Home again

I was still busy on Saturday, out with dad to get a new padlock, when i got a text from mum saying she'd lost Frank. "Did he go outside?" I asked when I got back (in a fairly relaxed manner). "No, definitely not!" she told me. "Then you haven't lost him!" I said. She'd last seen him upstairs, so I went and looked in cupboards and under beds. I'd looked under a bed that had some drawers under it, and she assured me she'd checked there, but as I got up, I heard a tinkle of a cat bell. "He's under there" I said. "Frank, do you want to come out?" He emerged from under the bed, kind of saying, "OK, your go now", after a successful game of hide-and-seek.

He was reasonably content in the house and continued to explore other places to hide, which include the cupboard under the window seats, under the chest of drawers in mum and dad's room, and back in the drawer under the bed. However, he also rated "his" place on the sofa, which is where he was when I went for my run in the afternoon.

I did barefoot, and the same route as yesterday. I saw a lady with two kids on bikes going through that massive mud patch. I offered to give her a hand getting them over it, but she said she was trying to convince them of the wisdom of going back. "It gets better round the corner!" I said brightly, until I saw her shake her head, "I mean, not much. Still very muddy..."

I get a bit of a hill on this route. Not like, Hastings hills, but a little rise all the same. I've figured out that perhaps hills don't bother me as much as I thought. I think they are interesting and challenging, diversifying the route, and also are a lot of fun to go down. So it's another reason to be negative about Peterborough (and another reason to go out to Stilton for another run....).

At the top, I turned left, and passed a family out walking. They shouted a warning about it being very wet on the track, which I smiled at, and didn't really respond to; I already knew, because I'd run it yesterday, and it was drier today.

Later on my trip, I had just gone through a massive patch of Molinia grass (purple moor grass) which grows in quite wet areas - this was no exception. It was sinky-wet. Bizarrely, because I wasn't on a main track any more, I passed the same family going the other way (of all the routes they could have picked). "It's really wet back there!" I warned, feeling they deserved some retaliation warning. The ladies were at the back of the party, and one of them said "What interesting shoes!" (because Southerners are always rude in a very polite way). So I paused to tell her about barefoot running and Mexican tribes and lack of support for joints. She seemed most interested. It isn't necessarily what you expect to learn on a Saturday afternoon walk in the Forest.

When I got home, it was time to take Frank back up the road. He submitted to the car quite well, and didn't make a bid for freedom, and by the time we'd got to East Grinstead, which isn't far, he had stopped miaowing, and even voluntarily got into his cat box, which was strapped in to the front passenger seat; this is what I was hoping he'd do. I felt that zipping it up would ensure that he never got into it again; so later on, when he got disconcerted at the Dartford Tunnel, he found a much safer place. He was quite contented there for the rest of the journey. He almost purred.

It took him a few moments to adjust when we got to Peterborough, although he got straight out of the car, I felt he might have had motion-problems, because he looked almost wobbly: but then he saw an open front door that he recognised, and went straight in. It could be a case of absence makes the heart grow fonder, because he's looked quite happy ever since then.