See that Tattie run!: June 2011

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

perhaps I spoke too soon

Huzzah! Perhaps my endemic pessimism has been misplaced once more?! Having had the weekend off exercise yet again, I decided to go out for a bit of a run tonight on flatter ground than I've been used to, if only so I could cover more distance. It gets a bit boring doing the same route time after time as well, so I decided to run up to Clapham Common via the delights of Kings Avenue & the ...

.....ah, forget it, I've no energy to think of a title

I write this with some difficulty, given my arm is stuck to the computer desk. I think it may have melted. After no summer to speak of so far, Mother Nature appears to have accidentally leaned against the thermostat after one too many sherries and south London has turned tropical.

We were promised a thunderstorm to dispel this two-day heatwave, but it has yet to arrive. It's pretty damn ...

Sunday, June 26, 2011

We've escaped the city for the weekend and I'm writing this in the sunshine outside my sister's house in the Cotswolds. A lamb roast is in the oven, as we await the return of her husband Chris from sheep-shearing duty. In the absence of tractors or landrovers coming up the lane, the scene makes me feel like we've gone back in time to the 18th century - half expecting a horse-drawn hay cart to ...

Off my Feis

Right - first things first - the Supajam offer was entirely genuine and we got in to the Feis on Saturday with absolutely no trouble. Fair play to them - considering there were allegedly 500 tickets, the queue we were in had what appeared to be a couple of thousand in it by the time we arrived. But they didn't seem to be arguing - my friend's bar code had apparently 'already been used', but his ...

We're in!

Cowering from the rain behind an ice cream van listening, aptly, to the Waterboys. Thanks Supajam! Less than an hour to get in. Now revelling in Irishness with several thousand countrymen

... But we're not exactly at the front either

At least we're not at the back of the queue

At the back of a very long queue

It seems the whole of London was the lucky winner of a Supajam ticket

London Feis

It's raining heavily on and off; the wind is battering the branches of the tree in the back garden off our bedroom window; I'm nursing a gentle hangover - all the ingredients of an Irish June afternoon, and therefore fitting that the London Feis is taking place in Finsbury park this weekend.

Time to test the Supajam free ticket offer. I received an email from them during the week ...

Steppe By Steppe - the blog

A mere 11 months after leaving for Mongolia; only 10 after arriving in Ulaanbaataar, I have finally begun blogging about our adventure.

I was able to post limited messages from the road via SMS to the official charity website whilst we were away; I've always intended to flesh out the story in greater detail so that when I'm old and doddery, I can look back and remind myself that we actually did ...

And as suddenly as they began...

...the views of my photos on have Flickr ceased....

Guess I'll never know what was directing people to the two Pepsi sign photos. Bit disappointed they stopped just short of 1,000 views though.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Mum's on a road trip

Yep, as we speak, my mum is in the sleepy Spanish town of Loja, in Granada - halfway through a road trip from Alicante on the west coast of Spain, to the Algarve on Portugal's south coast.

I got a text from her this evening saying that they had stopped at a basic but comfortable hotel because they were knackered from driving all day; the next plan was to get some food in the restaurant and h...

Token running post

Finally got back out for a run tonight, and it wasn't as bad as feared, in that my shin didn't splinter into a million pieces as I trudged up a hill.

The time wasn't actually too bad, and I don't appear to be in any more pain afterwards than I was before I started. Maybe I'll be ok for the 10K after all....

Even the dumbass middle aged munter who tried to run me off the path in the park by ...

Running update

Was gonna go for a run tonight to test out my wonky shin. Ended up having a couple of pints in the Regent on the way home instead. Best to rest the leg for a bit longer I think. Can't be too careful.

Monday, June 06, 2011

Put my feet where my mouth is

As it were.

I've just been idly clicking on the 'next blog' link (at the top of the screen if you cast your eyes upwards) to see who my neighbours are on Blogger. It appears that in the years that have elapsed since I last tried this, Blogger has somehow worked out a way of categorising the sites, and they have me down as a runner with a passing interest in New York. This is all well and good, ...

Supajam part two

I've noticed a lot of traffic coming to the blog trying to establish whether or not Supajam is a scam - as I alluded to in my earlier post, I don't think it is, albeit I'm not 100% convinced that there'll be as many tickets as 'ticket holders' should everyone decide to rock up en masse on the 18th of June.

For what it's worth, and given a further fortnight's reflection, I can't really ...

Wonderlust King

Have I posted this before? I make no apologies for sticking it up here again, if so. It seems odd that I wouldn't have already shared it - my favourite band, one of their best songs and part of the official soundtrack to our trip to Ulan Bator last summer - not to mention being an inspiration for getting off my arse and seeing a bit of the world in the first place.

Admittedly the ...

900 up

I promised something epic for my 900th post to the blog, but after 5 days spent not writing anything because it seemed inadequate, I looked back through previous significant milestones and discovered that I've pretty much failed to acknowledge 800, 700 or 600 either. Pressure off, then. Maybe I'll time my new-found productivity to coincide post 1000 with the Queen's ...

привет!

Ever wondered what our friends in Russia see when they log on to this very site? Of course you have.

The sight of Cyrillic takes me back to last summer, as we bumped and juddered through Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan & Mongolia. In particular, the "Who am I" section in the top left - translated to "Кто я?" - reminds me of the song that sound-tracked our first few minutes in Siberia, ...

Wrong again

So, turns out I conformed to stereotype once again last night, jumping to a pessimistic conclusion that I hadn't 'won' any Olympic tickets when there was still a full hour for the money to leave my account.

Admittedly, it wasn't so much negativity as a general inability to grasp basic tenets of timing - something I excelled at in New York, whether dragging everyone out of bed to get to a pub at ...

See that Tattie run!