bikes in the rain

On the very last day of the Commonwealth Games, the road race very nearly passed by our front door, so I took some annual leave from work and Dulcie, my mum and I headed down to cheer on the cyclists.

Shortly after arriving, the rain began and it ended up being that oh-so-Glasgow brand of particularly soaking rain.  After half an hour or so, we headed home, all of us wet right through to our pants...and beyond!  Ooh-err, this paragraph sounds v dodgy.  Sorry about that.

Dulcie seemed to enjoy herself despite the weather.  She was stamping her feet and singing, waving at every cyclist or police escort who went by.  She also made friends with a lady from a distant land who kindly shared her umbrella.  I enjoyed it too and was glad to have seen some sport while the Games were in town, but was more than happy to head home and watch it on TV, listening to the helicopter flying overhead at each lap.

fabulous felt shop

Have you seen this amazing hand-stitched corner shop/newsagent?  Wow!  It's been made by Lucy Sparrow and can be visited (if you're in London town) for the whole of August.  Full details here.

dulcie's day out

Dulcie and Graham are still enjoying the bike seat and have been venturing a little further afield.  Last weekend they went to Erskine, cycling over the Erskine bridge (famous suicide spot...as you can see!) to visit Graham's parents.

Dulcie had a great time.  Granma's house is full of "glitz and glam" (as Granma herself would describe it!) and all the sorts of things Dulcie mysteriously loves, including this giant leopard.

Dulcie came home full of beans and news about her day.  The bike seat has really been a great addition to our family life.

time-travelling tuesday (part 13)

11th April 1988

Today I went back to school.  To my horror.  We had those tiddly orange seats.  I wrote a letter to Kim.

12th April 1988

Today I wrote my spellings in my very best writing. [Very neatly written!]

I am a genius. 13th April 1988

Today Miss Murial Mickey came to visit us.  She is learning to be a teacher.  She is Margaret's cousin.

14th April 1988

At school we had a fire practice.  I went to brownies.

To you

From me

xxx

15th April 1988 25 days until my birthday

Today I went to tap and ballet.  I had a very boring day.

To Donna

From Laura

xxx

16th April 1988

There was a film on TV called Splash it was very good. [Still love that film!]  Mind you I have seen it before.  Some people came to look at the our house.

17th April 1988

At Sunday school we got at juice and biscuits.  I fell over.

Made willie warmer for dad.

PS It did not fit.

goodbye, games

It's been fun having the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, not that we saw very much SPORT, per se (just a wee bit of the men's cycling road race yesterday) but the general atmosphere has been nice and I've been most entertained by seeing our town on the telly every day.  

I don't think this Marks & Spencers biscuit tin is an official commemorative item, it's more Highland games than Commonwealth Games, but it will be our souvenir of this very brief time...or that's what I used as my excuse for buying it anyway!  Mmm, shortbread :)

100

Recently, a lady in our neighbourhood turned 100.  As part of her birthday celebrations, she had these display boards on her fence, one for each of her ten decades, explaining what was happening in the world at that time and what she herself was doing back then.  In her 30s she was fostering Jewish children during the Second World War, for example.  Pretty amazing to think someone who's still around today was doing that back then - makes you realise how recent all these things really are.  The boards even had little devices to play sound clips, so you could hear things like the hymn that was played at her wedding.  It was really sweet and interesting and lots of people were stopping to look.  Such a nice idea :)

swim challenge!

This lovely swimming print available here.  Yes, I seem to have lot of swimming-related Etsy favourites!

I've mentioned recently that I've been trying to swim a bit more.  Exercise is very important for my heart condition.  Fortunately, I walk pretty much everywhere, which means I'm regularly doing something active, but I've been getting increasingly frustrated with myself for not managing to take a more focussed approach.  The amount of walking I do is better than nothing and keeps me ticking over, but I really want to try to use exercise to IMPROVE my heart function.  I was trying to find a way for somebody else to keep me on track and tell me off if I started flagging, but the NHS wouldn't provide anything and hiring a drill sergeant at the gym wouldn't fit in with the rest of my life.  I felt like I needed some structure or goal, though, in order to keep me going, so I came up with a little swim challenge for myself. 

I'm aiming to swim the equivalent of the Channel in six months.  This sounds pretty pathetic when you think that people generally swim the Channel in a oner, but it works out at an average of 52 lengths per week, which seems like a good amount for me - just enough so that I can't skip swim sessions for no reason, but not so much that it's unachievable if I genuinely can't make it along some weeks.  I'm one week into the challenge so far and have actually managed an impressive 96 lengths this week - got to make good use of the temporary live-in baby-sitters while we have them!

I can see that having the "official" challenge is already working in the way I'd hoped it would.  I wasn't feeling great yesterday and every length was a struggle.  Ordinarily, I might have allowed myself to stop after 10 lengths on a day like that, but I was thinking how I'd be away for a week soon so I had to make the best use of the time I had, and I ended up doing a much more respectable 44 lengths as a result.

Frustratingly, I'm not really in control of my own health.  Most people would be be able to expect to see some cardiovascular benefit from something like this, but not so me.  I had my regualr exercise test recently so I know what my VO2 reading was.  It hadn't changed since it was tested four months earlier and I'm hoping, when it's tested again in around four months' time, that I'll see an improvement and be able to give myself an official pat on the back, but I know this is not really something that's in my control - it might get worse despite all this and, even if it improves, that might have more to do with my medication and pacemaker doing what they're meant to (but don't always) do.  I'm trying to look on it in terms of doing something has got to be better than doing nothing and I need to try to do everything I can to stay well.  The possible lack of real results is why I think it's so important for me to have these other artificial goals to work towards.

Anyway, I've set up a wee ticker thingy so that I can keep track of my Channel-swimming progress.  You'll see it if you scroll down to the bottom of my blog.  96 lengths down, 1264 to go!