Kerry Buckley What’s the simplest thing that could possibly go wrong?

The starter motor in the Roadster refused to move again as I attempted to come home from Felixstowe in the pouring rain on Tuesday night. So far, it only ever does that when I’m at least ten miles away from home. Fortunately I’m now armed with the “stick it in gear and rock the car forward or back slightly” trick, which worked again. On balance, I think that all left me both more and less confident in my ability to return from anywhere I may have driven to.

At least one of the cats has now spent a bit of time climbing on the new contraption, although not before all three of them had played in the cardboard box it was delivered in.

Another double “Run For” Wednesday, with coffee in the morning (missing the rain) and beer in the evening (not so lucky, and completely soaked, especially on the run home from the pub).

It was my birthday on Thursday, which I largely ignored. I had the day off work though, and popped to the supermarket. In doing so I remembered to take my stack of “£12 off when you spend £80” coupons with me. Uncharacteristically, I did actually spend £80. I even remembered to scan a coupon at the checkout.

Naturally they’d all expired four days ago.

On a more positive note, I’d been contemplating a Pixel 6a after cracking the screen on my 4a on Tuesday (the battery life has also getting progressively worse, to the point that it barely lasted half a day on a charge). I hadn’t quite made the decision by Thursday though, at which point Google made it much easier by dropping the price from £400 to £300. It arrived on Saturday, and the process of transferring everything over was pretty painless.

Phil came up for his traditional annual birthday beer & curry visit on Saturday (we’re fairly sure this tradition is unbroken since 1992, apart from 2020 when the world temporarily stopped). This time I’d managed to persuade him to enter the Hadleigh 5 on Sunday (I was running the 10), and then had to break the news to him that it was five miles, not km. He got round OK though, especially considering he hadn’t previously run further than 5k, which he last did over a year ago. I think he even kind of enjoyed it! I did better than last year in the 10, but not as well as in 2019. When we got back I made the also traditional fry-up, despite it being by now past lunchtime. I cobbled together some hash browns from a couple of potatoes I had left, an onion and an egg, and despite relying on vague memories of how hash browns work rather than consulting any kind of recipe they came out OK. Also notable for being one of the extremely rare occasions when I’ve used all six burners of the hob at once.

Not much happening during the week, but on Friday I went to Norwich to see the always-excellent Half Man Half Biscuit. They were on at the Waterfront, which is much more convenient than UEA because it’s about five minutes’ walk from the train station. I saw them for the first time there 14 years ago (almost to the day, coincidentally), although I first heard them about 21 years before that. In 2008 I remember having to rush to the station the minute the encore ended to catch the last train, but this time we had an hour to kill, which meant we were forced to pop back into a pub for another pint.

Saturday saw a very gentle parkrun on the slightly dull Kesgrave course, as Chantry Park had been taken over by the “MoRun”, which seems to be an rather expensive race trading on the Movember brand while not actually directing any of people’s entry fees their way. Then Sunday was the Scenic 7: always a pleasant event, and used to be the only local seven mile event until Martlesham muscled in with the redesigned 10k. I managed to go a little bit quicker than I’d expected, but still 30s or so slower than my best. My ankle, which had stopped hurting, started hurting again – both times it was after wearing the Hoka trainers that I bought semi-randomly when I couldn’t get hold of the New Balance ones I usually wear, so I don’t think they suit my feet. The Saucony ones I got at the same time are fine, as are the lighter Asics that I wore today.

I finally got round to taking the shelf unit that I set up as a standing desk in the corner of the lounge at the beginning of lockdown out to the garage (I only used it for the first few months of working at home), and replacing it with a giant cat scratcher/climbing thing. So far none of the cats have shown any interest in either the thing itself or, more surprisingly, the box it came in.

Well it feels like summer might be finally over, although we did have a bit of a false start to autumn a while ago, so who knows? I finally caved in and put the heating on on Friday evening – partly because it had dropped to 14? in the house, but also because the humidity was 89%, which seems like it might be a bad thing. Incidentally, am I the only person who can never remember the keystroke for the ? symbol, so just holds down the option key and mashes the first two rows on the keyboard until one appears, then deletes all the other rubbish?

I went into the office twice this week, because it’s been mandated that we go in three days a week from now on, and two is equal to three if your error margins are wide enough. On Tuesday I forgot about the clock change, and didn’t take any lights with me (fortunately there’s a route home that’s mostly cycle paths). On Thursday it rained, and it turned out that despite most of us being in the office the team meeting we had scheduled was happening on Teams rather than in real life.

In the light of all the Twitter/Musk kerfuffle I found my Mastodon account again, and actually made my first “toot” (hmm) there, after five years of silence since I initially signed up. That may seem like a long time, but I was on Instagram for a whole decade before posting anything there.

The cross country season started this weekend. I pushed a bit harder than planned at parkrun on Saturday, but despite that and the pouring rain and mud I actually had a reasonable race on Sunday. Obviously these things are all relative – I only managed 97th place – but I beat Robin for the first time, which I’ll take as an achievement.