Pedalling On

 Yesterday was a turbo training day and we try to find something special to help us through these times when every day seems the same while we run or turbo on alternate day and are missing our swimming so badly. A change is a good idea now and again, and so Steve found something he knew that I would be only too keen to watch again.

Amongst the hundreds of recorded shows, concerts and sports events there for the taking on our TV

He found the Exhibition Gala at the end of the Figure Skating events from the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeong Chang.The gala is always so happy and relaxed after the pressure of such top-level competition.

 

It is also interesting that even when the years of training, and the most testing of competition is over, how very few have the nerve to give a comedy performance for the most important Gala on the figure skating world circuit. The Gala is made up from the medal winning competitors but sometimes opened with a few performances from young skaters who may well be the stars at a future Olympic Games, as was this one; a few moments of promise.  The first international star to dare to lift the mood was Spain’s mega star Javier Fernandez with his super hero routine. The only other notable performance in the comedy entertainment genre was the Italian pair Valentina Marchei and Ondrej Hoterek with their fun and skilled Barbie and Ken routine. We pedalled our way through the entire Gala, showing all the medallists.

 

Having been deeply into a couple of hours evening crime drama before bed time lately, including The Black List and The Prodigal Son, series that we are still working through, we thought we could take a break from crime and not so much punishment and go for something different last night. Steve had found, completely by chance, a live performance of Barber of Seville from The Norsk Opera and Ballet company. Steve usually hates it when a traditional opera has been moved to a modern setting, but this was most enjoyable and in addition to a splendid cast, it also had the most astonishing multi-faceted, huge revolving scenery block that turned into a different set with each revolution and could be closed up in any number of ways, until it finally looks like the biggest most impressive Ikea demonstration you could ever see. That sounds a bit mean, but it was enormous and yet so neat, a great invention, feather in the cap, of a brain box set designer. Thoroughly enjoyable.

 

his morning we took a five mile turn around our local woodlands whilst nature did some showy mood changing from bright sunshine, to a vast stretch of a misty fret that came from totally the opposite direction that this phenomenon usually appears from. It usually slips in with the tide, but our prevalent wind is from the south west, and this came from the east. There were breaks in the mist when the sun shone through here and there.

 

We had a useful workout and as always loved the ever changing scenery in Angmering Park Estate.

 

Places to go, pedals to turn?

 

Uncertainty fills our locked down lives at the moment and at this time we may have reached the point where many of us wonder where it will all end, or worse still if it will end ever.

It’s easy to see how we came to think these things, because our present situation came to be like a ton of bricks falling out of the sky at around this time last year.

Only last year? Can that be true?

It seems like an eternity ago.

 

Yet, although we have lived through every new up- date from No. 10 Downing Street, when our leader (love him/or hate him) appears to be trying to numb us to the dreadful mountain of deaths that have occurred during this pandemic. Even this week when they are trying to tell us that figures are improving…. When numbers like 1300 in the last 24 hours seem almost normal now and  surely figures like that do not back up the lie that things are improving.

 

My husband and I have both had our first jab and we were pleased to have reached that point, the point that last summer we were told would be here in late autumn.

Still, trying to sound optimistic it is better late than never. We will see how long it takes to get the second jab, that was originally advised to be three weeks after the first one.

On that early advice my second jab should be next Thursday and Stephen’s would have been the following Tuesday. Talk about moving the goal posts as they now quietly say twelve weeks will be fine. No, it won’t be fine. It will not be fine at all. I just hope against hope, that things will improve as more people do get the jab, that seems logical doesn’t it?

Think for yourselves and don’t lap up the eyewash, the utter balderdash, we are being handed.

Keep questioning. Please do, and the sooner we will get our lives back.

 

It OK for younger people to say, ‘Oh well its only a year or so out of our lives’.

WHAT? Things may be better soon, I sure hope so.

I will be 82 next birthday and I still have things to do, places to go, people to meet, challenges to test myself against.

There will be no throwing in my hand.

I may well be the very first person on the planet to refuse to die at all!

AND I will be as big a pain in the neck when I am 120 nay 140! You doubters may not live to see that.

I had a phone call this morning, that followed a call I had made a night or so ago, when I think I must have banged my head on a kitchen cupboard door or something, because I had made these dear people think that I might perhaps be suffering from depression.

This was because I had said how disappointing it was that I had missed out on all my triathlon events last year, and that it was starting to look as though more would be cancelled or postponed this spring and summer and that it was a crushing blow to somebody like me, who absolutely loves to travel to new places and take part in my preferred sport in places that I had never been to and there are still plenty of those even in Europe where my husband/best friend and I have travelled extensively, since our lives together have seen us driving a truck here, there and everywhere in the course of our work in the antiques world too.

 

Neither of us have finished with Europe; still so many things that we want to do, so many places that we have not seen and a couple of places that we have not seen enough of; like Matera in Italy that I was not able to wander around when we got there, because the day before our arrival, I had had a fall and broken three bones!

I need to go back there and not to do a triathlon either since it is an ancient hill town.

 

Assisi. What about Assisi, that is very, very high on my list.

Florence; it is unbelievable that I have not been there before this?

Schőnbrunn Palace & Gardens, Vienna; HOW, have I missed that out so long?

The list goes on and on and on.

Places to see, people to meet, food to eat, pedals to turn.

 

I have a little book called the Poetry Pharmacy that recommends various poems for whatever ailment or feeling is troubling the reader.

This one is on page 78-79 the condition it offers to treat is: Fear of the Unknown.

I love it.

 

 What If This Road

                                  by Sheenagh Pugh

 

What if this road, that has held no surprises

these many years, decided not to go

home after all; what if it could turn

left or right with no more ado

that a kite tail? What if its tarry skin

were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,

that is shaken and rolled out, and takes

a new shape from the contours beneath?

And if it chose to lay itself down

in a new way: around a blind corner,

across hills you must climb without knowing

what’s on the other side; who would not hanker

to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know

the story’s end, or where the road will go.

 

 

Swampy-slow-sinking-steps

 

We had not made it out for even a half decent run for several days and so since we are trying to keep to an, every other day run plan. We set forth this morning even though in the predawn half light we could see that it might not be the most pleasant run we had ever taken. It was one of those we discovered when it looked like thick mist but in was fact the finest rain. We were both dressed for the day and so set off to cover our standard closest10km run course but taking the route backwards. 

 

The reasoning on this was that we would be starting up hill and that would make it a good work out even if we walked some of it which we had to because this path was as wet as we had even seen it and much of the time there was no option but to go through the swampy bits that had fattened out to cover the path from side to side so there was no chance of stepping around the worst bits. The highest section was not so bad and there was some grip but once over the high point one section which is a hillside ridge was unbelievably squelchy and difficult to even stay upright without grabbing at branch safety handles that nature had provided were gratefully used to avoid slipping. 

 

 Then for the last two miles we were back on wet but solid ground. There were several blessings of the outing; the first was spotting the rarely seen white deer peeping out from the undergrowth and watching us carefully as we quietly approached hoping to get a photo or two. These would not be anything to be proud of but good enough to remind us that we had yet again seen this lovely animal and that always makes us happy since it is much more of a rare sighting than the plentiful brown one’s big and small but common spottings. She soon darted off into the woods and away but had made our day worthwhile. The other thing that we liked was that dull morning lacking a watchable sunrise was that we saw not a soul until very close to the end where there was a dog walker or two. The last thing to make us all joyful is that the Daffodils are bursting into flower everywhere and I am sure we all look forward to this golden army and spring.