Farewell to the Queen :-(

The last few nights have been autumn-cold, but shorts and a t-shirt was still sufficient for my run this morning… just under 2 miles in just over 20 minutes.

The last few weeks we have been decorating the house, so my body has had an ongoing workout of infrequently used muscle groups… balancing on top of ladders, painting, moving furniture, carrying things up & down the stairs etc.

This appeared to make little difference to my run this morning, but it did make a difference to gardening at my Mum’s yesterday… I found that trimming her 80ft hedge and then cutting the grass with a push-mower was a lot easier than the last time I did it, with fewer after-effects.

The more you do, the more you can do.

Which segues neatly into the subject of Queen Elizabeth, whose funeral is today. Though I didn’t have the honour of meeting her, she has been an ever-present force in my life.

Lots of uber-wealthy people around the world have lifestyles similar to hers, but my guess is that very few of these people would consider themselves to be a public servant, or would work tirelessly (by all accounts) for the good of common people… in her case the people who make up this country and commonwealth.

Few people will have a high pressure career lasting more than 40 years, let alone one lasting 70 years… not to mention working diligently right up to the very end. She really was amazing.

I pledged allegiance to Queen Elizabeth as a Cub Scout fifty-odd years ago and, based on her work ethic across that time, I’m now very happy to transfer that pledge to her son and successor, Charles.

The Queen is dead, long live the King!

Mark, my words

I was feeling my age this morning when I dragged myself out to the teahouse for the first of two quadspressos, but Mark’s suggestion (‘go on, you know you want to, go for a run‘) was sufficiently assertive that my body obeyed before my mind had a chance to spin up any excuses.

Next thing I knew I was running down the road… and this time with a key to get back in 🙂

‘Just over two miles in just over 20 minutes’ was probably not what Mark had in mind (as he stood on the top of a mountain somewhere) but at least I was out there 🙂

In other news, Andy P completed the 100 km UTMB CCC in 22 hours, showing more grit than some people might muster across a lifetime. Thinking about the circuit brings back very happy memories of my walking trip with Daren 🙂