Sunday Summary

Thank you all for being lovely this past week and bit while I've been a disgusting, snotty mess with a voice that has teetered between old man, teenage boy and donkey (we're now onto Jo Whiley, which is nice), and a frankly annoying-as-chuff cough that just keeps giving. (Really, it shouldn't bother.)

The grimitude still lingers on but I'm vanquishing it by, well, ignoring it, largely, or suppressing it with Olbas oil and hope.

This week, then, aside from coughing like a decrepit old mule, I have mostly been...

Reading 

Walking

I'm definitely on the mend (praise be): I managed a 1-hour-20 yomp back to Clapham on Thursday and I didn't diiiiiiie. And then a 3-hour yomp round Reigate (9 miles, for the record):

{I like my routes to have an element of whimsy...}

And I'm still aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!

Today's route started at Reigate Station and took me all the way up Pilgrims' Way (veh veh nahce hoises... bit out of my life range), and up through the chalk paths onto the Reigate Hill path. Veh veh nahce views.

{Don't look doooooooown...}

{Selfie with crow's-feet. Fresh air ages me.}

I then trailed a bunch of very earnest walking families with dogs onto a hairpin bend of a path which leads up to this wondrous structure in one corner of the field (a topograph, I'm told):

{View from the top-ograph...}

{#Show me the way to go hooooome...#}

After a long muddy yomp through the Four Acre Wood (sadly not the Hundred Acre Wood...) I found myself on the periphery of Gatton Park again, took a weird turning, walked part way down Wray Lane and rejoined the Gatton walk I'd done previously, but in the opposite direction.

More mud ensued, but it was a gorgeous sunny noontide so no harm done! Plus I had the sticks. Oh, those wondrous Nordic Poles. Lifesavers, if I do say so yet again.

{Green and pleasant land, what-ho?}

{PIG!}

By the time I'd ambled around the park, dodged the traffic and then moseyed home via Wray Mill

then pottered into town to do a quick circuit of the Memorial Park to make up time, I'd clocked up three hours. Rah.

My body is making me well aware of this accomplishment now, though I was also carrying the additional weight of my newly acquired 2L hydration bladder (it's a water bottle, not a catheter, let's just clear that up right now).

By the by... if these accounts have served to convince you as to my dedication to the cause, you can still sponsor me to walk the London 2 Brighton Challenge here or by clicking on the Sponsor Me link in the right sidebar of this blog page. #shamelessplug

Singing "Some day my prints will come"

...in tribute to having ordered £25 worth (eek!) of prints of my NYC photos. Actually, no, that doesn't really elicit an Eek reaction. The NY trip in September last year was a Bucket List item well and truly ticked, and I'm just sorry it's taken me up until now (over five months, what?!) to get my derriere in gear to start properly scrapbooking the whole experience.

{this one's going to be an enlargement,
to be framed!}

And since online photobooks are just too fiddly to assemble and don't really allow for the inclusion of souvenirs, I'm going back to dead trees and glue.

{the excellent travel journal
of Kondo Yoshi, via Pinterest}

Falling ever so slightly in love...

...with Lady Gaga. And here's for why: her blinkin' astounding performance of a Sound of Music medley at the Oscars last weekend:

As my friend AJ so rightly commented, she's wasted in pop. (Ditto Nicole Scherzinger, for that matter although actually Gaga surprised me more.)

Thanks to gorgeous Glenda for posting the Lady Gaga video on Facebook -- it pretty much made my week. Fallen Madonna who now?

{The internet is superb, isn't it?}

Weekly Weblinks

Literary Linkage

• National Book Tokens launches eBook gift card | See, that's just...

{I love this man. #justsaying}

• Why are so many adults reading YA? | Because it's an intelligent genre, maybe? Or we're regressing...
• Dahl and Kinney most read by UK school pupils
• Egmont rebrands Michelle Magorian titles | and they look beautiful

• US publisher Lerner acquires Egmont USA list
• Film adaptation on cards for Where'd You Go Bernadette
• 20 fabulous bookmarks | Thanks to Emma J for sharing

{Hungry hippos!}

• Waterstones recommendations are just getting weird | Bit rude. Still entertaining. 

Non-literary Linkage

• Young children must be protected from ingrained gender stereotypes
• The girl who gets gifts from birds | This is magical
• The Owl Bar: the next hip London thing...?

{Darwin thinks you've had one too many mojitos already...}

• Greedy possum! | Photoshopped? Maybe. (This is from the Daily Fail, nuff said.) Adorbs? Fo' sho'.

"Dude, stick a fork in me, I'm so done... Urrrrrrrrrrrrrrp."

And finally, to play us out...

• LOVE this tribute to 80s teen movies:

On that note, I'm off to dust off my pixie boots and dance off my distaste for adult authority. (Or maybe just watch that Gaga video again.)

Bye-zee-bye!

qb xx