Merry Christmas

As I have a cast iron guarantee that murderers stay in on Christmas Day, and because I am spending Christmas Day on my own this year which means I won’t be drunk by lunchtime, and because I need to fit in two runs before Friday, I load up my iPod and brace myself for 9 miles in the gloomy, cold, wet and windy weather. Blimey, anyone would think it was Winter or something.

The cows have still gone but now there is a cattle grid and a proper cattle grid this time, not just a sheet of metal and I think what’s the point of that, the cows have gone now.

And I think how the fuck am I supposed to get over that? The holes are huge and they’re all wet and I can’t go around it as it seems to be gated off but I manage to get over it without falling over, unlike on my birthday when I apparently informed everyone I was going to run home, got about ten feet and then fell over, whereupon I was promptly poured into a cab.

And then I’m thinking I should make something for my dinner but I don’t know what to have as I haven’t been to the shops and I think maybe I should have thought of this before Christmas Day and I think I could go to the shops and get some potatoes and make roast potatoes, seeing as I’ve been kicking up a fuss about office parties offering veggies risotto instead of roast potatoes but I don’t know how to make roast potatoes but I don’t suppose it can be that difficult and the big building’s still there in the marshes and I can hear noises coming from inside it and I think maybe it’s a roast potato factory and they’ll give me some roast potatoes but then dozens of very smartly dressed people come into the marshes and head towards the building and I think oh, it must be some religious thing and not a roast potato thing. Damn.

And I get around Hackney Marshes without getting murdered so the cast iron guarantee about murderers must be true and I’m back at Walthamstow marshes and there may not be cows anymore but the horses are still there

and I decide to continue up past the river and I see some ducks. Or Canadian geese. Or some sort of bird anyway, but not the huge mechanical ones that were in my dream last night crashing everywhere.

And then I’m back on the street and suddenly the road turns into a lake and I wonder how deep it is so I put my foot in it and fuck, it’s deep so I side step onto the railings and make it past the road-lake and then after 9 miles, I’m home, soaked.

Today’s route

Stats:
Distance: 9.3 miles
Time: 1:51:08
Pace: 11:57
Calories: 875
Cows: 0
Roast potatoes: 0
Religious people: lots
Road-lakes: 1
Music:
Hole
Crazy Frog
Peeping Tom
Maximo Park
My Bloody Valentine
Devo
Baby Teeth
Mr & Mrs Smith
Andre 3000
Elastica
Subhumans
The Polyphonic Spree
The Specials
Madness
Mark Ronson
The Gossip
The Young Knives
The Damned
Catatonia
The B52s
Manic Street Preachers
Faith No More