Two and a half weeks before D-day

It's a shame in a way that I am feeling the need to 'share', when I really haven't yet done anything of interest. I'm sitting at my desk, overlooking the gentle bosomy hills of North Shropshire. My feet are a little chilly thanks to the draft from the french windows, but otherwise I have no physical discomfort to complain of. I will be sleeping in a centrally-heated bedroom tonight after an evening meal that will without doubt involve a minimum of one meat and two veg, and with the exception of the odd frog that takes me by suprise, I do not feel in the least threatened by my direct environment. That said, I do think we underestimate the impact of hair-straightners on the UK's domestic security risk, but apart from that, physically, there's not much to worry about from my point of view (apart from over-use of metaphors involving creatures such as blue-arsed flies and kangaroos-on-speed having actual physical repercussions, but then we're into Hogwarts territory, and I think I'd best leave that to Ms. Rowling).

Quite why I'm writing this with two weeks 'til we begin our journey I'm not sure, but it does bring me to the point that only when in a quagmire of trial and tribulation or on an endless test of physical endurance is one allowed to get away with a truly self-indulgent online diary.

"I'm running the London Marathon in April!"
"Ooh, that's amazing! You could write a training blog."

Is it not wierd, that as soon as someone does something hard, they feel the need to put pen to paper? Surely they should be focussing as much energy as possible on getting that hard thing done. Or not...

"I'm running the London Marathon in April! And I'm writing a training blog - you should read it" (CLOSE MOUTH) ... because if I'm going to be the only person who understands how fucking hard it is, what the hell would be the point in doing it?

I labour under no illusion that I am doing this for your pleasure.

I was forced to sleep in my car near the Elephant and Castle the other week. This perhaps sits better in the 'ard, rather than hard, category of things to do, but still is probably the closest I've ever come to sleeping in a tent in rural sub-Saharan Africa: I was thrice woken by the cries of wild animals (next time, I'm taking the North Shropshire Fox Hounds with me), but I respected the natural habitat (careful off-street parking) and any creature that might have caused me trouble would have been more afraid of me than I of them (specifically the wide-eyed clubbers spilling out of the Ministry at 6am).

Don't worry, soon I will be doing something reeee-ally hard and will tell you all about it... just bear with me.

My very own Voyage

Barty just told me we have eight working days to play with before we go. EIGHT WORKING DAYS. It can't possibly all get done. But it must.

A friend of ours is in the last few weeks of her pregnancy. We decided there is a comparison to be drawn here - one embarks upon something of scale with the cushioning of distance. As that distance diminishes and the thing becomes a reality, it becomes less and less probable but increasingly inevitable... hence this sort of permanent fidgety twitch that I have developed. When I'm not emailing people and sorting things out, I should be, and when I am, I'm not doing it fast enough. Except for the other morning when I had sent eleven emails by eight o'clock. Barty soon stole my thunder however when he told me that he'd sent thirty eight by nine.

The cycle training has taken a back seat. By necessity, it became not so much training as transport. I even took my little, very crap child's mountain bike to London town last weekend - it made me savings on both beer and public transport, and led to the discovery that people who smoke on trains do so in the bicycle carriage.

What I have done however is test driven my bicycle proper! She's a Voyage made by Ridgeback and she's beautiful. I wouldn't say she's exactly built for the ladies - I mistakenly wore a short skirt to test her and nearly caused a minor accident on the Banbury Road in Oxford - but nevertheless, she goes like hot snot and left me exhilarated.