Lame blogging

Just logged on for the first time in ages and feeling a bit guilty for only posting once in 3 months.  How lame.

Mid-year resolution:  Will blog more.  I'll make sure I post something tomorrow.

Daniel's first trip to the Lake District

We took advantage of the glorious sunshine to take Daniel on his first trip to the Lake District. Our destination was Graythwaite, with the aim of Steve and I both getting to do an orienteering course. Once we arrived, we quickly realised though that with a 2.7km walk to the start, it was going to be pretty impossible for both of us to compete.

So Steve opted to look after the baby, and I took the chance to do my first orienteering for many months. The light green course was great, though pretty tough, and I blame all my mistakes on being preoccupied most of the way round with wondering whether Daniel would be letting everyone in the assembly field know that he was hungry in the only way he knows how!

As it was, he was waiting quite contentedly with Daddy to meet me at the finish (although apparently it had taken a 45 minute walk in the pram to get him into that calm and happy state!) Anyway, we all survived, learnt a few lessons (e.g. need to buy some sun cream and a sun hat for the little man) and greatly enjoyed the day out.

A lady of leisure

Well, I've now had one whole week of my maternity leave. And I'd highly recommend it. The two top tips that I've been given by various people were:

1. Get as much rest / sleep as you can, while it's still an option; and

2. Make the most of being able to do simple things like meeting friends for lunch, or popping out for a swim... before you have to start thinking about taking prams / changing bags/ car seats etc. etc. with you.

So I've taken the advice to heart, and afternoon naps and cups of tea with friends have made up a good proportion of my first week off work!

Whilst I'm here, I thought I'd share a photo of the lovely bunch of flowers that I was given on my last day at work. The photo above was taken 9 days after leaving and the flowers are still looking beautiful!

Creatures of the Night

Going through a little phase of night-o at present with my 3rd event in a month coming up this weekend.

To non-orienteers, I normally get a "you're not quite right in the head" look when night orienteering is mentioned. Is it not dangerous to run round a dark wood or moorland? Won't somebody mug you or kill you?

Errrmmm... Nope. Anyone daft enough to hang around Watergrove (or Hurstwood next week) moor on a dark, windy Saturday night waiting to mug someone with a headtorch and no money would be really stupid as well as mad. Better to hang around a dark street in the middle of Manchester as there is a much better chance of finding a victim - I suspect that's what the nutters actually do.

Night-o is refreshing and gives a real sense of freedom. It's your problem to get round the course and not to worry about the dark night. It certainly gives me more satisfaction to complete a night event than a day event.

It also sorts the wheat from the chaff in navigation terms. In adventure races with night stages, there is always a wide margin between the top and bottom teams. The top people normally have someone who is pretty handy at night-o. You can't get by with a 'run and hope' strategy to finding control sites - discipline with bearings, use of line features and map reading is needed.

I like it, so as long as I don't get disqualified for running past controls... (which is a habit of late)

And the creatures of the night are happy to let you get on with it.

Street-O is a go-go

Had a practical 4 hours out on the bike yesterday getting 49 out of the 50 controls identified for the street-o next month.

Phew! Pressure is easing on that front. Having enthusiastically produced the map last May when I should have been working on my MSc, I've let it gather dust for about 5 months doing remarkably little.

What is noticeable when doing these things is the difference between modern housing estates and older areas. Modern estates, with their underground cables and hidden features, are incredibly dull with very little to use. The only features are numbered lamp posts, but I don't like using these as in some instances it is possible to count them as they are almost always sequentially numbered.

Older estates have things like telegraph poles that are far better. They are numbered so randomly - which makes a dream feature for a course setter! It took a fraction of the time to find control sites in these areas.

Helmshore should be a tough street-o. I reckon it would take almost 2 hours to clear the 50 controls on a bike - so the runners stand no chance! Even Quentin...

Goodbye 'Shagged Piles' Carpet

Alas, this is a sad day in Upper Ramsbottom as we wave goodbye to all the carpets in our house to be replaced by a new set of browney-cream things.

Of particular sadness is the loss of the 30-odd year old yellow 'shagged piles' carpet upstairs.

This carpet was magical in that it would fill the bag of the vacuum cleaner single-handed every time you hoovered it. It also looked really vulgar and appalled every visitor who saw it - though most people politely tried not to comment on it.

We'll miss it really...

Actually I'm lying. Good riddance...

Phone boxes are now rubbish

In a moment of madness, the car decided to lock me out at the Tod Harriers mini mountain marathon yesterday .

Not a problem I thought. There's a phone box 50m away and I can call Cath and get her to come out with the spare keys. Cost around 20p?

Oh no. Walk in and it has the coin insert bit sealed. What were the options on the instructions:

a. Cash - Errrmmm, that's out because it is sealed.
b. Debit card - Swipe your card in the swipe thing. Errrmmm, there isn't one. So that's out.
c. Reverse charge - Dial 0845-'scam-a-landline' and reverse the charges. £3.50 connection and an unstated minute rate that can be found out upon request. (later found out to be 50p/min)

WTF????

So BT are actively discouraging the use of phone boxes and scamming the fools who do use them with extortionate fees (so people use them even less). What a shabby service! I wonder what visitors to this country must think of our cutting edge facilities?

Went into the pub instead and phoned home for the princely sum of £2.30, including a free pint.

Much better value!