Something’s changed

January 30, 2010 at 11:46 pm | Posted in Stuff | Leave a comment

what snow?

…specifically, my shape. There is more of me than there was before. And it’s not good. Still, if I will keep on with my usual festival of carbohydrates when my daily exercise consists of picking up cakes, what can I expect? I am officially a bit fat.

The new year started with such high hopes as well. Plans for lots of training, and less red wine (it was a shock to find out it’s not one of my five-a-day. Thank god that chips are ok, though). But, life is what happens when you are busy making other plans, and I’ve been struggling with a bad back and some bad colds and some much badder busyness, and some even worse laziness.

And in local news, we’ve invested some debt in a rather lovely woodburner, and there has been a little bit of raised heart-rate while happily foraging for woodage, and that has had to do.

What I’ve decided now though, is to have another new year. The queen has two birthdays, so I am going to have two new years. And that way, I can catch my former resolutions by surprise, sneaking up on them when they think they’re safe. 

And talking of resolve, what I have noticed is that the less I write, the rounder I get. So I’m going to have to do a bit more writing.

A bit of reading is also good.  One of the enfs got me Charlie Spedding’s autobiography for my birthday, and it’s  stunningly good. Charlie’s speciality was peaking for key races – taking his talent and training,  and burning it to a point like the bright sharp sun through a magnifying glass.

Part of that, was a set of three questions he came up with sitting in a pub with a notebook (now that’s nice…).

• what do I want?
• why do I want it?
• how much do I want it?

And without being too new-agey about it , that’s not a bad set of questions to start the year asking (especially if it’s your second new year in a short while).

I’ve thought quite a bit over the last few months about transitional landscapes. About how although the rocks and fields around us will outlast us and more, they are still very often dressed in a temporary measure.  On the beach in a gale, where footprints swirl and smooth themselves and vanish so you can’t see where you came from. Fields where the river has escaped, and swans and cows can’t quite decide who should be there. Making snowballs that are bigger than us, on white days when we smile and laugh at the differentness of the familiar. 

So, I’ve realised and decided that my new-found lumpiness is a bit of a transitional landscape.  And the first step in making it transitional, is my slightly daunting race with Dartmoor Runners tomorrow. 

And that, dear reader, will be another story altogether…