Christmas cakes made! I’m wondering whether to try making a pudding as well this year, but if so I won’t be following Delia Smith’s stupid recipe that took about 24 hours of cooking last time I tried it.
Thanks to a combination of tight customer finances and Oli the apprentice wanting to try working in a variety of teams, I’m now back to being solo on the project at work. I feel like I might struggle to keep output up to 50% of where it was with the two of us, even though for the majority his time on the team he was only working three days a week and studying the other two!
Our head coach, Ian, had his 60th birthday on Tuesday, and various club members, including his wife, conspired to organise a surprise party after the training session. I think we all managed to keep him in the dark pretty much until we “happened” to regroup near the venue during the jog back to the sports centre after our efforts on the prom.
After last week’s pitiful running mileage, I managed to up it a bit this week, including running to (slightly quicker than I’d have liked, to make in time to shower before my 9am meeting) and from (much more slowly, but almost twice as far) work on Wednesday. Along with running for coffee on Friday, parkrun (slowly) on Saturday and the Capel 5 on Sunday, I managed to go from my lowest mileage since 2022 (13.6) by jumping up to the highest total since the end of my marathon training at the beginning of this year (42.4).
I arrived at work on Thursday pleased that, despite running in instead of cycling the previous day, I still had my pass card and the right keys with me. I got changed, and wandered across to the office (about a two-minute walk). On reaching my desk, I realised that I didn’t have my laptop in my bag, because I’d left it in my locker overnight and forgot to pick it up. I put my bag down and walked back to the changing room, only to realise that my locker keys were in the bag. Walked back to the office to get the keys, back to the changing room to get the laptop, and back to the office, where I finally managed to start work. And I’d been kind of late in the first place.
I had a visit the other day from a man from the council saying they’re going to resurface the pavement outside my house later in the year, and that I needed to clear any vegetation that encroached on the path. I spend a few hours on Saturday afternoon hacking, digging, pulling and strimming at the ivy that’s slowly taking over, and now you can actually see the retaining wall again. I do need to also tackle the even bigger ivy that’s colonising the mostly-out-of-sight north wall of the house at some point too (along with the actual garden, of course).
Two ’spoons visits at the weekend, for second breakfast after parkrun, then back for food and (a little too much) drink on Sunday evening.