Evil has come to our town.
Crusty, chewy, succulent evil.
Merthyr now has its own Papa John's. This spells all kinds of doom for all kinds of Disappearing efforts, and today, when d got out of work, we went to give it the blessing of our patronage.
Given that the weather today has been all kinds of apocalyptic - I was out of the door ten seconds when the sky started throwing little pellets of fuckyou (or hailstones, as the rest of the world rather boringly insists on calling them) at me - I had figured that today might be one of those wondrous, joyful things we like to fondly imagine are necessary - a rest day from the routine of exercise.
But as we sat in our flat, moaning rather indecently given we were on separate couches, and chewing our Papa John joyfulness, the sun did a rather unfriendly thing and beamed through our window, as if to say 'Ohhhh no - you're not pinning this shit on me, pilgrim, I'm here if you want me.'
So, I grabbed my trainers (I have yet to convince my body we're taking it seriously enough again to stap on the walking boots - not least because every time I do that, I get pigging blisters!), and trudged out of the door.
Wales, as I've mentioned before, is not flat. In fact, if you were looking for absolute antonyms of Welshness, 'flat' would probably win hands down. I wanted something slightly different from my Trail walk, which saves most of its uphill stretches for the return journey, so instead I looked towards Thomastown. Thomastown, for those who've been with the blog a while, or who know the topography of Merthyr, is up what I'm pleased to call a Hail Mary Mother of Fuck of a Hill. Since I've been living in Merthyr this time round, I've tackled that hill many a time.
I've never been this heavy when I've done it. In fact, it's fair at this point to recall that I've not really been this heavy while living in Merthyr...erm...ever, I don't think. So instead of the straight up (and I do mean straight up) kill-me-now of a hill, I tackled the thing with a puff pastry principle - walking along one way, making a little upturn, and walking back the other - acheiving the rise in altidue in a series of at least theoretically more manageable inclines (it's possible I've been married for a foodie too long for this reference to make automatic sense to non-foodies, because this naturally feels like puff pastry to me - it's all about the layers). By the time I got to Thomastown Park, I was still practically begging for death from any wandering deity or demon. A detour over to my mother's place to check on her, as she's been suffering from the bastard son of a thousand lurgis recently, and I managed to rack up something a little over three miles. With a whole hell of a lot more up involved than my Trail route ever feels like. So, technically a light day, exercise-wise, and a heavy food day, with the discovery of Papa John's. But still, the joy about doing a truly painful walk is that you feel ridiculously virtuous at the end of it, whatever the numbers actually say. I'm not sure what this inherent masochism in the human spirit is all about, but you do feel like you've 'earned' your dinner if you happen to feel bloody awful after some exertion, whatever the reality might be.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sink, Bertie Wooster-like, beneath the water of a hot, reviving bath. one rather feels one has 'earned' that too, having walked a painful walk. The dangerous thing of course is that the same logic whispers into your brain that you've earned a big slab of chocolate as well...
Argh - to the bath!
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