THE GOOD BUCK

You know how you set yourself a goal (my first of note was to run a half marathon) then when you’ve done it you see that far from being impossible it’s common-place? So you raise your game ( full marathon, Ironman) but that’s not good enough because it’s not the brand name Ironman, just the distance. The Rola-Cola of endurance triathlons. Drunks shun you when they realize it wasn’t a branded event. Well, as I mentioned last time I’m going to put that to rights next year. So how’s about this for training for it;  a Lands End to John O’Groats ride!

I’m going to do it the other way around (apparently we happy few call it an ‘end to end’, anyway) as Scotland’s up North so it should be all downhill to Cornwall. Genius. You can tell I’ve been studiously researching it.

I’m looking at 120 – 140 miles a day at the minute, so I can do it in a week. The chap who’s very witty book on the subject I’ve been reading did 150 m/d to do it in six days. It would appear the record is something like one day, seventeen hours! I’ll not be going for that. I’ll see how the training goes. I did 112 miles in a bit under seven hours for the Outlaw, perhaps 150 miles a day is not too much of an ask. We’ll see.

You know how I’ve said before that the parking space for trailers at work used to fit eleven trailers and now they’ve decided we have to squeeze fourteen in the same space? I moaned that it was a tight fit, but because of the time I was getting back it was always too dark dark to take a decent picture on my ‘phone. Now I have the snaps. It would have been bad enough if it had been a straight reverse, but there was a car parked in the way that I had to swing around and then try and straighten it up. Anywho, here’s the view from the cab.

Drivers side: (Look at the gap in the mirror! You’ll note it’s that tight the unit next to me had to have it’s mirror tucked in)

That has been our situation with debt. Achilles is a faster runner than the tortoise, but, if time is divisible, by the time he gets to where the tortoise was it will have moved. He moves forward, the tortoise moves forward. Achilles can never catch the slow but indefatigable tortoise. 

Unlike philosophers we put a rock on the tortoise and watch it flail helplessly in the sun. Hmm, tortoise soup.

Where was I? Obviously still dieting, if a philosophical paradox/ debt metaphor can be turned into a soup reverie.

That is my main news for the week. Bloody diet.

It’s a two phase thing. The first five days you flush out all the old crap from your body, then start on phase two. The good thing is you can eat as much as you like of the allowed items, so you are never really hungry. The bad bit is you are really restricted on carbs the first week. No spuds, pasta, small amounts of parsnip and carrot, no milk (apparently a surprising amount of carbs in milk, who new?) 50g of brown rice a day, or porridge but no bread. And no sugar, or prepared food. Worst of all no caffeine! Cue the three day splitting headache and milder ones since.

You can have eggs and bacon by the bucketful for breakfast, cooked in butter and still lose weight. But no bread, or beans.

Finally it’s arrived! One day from China to Coventry, two weeks sat at customs, another couple of days being sent to London then Liverpool, then being held there until I paid the import tax (£18, plus £13 handling fee to Parcel Force, robbing bastards.)

Finally got it on Friday. It’s ace. It looks titchy, but it’s surprisingly loud and the keys feel natural, just the same as playing the tenor.

Here it is, the tenor and my new soprano saxophone: