No good deed goes unpunished!

Wake at seven and let Norman into the garden, the house is cold, I turned down the thermostat before leaving to baby sit last night and forgot to turn it on again. I rectify this and when Norman jogs back up the path, pop back into bed until the central heating warms the place up, finally stirring around eight. Sarah thinks Norman is getting fat, despite his exercise regime, and objectively I am forced to agree. I feed him three times a day, we eat together, she used to feed him just once, in the evening. For an old dog, he needs to have smaller more frequent meals, but it isn't good for him to get fat, so I am controlling his rations. For humans it is best to match calorie input to output and so the bulk of the calories are best consumed at breakfast and lunch, the old saying, breakfast like a king, lunch like a lord and supper like a peasant, is pretty much my rule. I will include Norman in this plan, from this day forth, not believing in crash diets, for dogs or humans, we will ease him back to his ideal weight. We start with breakfast, I fry one pork sausage, two slices of black pudding, two rashers of smoky bacon, one tomato and one large egg. Normy has a quarter of my sausage, half a rasher of bacon, one slice of black pudding and the trimmings from my egg white. He seems happy enough with this, he mostly wants a bit of what I am having, he doesn't necessarily need a lot. After breakfast I drink coffee and listen to the news and then open my new pullover from "Woolovers", that arrived yesterday. The colour and quality are fine, but it is a little too large the shoulders dipping two inches down my arms. My weight, 80 kilos, and chest size 42", hasn't changed in twenty years, but during that time I have migrated from a medium, to extra large fitting and now, it seems, back to medium again, as manufacturing moved offshore and then later, vanity sizing was introduced. The company seems really good, there is a returns label and a no quibble policy and so I pack it up and ask them to replace it with a medium fit. I will post it later. After showering and dressing, we leave for Cherry Burton, shortly after ten, and after collecting Dolly and Teddy drive into Beverley and park in our usual
place. It is a clearer day today, not quite so mild, but still with an easterly breeze, the fog and mist have cleared. The trees are in tremendous colour, the elms, hornbeam and horse chestnuts, but the latter are losing leaves fast and in a few days will be bare. I notice that Leslie has called me, and when I call him back, he asks if I will take him to the doctors for four o'clock, I agree and then realise afterwards, that this means it won't be possible to maintain my swimming window at the pool. Still friends are more important than exercise, particularly ones in need. I decide to use this problem as an opportunity and plan to run this afternoon instead. Whilst I am reprogramming my day, and totally lost to the present moment, I walk past Black Mill and onwards towards Burton Bushes. Black Mill is where Dolly is trained to come back to the lead and of course she interprets my actions as permission to shoot off hunting rabbits. Teddy, Norman and I sit and wait on a bench by the eleventh green, up against the Western edge of the common. To no avail, we can hear her hunting in the hawthorn hedge behind us, which lies behind the fence and runs to the Newbald Road, which we must cross on our way to Burton Bushes. Rather than risk Dolly across the road, we retrace our steps back to Black Mill and Dolly meekly returns to be put back on her lead. Hunting holiday, courtesy of my absent mind, over for today. We make our way back to the car, down Newbald Road, the Hornbeams are in such a show of splendour, I snap them with my iPhone, quite an achievement when you are juggling three dogs on their leads. We drop the terriers back at Two Riggs and arrive home in Tickton for a quarter to one, Norman is really thirsty, so I fill his dish and then fetch the box with my winter running gear from the garage. Eventually, I assemble an old pair of silver shadow running shoes, Ron Hill trickster bottoms, yesterday's tee shirt from the wash and a navy track suit top. By now it is twenty to two, but I only intend an easy 5k around the fields, as I haven't run for a couple of months. I set off easily, down Green Lane, through the snickett onto Carr Lane and down to the bridge. My heart, lungs and core muscles are fine from the swimming, but my legs feel heavy and stiff. There is still a hint of a twinge in my left hip and so I will monitor this as I run. As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, balance is key, so I run tall and relaxed and start a seven count breathing pattern. I have detailed this before, but not recently, so it is, perhaps best to repeat the detail of the practice. Each breath is taken in a relaxed manner and counted up to seven, then counted down, all the way back to one again, and then the cycle is repeated. It works a bit like a mantra and helps to bring the mind back to the body and the awareness of the sensations of the senses as I run. The internal dialogue gradually fading away. After a while, the process becomes a habit and is relegated to the subconscious, and then there is just the awareness of moving through the landscape. At the little bridge I turn West into "almost straight wood", the first fifty feet are really boggy and I have to adopt a kind of cowboy style of running, bow legged with my feet to either side of the path, but then I am onto dry ground and the going is firm, dry and easy. Coming out of the wood I turn south and then the easy going comes to an end, the path has been churned up by tractors bringing in the harvest and then later, preparing the fields for next years sowing. Between the tractor tracks, the horse riders have made a bridal path and so that is pretty chewed up as well! No point worrying about it, that's just how things are today, it is harder on the legs and takes a little more concentration on balance, but a kilometre and a half later, I am back over the bridge and jogging my way home. The run takes just over a half hour, I hardly broke sweat, my legs aren't loose enough to put my heart and lungs under a serious load yet. The main issue is with my joints, I will space my running days with swimming and rest days and see how things go. I will be happy just to be able to run a couple or so times a week. When I get in, I make a pot of tea and a sandwich, Parma ham, Cheshire cheese and tomato, Norman begs for food and has to make do with a bit of Cheshire. Afterwards, I shower and dress, then drive to Molescroft to collect Leslie, stopping at the post office to despatch my parcel back to "Woolovers". Leslie is waiting for me, when I arrive and we load him and a wheeled walking aid, that he insists on taking, into the car. We leave with fifteen minutes to spare, to drive the half mile to the Doctor's surgery, behind Saint Mary's church, for Leslie's ten past four appointment. The traffic is very heavy, as it coincides with the school run, but we get there in time and I park in a disabled bay outside reception and then help Leslie inside to the desk. The receptionist is very helpful and doesn't mind me using the disabled parking, but then tells me its patrolled by the council. I figure that, if I get a ticket, I have a valid excuse and so leave the car where it is and take Leslie upstairs in the lift to the doctors waiting room. As far as I can tell, there is nothing actually wrong with the old boy, his nasal problem is clearing and the scab on his leg hardly merits a doctors visit. It seems to me that it is largely a matter of lost confidence, following his spell in hospital. Doctor Hill comes out and collects him after a few minutes and I wait for Leslie to return, and wait and wait and wait, for almost an hour. Other patients come and go and eventually I catch doctor Hill as he calls in another patient. He tells me Leslie left ages ago to have his leg dressed by the nurse. When we check, we find him downstairs, sat on a chair by the pharmacy. He tells me that everyone knows you come downstairs when you have seen the doctor! Doctor Hill found nothing wrong with Leslie, but has arranged for the district nurse to call in and change his dressing, which is what he was after from the outset. No point getting annoyed with the old boy, but it is most unlike him to be so absent minded or inconsiderate. I call at Tesco's to buy Norman some dog tins and pick up some stir fry vegetables for dinner and an unsmoked Loch Fine kipper for breakfast. It is six o'clock when I get in and my first task is too feed Normy, and then pack away the shopping, before taking him for his evening walk. It is almost dark as we set off and fully dark as we turn round by the farm and come home. Norman is in a very good mood and keeps stopping, forcing me to play "praise and pat" with him, scooting ahead twenty yards or so and then stopping with his tail wagging to do it all over again. Once back indoors, I do some ironing to Bob Dylan's "Modern Times", and then make my Thai chicken stir fry, I defrosted a filet, sliced it and marinated it in sesame oil, chilly, ginger and garlic before taking the dog out. This is now transferred to my new wok, quickly browned on both sides and then the vegetables and later the noodles, are added. It makes a pleasant change, but the alleged, Thai vegetables, lacked Thai basil or lemon grass, so perhaps not quite Siamese. After dinner I fiddle with the lap top, it won't download the latest version of iTunes and I can't synch my phone or iPad until this is done. It tells me to try to download them manually, but this function has been replaced by a new apple program called "bonjour". I used to be able to
program and do systems analysis, albeit, thirty years ago, but this is going to take me a while to sort out and I haven't the energy or will to do it this evening. I take the remains of a glass of Hock, that I drank with dinner, into the Garden room and notice Leslie has phoned half an hour ago. I call him back and find it is about our arrangements for Caffe Nero on Sunday. He couldn't remember what time I usually collect him. This is really worrying, as I always pick him up at ten. I suspect the episode with his legs, two weeks ago, may have been caused by a little stroke, which is what was suspected at the time and his poor memory and uncharacteristic behaviour, may be a consequence of this. I will talk to Liz his care worker and his daughter, Margaret tomorrow and ensure that we all keep an eye on him. To bed for eleven.