The Gumshoe Principle

Second day, second five mile walk. Cos, y'know, that's such fun.

Can honestly tell you, at several points along yesterday's reintroduction the the business of going places by foot for the simple act of going places and coming back, travelling, as it were, for the sake of travelling, I was fairly convinced I was dying.

Today there were fewer of those, but more points at which I just felt singularly cheesed off in the doing of it - possibly the result of added drizzle, so there being less of a Snow White, Jimminy Cricket Disneyfied lightness of soul to the whole thing, and more of a Philip Marlowe, Didius Falco, thank you all you gods of gumshoes trudge about it instead.

Still, it's done, and for better or worse, in the last 28 hours, I've walked ten miles, about which if you'd asked me yesterday morning, I would have told you was a physical impossibility for me right now. If nothing else, the Gumshoe Principle of having to walk somewhere to be able to say you've done something, and once you've started out, having no option under the stars but to walk the hell back, gives one a certain Eeyore-like fatalism about the whole thing. At some point between A and B, X amount of distance will have been covered, carved out of the day by one's own feet.

I should be grateful, really - at the point at which I had a Snow White song in my heart about the idea of going walking today, the heavens opened and pissed all over the idea. 'Get thee to an exercise bike,' suggested d, and that looked like being the plan for a while. Then she discovered she needed a bit of kit for work, so I had to walk it over to her in any case. The sky was vaguely blueish, like a young child trying to be brave about the suffering of the day after a crying jag. So I chanced it down the Taff Trail, sans coat, sans hat, sans thankfully not everything. it opened up again before I'd hit my turnaround point. Had a couple of distinctly iffy Doctor Who audio stories for company, which perhaps didn't power my steps on, but at least allowed me to put my mind in neutral, which is as good a way of covering distance as any other when you get right down to it.

Oh yeah, you'll want to know weigh-in figures, won't you?
Well, they're odd.

This morning, pre-bathroom, I weighed in at 19st 2.75. Which is less than I expected. Normally of course, I would never have taken this as the final weigh-in figure, but if I tell you that at 20.40 there has yet to be an opportunity to record a post-bathroom figure, you can see I have little in the way of options.

So on we go to Wednesday, with a stomach that feels full and bloated (Bran flakes, bananas, a chicken and bacon slice and a small pot of rice pudding, since you ask), feet that feel disorientated, and like they've forgotten how to be feet, and a due sense of exhaustion and achiness