the quirky brunette: Sunday Summary

Charlie, it's heeeeeeeere!

This week, I have mostly been...

Reading

And I have to say, I'm disappointed.

But then if the advice (hidden among the self-indulgent personal anecdotes, unrelated quotes and patronising chapter on 'Quantum Physics for Dummies') in this book is anything to go by, I'm already brilliant (and thus don't need this book anyway). Yeah. I'm just too darn busy with modern life to appreciate that brilliance. That's definitely it.

Here's my advice: NEVER TRUST A BOOK THAT USES STOCK FONTS. They're unlikely to use correct punctuation either, or in fact have a consistent title on the cover and the spine. Seriously. Everyday and Every day are not the same thing. A little kerning or a cheeky keyspace would have made all the difference.

Also, and this is fairly basic advice, really, never expect a book like this to give you enlightenment. You've got to search for the hero inside yourself. Or something. (With thanks to the M People.)

...Wow. That was barbed. Totally did not mean to be because actually, on this day, 8th February 2015, I am feeling fabulous. All the positive thinking and posting of deliberately over-perky sparkly affirmations (are they getting annoying yet? Are they? Are they? Oh good, I'll keep 'em coming!) is paying off.

Here's today's dose of Fab-ruary Fabulosity:

Walking

Here I'm going to give a little chuckle of a shout-out to my walking buddies of yesterday, Fiona and Bianka (of 'previous quirky brunette post' fame). Because I can absolutely laugh about it now! And yes, ladies, of course I'll go walking with you again. Just hand over the map and nobody gets hurt, OK? ;-)

Luckily, this didn't happen...

So when we met in the car park yesterday afternoon, armed with our Nordic poles (which by the way are probably lifesavers!), none of us had any idea that four hours later we'd be navigating empty golf courses, clambering over gates and under fences in the dark and wandering a very very very very long road, praying for higher-vis clothing, and hot dogs, and occasionally jumping into ditches to get out of the way of passing cars. (There may be some exaggeration afoot -- heehee, afoot! -- here but I'll let you work out where it is.)

Never a dull moment on what was intended to be a fairly standard circular walk around Chipstead and its environs:

I think this is the intended route?!

And it was going fairly well by the power of map-reading and GPS, with a couple of false moves -- but isn't that all part of the process? In hindsight, yes, of course it is. #chillyourbootsquirky

Until it transpired that someone had removed one of the all-crucial route arrows. Grr.

As a result, we went down, and up, and down, the same hill (ending up with trainers so dense with mud they resembled Hobbit feet) to find the next stage of the walk, before chancing it on an amended route towards Fanny's Farm Shop (excellent place, remind me to pay a visit when I'm more presentable) and then onwards... as it got gradually darker and darker.

Oh.

And there was me thinking a head lamp was a superfluous purchase for walking. Not so much. *adds to lengthy L2B shopping list*

There's something eerily Cyclops-y about this...

I'll say for the record here that I was of absolutely no use when it came to the orienteering, not to mention I was a lil' time-pressured by the fact I was due at Miss Evie's birthday party in the evening (at which I stood, wobbled, drank wine, ate Wotsits, and chatted to lovely people, then had to sit down on the floor for the duration!).

I remember now why most of my training routes are in straight lines, which even so bring their own problems. Wait, there was a pavement here a minute ago, why am I trekking on the hard shoulder?! Also, dangnabbit, Earlswood is a dull little town to walk through! (Apologies to Earlswood residents...)

But, hey. We clocked up 9.5mi yesterday (as opposed to the 7 we'd expected to do). So that was nice.

It's mildly circular!

I can look upon the chivvying emails from the London 2 Brighton Challenge brigade, telling me my training ought to have started in earnest by now, with pride and smugitude. Why yes, L2B, training has indeed started and I have the aching limbs to prove it.

BOOM!

By the by, if you're inspired by my capacity to move using my legs across long distances for a sustained period of time, please do sponsor me here. Big thanks!

And a massive salute to Bianka and Fiona who were actually just doing the walk for funsies!

Now, I couldn't move on from this post about walking and route-mapping without sharing a rather lovely TED talk that I've only just made time to watch, by a Yahoo! employee called Daniele Quercia << heehee, his name looks like 'quirkier'!:

If you don't have time to watch it, I'll summarise (oh and also, the transcript is here) -- it's about the creation of Happy Maps, paths across a city that don't necessarily take the quickest route between A and B but are the most appealing in terms of provoking happiness.

I wish I'd watched this talk before this weekend -- it certainly speaks to my inability to surrender control and just go with the path less trodden, because essentially I think that's where my greatest anxiety about walking lies: essentially I need to know where I'm going and not get lost going there. Which I think is fair when I'm walking alone. Common sense, really. But less so when I'm in a group when there's safety in numbers.

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