plans afoot and a whole lot of photos

5 January 2015

It’s hard to believe that four whole days have passed without me taking a single photo. This is, in part, because I’ve been obsessing over old photos. My Mac has somehow accumulated fifty three thousand of them covering the last few years and, for Christmas, Commando got me a mobile drive to transfer them to. Slowly I’ve been going through discarding the rubbish and saving the ones I can’t bear to part with. It’s a little like walking down memory lane without the actual walking.

In fairness, of those fifty three thousand photos, many are from the download of the old blog archives and WordPress has kindly saved each one in several sizes. Even so, that is a lot of photos to go through. This is before I’ve even thought about going through the shiny cd’s filled with past holidays and Dream Factory trips. It makes my eyes ache just thinking about it.

In between all this frantic photo deleting and saving activity there have been two days of paid work at the bus mines. Only one of these included a walk and that was so wet and dark my phone stayed in my pocket the whole time. Saturday morning was so rainy Commando took pity on me and drove me in. At least the phones were quiet, possibly because the bus using public thought we were closed. To fill the time there was some very productive working through the email mountain.

What there hasn’t been is much in the way of walking other than trips up and down the hill to the village and back and one trip to the stadium to watch a rather boring FA Cup match. The sky has stayed a resolute shade of grey, not exactly conducive to pretty photos and the cold snap seems to have put paid to any interesting flowers. Instead I’m populating this post with some of the old photos I’ve found, just in case you were wondering about their slightly random nature.

There has, however, been some planning ahead. Most of this is down to Commando and his slight obsession with running marathons. There were plans afoot for a return to Manchester for another go at the Manchester Marathon and, in April, I was quite looking forward to the first ever Southampton Half Marathon. I’d even thought about signing up for the 10k myself and walking it. So, when he said, “I’ve got some bad news, I won’t be able to do the Manchester Marathon or the Southampton Half,” I felt disappointed and a little puzzled if I’m honest.
“Why not?” I asked. After all, he’d signed up for Southampton months ago and quite recently put in his entry for Manchester.
“Because I have a place in the London Marathon!” he said, quite rightly looking a little on the smug side.

It turns out he’d applied for a charity place with Southampton Sight, a charity that helps blind and partially sighted people in the city. He’d not expected it to come to anything so hadn’t even mentioned it. It’s a charity close to our hearts because his uncle Bill is registered blind. He’s an amazing man who doesn’t let his disability hold him back in the slightest and can often be found wandering around the city or sitting on a bus. Against all the odds, the place had been accepted.

Of course getting a place in the London Marathon is a big deal. It’s a once in a life time race and places are a little like rocking horse poo. The fact that it’s the week after Manchester and the same day as the Southampton half is a shame but there will be many more chances to run both. Of course I shall be going along too in my capacity as blister technician. Now all he has to do is raise the £500 minimum for the charity.

London isn’t the only marathon on the 2015 horizon either. This week Commando signed up for the Toronto Marathon in October. There is a whole Keates clan living in Toronto and some of them have been suggesting he run this marathon for a while now. It seems there will be no lack of support at the finish line and hopefully I’ll have someone to show me a few sights while he’s running. How exciting.

After the trials and tribulations of 2014 it’s nice to have some positive things to look forward to this year.