Chaos

Apologies for the lateness of these blogs (especially to Matt). The reason for this should become clear forthwith.

I’m too busy for this training lark. That does not, of course, mean that I’m quitting. I’ve given up salsa already, but I haven’t stopped the socialising yet. This is difficult. I had some homework to do recently from Sal (her comment indicates she doesn’t remember this, but she probably just doesn’t remember that she referred to it as homework) which was to have a look at a race website and book myself into a 10km race in August. This was extremely tricky, because as I have already mentioned, I’m booked out, weekend wise, till the second weekend in September. Inclusive. However, I’m never one to avoid a challenge, so I’ve found a couple of Sundays where I might be able to rejig things and fit something in.

This weekend, however, is proving to be something more of a challenge. I was booked onto a train this morning at 9:45, which I thought would give me enough time to get to the swimming pool at 8 a.m., get my hour’s training in, and get home for just after nine to pick up my bag and head out.

That was before I spent Thursday night bottling apricot jam until 12:30. This was partly because I had such a suffeit of apricots, and giving them away to some people (like my coach) kind of meant that other people wanted some, so I ended up delivering apricots earlier in the evening, which inevitably took longer than I’d thought. I also had an unexpected delivery of eggs from a colleague that afternoon, and in a moment of blithe generosity, suggested to Susie that I make a quiche and bring it up with me. It would also use up some red peppers kicking about in the bottom of the fridge, and it really upsets me when they go off. I thought about the quiche at 12:30, and being insane, I decided the best thing to do would be to go ahead and make it. I got the butter out of the fridge, and smelled it – I don’t eat butter because of its general unspreadability, and I only buy it to use it in cooking or baking, which I hadn’t done for a couple of weeks. It smelled fine, so I gingerly tasted a bit. GAG. Rancid butter. Ack. I ran to the bathroom gagging, and practically drank a bottle of Listerine. Then I found two of the eggs had cracked on the way home, so there was no option but to have fried eggs for dinner. Oh, and in the excitement, I forgot to have dinner! And some asparagus that I’d bought earlier – they go surprisingly well with fried eggs. Who would have thunk it?

All told, feeling less like a domestic Goddess than Val had given me credit for earlier (I’m not sure how growing apricots makes you into a domestic Goddess, but apparently it does), I realised I had failed to tidy the house, which I like to try to do to save my embarrassment when Maggie comes round to feed the cat. It doesn’t really work, because frankly, no amount of tidying will ever make my house as tidy as a normal, or “tidy” person’s house. And Maggie does mention this to other people at not-quite-every opportunity, so sometimes I think, the hell with it, it’s staying messy. I posted a Facebook status message saying that I was not a domestic Goddess, I was in fact, an actual goddess, because I have a book of essays entitled “Messiness is next to Goddessness”, that a thoughtful and loving friend once bought me. Then I went to bed. At one thirty. Oops. Ignoring Sal’s message on my first ever post.

So, amazingly, I didn’t actually get up and go swimming at 7:30. Instead, I listened to my poor, abused body until half eight, made a second (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempt at packing, and tidied the kitchen. I was still trying to find my camping towel at 9:30. “Shit, taxi” I probably vocalised, and called one. “About ten minutes, love, alright?” they said. They always say this, and always turn up in seconds, hence my desire to be ready before I call. They didn’t. It was about ten minutes. In one sense, I can’t blame them, because I used all of those minutes to throw more stuff at my bag. I missed the train. I missed swimming. I dropped the bag on my foot. It hurt.

The concern about being too busy doesn’t end there, however: I’m on my way to a(nother) hen party, where we are “glamping” at a festival called “Rewind”. The Hen, my lovely friend Susie, wishes us to dress as smurfs. You can go off people. Now, I (possibly) have packed my running stuff, and in a fit of optimism, also my swimming stuff – there is a pool in Perth, I checked. I could run there from Scone. At what point, however, I think I am going to actually do this, I do not honestly know. Although on the bright side, I should easily be able to fulfil Sal’s request to run up some hills, in Scotland, which is well-known for its hills. One thing I do know though, I’m not going to be very popular in the yurt if I don’t find a shower. I accidentally smelled my running stuff the other day, if I’d left it any longer before washing it, it might have started going running by itself. There’s an idea. I wonder if I could get it to wear the garmin?