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Another long run this morning - it was raining and my watch kept stopping because of the dampness and my sleeve rubbing against it, but I think we did around about 14km in about 86 minutes. It wasn't easy, but I kept running all the way and had more in the tank. Me1 got the call up this week and although he went further than Me2 I think he was a little off the pace, but then again we went on a different route this time. Running with someone who is much fitter than you is a good way to up your game. I am frankly astonished that I am doing this well.
We were going to have lunch with some friends in Kent and it felt like we were going on holiday. This is the first time Catie has been on a long road trip since last August (though the rest of us went to Cheddar last month) and who'd have thought going round the M25 would feel like a leisure trip?
Our friends have a nice set up with their own garden and then an extra bit of shared garden at the edge of the orchard behind where there’s a trampoline and some other stuff. Although we’re still a bit edgy when we let the kids out of our sight it felt safe enough to let them all play back there and they ended up with in the garden of the kids next door. Ernie came back in and asked if we’d packed his swimming costume as they had a pool there. I just felt relieved that he was well trained enough to come back and ask rather than diving in on his own.
It was halfway between being a paddling pool and a pool as it turned out, but had room for the five kids and enough water for them to swim a little bit. We didn’t have swimming stuff, but Phoebe borrowed some and Ernie stripped down to his pants. They braved the cold water and mainly had fun, with the older kids being very protective and helpful. Kids get a bad rap, but most of them are pretty decent and polite. Not ours so much, but the other ones are good.
There were chattering teeth and some tears as there should be when something like this is going on. But after all these months of isolation this felt like some kind of unbelievable magic. Eventually I carried my shivering son back to his clothes and wondered if he’d remember this day. He’s a very social kid and the lockdown has been hard on him.
For some reason, on the drive home, I was reminded of the time when I was maybe about Phoebe’s age when I had to write a diary for my school and I claimed that we’d had a burglar break into our house who had stolen my dressing up police uniform. That’s all he’d taken. I remember the teacher questioning this. It wasn’t true, of course, but I must have believed she hadn’t realised that. And I said that the police thought that maybe the burglar had a son about my age and had taken it for him.
It was my favourite possession at the time and so maybe it seemed believable to me that someone else would value it above the TV and whatever other items of worth my parents might have had. The teacher played along and didn’t reveal that she thought I was full of shit. You don’t realise for a while that grown ups are a bit cleverer than they pretend to be. Then it’s a few more years before you realise they’re not as clever as they pretend to be.
I was going to try and make a Bella’s pudding for Ed and James’ RHLSTP but by the time we’d got our two happy kids to bed I was fading fast after all that running and driving. So we watched Ted Lasso in bed and then I passed out.
