Fun Run

Our local Fun Run this year marked an extraordinary developmental stage in my life as a terrible mother; I remembered the SAFETY PINS!! with which to pin on the race numbers - first year in eleven!!! Hoorah hoorah hoorah! Previously, we have used needles, pins, blue tac, sellotape, and we've borrowed safety pins from various sad and pathetic people who thought ahead, but never, ever have we had our own.

I’ve done the 10K myself actually (not to boast!) I sourced a running group a few years back (all females – don’t be shy!) which coincided neatly with bath and bedtime. Alan was supportive of the get fit campaign (what with the golf), but a little cool about three runs a week. Nothing was said exactly, but if we’d taken positions it would have been I’m knackered and need a break versus I’m knackered and need a break more, with a subplot of ‘who’s bringing home the bacon/are you saying that’s more important?’. Anyway, I powered on, jumping from foot to foot at the pelicans as you do (don’t let the heart beat drop!), doing that lunge and stretch thing in public places, until I realised I felt so guilty about my absence from home, I was spending more time with the children before and after the run than if I’d just stayed home and ignored them as usual! I hammed up a slight knee-ache into a ‘sports injury’ and resumed faffing about in the kitchen furtively reading a book at that time of night. And I convinced myself that if everywhere I went I walked really really fast, I would get almost as much exercise (but look odd).

Back to the Fun Run, this year's 10K-ers trotted off in their undies, boobs-a-bobbin’, jowls-a-joggin’, ’you’re only as old as you feel!’, followed by the gorgeous tinies, Knees Up Mother Brown, arms akimbo, crying, laughing, a doughnut at the finishing line! Naturally I was far too busy being sycophantic about other peoples’ brilliant children to see my own actually run their races, but then other people were being sycophantic about mine, so it all evened out in the end. Can’t wait ‘till next year – perhaps I'll have a real hamper by then, darling!