A Bug's Life

is that you get home and it feels late and it's dark and you think "Is it dinner time?" and you look at the clock and it's a quarter to five :-/

As I said on Twitter: 20.1 miles, 42000 steps, 7.5 hours, 3 blisters, 0 getting losts, 2 muddy boots, £312.50 donated, thanks to all for your support. Cold, windy and muddy but no rain, and only a day after schedule.

If you have been waiting for me to finish it before donating money, now is your time!

http://www.justgiving.com/BradshawWalk

I'm fit for the walk, but it will be very muddy underfoot. Those who thought it might be fun to meet me in a pub at the end - the landlord will be saying "Not in those muddy boots, you're not!" I have brought a couple of stout carrier bags for the rest stops I hope to make, I can't carry much especially a change of shoes.

doubtingmichael warned me last night that the rowers had been called to have their morning rowing cancelled, with the overnight rain and the winds gusting to 24mph. I might have been a little blasé - winds? Pah. It's not meant to be a pleasant walk. But I don't know what winds that strong are like. They look pretty gusty. I hope they're on my back, not in my face.

I get of the train at Ely at 9am and the sun sets at 4pm, which is an incentive to keep the pace up, though the last 2-3 miles are through town so that's less of a worry.

I'm glad I don't have to worry about being homeless in this. <-- shameless emotional blackmail to encourage donations to Shelter.

And thank you to everyone who has given their support, in words and/or money, this has raised £282 so far. Awesome!

http://www.justgiving.com/BradshawWalk

London trip on Sunday is off due to no fast trains and me not being up to the 1.5 hour slow trains... And the weather looks good on Sunday, well, better than Saturday... And my back has to go out for dinner tonight which makes it sore... And tamaranth has more brain than me and suggests I do the Ely walk on Sunday instead. First train is 9am so I lose an hour's daylight, and I have to go in to work the next day, but that looks like a plan!

Right, let me spend Saturday doing physio etc...

[bit nervous now!]

http://www.justgiving.com/BradshawWalk

I seem to have recovered and got my walk on again (10 miles today, I think my pedometer is broken, just walked around Cambridge but it thinks I've climbed the equivalent of 70 flights of stairs today - Cambridge, FitBit, really!) and Plan A of Ely walk on Sat 24th might well be back on again instead of postponing. Get it out of the way, eh? It's getting so dark of a late afternoon.

There's antimony, arsenic, turmeric, Silurian,
And cardomom and cinnamon and nitrogen and Cybermen,
And fennel, neodymium, Tythonian, Crinothian,
And Auton, Peladonian and heracleum persicum

I've been planning and thinking and I shall do SwDrWaMo in November. That's the software testing course I booked with last year's work training budget, making a dress, the sponsored walk with associated training, and month.

But first, laundry...

I'm doing a sponsored walk - not an organised one, as the dodgy joints mean I'd bad at reliably turning up on a specific day to do something then queuing with a mass of people at the official start point, but an, um, disorganised one? An opportunistic one? 18-20 miles from Ely to Cambridge, but in November/December so it will be cold and dark and probably wet. I'm aiming for Nov 24 but if that doesn't work I'll try the next weekend, and the next, until it happens. And that is how a bugshaw breaks the barrier to doing a charity walk. Sponsor me here if you like - I'm raising funds for Shelter - thank you!
http://www.justgiving.com/BradshawWalk

Books read (56-60)
I, Phone, David Wake (2012)
How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Stewart Lee (2010)
The Duplicated Man, James Blish and Robert Lowndes (1953)
Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume, Jeff Smith (1991-2004, 2004)
The Apocalypse Codex, Charles Stross (2012)

Films watched (140-142) 1 at the cinema, 2 DVD
Life Is Sweet
Looper (rewatch)
The Revengers Tragedy

Gigs (10-12)
Katzenjammer (Cambridge)
John Cooper Clarke (Cambridge)
Salon Rouge again - still not sure if a club night counts as gigs, theatre etc. I think this one does.

Books incoming 34-35 (1 purchase, 1 loan) (read 27/35).

Three films in a month? That's nothing! But I have watched two full seasons of The Sopranos, and would have seen Skyfall if it weren't sold out.

I love my Fitbit pedometer. I ought to stop saying that, as a little message lights up when you pick it up and recently it has been "CUDDLE ME" or "SMOOCHIES" rather than the more fitness-oriented "WALKIES" or "GOOOOAAAAL".

I walked it back from the cinema this evening, and can see on its activity log the ten minutes for which it was lying on the street as it fell off my trousers and I walked back and forth looking for it while not logging any steps. Cool. I am glad to have it back.