7174/19694
Sure, I’ve had a couple of nights out and ran my fastest Park Run of the year yesterday morning, but was surprised at how blasted I was today, especially as we’d had a bit of a lie-in as the kids were at their grandparents. But as I realised yesterday, I am now in the 55-59 grouping at Park Run (and only ten 55 plussers beat me yesterday - though a few of them were over 60) so I am old, even if I am the youngest in this new grouping. Two nights out in a row, even if we sloped out fairly early from both is still a lot to take.
Even though I’ve been saying I’m 55 all year (I always do this to soften the blow of the actual birthday) it is only just striking me how fucking old that is. The only thing that made it slightly better was that I spent most of last night talking to Norman Pace (from off of The Stomp) and he’s 69, which made me feel young (or would have done if he hadn’t looked like he was 57).
My other take from last night’s night out was that it’s important to observe life. It was great to see and remember and take joy in all those little snippets of other people’s lives, but it only happened because I didn’t bring my headphones with me and so I wasn’t listening to Martin Jarvis reading Great Expectations. One of the amazing things about Dickens is the precision of his observation and the fact that he describes loads of activities that must have been commonplace to him, but which no longer happen, giving the modern reader (and the futuristic reader) a real insight into 19th Century life. The streets I walked through last night would once have been lined with straw to dampen the noise of horses and carts. Most Victorian writers might not have bothered noting such a detail that all their readers would know about anyway. But Dickens knew it added colour, even if he might not have known that within decades those streets would be thronging with motorised vehicles that no one bothered dampening the sounds of.
Anyway, hope the people of the future will enjoy finding out that cardboard was important to homeless people (even if I failed to explain why and am not going to do so now, just to see if they can puzzle it out themselves - it’s pretty grim future readers).
I went to the in-laws for lunch and played with the kids, but kept almost drifting off to sleep, though was awake enough to be able to hear the conversation nearest to me, so was almost taking part. Also, of course, when there’s lots of people around my brain feels safe to shut down, but when we’re at home I have to be ever alert to one of the kids throwing themselves out of a window (and when I say one of the kids I mean Ernie).
And the amazing thing is that the kind of tiredness I feel these days is a tenth of what I felt when the kids were little. Then it was permanent, now I seem to consolidate all my tiredness into one day and then when I’ve recharged a little bit I’m good for a week or two.
The morning without kids had flown by so fast, but the afternoon did too. So in my life, today almost becomes a non-day, like when you fly round the world and manage to basically miss a whole date on the calendar.
