Silencing The Doubters

L rings what’s-his-name, oh you know, he who used to live with us but is now at Warwick University. He’s doing good, he says. He's even managed to cook something, so the free pizza must have come to an end and cooking is probably a necessity if he’s going to have any money left. He’s even done some washing and the rumour is that he may have to go to a lesson next week. Unfortunately we still don’t know what he wore to the pyjama party; he doesn’t have any pyjamas.

L is jealous. She wants to be a student. Not a problem. I tell her we’re both going. Once we’ve got Daughter there, it’s our turn.

L goes to sign on for tomorrow’s Survival Of The Fittest. The important question is, of course, what colour is it? The t-shirt that is. It’s white, well pre-Trent anyway, obviously grey afterwards, even after several washes. If I was her I’d wear something else tomorrow.

I leave work and run towards home. My work colleague and occasional protégé asks if I’ll be running all the way home this week. I keep saying this is something I intend to do. No, I have that pencilled in for next Friday, which will be my last long training run before the Birmingham Half Marathon. ‘You’re not going to do it’, he says, ‘are you?’ Of course I am. Next week. Hmmm. Doubter.

It’s busy out there on the streets, lots of runners about. The men sweating away profusely. The women glowing away... so they say. ‘Men perspire, women glow’ you know. Some of them are glowing buckets. Attractive actually, I do like a bit of sweat, I mean glow.

The run goes very well. I don’t walk any of it and don’t stop apart from at the occasional road junction. It probably goes too well. I get carried away and run fourteen miles, carrying on past my intended stopping point by about three miles. Well at least that should silence the doubters.

Three quarters of the way across the university campus, close to home, I decide to walk the rest as a warm down. Then L texts to say she’s got the house to herself and she's just about to slip into a hot bath... I break back into a run.

Later we naughtily slip out to the Plough but no one notices, as no one is home.

(Friday 8th October)