So goes the nursery rhyme, and actually our buckets were fine, it’s just that the Italian winter blew off our shed roof, our wood store roof and filled our jacuzzi full of rain water, having torn the covering tarpaulin to shreds.
Monday’s job was to try and bring some sense of order to the outdoors, which is looking a little sorry for itself after seven months of neglect, which come to think of it is like my bod after three months of lockdown.
My no-running exercise routine, included going grocery shopping (ugh), emptying said jacuzzi of about 700 litres of water and doing it by bucket to water our very sorry and sad looking oleanders. Killing a vast number of wasps that had made nice nests under the leaky tarp – my method is to spray, pray and run. I should have been watering the newly planted hydrangeas too, but we lost all of them, due to no watering in Spring and all we have are seven sad straw stumps.
Then I helped Mr JCR recover the shed roof, with the rescued tarpaulin remnants, and now we look like long-term Italian residents. No Italian country garden is complete without a Heath Robinson type covering involving a tarp, dodgy rope and any convenient weights you can find. We now have a fetching bright green shed roof, with an elastic garter, and three different types of wooden poles weighting the roof down. All we need is rope to hold up our gardening trousers and we’ll become a pair of Compoes from Last of The Summer Wine.
Today’s job is to empty all the previously empty buckets and containers in the shed, which are now chock full of stagnant water. Livin’ the dream! Oh and go for a run, preferably one that lasts longer than Sunday’s and is marginally quicker. That means getting up early, which means going to bed early – neither of which are in my usual routine.
And yes, epic fail, the alarm was set, JCR not. Three hours later I set off on the same route as last time, only today it’s hotter and there’s less shade available. Stupid tart syndrome entirely of my own making and 29 degrees is about 84 F, so really scorchio.
Needless to say not a soul about, the dog walkers got out earlier on, I wonder if I can get them to bed shame me for a run? Lovers’ Lane was predictably hot and dusty and Villa Bali didn’t give me any shade whatsoever and so I made my weary back to Mill Lane, where even the water pumping station was quiet. All I could hear was the chirruping of cicadas. Now when they get going I find it makes me feel hotter, there must be something auto-suggestive about that particular noise. I could feel my face getting redder and redder and the panting was increasing too. In truth this bit of the run is always hard as it’s the first ten minutes and it takes a while to get in my stroll. I pootled down the Slope of Hope, got ‘goosed’ by the barking balcony house. They seem to have obtained another deeper voiced dog, and both of them conspired to make me jump. Both dogs have the knack of staying quiet until I’m just about past them and then they bark into action.
Having recovered some kind of composure I made my way towards Laundry Lane and it was fairly brutal, I did find a small 50 yard section under mottled shade and ran that backwards and forwards a few times, to get my run to the 4km distance marker. At that point there was no shade to be had at all and Laundry Lane starts rising quite considerably, my bucket of grit and determination was most definitely full of holes. My C25K is now officially going backwards, I’ve done 1 km in a run less than about a month ago, but a temperature difference of running in the sixties to running in the eighties does cut me a bit of slack.
Upside I ran 4km today
Downside – not getting up and the temperature
Overall Rating – Could do better JCR
Stats
Distance 4km – so it was longer
Time – Awful – no improvement on pace, but see above
Temperature – Brutal
People – None
Leaps in the Air – Two
Physio
Just going to do it…
Oh and btw on Sunday’s run I actually tried my skipping rope afterwards. OMG it’s too embarrassing to contemplate just how little coordination I possess.
Music
Best track – Telegram Sam – I loved Marc Bolan, I think he was my first grown up crush, although my first child crush was on Troy Tempest. I actually wanted to be his mute girlfriend Marina, which considering I loathe swimming and the sea, is utterly bizarre 🙂
I’m going to kick you out of bed on Thursday morning. Tough Love.
LikeLike