Title Was Longer Than I Wanted It To Be,

 I was going to name this blog post "Today I Made Some Decisions That I Would Make Again, Despite The Outcome Not Being What I Wanted It To Be." 

Since moving back to Manchester, whether we are classing that as two years ago or six months ago when I bought this house, I've been trying to reconnect with friends I haven't seen for a long time, and people I haven't spoken to in a long time as well. 

Despite the fact that plans went awry today, I don't regret making the plans I made to meet up with one of my friends. I don't regret that, in order to get a lie-in, and have more time to spend getting ready, I decided I was going to take an Uber to get there, despite the fact that the cost was something like three times what it would have cost on public transport.

The thing is, I was investing my money and my time into myself just as much as someone else. It was good for me to get out to a place I knew and hopefully with someone different. I spent today feeling safe outside of my home and outside of the environment I've spent the last two years in, but whilst my mum did need to come to the rescue so that I didn't need to get an Uber home or face a 35-minute walk and then two buses with an anxious dog, she did better than I imagined that she would have done. 

My dog spent today saying hi to more people than she normally does and not freaking out when the other doggies barked. She sat on my knee in the Uber and was so brave. I am so thrilled that she's as brave as she is. 

Then later on in the day, I learned that I woke up this morning to a world without a friend of mine, and I honestly can't say that I can put my finger on how I feel right now about that. Yes, I'm sad, I'm devastated really, and I'm angry because it shouldn't have come to this, but other than that, I'm still in a stage of utter disbelief. But knowing he's not here makes me even more glad that, even though I didn't get to spend the time with the friend I was trying to spend time with today, I put in the effort, because my friend knows I put in that effort, and he knows we need to try again to meet up, and losing one friend makes me realise even more how much I need to hold onto the others. We all need to hold onto each other. 

Happy New Year (Oh, Here We Go Again),

  I honestly thought that when I took the time to sit and count up the number of blog posts I wrote in 2021 the number was going to be smaller than 14. I had thought I had basically taken almost the whole year away from writing, but it would appear not. A lot of it was about running, a bit about dogs (standard practice for me, of course) and a couple were mentioning the new house. 

2021 was a good year for some things because it was the year I met my fur baby and fell truly in love with the girl, even though she weed on my carpets a lot. It was the year I found and bought my first house and started to realise how damn expensive getting everything I wanted done to it would be, though that's also been exciting because getting stuff done to the house just is exciting. It's also the year that I went back to Scouting and that has been an utter gift, even if at times I have wondered what on Earth, what manner of lunacy, made me think I wanted to work with kids, even if it is just for a few hours a week. It has been the thing which has got me out of the house, got me teaching and got me learning as well as socialising with the kids, the other adults, parents and just a whole other community that I feel really lucky to be a part of. 

Obviously, in other ways, 2021 sucked. Whilst COVID wasn't in as much control of our lives as it was in 2020, it was still hanging around like a foul smell and it has been sewing seeds of discord between friends, families and communities, with arguments over testing, masks, vaccines and who broke the lockdown rules however many months ago. We never really got back to the point where we could meet with other people freely and easily in the long anticipated return to normalcy, and that was bloody hard. As a family, we lost my granddad and at the funeral promised that we would meet again as a family as soon as we could. We'd lost one cousin (well, second cousin for me) before we lost my granddad, and then before we could plan the get-together we were all waiting on, we lost another cousin, and a smattering of other relatives and friends, and then we lost Akela. 

Obviously, there is no point trying to quantify all of those things and figure out if, on balance, the scales tipped in favour of 2021 being a good or bad year. There were points where it was amazing, there were points where it was terrible and there were others where it was awfully middle ground, and most of it is from these external events that are kind of beyond anyone's control. If it comes out as a good year, what does that mean? Does it mean I can sit and rest easy this year because last year was good? Obviously not. If it turns out it was to be considered a bad year, does that mean I have to 'try harder' this year to make good things happen? How do you even do that? I spend my life running around in a tizzy, always doing something, forever busying myself with something and it is utterly exhausting. I have started giving myself some time to relax and have a break as well, but if I'm supposed to be 'trying harder' what more can I do? Honestly, not a whole hell of a lot without splitting myself down the middle. 

I'm going into this new year feeling hopeful for a lot of things - driving, relationships, camping, all that sort of thing, but I'm also trying to be cautious to not overhype the things I'm hoping for in case this virus means some of them or all of them don't happen. So I'm not doing resolutions, I'm not going to get overly anxious about the run that's coming up at the end of the year - though I am going back to training for it in the next few days - I'm making no goals about my weight because if I stay chubby, I stay chubby, and I'm not going to make any real goals about what I want my career to look like in the next few months, because more than anything, I just want to be able to breath, get through each day and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Things will come together (or they won't) and this year I'm just going to try and let that happen without getting super wrung out over it. 

Chai Pants

It's been a while since I published anything on here even though I have been writing. I feel like the pandemic and the lack of social interaction has made me more easily confused than I was before, I go on a lot more tangents and I can't focus or follow a point as easily anymore. In fact, I find it really hard sometimes. It is almost like the way I feel after taking Diazepam but without the calmness, which is awful. I feel like I have lost a lot of confidence in my writing because of that, but I am trying to get myself back to something that looks like 'normal' or at least, normal for me. 

Since being off of this I did something I have been wanting to do for a very long time. I finally got my dog. She is a bit of a funny looking spaniel, because she's actually a shih tzu. When it came to it, my garden wasn't right for a spaniel. I had to look at getting a smaller dog who couldn't hop the fences with a short bound, and it just so happened that at the time that I was looking for a dog, my little girl was looking for a new home. 

She came from a breeding farm, peed all over the carpets and crawled her way into my heart when I wasn't looking, but she's wonderful - except when she is barking at three o'clock in the morning, at which point, she's a lot less cute. She petrified of everything, but getting braver, meeting the family and starting to have a life that doesn't involved producing and looking after puppies, and I couldn't want any more for her.

Oh My God, We Get to Run Again, (and the different tones of voice we use when we say that)

Firstly, I'm going to apologise to everyone who saw this title or opened the blog and immediately thought, oh God, she's talking about running again. This blog was never created for me to talk about running. It was kind of a writing, mental health and me thing, so whilst running fits in the latter two, the former it has absolutely no relevance to, and for that I do apologise. However, it's important to me, so here we go. 

When COVID struck mass participation events dropped like flies and we moved to virtual races which were incredible in some ways - doing the virtual London marathon I had the opportunity to pee and visit my water station in the porch roughly every point eight miles which was really helpful. I didn't go on every loop, but it was helpful to know that if I needed to, it was there - but in other ways it sucked because no running buddies, not crowd, no kids with high five for power up signs and no desire to touch them even if there were because that just sounds like a pit of germs and nastiness to me right now. As we moved into 2021 it was almost like there was a promise that it was coming back: the feeling, the events, the crowds, the cheering, the charity work and everything else that comes with mass participation sporting events. But in the same way, the pages of the calendar turned over and we were, and are, still wearing masks, still taking tests, still getting briefings about scary numbers of people infected with a virus that has decimated populations of vulnerable people and also killed innumerable people deemed to be fit and healthy and at a lower risk. 

Runners like me have struggled to get back into training because the belief wasn't there that it was coming back. We can't even go to parkrun yet, with most venues being under a thousand participants, so how on Earth are we going to get to London to share a start line with thousands of other runners - around fourteen thousand for London Landmarks Half Marathon and fifty thousand for London Marathon - in just weeks. There's been a part of me that has been screaming IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!! Well, boo to that, because in two weeks time, London Landmarks is happening, and in less than eighty days, less time than it took to Phileas Fogg to circumnavigate the entire globe (I brought writing nerdery into it somehow!!) London Marathon is happening, and I am not the only one who is not ready.

On the Facebook groups for all of the races I'm involved in this year, there's a lot of people coming to the realisation that training has been horrendous, people have had COVID, been pinged to self-isolate and whilst a man in, I think it was France, managed to run a marathon on his six meter balcony, not everyone has a six meter balcony, or a six meter garden, or six clear minutes where their kids, whose bubble have been sent home from school due to a positive COVID test which may or may not be due to a TikTok "hack" to be able to just run around the garden or spend thirty minutes running up and down the stairs like a loon in place of training. Gyms are open, but a lot of people go to the gym where they work and are currently working from home. This year has still been complicated in terms of training - somewhat more and somewhat less than last year. There will be people who have had extra time to be able to run and are fitted than they predicted they would be and I wish them so well on the road to their PBs, but there will also be those of us who wanted to be in a better position than we are right now and are bricking it about how we're going to survive to the end of something SO LONG. 

I've spent the last few days saying hello to a lot of the folks who are worried that they won't finish, because they have never joined the back of the pack. The back of the pack is potentially going to be a lot bigger this year and it's something I am so here for. If more 'casual athletes' learn that being at the back of the pack doesn't suck as long as we're together, hopefully it can stop some of the utter crap like saying that London marathon isn't a walking race, and we shouldn't be allowed seven and a half hour pacers. Let me tell you, a long marathon time is not easier to achieve than a short one. Yes, Kipchoge is an utter legend for running under two hours - and that's something I'm not getting into a debate over, it was a feat to stay at that pace for so long - but it's two hours and then you can go and get a sports massage or get your massage gun out, you can get in your hot tub or whatever your recovery protocol is, you can get on that. For those who are on for a seven, eight hour or longer time, that's three and a half to four times as long on your feet. That's longer that your back has to keep you upright and moving forward. It's a lot longer to keep your head in the game and not let that self doubt tell you that you can't do this. I'm not trying to devalue speedy athletes and fast runners - I really admire them - but my hope is that if there are more of us at the back of the pack this year, I hope the experience changes things. London Marathon 2019 changed things for the back of the pack and I'm glad it did, but we are still not at the point where there is the respect for "slower runners" that they deserve from the feat of endurance that they go through, often for charities, but also to prove to themselves that they can. For myself, I have to battle all of my own demons, so to have someone else telling me I'm fat and slow is just unkind. 

My sincere hope is that this year sets the scene for a return to mass participation events, but not a reset to how things were before. I hope we come back kinder, and come back stronger and with more unity. I would love to see anything which encourages those bringing up the rear to keep going - from the party bus that was proposed for last year to keep the music going to the option for faster finishers to rejoin the back and keep everyone moving. If it's not about the winning, it's about the taking part, it's about all of us taking part, not just those who finish in an average time or those reaching for a PB, especially not this year. Let's just be happy to be out, in a crowd and back to doing something we love. (Even if we don't love it so much on the day because it's hard and it hurts.)

The Disappointment of Falling for You,

From the moment I knew I was buying the house, I knew I was going to get a dog. To be completely honest, I would have an entire pack of dogs if I could, but at the very least, I want a single dog. I have been writing to a lot of rescues and applying for lots of different dogs and it has been difficult because lots of people are applying for the same dogs and it has been very disappointing. And then I saw a pair of dogs that I fell a little bit in love with. They were nothing that I had asked for, but they were sweet and they were beautiful and I was besotted. 

One of the girls was an old girl in a toy breed. She is in a bit of pain due to arthritis, but otherwise well, which is baffling due to her age. The other girl was a cross with a breed I would never have considered (think pug or Jack Russell or similar) cross with another one that wouldn't be my first choice (lurcher, greyhound, whippet sort of idea) but the pair of them together melted my little heart. I contacted the rescue constantly, and they kept me in the loop with medical issues and tests so that I could let them know that none of it was worrying me in terms of adopting them. Okay, the little old girl needs a comfy bed to sleep on (she can have a memory foam bottom one for the living room and she's probably going to sleep on my bed upstairs) and regular vets visits, the younger of the two is a bit of a live wire and needs good exercise (so she can run like a mad hatter all around the garden as well as have a few walks a day where her sister can either plod or be carried in a puppy bag - I'm not a big fan of puppy pushchairs personally). Everything was going well and I was due to meet them ahead of getting a home check done on my place and then being able to go and collect the girls and bring them home to live with me. 

Unfortunately, it seems that was not to be. 

I'm going to emphasise that the rescue did nothing wrong. They were asked to care for and rehome a pair of dogs belonging to a person who became seriously ill and was no longer able to care for their pets. A family member surrendered the pets to the rescue, the rescue explained that this would legally transfer ownership to them, and that was that. They cared for the girls. However, the owner has recovered from their illness, which they were not expected to do, and is understandably fuming with the actions of their family member. 

Although I know that the best thing for these girls is to go back to the home they know and the person that they know, it is utterly heartbreaking when you've started to plan for welcoming a particular little personality into your home and your life and then you find out that, for whatever reason, they are not coming. It's devastating because you get excited about these things, and you imagine what your life will look like with them. 

I think the important thing that this raises as well though is to make plans for your pets. Very often we take on a pet with the knowledge that the span of their life is likely to be limited, and we will likely go through the pain of losing them, but it's important to make a plan for what happens if you are unexpectedly taken ill or if, heaven forbid, anything happens to you before your pet. 

For me, I know my parents would take on my dogs if I took ill, or if anything happened to me, but we also know that we like different dogs, and the mad spaniels I am besotted with might not fit into their lives overly well, so one of the things they know about is which rescue my dogs came from, so where they should be contacting if they need support, or if they needed to rehome. They know which rescues I have contact with and have worked with, so where I would want my dog(s) to go to. 

Whilst I am really disappointed and still quite upset that I won't be having the girls come and live with me, I trust that the rescue will only return them when they are well assured that the girls will be properly cared for, and that at some point very soon, someone with four legs and a big heart will come padding into my life, and it's going to be fabulous when they get here. Until then, I will keep looking for them, and making sure that their home is ready when they are.

If It Makes You Happy (It Can't Be That Bad),

 Okay, so I expected this to be a Facebook post with photos before it was a blog post, but when does anything go to plan? Well, not when you are buying a house. Yup, that's right, homeownership isn't something simple, would you ever believe it? 

This story began in earnest at the end of 2020, when I decided that, instead of waiting to be able to afford to buy a flat in a very particular development just south of where I worked in Croydon, I was going to look for a house in Manchester. The main reasons were space and family. 

In terms of space, I was looking at potentially a two-bedroom flat where the second bedroom was big enough for an office and a hobby room, but if I ever met someone and procreated, we would need to move when the kid needed their own room, or, and this was the more realistic one, a one-bedroom flat which would be big enough for me, but God help us if I ever met someone and wanted them to be able to move in with me because there was no room for that to happen there. Either of these options would have been Share to Buy - though without a rent bill on the side which was part of what made them affordable. Anyway, compare this to buying a house on the outskirts of Manchester where I was able to afford a three-bedroom property, the decision seemed to be one that could be made before your morning coffee. No real contest here - a house in Manchester is a good option. 

So I started looking, and there was this house that I kind of hated, but I also loved. Between Christmas and New Year I took two viewings of the property - roughly an hour and a half apart from one another - made an offer and it was accepted pretty quickly. So far, it all seemed plain sailing, but then they survey came back, and I was crushed, though it was better to be emotionally crushed by the news than physically crushed by a very problematic roof or by the financial burden of sorting out each of the pretty major things which made me realise it was a nice house, but it was not the house for me. 

By the point I came to this realisation, the market had gone MAD. Properties in the price bracket I was happy to look at with the kind of space I was looking for were getting thirteen to fifteen viewings on the first day they were listed, and it seemed impossible to find something that would be right, especially because I suck at painting. I can do the twiddly edge bits and things, but the middle, thoroughly suck at it. I was looking for somewhere that I was able to live in for a decent period of time before having to actually repaint. One of my parents was effectively saying that we can paint anything, whilst the other was pointing to their own house and saying it hadn't been painted in ten years, so there were a lot of places that had to be discounted because of the serious need to fill dings in the wall and then repaint the place. 

I had just decided to give up looking for a bit when the details of a house went online, but even by the time I called there were multiple viewings already booked in, and I called then as soon as I had seen the advert which had been online for less than an hour. 

That was February. I saw the house, I liked the house, I wanted the house and with a bit of back and forth with the estate agent, I got the house, or the offer accepted at least and was told it would be about June before I got the keys, what with conveyancing and all of that sort of thing. 

It wasn't too far wrong. I got my keys on the last working day of May, but even that wasn't simple. There had been a multitude of delays, chasing paperwork around, emails flying back and forward, then on the day everything was supposed to be done, I was waiting for the houses up the chain to complete because the owners of my place couldn't move their stuff into their property to let them release the keys to mine. To me, if I would have been doing last-minute cleaning to make sure I wasn't leaving a mess for someone else, but that's not everyone, clearly. 

A very short list of things was: pee in the downstairs toilet was left unflushed because the downstairs loo did not flush, there was dried spaghetti over the kitchen floor - like snapped up pieces, but quite a bit of it, there was dust on everything, and sticky handprints on a lot, too, the backdoor wasn't locking properly, the door handle on one of the bedrooms was hanging off and they had taken out a couple of light bulbs from fittings in different rooms. I get taking your light fittings because I would probably have changed them anyway, but the light bulbs? Oh, and when I looked in my oven, it looked like the shelves were missing, though I happily found these in the dishwasher, and couldn't help but wonder if they knew that the dishwasher isn't really the best way to clean greasy oven things. Granted, that was not a patch on finding that the bottom of the green bin stank worse than anything you could have imagined because there was rotten food practically ingrained into the bottom of the thing. 

But all that aside, my neighbours, or a lot of them, have popped over to say hello and introduce themselves, and generally to welcome me to the street which has been lovely. My parents have done a lot already to help me to move in (though that might also be the self-interest of the sooner I'm in there, the sooner I'm out of my childhood bedroom and my stuff will be leaving the rest of the house, as well) from washing down the inside of all the cupboards, wardrobes and essentially cleaning anything in the house or that was moved in, to changing my locks, taking a small piece off of the gate so it opens properly, jet washing the bins (I should really buy him an entire vat of beer for that one because that was a vomitous task) and also driving backward and forwards between their house, my house, the storage unit, B&Q and everywhere else I've needed to go pick things up from as I still don't drive. 

Anyway, last night was my first night in the house and it was blissful, aside from realising some of the unique oddities of the house, like most of the doors opening over the light switches, so having to step into a room and shut the door before you can switch the light on, or the bit at the top of the stairs where there is skirting board on the landing, skirting board on the stairs and a four-inch gap where the two should meet that someone just painted skirting board coloured, because why the hell not, so yeah, aside from that, I realised that my house is a comfortable, cosy, wonderful little home and I love the place already, even though I haven't really spent a whole lot of time there. It's a proud moment for me and it's also a really fun moment, because now is the time where I get to come up with all of these ideas of how I want it to be and what I want it to look like, and it's mine, so I can do what I want to. Hell, be crazy, paint the ceilings purple! Except maybe don't because purple ceilings would be properly weird, possibly a bit oppressive, and really difficult to paint back over when you realise it's not the best look for the place. But still, it's mine, it's the place I can be weird and I can make wonderful and just enjoy this experience of being an adult, even if it is way more complicated than I could ever have imagined before I found that first house listing just over six months ago. 

And with that, I'm going to take myself off to have another sip of prosecco in celebration of what is probably the biggest thing to happen since coming back to Manchester to sit out 2020 with some company.

Was It Everything You Dreamt It Would Be?

 Over the past couple of weeks, one thing that has been on my mind a lot and has therefore been something I have talked about a lot, both in person and online, has been the Reunion 5K at Kempton Park. The race had already changed a lot, or it felt like it had, from the original announcement of a Reunion 10K at a park in Hertfordshire, to be half of the distance and somewhere the opposite side of London, but hey, whatever, organising one of these things is effectively a logistical migraine, so if that's what it needs to be, go with it. 

When first announced, the 5K at Kempton was aiming for 3,000 runners in 3 races - what actually happened was around a thousand runners in two races, so again, a lot of changes. Originally I thought I was going for an afternoon run and it would be an earlier start than I was used to but nothing inhuman, and a potentially late night, but the change meant everyone was running in the morning and I had to be up at four, our by four-thirty and got to the train station at five in the morning. Had I been coming straight back to Manchester after the race, that would have been getting home at maybe six or seven in the evening, so not too horrendous overall, but I had a pit stop at the new house of a friend to have tea in the garden - weather be damned!! - so I didn't get back into the house until about ten in the evening and it had been an exceptionally long day. The obvious question on the minds of my family and friends: did you have a good time? Was it worth it? 

The simple answer was, oh my God, yes. 

When we first got there, everyone seemed, to me at least, to be nervous of the fact that we (runners) were back (together/ at an event/ in close proximity/ etc) and it was as though no one wanted to believe it. There was one lone guy doing his warm-up circuits around groups of other runners, but people were in ones and twos, maybe a few smatterings of people who were about a handful, but they seemed like they could be families. Even running the warm-up laps we went for seemed to be a bit distanced - when it wasn't the chaos of getting into the loop at the right point and then also being able to slingshot out of the loop to go to the bag drop or the loo. But then we were asked to move across the field and people started to need to move closer together, and there were quite a few who seemed to be shying away from being so close together. And then something changed. 

The atmosphere of parkrun and of races came back and people were chatting and laughing in bigger groups. The announcer that had previously seemed to be trying to rile everyone up and not getting anywhere got the crowd going and it was like being back at the beginning of London Landmarks in 2019. I was getting a bit emotional if I'm honest, and then we were all walking up to the start line, and that was it. It was happening. There was a lead bike out in front like when we had parkrun, there was a bunch of people running so fast you could be exhausted watching them and there was a back of the pack group that were supporting each other, sexy pacing the heck out of it and just enjoying the day. 

The whole thing was organised beautifully, with time to finish, plenty of staff to support, a swift moving bag drop, ACTUAL toilets as well as portaloos and runners who were just happy to be there. The changes in races meant that a few of the people I had been hoping to meet there couldn't make it, but even without them, it was a hell of a day, and the first wooden medal I have ever had, so that's pretty cool. 

Picking up your own medal from a stand instead of having someone put it on for you was one of the things that had needed to change because of COVID (as well as the 'fun' of lateral flow and PCR tests) but it worked, and we were all glad to still get a medal, and everything with the train station had been organised well to make it easy for the many of us who weren't driving. 

That isn't to say it was easy. I have never felt, or I don't remember feeling, quite this done in by a 5K. I honestly look at it and wonder how there was ever a point where I was running one of these every weekend. Both of my knees hurt yesterday, which wasn't a good sign, as did my calves - rock solid calves do not help me run well at all!! - and then today everything hurts. I even stretched at the station, so as much as I know I brought this on myself, I am a bit cheesed off that I'm in so much pain. However, there is a good thing with it. It has shown me that I really need to get my ass into gear for the training plan, because the start of the sixteen-week plan that included two half marathons isn't far off, and then it will be London Marathon. Also, if this weekend was anything to go by, and I hope it will be, this is it. Races are coming back and they are coming back in person, all together, taking to the streets of London (all my races are in London, but in theory, all races should be coming back!) and there is no hiding from it, or walking it at whatever pace because there is no cut off time. There is a cut-off time and I want to be way ahead of it. 

So honestly, it was the best day I have had since March 2020 and I know that I am not alone in that thought. And the last thing I have to say on the subject is: roll on the next one! I am not ready now, and in truth, I may not be ready on the day, but I am a hundred percent ready to give it a go, raising money for Macmillan, and trying to get a bit fitter and a bit healthier along the way.