The Lion Sleeps Tonight

After a tough week with several sleepless nights I seem to have regained some inner peace; for now at least.

'Hush, my darling, don't fear, my darling
The lion sleeps tonight'

I seem to have been permanantly cold since Friday. It doesn't matter how many layers I put on, my hands and feet are cold and are refusing to warm up. I've increased the heating in my flat and am sitting writing this with a hot water bottle stuffed up the back of my jumper. There are no radiators to sit against here, only night storage heaters.

The weekend seemed to pass by very quickly. We celebrated Tom's birthday (my eldest son) on Saturday, which involved lunch in the pub (mmm feta and tomato salad and baguette, and two glasses of white wine and soda), followed by a walk and ice creams on the sea front, birthday cake in the afternoon, and Mum's home cooked mexican dinner, yom yom! In the evening we watched Shakespeare in Love; a great film but rather too many sex scenes for comfort given the presence of my sons. Andrew missed the rude bits as he'd nodded off!

Andrew and I had been out for hill reps at Branscombe at 6am and managed to squeeze eight climbs into the two hours we had spare. The first couple of reps were done in the dark. As the sun rose the low cloud formed an inversion in the valley which gradually sank away to nothing as the sun gained height and warmth. It was a beautiful sight.

The hill starts as a gradual slope on short grassy pasture, then ramps up a bit through a second field to a style and a flight of steps. The steps are pretty big and are rough cut into the earth with wooden retaining faces that stand proud above the treads. It had rained a lot overnight and the treads were full of water. After the steps its back onto a short but fairly steep section of pasture to a low earth wall which marks the top. Interestingly, it's the least steep section of the ascent that I find the hardest. Descending I find the steps require a huge amount of concentration as they're quite big and its really easy to allow my knees to lock up giving a tendancy to pitch forward; I'm wary of tripping over the wooden faces and hurtling downwards head first.

Mum had made us a picnic breakfast of sausage baguettes. There was something really special about eating these by the sea under the canopy of the not yet open tea shop. There was noone else around but we had plenty of company as we shared the cover with a colony of chirpy sparrows.

On Sunday we were up early again for a 6:30 start. Andrew, Sam and I ran to Branscombe along the cliff path and back. We started with headtorches but didn't need them for long as it became light soon after we set off. The run went well and at a faster pace than last time; I was proud of Sam for keeping up without complaint, even managing a sprint finish with Andrew!