Thirty-Eight is the New Twenty

It was our school reunion last night. Everyone was thirty-eight or thereabouts; and looking fabulous.

Despite my encyclopaedic memory, twenty years was quite far back to go. I remembered everyone, but for some it felt as if I had only a single memory of them – like a freeze-frame photo.

With others, the memories were more detailed. I could remember the classes, the seating plan, the social dynamics…

I got distracted when a large plate of nachos arrived, but I still managed to end up completely hoarse from twenty years’ worth of conversations crammed into three or four hours.

So, if we do it again in twenty years, we’ll all be knocking sixty. And given how young people who retire look these days, I am pretty optimistic we won’t have changed a bit.

Then twenty years later, we’ll all be knocking eighty…

Then twenty years later…

Time flies.

Fancy a Pint?

At last I can check off “give blood” on my new year resolutions list.

I heard a friend was going to give blood , so I hijacked the band wagon and indeed, offered to drive it. I had a friend who wanted to come so he also hopped on the band wagon. And he thought of someone else who could come, so the band wagon set off with the four of us aboard.

Into Glasgow city centre, parked at John Lewis. I did well not to get sucked into the lighting, paintings and soft furnishings in there, and we were soon on the way down to Nelson Mandela Place.

Lovely staircase with that “infinity” thing going on that I want for my hallway. Need a lot of mirrors.

So, as we arrived in a group of four, the staff all suddenly looked a bit overwhelmed.

I had to fill in a checklist of a zillion questions and then they checked my blood. It was good enough.

So I sat in a big dentist chair type thing and they hitched me up to the sooking apparatus and away we went. That was all fine.

So at the end, the nurse took out the needle and I “felt a bit woozy”

so she tipped the chair up, and I sat, head to the floor- feet to the skies for a while until the blood re-grouped in my head.

After a wee while they took me over to the ironically named “tea area” where I had to have some vile diluting juice. And I thought I’d better have a tunnock’s tea cake just in case.

I then “felt a bit woosy” so made a dive for a handily proximate bed and then a nurse came over and I did feet-to-the-skies again.

After a while, I sat up.

Then I “felt a bit woosy” and lay down again and did feet-to-the-skies.

So they gave me a six month minimum limit for returning – which I am SURE I can manage, giving that it took me 38 and a half years to turn up in the first place!

So eventually I felt fine and assured my friends I would be just fine to drive them home, which thankfully I was.

 

I got the cup of tea I was hoping for while picking up the children afterwards. It was most welcome and much appreciated.

So, my resolutions for 2011 were to run, read, diet and give blood. I’ve given blood, “run” the 10k and have finished Peter Pan. I have lost 3lb in the last week – but I don’t think I can count that as dieting yet – as I have put on almost a stone since January…

Definitely Not Lost In Transition

It has been a week of preparations for transitions.

I have been at a school show, received a school report, attended both a “starting nursery” meeting and a “starting school” meeting.

I had the *HORLICKS* task of proving that “I am who I say I am” and “I live where I say I live” for the second time this year – scrabbling about in the lever-arch files for birth certificate, mortgage agreement, council tax letter and child benefit letter.

Because “I am who I say I am” and “I live where I say I live” – this was not a problem. Nor was it a problem in January, nor was it a problem twice three years ago, nor was it a problem four years ago.    It is not a problem because “I am who I say I am” and “I live where I say I live”. Oh yes I do. For sure.

It is felt that “they” will soon be looking for a sample of your blood to somehow back up the paperwork. They are welcome to it. It is my blood and “I am who I say I am” and “I live where I say I live”.

Speaking of blood, I still haven’t given any – and that’s half the year gone…

The Tortoise or the Hare?

I tried a new strategy today for the 10k. The previous twice I have run, my aim had been to “not stop”. And I succeeded, taking 1hr 15 in 2007 and 1hr 13 in 2009.

Secure in the knowledge I can run 10k, I decided to try a new strategy: going faster.

I decided to run without a water security bottle to suck on in times of stress. I cast my bin-bag to the pavement and was all set. Like a greyhound, I was released from the trap, weaving and threading like a rabbit through the wobbly bottoms of Glasgow’s finest.

By 2k I doubted the wisdom of the Hare strategy. Feeling a bit thirsty; a bit breathless. People started overtaking me as I stopped overtaking others. Encouragingly, the bibs overtaking were still the same colour as mine, I had yet to be eclipsed by Green or Orange.

On the home straight I did my best to sprint to the finish, but my legs by this time were made of rubber, so I smiled cheerfully to the cameras and was pleased to see the clock imply I may have improved on my personal best. Although subtracting 5 from 16 was a bit tricky in the surreal haze of the finish line.

So, 1 hour and 11 minutes. Two minutes in two years.

On balance, neither the tortoise nor the hare have cracked it. What you need to be is a fast tortoise.

I’ll work on that.

Fit For Nothing

The 10k training has had a bit of a lull. I managed to have back-to-back viruses wiping out not just my Easter Holidays Spring Break but also my training for a month. Hopeless.

Instead of the smug and self-righteous regimen of healthy diet and regular exercise that I had planned, the holidays were spent sleeping, complaining, considering whether or not to see the doctor and eating a load of rubbish. And cheese. And tapas.

So today, after a breakfast of half a shell of a Cadbury’s Easter Egg, I went running. 7k, with hills. It was OK. I think I did better than I thought I would. Lovely day for it and I think I feel better for it. I may have subsequently eaten too many crème eggs today for the calorie burn to register on my waistline, but you never know.

Luckily there is another flurry of holiday on the horizon so I should get in two more runs next weekend. Thanks to Kate and Wills for their consideration of my training hiatus.

So, other runners – tell me it’s not too late to get from gasping my way round a hilly 7k to breezing my way round a flattish 10k in three weeks. I’d be very appreciative.

Blood Bottle

I had an opportunity to give blood recently. I was passing the local library and saw the big van there. I was on my way to school for the three o’clock pick-up, so couldn’t investigate immediately.

While walking, I started thinking. I thought I maybe had the tail-end of a wee virus, that (may well have been psychosomatic – but it) would probably be worth a mention. Then I also wondered about my travel history – maybe those weekend city breaks to Oslo and Boston would preclude my donation?!… and I am not sure which jags I’ve had when and maybe I would need to know that stuff…

On the way back from school then, I was, naturally, supervising children. So, how was that going to work? What if I got all faint and pathetic? What if it wasn’t like it was on the ads, with the nice nurse and “nice” biscuit? What if I was so drained that I couldn’t function as a child-carer? What if there was a miniature child-centric riot in the trailer thing and it was all my fault…

All in all, the thought of steering the children in to a confined space with blood and needles and a jibbering wreck of a mother with twenty-questions for a range of jaded health professionals was too much for me.

This is pathetic, and I stick by my resolution to give blood this year. But we are almost halfway and this is as close as I have got.

Who has ever given blood? Any stories?

What Did You Want To Be When You Grew Up When You Were Wee?

Yesterday,  I was at a fancy-dress function with this theme.

There was… a French painter, a space man, a Russian spy, a lollipop man, some tourists, some cabin crew, a doctor, a vet, an Oscar winning actress, a palaeontologist, a mad scientist, a life-guard, a racing driver, a policeman…

So for me, it was a toss-up between wearing work clothes, or being creative. I set about remembering what I wanted to be when I grew up.

When I was wee I wanted to be either an archaeologist or a minister.

I had a book about dinosaurs I really liked, and I remember going to a dinosaur museum on the south coast at one point.  The dinosaurs’ names and their shapes and all the facts and figures about them were fascinating – and also with the fact that is was all theory and deduction from fossils, footprints and skeletons – trying to piece together the past from rocks and dust.

The minister idea – or at least the teaching part of it – still really appeals. I couldn’t do the hatches, matches and dispatches part of it. I lack a certain level of sympathy and compassion that I figure is pretty much essential. But expounding the scriptures? Love it. It’s like “Close Reading: EXTREME”.

But, having lent out my palaeontologist’s hat, and not having a dog-collar – I thought harder about the ambitions of that girl that I once was… so I attended the event wearing an apron, accompanied by a few dolls who were tied to the apron strings.

So, as time has passed and I have been what I am for fifteen years, I guess that was what I was going to be when I grew up. I’ve been it. Am it.

Will be it until 2033?

What do I want to be when I grow up now?

I’m thinking novelist or poet.

Better get started. Time is ticking on.

Brilliant plot? Anyone?