Running up that hill

I'm lucky enough to live somewhere beautiful.
I'm unfortunate enough to be intrinsically lazy. I love walking, but faced with the tough choice of another chocolate HobNob or getting a bit puffed out on a big hill, I'll go for the instant gratification and non-sweaty option.

This has presented me with a bit of a problem. I'm now seriously unfit, having done just one walk in 2011. So I decided to set myself a little challenged for 2012 - Walk 200 miles during the course of the year.

Sounds easy, right? Yeah - I've only got to do 3.8 miles per week. I have set myself some rules - strolling to the shop for a cappuccino doesn't count; it has to be a walk for the sake of a walk. Distances of under a mile don't count either.

3.8 miles a week. Easy. Yeah. Except I work, so in the the winter, weekdays are out. Still, 3.8 miles every weekend - can't be that hard, can it? Can't miss a weekend though, or I'll need to do 7.6 miles the next week. And I live in Cumbria - it only has one weather setting, and that's why we have bloody big lakes.

So I decided to get started promptly. 3.5 miles over Arnside Knott today. Considering it has rained every day for at least a fortnight, the mud factor was pretty high. So was the out-of-breath-possibly-having-a-heart-attack factor going up.

I'm pathetic. And I have a lot of walking to do. Did I mention I want to lose half a stone too? I had to deny myself chocolate this evening.

If you hear of a murderous rampage in South Cumbria over the next couple of weeks, it'll be me. Assuming I'm able to get out of the chair.

(CD's galore for Christmas! Currently listening to Tori Amos' "Night Of Hunters". Moodyaliciousness!)

Comments

Faking it for real

As Donald “I’m really great, everybody says so” Trump is so fond of pointing out, there is a lot of fake news around nowadays. Honest. Your friends at Facebook think so too, and have recently been publishing their top tips for spotting false news – by placing them as ads in newspapers. Considering they came in for considerable criticism themselves, that’s like shouting “Squirrel!” and pointing at a tree whilst you hastily kick away the prize begonias you just trampled. To help you make sense of this (and because I’m a caring person), I thought I’d run you through their suggestions and help to explain them for you. I know. I’m lovely. 1. Be sceptical of headlines READING THIS ARTICLE WILL IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE!!! And explain that catchy headlines, or stuff all in capitals might be a bit iffy. 2. Look closely at the URL You can find out more about this at www.wowyouregullible.com if you want to understand how phony web addresses are a sure sign of dodgyness. 3. Investigate...

Going Underground

The US presidential election and Brexit must have made me more nervous than I’d realised. It seems I’ve created an underground bunker without realising I was doing it. Still – we’ve all done that at some point, right? No? Ah... In that case, the fact that I have inadvertently turned my cellar into a rudimentary survival shelter, just in case it all kicks off, demonstrates a severe case of bunker mentality. Fretting about Donald and his wall, and Hillary and her emails, clearly made me more paranoid that I thought about the possibility of WW3 kicking off. Whilst attempting to find a specific size of imperial washer the other day (turns out I’d mis-filed it in the nut cabinet – Tsk!) I was struck by what a lot of jam and chutney we have in the cellar. And I do mean a LOT. There are boxes of boiled-up sugar and fruit and more boxes of boiled up vinegar and fruit. We’re still only part way through 2015’s output too. Then there’s the plastic containers holding pasta in various for...

"It's all gone quiet..." said Roobarb

If, like me, you grew up (and I’m aware of the irony in that) in the ‘70s, February was a tough month, with the sad news that Richard Briers and Bob Godfrey had died. Briers had a distinguished acting career and is, quite rightly, fondly remembered most for his character in ‘The Good Life’. Amongst his many roles, both serious and comedic, he also lent his voice to a startling bit of animation that burst it’s wobbly way on to our wooden-box-surrounded screens in 1974. The 1970s seemed to be largely hued in varying shades of beige, with hints of mustard yellow and burnt orange, and colour TV was a relatively new experience still, so the animated adventures of a daft dog and caustic cat who were the shades of dayglo green and pink normally reserved for highlighter pens, must have been a bit of a shock to the eyes at the time. It caused mine to open very wide indeed. Roobarb was written by Grange Calveley, and brought vividly into life by Godfrey, whose strange, shaky-looking sty...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog