Another month must have elapsed, because Wednesday was time for another meet-up with Rupert, Mel and Joe in the Fat Cat. Always good to catch up.
I’ve now received my number (50267) for the London Marathon, which makes it start to feel alarmingly real. That’s just the information of the number of course, not the physical bib number – I have to make an otherwise unnecessary extra trip to London in the few days before the event to collect that at the Expo, because capitalism.
I had a more welcome trip to London on Saturday, to see Jim Bob’s 40 years and 40 songs show at the Shepherds Bush Empire. I had been planning to get the train down, but replacement buses would have made that unpleasant. Fortunately some friends who were also going had decided not to stay overnight after all, and they gave me a lift to Stratford from where we got the tube in. Instead of a support act, the gig started with an hour of Mister Spoons playing DJ and strutting around with a variety of props to match the songs (the highlight was him waving an apricot parkrun shirt around and having the crowd enthusiastically yelling “parkrun” at the appropriate points in Parklife). Then a solid nearly three hours of songs from the pre-Carter, Carter and post-Carter years, beginning solo, then bringing on Chris TT on piano, then the full Hood Rats band, and brief appearances from an additional horn section and – much to everyone’s excitement – Fruitbat. As expected, the mosh pit got quite wild, but fortunately for us aging fans there were plenty of slower songs to calm people down between the madness.
Once again, that didn’t exactly make for perfect preparation for a Sunday race, although at least this time it was only 10k (at Little Bromley) instead of 20 miles. I still managed a vaguely respectable time considering, then went home to keep an eye on WhatsApp updates from Cromer letting us know how the friends who were running the Norfolk Marathon were doing.
