I forgot that my ‘major’ problem last week was cat fleas. At least, I think that’s what it was: it might have been something I picked up out running. Every-so-often I seem to get this problem where my ankles get bitten (whatever it is seems to get just inside the top of my socks, where I get the impression that it goes mad because it can’t get out and bites me in frustration).
Last week it seemed to be worse overnight and I got to the stage where I was wondering about not sleeping in my own bed, but in the spare bed. However having sprayed various rooms in the house, washed tons and tons of bed linen (and my younger son’s duvet – just in case), vacuumed like a loony, stuck extra flea-stuff on the cat and slept with a bowl of washing up liquid under my bed, the problem doesn’t seem quite so bad. Fingers crossed.
I’m really enjoying my daily Yoga with Adriene. Having started on her 2015 30 days of yoga but added in a couple of other classes, I’ve just now done day 23 on 22nd April. Next I’m going to do some yoga for the lower back as I have a feeling that might also help my shoulder – I’ve had some sort of shoulder problem (stiffness/pain) which seems to have been exacerbated by doing Duolingo on my phone on the train on the way to work: definitely doing less of that plus some shoulder mobility and stretching exercises helped (and I should probably do more), but yoga and not travelling so much definitely seems to be the real key.
I keep wondering what the world is going to look like; what things we’ll go back to and what we won’t go back to after this virus is ‘over’: if it ever really is. I was doing a CPD webinar yesterday about Permitted Development rights – I don’t know about the planning system in other countries, but over here there are certain changes you can make without planning permission. One of them is changing offices to residential, which has apparently been somewhat contentious as it’s resulted in some very poor quality (and small) residential units. I asked the question at the end of the webinar about why we didn’t, and whether we should, have similar legislation helping the change from retail to residential: our town and city centres years ago suffered from office uses moving out to cheaper and more car-friendly locations on outskirts (a mistake, to my mind, for all sorts of reasons, though you can see why economically it suited people). But nowadays retail is also under pressure and I really think the answer is to bring more residential uses into town and city centres (parking will need some creative thinking, including some way of trying to get us all out of our cars, especially in towns and cities which don’t have good public transport. My aunt, in London (zone 2, so fairly central but not right in the middle), has a car but rarely uses it – but then she also has a bus pass and there is great public transport in London (and a congestion charge)). I’m attending a webinar on the future of the High Street this evening, and am also contributing some questions and thoughts on the subject: I’ll get back to you on this later. Meanwhile I’m off out for a bike ride in the sun (I’m not feeling very motivated to run at the moment).
Later…
It was quite breezy out on the bike but yet another glorious sunny day (in fact I think we probably could really do with some rain, or at least the gardeners and farmers could). I was on my triathlon bike, which I haven’t cycled for ages. I’d been wondering how different it would feel from my other road bike – the answer was, surprisingly so! The gearing means it’s faster on the flat, but harder work uphill – but on the other hand the wheels/tyres are also narrower, which helps. What surprised me – as I’m not terribly technical about bikes – was how different it felt size/shape wise – the frame geometry is more different than I’d expected. And also the saddle is a lot more comfortable – mental note to self to get a different saddle for my other bike, which is overall a more comfortable ride for longer distances (you don’t feel the bumps quite so much).
I loved being out on my bike and decided that I’d cycle this week rather than running – although not tomorrow as I’m ‘at’ an all day online conference and then it’s theatre night, so I shall just go for a quick run at some point. It’s a real luxury having the time to be able to cycle at the moment, so I may as well make the most of it.
When I got home I then finished moving the paving slabs in the garden and planted some pea seeds. I also noticed that loads of lovely tulips are coming into flower: and the african violets are spreading well around the garden!
English
I definitely have more time for one of my favourite pastimes, reading, at the moment: I ‘treat’ myself each morning to some time reading while I drink that so-important first coffee of the day. Fortunately I had a pile of books by my bed and a friend has now also dropped a boxful of books off, so I’ve had plenty of reading material.
A book which was recommended to me was The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg, and I’ve just started it. I’ve always been fascinated by language but also by history – I loved the period of history, the so-called dark ages and early medieval, that I did at school. I’d always felt that we (the English) fought so much with the French because we were closely related to them – like brother and sister. In fact we’re probably more closely related to them by going back to Celtic times than through the Normans – but what Melvyn Bragg’s book points out is how closely related the two languages are, and how English very nearly ‘lost’ out to French. I knew that French had carried on being the language of the aristocracy for hundreds of years (rather, I would assume, as it was in Russia?), and I’d always thought that despite being a so-called Germanic language, English actually has a lot in common with Romance languages. I hadn’t fully appreciated or considered just how much of the vocabulary of current day English comes from French, nor that French was, in medieval times, the language of trade (which is how words from Arabic have also come into our language). It’s amazing really when you think that English is now the language of commerce for the entire world.
The other thing, harking back to when I read The Origins of the British, is that English was actually brought into the country by a minority elite, and a minority who only initially ruled the south of the country – who almost lost out to the Vikings. That this language was then nearly overcome by another ruling minority – the Normans – and that they then became almost more English than the English, makes for a fascinating read.
Perhaps rather appropriate that I’m writing this on St. George’s Day – though in fact he was born in Turkey and became a soldier in the Roman army. Perhaps his heritage in some way reflects the rich mongrel mix that is English.
Running vs. cycling
I mentioned that I’d be going for a short run today as there wasn’t time to cycle. In fact my short run turned into a nature walk as after a couple of km I started feeling weird – I get this low blood sugar thing where I start to feel light headed/dizzy, a bit sweaty and a bit shaky – at its worst I get so dizzy that everything goes black; if the kids are around I can also get quite short-tempered and snarly (“stop winding me up and get me food NOW!”).
As I ran/walked I was thinking about the different aspects of running and cycling. What I really love are my long runs with my friend Penny – they’re not in order to get fit, although we do challenge ourselves, but are as much about getting out and exploring places. Having run the 16 biggest lakes of the Lake District for her 50th, I’ve suggested we run 60 of Cumbria’s tarns and small waters for my 60th: we could do some lovely long exploratory runs which would take in 3 or 4 tarns at a time.
Unless you’re a completely dedicated ultra-marathoner, you can’t run really long distances without the odd break for photos, flapjack, etc.: and that’s part of the pleasure of these runs. Cycling, on the other hand, is more relentless somehow: it’s not quite as easy to stop to take photos, and I’m often tempted to stop but instead just keep bowling along – especially if I’ve got up a good pace.
They’re both great in their own way: if I want to start doing triathlon again I’m going to have to get quicker and more consistent with my running; but for now just getting out and about every day is far, far more than I’ve been doing for years! Meanwhile I notice that the wild garlic is beginning to come out: this year I really must collect a load and make soup!
Monday 27th April
So that’s the end of another slightly strange week. Compared with the end of last week (or slightly before), my mood is far better: and from talking to other people I think a lot of people have had a bit of a low this past 10 days or so. It’s maybe just getting used to this different pace of life. I went out for another, longer bike ride – up to Bewcastle. It’s incredibly isolated up there and as I cycled back an amazing panoramic view opened up into the far distance – across to Northumberland, the northern Pennines, the Lake District. I wish my words could describe it better and that a camera could portray it better. You’re not particularly high up at Bewcastle, but you feel far away both in space and time, and as if you’re at the edge of something. The sky is gigantically huge, the sheep spill out on to the road as if cars didn’t exist and it feels as if it wouldn’t be surprising if Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons or Vikings suddenly appeared: or a bunch of marauding Border Reivers (English or Scottish) driving cattle.
At the end of this week I am close to having finished my 30 days of yoga; I have had some video singing lessons; I have spoken to friends, some of whom I haven’t spoken to for ages; I’ve done a bit of Italian though not as much as I intended; and I have tried to do home-schooling (surprisingly hard when you’re also trying to be a mother and when the children are actually far more interested in the xbox). I’ve also mused over many things, and whilst I’ve tried to get some of those thoughts down here, as with so many thoughts which are emotional in basis, some of them are less relevant today than they were on the day I had them, and it’s probably as well that transient grumpiness or paranoia doesn’t get written down in a blog.
What am I aiming to achieve in this coming week? Do I really ‘need’ to achieve anything, or is life currently about enjoying what I can, and doing so contentedly, rather than pushing to achieve all the time?
Apple and caramel bouchon (cinnamon on top).
runningin3time 
I remember coming back from a family vacation as a child and finding our home totally infested with fleas requiring us leaving and the house being thoroughly “flea bombed.'(Probably totally illegal stuff these days, but it was 1958.) I was very involved with city planning for many years in Portland, Oregon, from 1980 until 2000 when we left. Right now I am reading a book about Ed Logue who was instrumental in the urban renewal of Boston which left the kind of monolithic superblocks that later planners try to restore to walkable scale. It all goes around and around in planning I think.
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I agree – though on the whole the appalling car-orientated designs of the 1960s have tended not to be replicated (though of course we now build our office blocks higher and higher). I actually think the retail landscape will change after this – it was changing already but I think this may have sped it up.
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I am sure that the big shopping centers will disappear. I hope for a reemergence of some of the unique shops of the past.
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