Author: Kerry Buckley

I forgot to mention last week that just before I left Ekiden on Sunday I bit into one of my home-made ginger nuts, and felt a crown detach itself from one of my teeth (if I remember correctly, it’s the one from about 20 years ago). I got an appointment with the dentist on Tuesday, and he poked around for a few seconds before (unsurprisingly, after being told at my last checkup that both crowns had decay underneath them) telling me that it wasn’t really salvageable. The options were basically some kind of complicated procedure involve cutting down into the gum that might not work anyway, extracting it, or leaving it for now and extracting it if and when it became an issue. I went for the third option. That cost me £30, which is a pretty nice hourly rate if you can get it.

For some reason I kept getting adverts on Instagram for some fancy hydroponic herb garden thing. I didn’t buy one, but did order something similar, less fancy-looking and about a tenth of the price from AliExpress. I found some out-of-date seeds, and planted basil, coriander, a couple of types of chilli and tomato. Most of them have germinated, so fingers crossed. The main one I’m hoping works is the basil, because whenever I buy it from the supermarket (either cut or as a plant) it generally lasts about a day before going weird and inedible. For some reason while I had the kitchen door open in the heat a grasshopper decided to take up residence under the light.

On Friday I poured a drink of water and was shocked at how warm it was. I initially thought it was just from not running the tap enough, but I turned the tap on again, and for the first few seconds it was definitely *way* hotter than it had any right to be. I tried the hot tap, and it was instantly at full temperature, which isn’t right as I have a combi boiler and it takes a while to fire up on demand. I went to check the boiler, and sure enough, it was running even with the tap off. Then I realised that an area of the kitchen floor was unnaturally warm under my feet.

I’m assuming that the hot water pipe has sprung a leak, and it’s probably been slowly leaking for a while, until today the flow reached a high enough rate to trigger the boiler. This would also explain why the walls and skirting board recently started mysteriously showing signs of damp. The problem is that the pipes are in concrete, under travertine tiles.

For now I’ve turned off the boiler and the inlet feed (and briefly turning it back on for long enough to shower), and am waiting for the insurance people to get back to me, presumably on Monday.

Last time I broke a tooth and had to turn a water supply off in the same week was in mid March 2020, so if these things really do come in threes then we’re all in trouble

Friday evening was the Brantham 5 mile “fun run” (kind of an unofficial extra Friday 5). With the prospect of traffic nightmares from a combination of the Orwell Bridge roadworks and Ed Sheeran playing at Portman Road, I was talked into cycling there (13 miles or so each way). Considering that, the race didn’t go too badly, although the heat made the fairly hilly course even harder than usual.

With all this cycling I’d been thinking of getting a road bike as an alternative to my fixed-gear gravel bike. I was watching a few second hand ones on eBay, and put in a bid for one after getting a “finishing soon” notification while sitting outside the pub after Ekiden. Fortunately when it arrived everything seems to be in excellent condition, and it’s a pretty high spec for what I paid for it. I’m yet to ride it, because I wasn’t organised enough to sort myself out with road shoes before it turned up.

On Sunday Holly and I finally managed to run to Felixstowe, after last year’s nettle fiasco. We took a road route this time, to avoid a repeat of that trauma, and by the time we got there we both had tired, but unstung legs. The plan was to stop for chips, ice cream and/or beer before getting the train back, but Holly had to rush back for a parcel delivery so we only had time for a quick paddle and a rushed pint in the Grosvenor on the walk back up to the station. We even found an outlying hare (I think there are two in Felixstowe, but not sure where the other is).

And yes, we accidentally wore matching vests again.

When I got home I was sitting in the kitchen, and looked up to see a sparrow hawk (I think) sitting on the pile of logs in the back garden. It flew off before I could get a photo though.

Third week in a row that I’ve been talked into cycling to Felixstowe (about ten miles each way) for training night on Tuesday. Not sure whether it adds to or detracts from the running effort!

Another month must have passed, because it was time for ex-colleagues Fat Cat meet-up again. Rupert, Mel and Tony this time, and it was warm enough to sit outside in a T-shirt (although only just, by the time we left).

The final Friday 5 of the series this week, at Great Bentley. I ended up 5th in my age category (out of 18 who’d completed at least four races out of six – the best four score), which I guess isn’t bad. Well done to club-mates Steve, who took the gold in my category with a perfect set of age group first places, and Holly, who finished fourth in hers, missing out on the podium by a single point.

The local parkrun was off this week because of an event in the park, so a few of us cycled out to Alton Water to do that one instead (and still somehow managed to end up in the Ipswich ’Spoons for breakfast!).

We cycled out in the same direction again on Sunday, for the Ekiden Relay. I had the opening 7.2k leg for FRR (it’s an odd distance because 7.2+5+10+5+10+5=42.2, or a marathon), and managed a not-too-shabby 30:44. The “supervet” (50+) team I was in managed to come third in that category, although I’m not claiming much credit for that. Our vets (40+) beat us again. Then I ran a 5k leg for the Coffee Runners’ social team, which went a bit wrong when I saw the previous runner go past and everyone told me he still had a lap to go, but it turns out that wasn’t the case. When when I wasn’t there for the changeover they called out on the PA, but he decided to start another lap rather than waiting and I had to intercept him partway round, meaning I only did about 2.3 miles.

The weather held for most of the day, but like last year there was a downpour late on. We managed to time our ride home to avoid getting too soaked this time though. Well I say home, obviously it was actually to the Cricketers first.

Over a week late this week (last week?). Oops.

A long-overdue week off work, with nothing planned other than some balance of relaxation and tackling a small fraction of the ever-present list of jobs round the house. The first two of those were to chop up another two brown bins’ worth of garden waste ready for when they collected them on Wednesday, and cut my front hedge, which was starting to encroach on the pavement. Fortunately I did them in the opposite order, meaning that the hedge clippings filled the bins, providing the perfect excuse to shirk the other task. I also managed to clean the bathroom and a few other bits and bobs, and also do the chopping-up and bin-filling once the bins had been emptied.

On Thursday I managed to join a Run for Coffee for the first time in a while, then cycled out to the Red Lion at Martlesham for a colleague’s leaving do. The food was OK, but I wasn’t that impressed when I went to the bar to try to get a second pint, the pumps pretty much went off one by one, and someone was despatched to the cellar to “check the gas”. After waiting a while, I asked them to bring it over if they finally got things working again, but it never arrived, and no-one ever checked whether I might want something else instead.

Later that day I looked up to see not one but two foxes watching me. They looked quite young, so I guess there’s a family of them somewhere nearby.

Somehow I managed to get Thursday’s Wordle in two, despite not getting a single letter in my first guess.

Wordle 1,469 2/6*
?????
?????

Stowmarket Friday 5 this week, then Christchurch Park parkrun #2 (and a Wetherspoons breakfast for the second consecutive week), and the Newmarket 10k on Sunday. The latter was warm again, and no sausages as prizes this year. We stopped for some lunch at the Willow Tree in Stowmarket, and thanks to the late arrival of Dave and Gripper, who’d cycled to Newmarket for the race, ended up having four pints. It would almost have been rude not to, with Jaipur going for £2.29 a pint. Then barely time for a shower before heading over to Rob and Jo’s for a barbecue.

Nights are drawing in, etc. Also, a bit hot, innit?

Despite having already cycled to work and back, I got talked into also riding to Felixstowe for the club training night on Tuesday. A fairly gentle 13mph with Neil on the way there, but joined by Dave for the return journey after an hour of running, which entailed an increase to 16mph to keep up.

I thought at one point this week that Casper had finally learned to use the cat flap, but no, turns out I’d just left a window open all day.

Back on the Friday 5s this week, with a very warm one at Bury St Edmunds. Nowhere near as warm as it was there three years ago, mind. I ended up finishing one second slower than last year, which I’ll take as consistency.

Ipswich parkrun finally returned (kind of) this week, after five months’ absence. It’s now permanently in Christchurch Park, with a new name and starting at event #1. Inevitably the return saw a lot of interest, with 696 finishers. The course isn’t as good as the old one (and is tougher, with a long uphill slog and short steep downhill rather that the other way round), but will probably grow on us. Especially if the temperature drops a bit!

We celebrated the event’s return with a visit to the Cricketers for breakfast, and – because drinking at 10.30am is almost mandatory in a Wetherspoon’s – three pints. I’m blaming Dave for the third.

On Sunday (still hot) Holly and I decided to run round the “Hop to It” hare art trail that arrived in town this weekend. I think we got them all, despite thinking there was one missing in the Buttermarket, possibly related to a cordoned-off section under a broken pane of roof glass. We eventually decided to revisit on our way back towards Christchurch Park, and asked in the event’s pop-up shop, only to discover that the missing one was actually right in front of our eyes in the shop. In fairness, it was a different shape to the others, and we’d assumed it wasn’t one of the main ones. Oh yeah, and we also accidentally turned up in matching vests again.

I had a friend’s son doing work experience with me this week, which meant not only that I had to try to keep him occupied and not bored out of his mind, but also that I had to go into the office on all five days like it was 2019 or something. And get there before 9am to boot. I think it went OK though, or else he was too polite to say otherwise.

Friday was Neil the Vicar’s birthday, and a break in the Friday 5s, so a few of celebrated by running (slowly) round the route of the Ipswich race that used to be in the series but stopped just before my time. Then on to ’Spoons, naturally.

Kesgrave parkrun again this week, for what could theoretically be the last time, with Ipswich having announced a long-awaited return next Saturday, with a new name and permanent venue and starting again from event one. We used to use Christchurch Park before the pandemic for a few months every winter to let Chantry recover, but it remains to be seen how well a popular town centre park copes with hundreds of runners in the summer months, particularly as the new course has reversed direction and features a headlong dash down the big hill through the middle of the park.

We did another social run round the old Chantry course on Sunday (no reports this week of anyone being told they shouldn’t be there because “parkrun was banned”, but that might just be because Neil wasn’t there to aggressively wish people good morning!). I’ve been neglecting long runs since the marathon, so forced myself to run there instead of cycling, and joined Holly for a few extra miles before coming home. Thanks to our amazing navigation skills and sense of direction, we managed to accidentally add nearly a mile by looping back on ourselves and suddenly realising that the path we’d emerged on looked very familiar!

On Monday we had the “A14 Track Challenge” at Northgate. This is an inter-club 5k challenge which formerly included Ipswich Jaffa, Stowmarket Striders and Bury Pacers, and was extended to include Felixstowe Road Runners this year (the name derives from the fact that those four places are all on the path of the A14). I was in the middle (17–22 minute) race, with tired legs from the Framlingham Friday 5, and managed 21:10. Then Dave, Robin, Neil and I decamped to the Cricketers for a few beers, as is traditional.

On Wednesday I arrived at work in plenty of time for my 9am call, then the following thoughts went through my mind:

• Oh, I’ve brought the wrong keys again.
• I’ll just wrap the lock round the top tube so it looks locked.
• Wait, that means I don’t have my locker key either, and my jeans are in there.
• I guess I can just wear my bike shorts all day.
• Oh no, my laptop’s in there too.
• Looks like I’m cycling home again.

Sudbury Friday 5 this week – 45s quicker than Fram, but half a minute slower than Kirton.

On Sunday I went out on my own for a bit of trail running, and I thought I’d check the condition of some of the paths from last year’s horrendous nettle run. The first bit wasn’t too bad, then heading over to the bit that had been on the return journey that day (I didn’t cross the A14 this time) I bumped into a man out walking, who told me it was completely overgrown. He wasn’t wrong, but I managed to bash my way through with a stick, then hop a fence and follow the field edge again. Emerging at the other end I met him again, and he was impressed that I’d found a way through!

On Sunday Dave and Sally invited a few of us round for dinner, which made a nice change and was a lovely evening.

A quiet week, so not sure why I’m posting so late.

Second Friday 5, this one on a warm evening in Framlingham, where I was about a minute slower than at Kirton last week. Then an easy parkrun, and on Sunday another of Robin’s freedom runs on the old Chantry Park parkrun course (also taken nice and slow). This one was notable for a mad dog walker telling Neil that we shouldn’t be running in the park because apparently “parkrun was banned”!

I’m sure something else must have happened, but it’s slipped my mind.

First Bangla curry night for a while on Wednesday. No Robin or Dave this time, so I escaped a potential post-meal mid-week Wetherspoons session.

The Friday 5 series started again on … er … Friday, with our club’s home fixture at Kirton. I helped hand out numbers beforehand, and the new system of having a bunch of us standing outside the hall with an envelope full of bibs each and a phone to allocate them as people arrived worked far better than the long queues of old. In retrospect we should have worn hi-vis so we didn’t just look like random people accosting runners, but that’s a minor tweak! There was a minute’s applause on the start line in memory of Collette, who died on Sunday, and we formed a guard of honour at the finish for her husband Mike, who still ran in the race. It was a similar story on Saturday, when lots of people ran her home parkrun in club colours, or just red in general.

A mildly frustrating couple of days at work, accruing what may actually be close to the original definition of technical debt (as opposed to just “crap code” or “stuff we’d like to refactor”). I won’t bore you with details, but because of previous decisions adding something the customer needed fairly quickly entailed a fair amount of shotgun surgery and semi-duplication. We’re planning some changes to make the same kind of thing cleaner and faster to do in the future, but those changes were never going to be implemented in time for this specific set of features, so I had to bite the bullet and temporarily add to the mess.

I finally finished playing Batman Arkham City on my Steam Deck. Well I say finished, but after end credits that seemed to go on for about three weeks it dumped me back in the game, but with the main story complete. I carried on for a while, then decided to abandon it and give Arkham Knight a go.

Yet another bank holiday weekend, with appropriate cloudy weather and scattered showers. I haven’t done a lot with it so far, but am looking forward to a bonus day off tomorrow.

I accidentally watched the F1 for the first time in years (and the second time in about twice as many years), after switching the TV on to watch something on catch-up and seeing that Channel 4 were about to show their delayed coverage of the Monaco GP. Reassuring to see that it’s still just as much of a pointless procession round a circuit where passing is virtually impossible, and that they’re still messing around with novelty features – this time two mandatory pit stops – in an attempt to liven it up. Truly bizarre to see cars pitting in the first and last laps for no mechanical reason. It also didn’t help that I’d only really heard of two or three of the drivers, and I didn’t even realise that the orange cars were McLarens for an embarrassingly long time (everyone knows McLaren are red and white, right?)

Late again, and I don’t remember much of interest happening during the week.

On Saturday a group of us went for a ride to mark two years since Ben was killed by a car while out cycling. We stopped at the crash site to pay our respects, but it was mainly about having a nice day out with friends, covering 40-odd miles in the sunshine and stopping at a couple of pubs. Then in the evening it was back on the bike to head to Nicola’s birthday party, where it was still (just) warm enough to hang around outside in shirtsleeves.

None of that was particularly good preparation for the Woodbridge 10k on Sunday, and predictably I was slower than last year. Always a great event though, with lots of support from the locals. Then sadly we learned that we’d lost another clubmate, this time to cancer and also far too young.

Wait, another four-day week? Not much accomplished on Monday, although I did give the the kitchen floor a very long overdue scrubbing. I’ve also made a tiny amount of progress on digging the hole ready to lay slabs to put the greenhouse on, and am continuing to slowly eat away at the huge pile of cut-down laurel branches, two brown bins at a time. I treated myself to a pair of electric secateurs, which at least makes the process of removing and cutting up the smaller pieces a lot easier.

Another month must have gone by, because Wednesday was Current and Former Colleagues Sharing Some As-Yet Undefined Characteristic Fat Cat Meet Up night. Uncharacteristically for them, they somehow managed to turn my order of a pint and a half of one beer and a half of another into a pint and a half of a third, unrelated beer, plus a pint of what should have been a half. Obviously I didn’t say anything.

While doing my shopping in Waitrose shortly before closing time, I was accosted by a member of staff from the bakery, offering me a couple of free cakes/pastries. This turned out not to be a trick question, although they weren’t something I’d have normally bought, and were a minor struggle to finish (not both on the same day). Who’d have thought out-of-date baked goods might be slightly stale?

After watching the first episode, I’d forgotten that the new series of Doctor Who had started. When I finally remembered, and headed to iPlayer to watch the next one, I discovered that a new series of Man like Mobeen was also available, which was a nice bonus. I’ve also nearly finished working through all of Peep Show, which I’d previously only seen odd episodes of. And Taskmaster’s back on again, which is always good thing.

I entered the Stephen Williams 10k in a last minute fit of fomo. As usual the weather was unseasonably hot, and it felt like hard going, but at least it went a bit better than last year when I’d accidentally entered it before realising it was the morning after the Twilight 5k.