Well, I suppose it had to happen.
Indicating right halfway up pigsty hill, my extended finger made contact with the nose of an overtaking cyclist. We were fine on this occasion, but I can't help thinking that a slightly slimmer finger or a slightly wider nostril and we could have been in serious trouble. There is danger everywhere - if only you know how to look!
Meanwhile, shaken but not put off, I finally made it into the swimming pool. Well my hair did need a wash. On the advice of Marian at work, I'm trying to develop a more positive approach to swimming.
Lesson 1: Don't always immediately follow the word swimming with "I really hate swimming"
Lesson 2: Try to say the word swimming without pulling an unpleasant face
Lesson 3: Think of all the worse things that I could be doing instead, like dying for example
I'm not confident that it's going to make a long-term change, but I'll try until March anyway.
Walking's fine though. Did a 10 miler on Saturday, along the canal from Bath to Bradford on Avon, and 5 miles the week before, slithering around in the mud on the Bristol downs.
But the good news is that I've made contact with some of the other people who are gong on the trek. There will be 22 of us altogether apparently, and a couple of people have raised their head above the parapet with an email. The really good news is that there is a group of 5 people from Bournemouth, whose ages range from 48 to 58. It's not that I have a problem with 'Yoof', some of my good friends are positively child-like, but it'll be good to have company at the back of the walk (I've made some assumptions there, I know). Mostly though, it's the sense of humour. So many of my jokes fall on stony ground with the young ones in the office - and they're not all that bad. I think it's the cultural references.
Only last month, one of them asked "so what was so great about the Beatles then?"
What can you say?
Well quite a lot actually. I think the response lasted for 20 minutes. They'll never need (or want) to ask that again.
So there we are.
