Here Waiting’ Koichi Sugiyama – ‘Unflinchable Courage’ The Killers – ‘Mr Brightside’
…as I wanted a lie-in and a shorter run today, and Geth was still feeling the after-effects of being on a drip in hospital on Friday and so needed to stretch his legs a bit. It was really nice to run together, and it felt like a real rest day after all the Sunday long runs I’ve been doing for the last few months. I’ve got more of an idea now of what my running is going to look like up until the point where marathon training resumes in June, but I still need to spend the next few days working out the finer details.
I’ve been able to spend most of the rest of the day playing other people’s game jam entries, which has been really relaxing. Ready to try and get back to some semblance of normal tomorrow.
If we do end up in lockdown for the coronavirus, I couldn’t ask for a better quarantine buddy. Very happy to have Geth home right now.
I finally got back down under 30 minutes at parkrun this morning…
…but everything feels very Bizarro World at the moment, and so I’ve not really been able to enjoy the achievement. It’s looking likely that today’s parkrun was the last in the UK for a while. The Edinburgh Marathon Festival announced their postponement this morning, meaning that neither Geth nor I will have a long race to run now until the autumn. The Social Run Group at the Up & Running shop is still going for now (though meeting outside the shop rather than inside), so that may be the only running-with-people that I do for the foreseeable future. I don’t know if I’ll go to tomorrow’s session, though, because it’s eight miles and I quite fancy a shorter Sunday run now that marathon training has been postponed! I’ll see how I feel in the morning.
Geth is now safely home with me – Heulwen drove him back to Newcastle this afternoon. He’s not a hundred percent yet, but I’m hoping that a good night’s sleep and a day or so recovering will sort him out. Medical investigations will be instigated as soon as we can.
Everything feels very strange at the moment, not just running. With the coronavirus we can’t be certain that any of the events we’ve got planned in the next few months will go ahead, and because the situation is changing by the day, nobody can really make plans for anything. Geth and I are planners by necessity, as we have so many hobbies and other things going on – we always have a pretty good idea what our entire year looks like at the start of January – and so having to play things by ear is a bit new and uncomfortable.
The whole thing is a good excuse to get lost in some videogames, I feel. Fictional worlds are a bit more familiar than the real one at the moment.
Another lifetime. Venice, ten years ago, when I was still heavy and unfit. I love Northern Italy and am sad that they’re struggling so much with the pandemic. Looking forward to going back one day when this has all blown over.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Koichi Sugiyama – ‘Unflinchable Courage’ Will Powers – ‘Kissing With Confidence’
