Well, who’d have thought it gang? When you sit on your backside most of the day, work from home, make cakes, eat them, and have a beer of an evening... you start to put on weight!
I miss rock climbing. The drive to the rocks, stopping at the nice village shop to buy a few goodies, meeting my climbing partner and friends, spending the day climbing routes in beautiful surroundings... it is something I have done pretty much every weekend of my life (bar ex-long distance boyfriends and having a baby) for the past twenty five years. My holidays are spent in campsites near sea cliffs. If the weather is inclement, we go climbing indoors. It isn’t just a hobby. The rocks are my recalibration device, my lungs, my perspective, one of the nuclei around which my life spins and dances.
Another is my son. He has asked me in the past which I love more: him or rock climbing. Don’t worry, he is a secure child, just a big fan of this or that questions: mummy, would you rather be eaten by a big brown bear or a great white shark? kind of thing. He never really got into climbing, despite being a natural; he is slightly fearful of heights and there’s a bit of that ‘it’s something mum does’ which makes it tres uncool. But he does love hanging out in the hammock or tent he brings along, reading books, eating his picnic, shimmying up trees, scrambling about. Those long days of doing bugger all at the crags have stood him in good stead for lockdown. He’s revelling in it.
Me, I’m adapting. It isn’t hard, when you still have your health and a job and you live where we do. We have several acres of garden and fields - it’s like a National Trust place - closed to the public. There are a few neighbours; we now have a WhatsApp group, shop as a collective and have space to have a distanced chat. It’s really lovely and I am more grateful than ever to live where we do. But none of us live in isolation; we are connected to friends, family, society. It’s so bitter to think of all the people struggling...
I have been under the weather. Whether it’s the virus or not, who knows? My symptoms have been nothing like as bad as my sister-in-law in America, who has been very unwell for 11 days with cough, fever, fatigue, difficulty breathing. She has been tested and the result came back negative, but was told that the tests were only 70-80% accurate and with her symptoms, she should assume she has it. She has an oxygen meter by her bed and has been told if it sinks to a certain level she should go to hospital. We are all powerless to help beyond the daily contact to listen, bolster, distract, comfort and cheer.
Sorry, I forgot I’m on the running forum! Boundaries are blurring. I got very drunk the other night when my son went to his dads for the weekend and ended up making videos of myself singing maudlin songs on the guitar and then posting them on Facebook. Ah well. Running.
So I felt a bit better yesterday. My lungs still feel a bit blocked, somehow, but it felt like being upright and moving was the best thing to do, now the tiredness was fading. So I put on my shoes, my son got on his bike, and off we trotted. It was nice. Quite a few walkers, cyclists, runners about; in pre-Corona times I would barely see anyone else out. I think we saw perhaps three cars... my son said he appreciated cycling much more without cars on the road. He also observed more birdsong and butterflies and asked if people being in their houses was helping nature? The last kilometre was a struggle as we scrapped the ‘silence is golden’ approach, but more than worth it for such pearls.
We went for a walk in the evening, as the sun set, with not a soul about. I traversed a tree and he swung on a swing, befriended a slug, sat on a log. Rich times.
Squeezed a half term 5k 
A Foggy 5K 
A rainy 5k
A hilly 5k today
