Shoes

It's gone and got itself all intermittent again, hasn't it? The trouble is, I guess, that I can do several things when I'm sitting in front of a computer. One of them – the techy computer-y bit, I occasionally get paid for. The other – writing about things – I don't. It becomes difficult, then, to decide just what I should do at any given time. You may wonder why I'm writing this, then, and not generating reams of text which make whizzy things happen on other people's computer screens. Well, it's because I'm on the 'Tiny Tim' (no, not a euphemism or, indeed, rhyming slang. It's the little laptop I carted around Africa with me). You can't do much technical on this, but you can write on it when you're sitting on a bus (which I am now).

Anyway, I took the vibrams out for another run t'other day. My flatmate has now got himself a similar pair, and I don't know if this is now more or less embarrassing when we go out running together. His are a slightly different design, and a different colour in a way that would stand up in a court of law but would leave you looking a bit defenceless in the pub ('yes, technically it's a different shade of lime green and grey.... but you're still both wearing the same silly shoes’). I’m getting on much better with them, though, and it’s I managed a good run around the Common and a leisurely jog home, rather than the usual ten minutes on the pavement. My calves much preferred the softer grass and mud surface, so I guess I shall stick to turf until my legs are able to handle it. Still not sure we’ll be able to do the Helly Hansen ‘Hellrunner’ in them in November, mind you (10km over mud, sand, bogs, hills). We shall see. We managed a couple of classic 'open mouth' moments, though. To see a ten-year-old boy staring, slack-jawed, at our feet as we ran past had us chuckling all the way home. We got lots of funny looks from school kids. Whether it's to do with their height, or simply the fact that they're not yet jaded by conventions, but kids tend to look around more, to notice more, and to look at our feet as we run by. Luckily (for kids can be viscious), by the time they'd thought of something witty and cutting to say, we were well past them. On balance, perhaps next time we won't go out near school home time.

Meanwhile, I have to psych myself for harmonica action. The downside with the second time is that I’ll probably be expected to have something to say to everyone. Hmph.