From Borea

I'm re-reading Roger Deakin's Waterlog, (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Waterlog-Swimmers-Journey-Through-Britain/dp/0099282550) and have resolved to spend as much time as possible this year either in or on water. I made a concerted start yesterday by taking advantage of the insanely hot April weather and going to the beach with the children. After scrambling around to find beach gear, lying neglected since last autumn, we bombed down to the stretch of coast in front of the widewater lagoon between Shoreham and Lancing.



It's a funny stretch of coast, a beach which has been engineered as much of the Sussex coast with granite boulders, a steep shingle shelf and backed by the tidal lagoon of widewater with it's ramshackle frontage of large chalet houses. It's the Sussex version of the unfashionable parts of the Florida Keys, with expensive properties benefiting from access to the sea, bright sun and open skies broken only by the regular drone of light aircraft taking off from nearby Shoreham airfield. But despite the boulder groynes and revamped coastal footpath there is something precarious and fragile about these houses, unlike the Florida keys they have no storm shutters and evacuation plans. These chalets and bungalows are really no more secure than the beach huts which line part of the frontage here, mere matchwood in the face of sea level rise, storm surges and hurricane force winds.

Standing on the Groynes, the views are wonderful, the beach being placed halfway along the wide bay between Worthing and Brighton allows splendid views of both. Worthing, low and projecting across the western horizon, it's pier extending out towards the dim outline of the Isle of Wight; while to the east Brighton looks heaped up on the downland hills which here meets the ocean in white cliffs stretching off into the haze. The southern horizon was itself lost in a thin fog of water vapour, the cold sea condensing almost in surprise to the unseasonably warm sun, that fog was a sign of sky and water out of step.

My plan was simply for immersion, acquaintance with freezing water right now was a positive investment for swims ahead in the year. Experiencing the frigid cold of an April ocean would render every other swim this year positively bath-like in comparison. So I stripped down to trunks rapidly and entered the water to my knees, suppressing the need to squeal at the intense cold. I eventually lost all shame in vocalizing my discomfit and used my dog-like yelps of shock to armor me against what came next. I splash my arms and chests with heavy handfuls of brine and before the shock of those wet slaps had dissipated immersed myself fully, trying to swim a little.

My arms were reluctant to move and the sea water burned with an intense white heat. I felt my heart rate rise and endorphins begin to flow. They say cold water has the effect of raising white blood cell production too, are these metabolic effects just the results of huge increases in life force of chi when provoked by an extreme external influence. habitual cold swimmers swear by it's positive health effects. I know from past experience that whatever the benefits are you need to be in a state of relative good health to weather the external pernicious influence of such an environmental extreme. I've only entered water in the winter and spring before when I've felt that readybrek glow of rude health, any chink and that cold will find it for sure.

My immersion was quick and far from swimming like a sea otter I walked neck deep and made little attempts at kicking my reluctant legs and arms. I left the water feeling utterly invigorated and then got to lie in the sun for half and hour warming rapidly under 24 degrees of heat....bliss!

So, the spring and summer stretches out and inspired again by Deakin, aim to search out rivers and watering holes where I gain a frog-eye view of the world.

Ok, just back from physio. It appears I have a hyper mobile knee cap, a tight iliotibial band, micro-fractures on my tibia, an over pronated foot, increased patholgical bone growth on my tibial tuberosity. Though apparently gaffer taping might just get me through the marathon.

The problem is that might right leg is slightly weaker than my left. When running I firmly plant my left foot with a small heel strike and push off with my toes, just as every runner wearing padded running shoes tends to. But because my right leg is weaker, I sort of swing it out a little as I run and then plant mi-foot putting stress on foot, ankle, shin, knees, thigh, hip and most probably my back.

Not such a problem running five of six miles but with 41, 280 paces in the average marathon this kind of impact starts top mount up.

The shins splints and ankle pain are manageable but the knee pain left me unable to walk on Monday, this comes down to my knee now not fitting precisely in the groove it's meant to sit in, as the muscles are pulling it over to one side. As soon as the muscle heals the knee will sit right again, so nothing long term to worry about. For me the concern is the short term, namely three days times where I have to decide either to line up with 6000 others on the start line or stay in bed and get drunk or something.

My physio think by strategically taping my knee so it has to sit where it should will do the trick.
So I'll be using gaffer tape as a kind of external muscle/ligament. If it works it should keep my bones in line.

The implication is, should it work, I'll be effectively using an artificial ligament. Thats cool, it makes me feel like some kind of jury-rigged cyborg.

Once this is over I can rest, recover and then start to figure out what I need to do to run in symmetrically and smash my pb next time instead.

It's been a long and strange winter. Spring has never before burst forth quite so powerfully. Heat, raging blossom, people expanding outwards.

Such moments are like waves to ride.

I've managed to claw back fitness after a really patchy winter of training. My long run of 24 miles was agonizingly hard and slow (around four hours) but I managed it and my injured shins didn't play up too badly. The sun was hot and the sea breeze stiff when i made the turn at Ferring. I came home sun burned with cracked lips from the salt spray. It now feels a long way from my snowy winter runs.

Can i now pull 26 in under four hours. It's looking tricky from hear but its just, just possible.

Now going to sow seeds. Let them catch the wave too.

I'll try again...just lost my last attempt to write this post.
This is inspired by Roger's statement of intent to embark on a process of DIY transformation, having recently become the freeholder of some Bristol real estate.
The past year I've stepped up my engagement with my home, having finally accepted that I'm here for the foreseeable and needing to feel more grounded in my domestic surroundings. I'm in a unique position amongst those I know in that I neither neatly fit into a single batchelor category nor an established traditional family unit. Half the time I have to maintain a clean, ordered and nuturing familial home but most other times I rattle around in an empty house of which I occupy the smallest bedroom. Although largely accepting this situation as transitional over the past seven years, it became clear that thinking that way was starting to be counter-productive and damaging to my sense of well-being and so I started to order my thought far more in the present. I had projected my feelings of what constituted home either backwards towards my childhood or forward to some future fantasy and realised that a decade had passed in a kind of half-life, without fully taking ownership of the domestic now.

All pretty important personal stuff, mostly going on below the surface. The only visible signature of this change in attitude being the gradual purchase of a) paint and b)wood. I'll talk about paint here, and maybe wood next time. The distinction is important.

I set about, this January, stripping out every room. Selling, boxing, donating and throwing anything I didn't need or want. Then cleaning and coating the walls in a deliciously warm shade of white (not magnolia, not cream, just a magically warm white I never knew could exist).

I worked my way through my bedroom, the bathroom, the hall and the living room. Taking out what I didn't need and leaving or putting in only things that either meant something or fed something. The children's rooms need more thinking about and I'm waiting for input from them before I take the process through to their spaces. The kitchen awaits too, but that is a project which is only just taking form and will require money to fully realise.

Two things have guided the process, each kind of in tension with each other and driven by a anima-animus tension of attitudes to the home. Part of me is very motivated as seeing the home as a machine for living, an externalised piece of (usually) stationary, solid-state technology which augments the individual, coheses social units (the family) and facilitates necessary biological functions (eating, washing, excreting and environmental buffering). This could be seen as a very utilitarian and perhaps stereotypically male view (but compare with concepts of no-nonsense household management pioneered by many female home economists). I think its a useful concept but it needs to be balanced by something else, the experince of a home as a magical spirit that, like a flame in a well made fire, will spark into life in a suitable home. For me I associate this spirit most with the hearth and the oven, but also with other parts of the household, the input of children or the magical dynamic of a pet.

Now I've bemoaned many times not having a fire, the uselessness of my oven and the absence of a familiar beast in the home. These niggles stem from the internal recognition that, for me, I sometimes don't feel the personal magic of being at home in my home.

So my challenge is to integrate, as a single adult, the twin impulses of creating a finely tuned machine at home and welcoming in the domestic spirits.

In the first stage of this process, the sorting and reordering. the cleaning and painting. I've stared taking stock of what I need and don't need.

In the covering of walls with my wonderful warm white paint, I think I found the first balance between that stark sense of mechanical efficiency and nuturing glow of fecund domesticity that I need to strike.

I'm hoping to find one which likes helping with the laundry and, if possible, can mow the lawn too.

Never known a season like it, the trees around here have been bent double under a great weight of fruity goodness for about six weeks now. The plums were prolific, both my apples tress have bumper crops and the blackberries in the lanes seem to have had two fruiting seasons, they just wont stop.

I get upset when I see this food unpicked and unappreciated and so set everyone here in motion to collect and process as much as possible. So far we have made plum jam, blackberry jam, plum wine, cider, and crab apples cheese. Today I collected my first hoard of sloes for the gin. I worked out that we could collect about four kilos of small fruit every 30mins. This would extrapolate to about 100 kilos a day or 3000 kilos a month is we went at it full time.

In the remaining part of the season i want to experiment with preserving method that don't require sugar, maybe experimenting with fruity pemmican using deer fat from this years fallows.

Little bloggin from me this summer. its been a weird one. Work hugely important right now as we have both a great team and a great project that has taken a lot of my energies and focus. The year itself has been stratlingly busy and fast moving but after coming back from jersey and entering the Dog days my energies have sagged, my running has stopped, the weather turned grey and I've been wondering what the rest of the year will bring.

My last time out in the wilds was with Steve for the Solstice on Chanctonbury. No one else there except for passing night walkers, and there merged a great sense of stillness and ownership in our vigil. It felt a little like entering a new phase of maturity and connection with the landscape, like we had seen it in so many moods, seasons and years that it belonged to us and we could happily call cherio to the passers by in the night with no fear.

I read from Belloc and we talked through people and places.

As is more often the case, subjects seemed to merge and the ever increasing sense of liberation permeates as I finally reconcile myself to the fact that all paths are truly one, and that they have a single source not lost in the mists of time, but right at the heart of our cognitive processes.

The Solstice has passed and the dog days have almost run their course, I feel like I'm waiting for the autumn now and clear blue cold skies to feel a new rush of energy to bring 2010 to a succesful close.

Waking on Monday and seeing the sun had flooded the valley I felt instantly compelled to get out and explore the wild places. Of all the places within a morning's walk of here the most powerful is the little Heronry within a small hidden patch of damp marshy woodland. Heronrys are strange primal places, where the ungainly hunters, on their stilt like legs, build and sit amid their large tree top nests.

I had visited this one only few times before. The place is kept secret to protect it from any unwelcome attention. Gamekeepers and river bailiffs would persecute Herons to protect fish stocks in times past and even today many are ill-disposed to these birds. But to me there is something ancient and magical about them, their crane-like form, their patience in waiting to take prey and dark strangled voice lends something other to these birds.

So myself and Sam set off to see them again. Being careful to approach the woods from downwind and to not disturb the rooks who nest alongside the Herons and seem to act as gatekeepers. I had heard that an old lady in a nearby cottage would, if seeing the rooks rise up in alarm, release her dogs into the woods to chase off intruders, such was her protectiveness of the herons. It had never happened when I had visited but today I was with Sam and there was always a first time.

Thankfully our approach was uneventful and here, on the south side of the woods there was no wind to disturb our approach.

But the Heron nests were not their usual place and after some minutes of circling the edge of the woods I became worried they had gone altogether. Soon however the reassuring croak of the birds could be heard, but this time from the other side of the woods. So passing through the woods, obviously wild and untouched by humans for the entire spring, crossed only by deer track and badger paths, we edged towards the sound pausing only to place our ears against a tree being drummed by an unseen woodpecker. We felt completely like intruders in another world, the only thing that gave us any right to be there was that we alone had decided to make the journey there, to the little wood in the middle of the marshes.

Eventually we saw them, or rather they saw us and went immediately into circling flight. But these were five white birds. Not big enough to be Herons but looking very much like their smaller cousins the Egret. Egret numbers have swollen in recent years, could it be that they had out competed the Heron to take these woods or was I mistaken and these were young Herons? Was this the brood of Herons or their upstart replacements? I wasn't able to tell, but I suspect the latter.

We left the wood be for another year, next time I'll try to get there ear;lier to see the nest building at world. maybe one night I'll spend the darkness there to be awake when the dawn hits the woods and observe the nests at rest. I think this years I'll search out all the places like this in the valley, where elementals still reside and occasionally take form.

No blog posts for a while as I've been particularly distracted by work and filling spare thoughts mainly with running.

The run itself was the hardest physical thing I'd ever undertaken. It hurt more and required me to dig deeper than any challenge I'd previously taken on. This shouldn't be surprising as it was, after all, a marathon!

But I was suprised, every mile after about mile 20 was surprisingly long and surprisingly painful.

In my training I had reached a long run of 23 miles which I achieved in 3:30. That was a tough run but I didn't hit any walls and it felt good. I imagined that on the day an extra piddling three miles in half an hour would be simple. What I hadn't reckoned on was a)Having a tough two weeks before the run due to circumstances beyond my control and b) that the marathon is all about those last three miles.

So the last three miles from Shoreham Powerstaion to the finish were achingly painful and I'm not quite sure I was in my right mind by the time I crossed the line.

So my excuses were I had a bad cold last week which stopped taper training and got caught outside of the UK when the ash hit meaning I had virtually no sleep Friday. But what I've learned for next time is that training isn't just about the long run, it's about distance and pace. I should have been doing more short, fast training runs. I should have carb loaded more in the week ahead and carb-loaded less in the months ahead! I should also, when training for months in ice, snow, rain and gales, reckon on it being the warmest day of the year so far when I pitch up on the start line.

But the experience was amazing, to be running with so many people and to see Brighton looking so amazing lined with people in the Spring sunshine was a hugely life-affirming experience.

So maybe again next year? maybe sub 4hrs next time? maybe Brighton, maybe somewhere else.

I won't decide until these blisters heal at least.

But for now....achievement unlocked: Long Distance Runner.

Having just received another deer hide I'm going to try my best to turn this one into beautiful soft fur. This is the method I'm going to use.

"After fleshing the hide...Salt it heavily and roll it up after folding it in 1/2 flesh side to flesh side, after 2-3 days.

Mix up 5 lbs of alum with 5 lbs of salt in 5 gallons of warm water in a garbage can. Unroll the hide rinse off the salt, and put it in the solution making sure it is submerged.Move the hide position in the solution by lifting it and putting it back in the solution so that there are no air pockets or folds in the flesh.

I usually leave them for a week to 10 days depending on the thickness of the skin.

When it is tanned, remove the hide and wash it thoroughly with clear water then stretch the hide by nailing it to a sheet of plywood with the nail heads up for removal...the hide will dry and turn stiff.

Hair will be locked in,after that if you want it soft, you have to break the hide by working it or use a product called Softol and work it into the hide"

So in a couple of weeks we'll see!

Aside from popular superstition and urban myth I wonder what hard proof there is that our lives are tied to the moon. Today's full moon, which flooded my bedroom last night and then greeted me looming red on the western horizon, certainly seemed to coincide with a particularly energetic and focused few days. Will I crash into despondency with the waning moon next week? We’ll see.

To our ancestors, in very basic terms, the moon transformed the night completely. We lack any significant night vision, and for a predator this is terrible, it limits all out hunting times to between dawn and dusk. On moonlit night this might be extended, maybe our bodies sense this opportunity to explore the hostile environment of darkness for a few days and feel more awake and twitchy as a result.

I've thrown my energy this week into writing and reordering the house. In two days time it is Imbolc again and I promised myself that if I didn't have a fire/stove by this imbolc I'd have at least created a space for it in the house. So today is about furious cleaning, and clearing and painting and reorganising. I need to restructure the entire living room to create a space for this idea of a fire, and at the same time I'm creating a better space for my home working, more shelving for my files, books and papers.

Outside it is blue sky, low sun and cold air. All of which is now filling an empty white room, empty that is except for me, some vertical piles of books and my pc.

This will have to be a place-holding entry for now until I can get some images up.

But finally, after at least three years of waiting, I had my first tattoo!

It's of my youngest daughter's hand, in shadow, picked out by thousands of little dots of red ochre pigment. It's designed to look like a stylized cave art/rock art hand.

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/about_us.php

These hands are found across the world from Argentina to France to Australia, apparently as a prevalent and independently arrived at image. In the palaeolithic the hand shadows are quite often of children and children's footprints are often found in those caves that have art.

Initiation rites? Hunting Magic? their purpose is unknown and may have been diverse. But the image is an enduring and very early icon of humanity, especially as images of people themselves are sseem to be so rare in palaeolithic cave art.

The shadows were made by placing a hand on the rock surface and then blowing paint over the hand. It's a very simple form of stencil and airbrush technique and takes only a few seconds to achieve.

My version took 3 hours, plus many sessions getting Tabitha to hold her hand to be used for the stencil.

I had the tattoo done here: http://www.inkatattoos.co.uk/ by the very amazing and talented Barb. It only hurt initially and then towards the end as she went over parts that were already sore. For the rest of the time we talked about Reindeer, aliens, conspiracy theories while the artwork took shape. The whole experience was hugely enjoyable and I'm going to have to fight hard not to have another.

Finally some good cold weather. This morning, the valley was clear skied and icy. I went before the sun had climbed above the hills and set off on an 11 mile run. The route took me around Bramber, north to Wyckham Farm and then along the old railway line across the Adur, through Henfield, past the pub and more railway to the river again.

It was very cold and at first I didn't think my lungs would take the cold air. My legs felt it too and it was impossible to stop, even halfway, as the cold instantly cut through my basic running gear.

I learned my lesson from last year not to take water (it freezes).

Not smoking has certainly improved my fitness, but I've put 2kg on in the month since I quit. The extra weight came in handy against the cold but means I'll have to be careful I don't put any strain on my knees. My appetite for carbs is so huge right now I;m going to have to run huge distances to stop larding up completely.

Of course a long way to go until the Marathon but on course for hitting my target of 13miles by xmas.

Here is evidence that the great wild woods of Northern Europe might have been more short lived than previously thought.

Instead of large unbroken tracts of wooded landscape, large parts of Europe were only patchily forested.

There did seem to have been a peak in woodland growth between 6,000 and 4,000.

After 4,000 agriculture begins and this brief two millennia of increased woodland growth come to an end.

00:44:29

It's been a physically challenging autumn what with the op, subsequent infection, allergic reaction to anitbiotics and continued heavy smoking.

So I was astounded to have run my best time over 10k last Sunday. Admittedly by the time I got to the start line I hadn't smoked for three days, was off medication and had completely healed. In that respect I felt like I had hit my target for recovery but in other ways I felt unprepared. The weeks leading up to the race had been poor in terms of weather and although I'd managed a 00:48:30 time in training and knew better was possible, I had struggled to train enough. Add to all this I'm now carrying an extra 2kilos, a result of sitting around and too much eating of comfort food while I healed.

Saturday's weather was aweful, but Sunday morning was much better. The skies were clear for the race itself and only a stiff westerley wind had to be contended with. Ant encouraged me to line up with the sub 40minute runners which isn't really on but meant we got a really good start. I kept up with this pack for the first 3k but did so by stretching myself early on a race which is never wise. After this I settled back into my normal stride and let myself be passed until the turn at 6k.

Making this turn brought the wind behind me and I expected a huge surge, it didn't come. I'd burnt everything up on the way out and the explosive start and had nothing left to make the last 4km anything other than painful and arduous. Added to the my useful piece-of-shit mobile phone mp3 player cut out and so all I had was the sound of my laboured bretahing to accompany me home.

By the Palace Pier I had very little left and felt finished. But after a few more yards the clock came in site and read 00:44:05. At that moment I knew Id make it to the line under 45mins, knew I didn't have to increase my pace to do it even. So I jogged lamely but smiling the last few yards.

The buzz from these little achievements just seems to grow each time. I think I finally get what it's about, the competitive urge drives a huge amount but there is only one person to compete against in each race and that's me. Everyone else on the course is a friendly fellow traveller and those extra few minutes we always seem to get on a race day comes as much from the feeling of a collective spirit as it does from competition.

I know one year, maybe soon, injury or age will mean I know longer get better and faster and the challenges will become more subtle. But to have found in my mid to late thirties that I can compete against my younger self year-on-year and wipe the floors with his times, is very satisfying.

The valley was shrouded in fog for most of the morning and I simply didn't feel up to pitting my weak lungs against the cold moist air. Even when the thermometer reads 4.5 degree here on the hill it can easy by close to freezing at the bottom of the hill by the river where I choose to run. Cold air sinks.

An hour of inhaling freezing water vapour....no thanks.

So instead I worked all morning and ventured out for a lunchtime run. By 1pm the sun had burned off most of the mist but it was still cold and damp. The river-side path was still soaking wet from the weekend rains and so for most of the run I had to constantly adjust my pace, pigeon-stepping the short gaps between puddles before launching into big strides over the larger pools. A weekend feeling the effects of my allergic reaction last Thursday left me feeling less than strong, and the constantly changing stride was wearing. But still I managed to get in under my 50 minute target for the 10k which means that, on the day, I should be able to a minute off that too.

The op, the recovery and complications has put a strange spin on the beginning of autumn. All flow seems interrupted and basic, fundamental things like healing have come to the fore. The year has been so busy, taken so much energy out of me, that a bit of enforced contemplation and reflection hasn't been so bad.

Here is an interesting experiment. Take a 37 year old man, who is still black and blue from a vasectomy. Who has eaten a weeks worth of high-carb comfort food while he lay immobile and sore on his sofa. And who seems to have smoked his way through several Virginia plantations to help manage the pain.

Then in three weeks time enter him into a 10k race, the first stage in training for a marathon next April.

10k generally for me these days is nothing. I fit a 10k run in when I don't have time to run properly and have been averaging times between 44 and 50 mins over 10k for the past three years.

But right now it seems suddenly a long way to run. I'm still sore and I can't believe how out of condition I've got with just a week off. It seems at my age, that training has to be a year round thing and that fitness can be achieved with effort but won't last unless you keep putting that effort in on a daily basis.

The priority is to kick the smoking. If I can get that cracked without munching out on carby food. I'll be half-way there.

The second thing is when to risk my first run. I'm considering a little run just to test the water on weds but this is earlier than the docs recommend. By taking it easy and wearing some supporting underwear I might just get away with it.

Having just met with two of the south's finest wild food experts I'm off out to try and tap birch trees for sap. From this I hope to bottle some of this wonderful spring energy in a particularly powerful birch wine.

It was -2c this morning and managed a 10miler up the valley through the freezing fog. It wasn't pleasant though; my lungs burned, the sweat froze and what's more, at the half way point in the middle of nowhere I realised my camel-pack had frozen solid and I had no drinkable water whatsoever. I dont know if it was the cold or the dyhradation but the five miles back were hard going. Lactic acid built up rpaidly and I had to fight to keep the pace going.

It was pause for thought, I had been speculating that running in artic conditions was perfectly feasible given the right kit. Neanderthal nasal adapations might have even made it easier by warming air entering the lungs through their large fleashy noses. But acceds to liquids is a real limitation with long distance hunting. Even in a container strapped close to my body the fluid froze so I can't see how any carrier stone age hunters could have come up with (gut bags, birch bark pots) would have fared any better.

Fast paced pursuits would have to have been relatively short and planned, and access to unfrozen water a big consideration.

So the long painful run back did at least give me time to think.

Roll on Spring!

December and the start of the New Year has been extraordinary. The most prolonged period of benign, quiet, still cold that I can remember. No unseasonal high temepratures, no depressing Atlantic lows, no dissapointing flirtations with snow rusulting in soul-sapping slush. Just tranquil grey and blue skies, mercury barely rising above zero throughout the day, crisp frosts and weather you have to dress up for.

It's felt good to celebrate our winter festivals in such seasonal stillness. A good chance to reset the body clock in line with the turn of the year. Even though I haven't been out in it as much as I'd liked, I spent much of December digging in the cold and have run regularly throughout the holidays, on early mornings as the sun rose over completely still, sluggish blue seas. It's put in me in a space which is entirely winterly, north european in aspect and wholly infused with cold as an element in itself. Craving warm foods, root vegetables and simple winter pleasures.

The big absence in all this is fire, I don't have an open one in the house. So my first ambition for 2009 is to install a small wood burning stove, to bring real fire into the house. Fire produced from a local, carbon-neutral woodland and not dependant on Russian gas which could be turned off at a flick of the bear' petulant paw. It's a simple thing, despite the inital cost and logistics, but it feels like something tangibly missing from the winter experince and it's absence feels like the house is lacking something of it's soul. Bringing living fire into the house is something very primal, something of our collective evolutionary experience going back millenia. As I look through the internet for suitable stoves I'm tapping into one of the basic impulses of human life, and can't wait to experience that first lighting of the fire and the welcoming of new spirits and new dynamics into the house.

Back from the first genuinely winter run of the season. Temperatures hovering around freezing as the sun came up over the sea and only thin running gear between the artic air and my skin. It's absolutely pointless wrapping yourself up against the cold, within five minutes of running your body temperature soars and getting rid of sweat becomes more important than trapping heat. But for the first few minutes of exposure to the air you feel very under-dressed and exposed before the elements.

But thankfully intense cold is usually accompained by clear blue skies and the sea between Brighton and Saltdean looked equally crystaline, under such conditions its impossible to feel anything other than completely alive and energised. We are really lucky to have the Brighton coast, with its flat, wide, pedestrianised promenades. In all weather conditions but a full-on gale it provides a safe, clean training ground with measured distances, beautiful views and lots of human interest. Actually even a gale can be energising, you come back covered in salt spray but the water tends to be warm.

My brother and myself are training for our first 10k race of the season, which is in two weeks. Last year I completed it in 49minutes having not trained much and smoked. This year I hope to beat that, with 45mins a possible, if not highly probable, target. Our latest training plan is 20mins at a strong pace, 20 minutes at a full-on 5km pace and then 20 minutes back at a measured pace. The middle section is tough and by the end you fell completely spent, but amazingly after only a couple of minutes of slowing back down your body catches up and you find yourself needing to sprint again to the finish.

Between now and February's half marathon there will be many morning like this: cold, increasingly dark and distances increasingly long. But there is something defiant about getting out and embracing the dark mornings when every instinct is to turn over and snooze a little longer.

Spent the whole week doing first aid training, which I'd initally viewed as an administrative hoop to jump through and a distraction to getting on with clearing my work load. As it turns out I spent the week thoroughly engrossed in the course and couldnt believe that I'd managed to get to 36 without formal first-aid training. I, like most people I guess, thought I knew about first-aid and as no one had so far died on me assumed I'd be able to handle most injuries or traumas. But I was amazed at my ignorance, not only about how to give CPR or recognise serious conditions, but even stuff like treating burns and major bleeds.

But now, after a week or crouching over prone bodies and dummies, I've come away with a sense of confidence that I could pretty much handle a domestic, work place or street incident until the ambulance arrived. Thats the other thing I learned, if your wondering whether you should call an ambulance, call the fucking ambulance!

By contrast, I finished the week knelt and leaning over bodies, but this time for Ju Jitsu class and learning how specifically to hit, throw, bend and pin parts of the body to effect maximum damage, pain and nerve-searing discomfort. So much of ju jitsu is learning about how bodies move, how they bend and how they don't. And again so much of it is all new to me, why aren't we brought up connected with our bodies and their capabilities, their limitations and what to do when they attack you, or when they need your help?

Myself and Meg came back from hols to find ourselves thinking ahead to winter and fuel bills. There are going to be some huge price hikes looming for gas and electricity and thats on top of recent price rises. Recommendations from Money Saving Expert, Martin Lewis's web site to lock into a fixed price deal came too late for us as the nergy companies removed all their fixed price deals on Friday. And its impossible to look for better deals as the prices are rising and changing all the time.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/you-switch-gas-electricity

For nothing for it but to review how I consume energy and make the savings that way. So my plan this winter is to try and see how much of a svaing I can make and actually, for once, meticulously monitor my energy consumption. Apparently there is some kind of metre I can look at.

First thing is to think about heating, most of the time i live in the house on my own and work on the pc in my living room. To heat this room i have to turn on the central heating which heats the whole house.

This seems crazy. So plan one is to find an energy efficent way to heat just one room and leave the CH on off except in freezing conditions. Any suggestions?

One other thing its worth everyone doing is checking their bills and seeing if the amount they pay is actually clearing what they owe, the energy companies seem to want to get us in debt by giving us bills made on the basis of unreal estimates father than real consumtpion. You'll find that most of the time you actually owe them, and for some people this can mount up. Before we go into a long, expensive winter its good to make sure you aren't being scammed in this way.

http://www.uswitch.com/news/energy/20080714/energy-bill-debt-warning.cmsx?ref=google_uk

Huge stressful fortnight cumlinating in a long tiring day. Came home and imediately started answrting emails and before I knew it it was six oclock, i had hardly spoken to Sam, not had I put the dinner on.

Then leap from feeling like a rubbish parent to the fishing plan was lamost instantaneous. Grabbed rods, reel, makerel feathers and a fiver. Within half an hour we were sat on the harbour arm with a bag of fish and chips and our rods in the water.

The wind was blustery, it was a bit cold and there were no fish. But the joy of being away from work, pc, and phone (i left it at home on purpose) and just sharing the evening with Sam was immense.

Its a bit of a cliche but fishing really is one of the best excuses for complete escape. Looking forward to some warmer eveing when the fish decide to bite too.

Sunday morning, 6th April 2008.

Yesterday I was lying in the sun, in the garden, in a t-shirt and then worked up a sweat mowing the lawn. Think it reached about 17C.

This morning 11am, -2C, 4 inches of snow.

You have got to love living in a country that lacks a climate and just has weather.

Don't want to go all techhy on you all, but found this neat utlity some years ago for checking on disk space and helping in your annual/monthly/weekly(get a life)PC house keeping.

I find that, if nothing else it picks up those files which have got lost in the directory structure and isolates huge files lurking taking up valuable disk and page file space.

http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/