Krypton Fish Amazon Factor

By some mysterious, and numerous, quirks of fate, not to mention a series of unlikely events I find myself lying in bed with AnnE. We embrace as a hangover stamps noisily around my body and I dare to dream of contentment in between short dozes and long thoughts over investing and getting dumped. Once bitten twice shy, and all that.

The past few weeks have been messy. I’ve drunk more than I have in years, partly because there are no races to prepare for but mainly because there has been a busy social calendar and I feel like I may as well get involved. This time last year I was off to Brazil with work for 6 weeks, and had arranged my 3 week holiday straight afterwards, so I missed the current seasonal change to cold dark evenings with leaves on the ground. This year I seem to be busier at work than ever, and yet still find myself wondering what my next challenge should be. Common sense seems to indicate I should get the current one finished first.

I entered the new series of ITV’s 'Krypton Factor' on a whim, and got an interview, but couldn’t make it through work commitments. They phoned up on a Wednesday and were like, ‘Ooo, could you come up to Cardiff on Friday morning’ and I was like, ‘well maybe if you'd given me some warning, but I've got work on Friday.’ So they tried to re-arrange but it wasn’t to be. In a similar vein I am also writing an application for a BBC wildlife series, but suspect that this one will be slightly more competitive. I hope that tales of my trip to Brazil might count for something and I can get an expedition out to combine filming some fish, maybe giant freshwater stingrays, with doing some more fieldwork for the current work project. You’ve got to have a dream, right?

AnnE is lovely, but, I’m dont feel able to rush into anything this time. I’ve gone from living in different cities to the previous two girls I’ve ‘seen’ to living in the same house as AnnE. Its not that awkward par se, but sometimes on a bland Tuesday evening you just want to veg out and not have to make an effort. I think ill miss the excitement of dating, as I see her a lot at the house so the time is not that special. That said, we are having a ‘date’ tonight to see the new Bond flick, so we’ll soon figure out how we feel. Speaking to a few mates I don’t think housemates getting together is as uncommon as I first thought – I can now think of 3 at least – all of which went/are still going long term.

Time will tell.

Very apt...

I've just had the craziest week,
Like a party bag of lies, booze and then deceit.
And I don't know why I want to voice this out loud,
It's therapeutic somehow.

So I'm moving to New York cos I've got problems with my sleep,
And we're not the same and I will wear that on my sleeve.
So I'm moving to New York cos I've got issues with my sleep,
Looks like Christmas came early, Christmas came early for me.

I put one foot forward and ended up thirty yards back,
Am I losing touch? Or am I just completely off the track?
And I don’t know why I want to voice this out loud,
It’s therapeutic somehow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTEN359V8pI

(...apart from the moving to New York bit)

Oh. (Dumped)

Oh.

Still no news from LEA. No text. No message. I hate myself for doing so, but I check her Facebook. She is definitely back, its full of loads of shit updates. Whats going on?

I email her at lunchtime, ‘Hey! Are you back?’

She replies, ‘Yeah’

Nothing else. One word. Not even a full stop.

Oh.

This is not good.

I don’t reply.

The afternoon passes.

I walk home, and decide to go up round the Hoe. I pass a bench looking out over the sea and sit down to think. I look to my right and see another bench. I suddenly get a memory. That bench, this location, has some history. It’s the bench I sat on about 9 years ago, under what feels like similar circumstances, when I had just split with my Uni girlfriend. At this moment (well, lets not lie, about 1 minute after id set off again) I get the text.

'Blah blah blah are you free for a chat blah blah blah blah I'm finding more than friends weird and holiday made me realise that. Don’t want to loose you as a friend thou blah blah blah blah'

Oh.

So that’s it.

My mind whirrs. I'm gutted, but it’s some sort of relief to know at least. My brain kicks out these thoughts, in this order, over the next 5 minutes:

1. Does that mean she’s shacked up with some cunt on her holiday?
2. What am I going to do with the tickets I bought for us to go and see Tim Minchin on Sunday?
3. I cringe at the thought of sending her a FaceBook message while she was on holiday saying that I missed her loads.
4. What / How has (this) gone wrong in such a short space of time?
5. I don’t think I want to be friends with her. Ive seen a different side and cant go back.

I get home. I decide to run away from the problem. I run for 2 hours. I did 1¾ hours yesterday, so I’ve just set a new record for the most running I’ve ever done in 2 days – about 30 miles.

I feel more angry than distraught.

But I still cry a little bit.

My thoughts sway between two schools. The ageing 3-belt champion idea is to call her up and launch into her; tell her she shouldn’t be so fickle, shouldn’t fuck about with peoples feelings, and should have told me before she went on holiday. But this is not me. The undefeated young challenger idea is to try and rise above it – we were good friends once - we've got lots of mutual friends. Maybe, probably, in a week or two ill be grateful for doing so if I bite my lip now. I decide to not reply and let things set in for a day or two.

Then I get home and change my mind. I think I should send her a text or else she might call me and I don’t really want to speak to her. At first I write:

‘WTF?! Youre so weird. You shouldnt fuck about with peoples feelings’

But during typing it the predictive text only found ‘duck’ instead of ‘fuck’ and as I was trying to solve it the screen suddenly said ‘Sending Message.’

Panic!

I press every button on the phone 34 times in one second and thank fuck it cancelled the sending. Phew. I’m not sure what LEA would have made of ‘you shouldn’t duck’ Maybe she would have taken it as a threat – ‘don’t you fucking duck bitch when I shoot at you!’ - Or maybe not. I think back to when I finished with the Twin and got a blank text through; I guess she wasn’t quite so lucky with the cancelling.

Having read the text back it sounded a bit jovial, a bit matter of fact. I want her to know she has hurt, but I don’t want to write an essay. I change it to;

‘Oh. Understood. I am gutted. You shouldnt be so fickle with peoples hearts’

No Reply.

Good.

Now I'm in my room listening to Damien Rice and Arcade Fire, typing this. I made some freezer bolognaise but cant eat it. I try to phone my mum (she doesn’t know about LEA) as it would be nice to have a chat about nothing in particular, but she is engaged for three tries.

Oh.

Without wanting to sound too fickle myself, I’m looking forward to ‘Amazon’ tonight more than ever. Ive heard that they go to Manaus in one episode, the city I stayed in for 6 weeks last year.

I hope AnnE and DPsyc are not downstairs as Ill have to tell them and it will be rubbish.

Dumped.

Oh.

The Sport and The Girl(s)

Rubbish. Ive left too long between posts again. My boss has come back from Oz so ive been busy catching up with the stuff I should have done while she was away but was watching YouTube for most of the day.

Bristol half marathon was a lovely day out. I ran with my friend J for a few miles, then he pulled away from me and I never saw him again until the end. He finished 1 minute in front of me with little training, which was ever so slightly annoying, but I did do my best time for Bristol by 1 second which cancelled out any disappointment. Another friend was 40 seconds in front of me, and his brother did under 1 hour 20 seconds, which is a ridiculous time. I enjoyed the day, and despite the even shitter than usual goody bag, it is a treat to run around the closed off city streets which have so many childhood memories.

I saw LEA on the Friday night before and had an OK time at the cinema. We watched Rocknrolla which was quite shit, and she was very tired throughout the evening. She then bailed on coming to the race, and then I couldn’t get in contact with her in the evening so had to head back without seeing her. I was, at the time, convinced something was up.

Last weekend I did a posh gym triathlon. It was very funny. DPsyc, my housemate, is a member there and noticed a flyer on the wall advertising a sprint triathlon. It turned out to be a 5k exercise bike, 3k outside run and finally 10 lengths of a 20m pool. I turned up and had a look about the place, which emerged to be incredibly nice. The huge aircon room full of machines and weights, the aircraft hanger of indoor tennis courts, the spa, the pools, the everything. But with hindsight, maybe it was too nice. I don’t think id be able to properly train in such nice surroundings- id be wanting to sit down and have a coffee rather than busting out some running. Anyway, I made my way to the ‘Conservatory’ where 8 exercise bikes were lined up. I’ve never really had a go on a proper exercise bike, so had a quick warm up while I was waiting to start. It doesn’t really bare any resemblance to road cycling but is quite good fun. The distance goes down faster by either increasing your pedalling speed or by increasing the resistance. I just got my cadence to about 100 and then dialled up the resistance to what I felt like I could keep going for 5k. I ended up doing it in 7 minutes something, which was in second place, about a minute behind some old guy who had gone out hard and looked like he was really struggling to stay upright as he negotiated down the steps to start his run. I caught him up on the run and was about 20 seconds behind him as he started his swim. I eventually overtook him on the last length of the swim and so won my heat by 4 seconds. I got an email with the results on the next day and it turned out that I had finished second overall. That’s my best result ever, by miles, which was truly exciting! And just shows that if you want to get fit, and nice comfy gym is not the place to do it.

LEA has been on holiday for the past week or so, which has left me lots of time to both reflect on what is happening between us and avoid kissing other girls when drunk. Two feats which I have achieved with some pride, but, it remains incredible how much more interest I am attracting having told people im now ‘seeing’ someone. Its like you are flagged up as an acceptable catch when you’re seeing someone else, while you get pased over as potentially dodgy when you’re single. I think I might write this up as a post, if I can just find some time to waste at work.

Good weekends to you all.

Written on Friday, posted on Monday...

Hungover, I am, again, after Pub Thursday. There are no stories from the week so it will be a diary post today.

Wake boarding was cancelled last night due to it being too windy. We went down to the centre but the sea was really choppy and the two experienced guys both thought it would be rubbish, so we drove home and moaned about the weather. It has, apparently, been the wettest two consecutive summers ever in England. It feels like the summer has been stolen, but southern Europe has had better than average sunshine, so maybe not. It is made worse by not having a holiday to look forward to this year. There is no Brazil trip (though maybe next year…), and I haven’t booked another holiday as am really struggling with funds while trying to save up for a new car. I think once I get switched into winter mode ill quite enjoy it, but at the moment my body wants to lie in the sun, but the weather is so cold we have had to put the heating on.

This morning I have been reading a lot about the LHC and am quite interested in its results, despite not fully understanding the finer details of what is going to happen. It is by far the biggest and most exciting science experiment ever made. There is a really good science podcast on the BBC (here) the current episode of which is all about the LHC. If you have any science geek genes whatsoever you’ll probably enjoy it. I’ve just tried to put a clever status on my Facebook saying that the LHC was not as complicated as my HPLC (which is constantly going wrong) but it kept on crashing so I gave up.

This weekend brings the Bristol Half marathon, which is my last race of the season. I’ve lost a little bit of enthusiasm for training over the final few weeks, but am still hoping to run a PB, and will be gutted if I don’t get under 1h30m. My run training has been slightly different this year as ive done a lot more easy pace long runs (~20K) and occasional short sprints, as opposed to only running my usual 10K type distances. Ive also been playing 5-a-side footy once a week which I think is brilliant for speed training, but I guess we will see on Sunday.

Im back to the homeland tonight, so have got another date with LEA. Things are going ‘alright’, which is a step down from the first few weeks, but I think this is mainly because I haven’t seen her for 4 weeks. The reasons why, and the consequences of which can be analysed (and have been, by my head) for hours with few conclusive answers turning up.

What am I?

The familiar sensations come back to me as I walk into work. My legs ache, like all the toxins from last night have migrated down into my calves. My mind whirs as I flick through the memories of last night. I turn on the radio in my phone and plug in the earphones. The music sounds different. It has stopped being background noise. The tunes kick down the door to my mood and overpower my senses. I smile and sing. The songs mean nothing to me but my eyes are welling up. I feel euphoric as a thunderstorm soaks me and rain and tears run down my face.

Weird.

I get a sausage bap, a coffee, and retire to my office. I write this post. My legs still ache.

I’m hungover.

Wakey Wakey!

Yeah I went Wake boarding last night. Do you see what I’ve done with the title there?

A few of the guys from work go every week and there was a spare place on the boat so they asked me to come along. My only concern about doing it was getting injured as I’ve got the ‘Stol Half Marathon in 2 weeks, and I have seen quite a few of the first timers hobbling about the day after with a whiplash or crooked neck from a wipe out on their first go. I’ve always fancied giving it a try though so it seemed too go a chance to miss, and plenty of time to recover if it did all go wrong.

I’m really glad I decided to go too, it’s Fantastic Contraption-esque in how much fun it delivers and was a great evening. I think it was worth the £10 fee just to have a drive around Plym sound for a few hours, and we even had a hint of sunshine (which has been extremely rare this summer):



I got a lot of advice from the regulars on how to get standing up, which, apparently, is the most difficult part. Waz went first and zoomed around both sides of the wake and even pulled the ‘Michael Jackson’ pose, which as you might imagine involves your right hand grabbing your crotch and shouting something that sounds like ‘Shaaa-mon!’

It was soon my go and I sat in the water, legs bent, touching my arse with my heels as I’d been instructed. The boat pulled away, and as instructed I didn’t fight the rope, and tried to let the boat pull me up. After about 0.5 seconds I was in a desperate fight with the rope and boat didn’t seem to be pulling me anywhere but under the water. After about 1 second I was going head first, doing a quite convincing impression of a basking shark as gallons of water went into and swilled around my mouth, and then with no gills to escape from it all went down into my stomach. Not a good start, I thought, as I coughed it all back up again. My second go achieved a similar fate, and I was probably on about my tenth go before I eventually managed to get standing, then changing direction, and then crossing the wake before taking a dip. Looking back now I think I got too much advice at the start and did the best when I just pulled myself up on instinct rather than doing everything I had been told. On my last go the driver, Tam, gave me a ‘circle of death’ which is a first timers initiation involving him driving in a circle as fast as he can, everyone on the boat shouting ‘C-O-D!’ ‘C-O-D!’ as loud as they can, and me spinning wider and wider on the rope, going faster than I can, right up until doing my second impression of the evening, this time of a skimming stone that had been thrown by a professional stone skimmer, as I bounced over the water crooking my neck and giving myself whiplash.

Today I’m having to do that thing when you have to turn your whole body to look a different way, which is quite annoying, but nothing a nice rest won’t fix. I'm now wondering if I'm cool enough to pull off describing myself as a 'Boarder.

Probably not.