Now

I haven’t done one of these in a while. Haven’t written much lately. I haven’t made time for it; it hasn’t felt important. I haven’t quite felt myself lately, and one of the first things that gets cut when I’m in Survival Mode is self-reflection (which is pretty much the whole point of this website). Also on that list: joy in music. When I find myself doomscrolling through my music library I know that I’m having Another One of Those Days.

I suspect it’s the time of year. I get terrible hay fever in the fall (or, I don’t know, generic hay-fever-adjacent sinusitis), and this year has been worse than usual. Since the clocks have gone back, we only get about an hour of useable sunlight during the day — from noon onwards the sun is still technically present but its attention is elsewhere.

It occurs to me that I never wrote about the Loch Ness Marathon, which I ran at the end of September. It was a stunning day in a stunning part of the country. But the wheels came off just after the halfway mark, and I hobbled the second half at a walking pace.

Since then I just haven’t had much motivation. My running history has perhaps overindexed on Long & Slow runs, so I’ve been working on speed in an attempt to shake something loose. My running form has improved a bit, and I put up a good showing at the Brampton to Carlisle 10 mile race a couple weeks ago. I like that distance, and I like the carbo-loading pretext for scarfing an entire box of flapjack at once.

Still working towards a 20-minute 5k before the end of the year.

Around the house we’ve been checking more jobs off the list, with the goal of starting 2025 with a fresh slate. Our latest: there are now nice plush carpet runners on the stairs, replacing some awful tatty beige stuff that the house was assembled with back in 2008 or so. In a year of tiling, wallpapering, and carpeting, I like carpeting the best: it’s relatively tidy work and you can mask a lack of experience with a surfeit of staples. would carpet again.

For Sam’s birthday the other week, we both took some time off and enjoyed ourselves in the (admittedly meagre) sunlight while the rest of the world toiled at their desks. We went to a fancy breakfast in Durham with the retirees and the posh students, then took a tour of the Cathedral (no tower climb, unfortunately—under renovation) and castle buildings. We spent a day at Beamish and visited the new 1950s town; John’s Café is now open after having languished here on Wingate Front Street for years.

At the end of the week we made a chilly trip to the Lake District for a run with Ghyll across a couple peaks of the Helvellyn ridge. Clouds rolled in on us along the very tops, but on the hillsides we had wonderful solitary views over Grasmere.

I’ve just returned from a walk with Ghyll. It has been dark for hours (approximately 5) and the thermometer has dropped sufficiently that puddles are freezing over. In the field near our house Ghyll sauntered into the dark, from whence little crunching noises emerged at intervals as he wandered around in the tall, frozen grass. When we got home I had dinner and he curled up on the sofa.