Month: January 2025

I haven’t made a farewell note — I probably won’t, to be honest — but I’m trying to unstick myself from Facebook and Twitter (BlueSky seems non-toxic so far, with a robust fountain pen community, and Insta, however much I mistrust Meta/Zuck, makes Margaret laugh). My hope-plan entails leaving my accounts in place, leaving links to my blog and other pointers away from Face/X.

Partly I’m leaving in order to put my energy where my mouth is: on the blog. I still keep my news reader alive and refreshed, and I have been trying to keep up a reasonably consistent frequency of blog entries. But I realised that I was blogging less because I was reading less; and I’m reading less partly because my workload (first at Seabury, then at Glasgow, then especially at St Stephen’s House) has cracked my concentration, but also partly because Twit/Book had trained me to read only snippets, and to read snippets obsessively. I read social-media-panic reports sceptically, but I can’t deny my own experience: it’s easy for me to spend an hour scrolling through the feeds of my very, very many Facebook and Twitter friends, and it’s hard for me to sit down and immerse myself in a fictional world, and much harder still to read through an essay in biblical studies.

I still have work to do. I can’t let that pattern stand unchallenged.

So I will be trying, trying, trying to break the spell.

Got my miles in, at a slightly better time than yesterday. I’ll give a rolling average after my next run. Coffee and fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, ran some errands, coffee and toast, accomplished some work tasks, now it’s time for lunch. More tasks after lunch.

There’s still more than a week of January left? How can that be?

Two miles (adequate pace, will give a rolling average once I figure it out in a spreadsheet), coffee and hot breakfast, shower and Morning Prayer, safeguarding workshop homework and Staff Meeting, then — heaven permitting — some time to take care of other miscellanea.

Two miles, at an inglorious pace (which time I won’t disclose here just yet), coffee and fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, coffee and toast, started a PixelFed account. Now to resolve some marking debts, referee a submission, maybe read a little today, and prepare for a thrill-packed DCC meeting this evening. Not thinking, for a few minutes at a time, about the political catastrophe in the nation where my children and grandchildren (and Goose) live.

We did well at the Mayor’s pub quiz at the Crown & Thistle; no sport questions and most of the music questions involved music that did well in the US (and also, little to no house/club music); we finished toward the middle of the pack, perhaps the upper middle. Yesterday, two miles in the morning, then a good Mass, then I scuttled to the King’s Head & Bell to enjoy a hearty lunch with Rosie, Brendan, and especially Edith (who is way more articulate than last time I saw her). Then bounced back to St Helen’s for the Epiphany Readings and Music followed by our annual Epiphany Tea. At the end of the Tea, I staggered home and curled up in a quivering bundle of exhaustion.

Two more miles this morning, and as I ran I thought that it was time to begin clocking my runs again (see what I did there?). I haven’t felt any progress over the past couple of years; I imagine that my determination that ‘just the running itself is the point’ — true as it is — was letting me slouch through tepid efforts without much progressive benefit. I’ll feel free to give myself untimed days now and then, but I anticipate timing my runs once again beginning tomorrow (and reporting to you, inquiring reader, after a few days).

Meanwhile, I’m nearing the bottom of my cup of coffee, I’ll shower and go to Morning Prayer, then a meeting at church, then home, then I’ll offer a Home Communion at Fr Keith’s flat, then home again…

Pub quiz tonight, so I’ll have to ratchet up my recall…

Two miles, hot breakfast, Morning Prayer (at home), time to do something productive, or just read.

Two more miles, same 2°, reluctant legs that got limber for a short interval about q third of the way through, then settled back into leaden torpor, then coffee, then Morning Prayer (followed by a power cut that set off the fire alarm’s ‘fault’ alert), breakfast at R&R, home to oversee the kennel as they await the groomer (in the positive, hair styling, sense). En attendant la toiletteuse….

Two miles, 2°, coffee and a banana, shower, Morning Prayer, home for another cup of coffee and toast, then gnawing away at parish email-paperwork and some leftover marking. The excitement never abates….

I joked a couple of days ago about the temperature seeming balmy because it had risen all the way to 2°, but today it was 7° when I ran. Since I was mildly jubilant about the rise from -5° to 2°, you might think I would be even more exhilarated at this morning’s temperature. You’d miss your guess, though; the cold mist soaked into my bones and made the air feel even colder than 2°. So, and adequate run, but nothing special. Then I made a hot breakfast for myself, coffee (lots), Morning Prayer, home to make lunch, then staff meeting, ‘Preachers’ Group’, and now home for the afternoon.

I should mention that over the past three weeks, the plantar fasciitis that has beset me on and off over fifteen years has ebbed again, for the time being. My experience of fasciitis has been that its onset and alleviation have been quite random. I wear the same shoes, with the same insoles, for months, and one day my plantar fascia flares up and hobbles me. For months after, my foot feels more or less the same — generally sensitive when I overdo, susceptible to flares if I wear dress shoes for too long. Then after a while, usually after a long while, I notice that my foot felt normal all day, and the day after, and the weeks after that. Nothing I do by way of exercise seems to make a positive or negative difference beyond the time I spend stretching, or resting, or rolling on a ridged roller, or any other tactic. ‘Walk it off’, as my Little League coach used to say.

Not that warm, of course, but the difference between running in -5° and running in 2° is striking. A good run, coffee and fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, some paperwork at church, then home to work on various odds and ends, some ecclesiastical and some academic.