Terrapins and Tofu Love Frogs

Because Adele asked Londonjogger on her blog if she’d seen the terrapins in Clissold Park, I think I WANT TO SEE THE TERRAPINS and decide to venture over there and look for myself and I consult the A-Z and I think I know the way and when I get to the marshes, all the geese come to say hello to me

and they’re saying hello in a hissing kind of way and I’m glad they’re behind railings and I’m trying to remember the last time I went to Clissold Park and it must have been at an anti-Criminal Justice Act festival in the early 90s and I wonder how we got there as we certainly wouldn’t have walked and we certainly wouldn’t have had any money for taxis and I decide we probably got a bus and I’m trying to remember who played and I think there was a band with Frog in their name or something but I can’t remember and I go through the marina onto Spring Hill and it’s not lying about being a hill

and there’s a sign that says if you drop litter you’ll get fined £50,000

and I think bloody hell, £50,000 just for dropping a carrier bag? that’s steeper than the hill I’m about to run up and how would they get their £50,000? If I got fined £50,000 I’d have to sell my house to pay for it and I decide that it might be a good idea to just not drop any carrier bags in the first place and then I’ll still have somewhere to live and then I’m in Stamford Hill and I get to Abney Park Cemetery

and I think ah, I saw that in the A-Z, maybe I can cut through here to Clissold Park but I don’t know the way and I don’t even know if you’re allowed to run in cemeteries but then a man jogs past me so I decide it must be ok after all and so I go into the cemetery and it’s like a forest.

And in the middle of all this greenery is a single red rose.

And a grave with a lion on top

and I decide I want a lion on my grave but then I think no I don’t actually, I just want to be thrown in the sea and I’ll stick to Plan A and being thrown in the sea is probably a lot cheaper than having a big fuck off lion on your grave and I’m still running in the cemetery forest and I’m a bit lost and don’t know where I am and wonder why I keep getting lost in forests and it didn’t look very big on the A-Z so I can’t be far away from civilisation and I don’t want to be lost in the cemetery all day as I WANT TO SEE THE TERRAPINS and I eventually get to a bigger path and I see a gate and it’s the gate I came in so I’ve just gone round in a circle so I go down Stoke Newington Church Street and go past a shop that in the olden days repaired fountain pens

and I wonder how many people took their fountain pens in to be repaired and I wonder when Bics were invented and people didn’t have to take them in to be repaired, they just chucked them away but hopefully not in Spring Hill because then they’d get fined £50,000 and then I eventually get to Clissold Park and Emily told me to stop practising looking at trees because there are no trees in Cornwall but to practise looking at fields instead and I wonder if this is a field

and I decide it isn’t really but it’s the nearest I’m going to get to a field today as later I’m going to the Barbican and therefore will be surrounded by nothing but concrete and then I get to a lake

and I go up to the railings and I peer down into the water to look for terrapins but I can’t see any and then I’m hugely disappointed and I carry on going and I see a swan in the middle of the lake so I go over for a closer look and THE SWAN IS SITTING ON A LOG WITH TERRAPINS. Hooray for terrapins.

And I thought terrapins were little and lived in goldfish bowls and I would have thought these were turtles but what do I know? I only found out the difference between a crow and a blackbird last year and then I carry on going round Clissold Park and get back to where I came in and I head back home and go down Spring Hill

remembering to take care not to accidentally drop a carrier bag in case I have to sell my house to pay for the fine, therefore rendering me homeless like being jobless wasn’t enough for the time being and on the bridge is a sign for a festival

and it says the Tofu Love Frogs are playing and I think fuck me, that’s the name of the band I was trying to remember and I can’t remember if they were any good but I’ve got a race that day and so can’t go to the festival anyway.

Today’s route

Splits

Stats
Distance: 8.22 miles
Time: 1:46:39
Pace: 12:59 m/m
Calories: 724
Geese: lots
Hills: 1
Cemeteries: 1
Lions: 1
Fountain pen repair shops: 1
Terrapins: 3
Music
Black Kids
PJ Harvey
5 o’Clock Heroes
Kate Nash
THE 100 MILE CHALLENGE
Miles completed so far
56.07 out of 100 / 10 days left