USB Sockets for Bertie: Update 1

On 10 July I outlined my plan to fit some USB sockets in Bertie and said that all the parts were on order. I patiently waited for them to arrive, then waited some more whilst one incorrect delivery was corrected (seller’s mistake) and one item was reordered (the switch I’d ordered was, I decided, too small).

Once everything was in hand, I must have either been distracted elsewhere or the weather was miserable for the rest of that week as no further progress was made. I had plenty of free time last week, but I’ve too many times done myself a mischief whilst carrying out tasks that involve contorting myself and kneeling a lot, which was something I couldn’t afford whilst my focus was on completing the Virtual Lakeland 50. I then procrastinated some more, waiting for a nice warm day, but today I resolved to get the task done, starting with drilling some holes into a bit of scrap wood* to check the fit of the switch/sockets before wielding the drill in Bertie's direction.

Holes in a piece of scrap chipboard - a new low in illustrative blog photos? 

I confess that at no point in planning this job did it occur to me that I would need any new hole saws/drill bits as I assumed I already had the right sizes. The test holes established that I could certainly get away with using 22mm and a 32mm respectively, but both are a bit big so require the switch and socket to be perfectly centred so as not to show any gap around the edge. 

I dithered a bit then decided it was worth the expenditure and wait to buy the appropriate sizes (cue another chunk of time lost to choosing exactly which bits to buy and from where).

I couldn’t let another day slip by without any progress, particularly as it was such a nice day, so I’m pleased to say that I have now run the cables through Bertie’s belly and to the places they need to be.  It proved to be surprisingly easy; I didn’t even have to holler to Mick for help and was all done in half an hour.

To be continued…

^{(*Absolutely no good reason why I didn’t do that last week or the week before and, in hindsight, it’s a shame that I didn’t.})

Virtual Lakeland 50 – Day 7

What a good night’s sleep I had! My first awareness this morning was Mick getting out of bed and my first thought was “Gosh, I’m hungry!”. Mick looked like he was heading to the kitchen, so I mumbled a request for a bowl of porridge to go with my cup of tea.

Having completed the required 50-miles yesterday, there appeared to be little reason for me to head out for another 3.5 miles, except that the event organiser had requested that all participants go out today (wearing something green) to run up a set of steps. This was by way of substitute for ‘Jacob’s Ladder*’, the stone-staircase of a path that leads up onto the fells from Tilberthwaite (the final Checkpoint) on the way to Coniston (the finish line).

Last Monday, during my first run of the event, I wracked my brains and could not think of a single set of steps nearby. Then on Tuesday I remembered these:

I would have sworn this ‘flight’ comprised only two or three steps. Must usually take them two at a time!

They couldn’t be considered in any way comparable to real thing (the ascent in the final 3.5 miles of the real Lakeland 50/100 is just under 300m), but they were the best I could do.

At the very civilized time of 0940, I headed out the door with Mick, who was going to accompany me, not only because he likes my company and needed to go for a run today anyway, but also (and more importantly) to photograph my ascent of the steps.

Can you see the man cutting the bush to the left of the steps? Our behaviour must have seemed odd from where he was standing!

We then tootled back home where I didn’t waste much time in addressing my ravenous hunger!

Here’s 2.5 minutes of video** coverage of the outing:

If the thumbnail above doesn't work, use this link.

I think I’m going to have a rest from running tomorrow!

^{(*Jacob’s Ladder is not a name you’ll find on the map. Jacob was a young lad who died of cancer last year, after whom the Lakeland 50 & 100 events have unofficially named the path from Tilberthwaite. As well as the Lakeland events being fundraisers for the Epic Kidz charity (they reckon the entry and merchandise fees from this virtual event will have raised £65k) they also ‘charged’ a charitable toll in aid of Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group(nominally £1) for going over Jacob’s Ladder.}

^{**Incidentally, it took me a dozen attempts to manage the voice over bit in a way that was both coherent and fitted into the available audio space!)}

Virtual Lakeland 50 Day 6

I said yesterday that I was having an (almost) rest day today, with just 2.1 miles to cover to take me to the virtual Tilberthwaite checkpoint.

Then last night, for no objectively good reason, I thought it would be nice to finish the 50 miles in 6 days rather than 7 (in fact, if I hadn’t been so tired after my second 4am start, I probably would have gone back out right then, to finish in 5 days), so when I woke up at 0550 this morning, I crept out of bed to do exactly that.

I’d not got as far as the bedroom door before I realised that my shoulders and neck were really sore. My assumption (incorrect, as I’ve now worked out*) was that I must have slept funny. As I got dressed I kept under-balancing** and in a conversation with Mick before I set out, I repeatedly got my worms words mixed up. It didn’t bode entirely well, but except for the sore shoulders, I felt fine, so at just gone quarter to seven, off I went.  

Ten minutes later I was having an intracranial debate as to whether I should just revert to Plan A. My legs felt fine and I was alert, but just why was I doing more than necessary, when I could be back home in another 10 minutes, leaving myself fresh for tomorrow? My route gave me the option of cutting short after 2.5 miles, so I told myself that was my decision point – a cunning ploy because not only is the half mile before that point downhill, which would give the illusion of ease, but also I knew I’d have got into my stride by then.

So, of course, I did cover the whole 5.6 miles, although not without a phone call to Mick when I realised my watch was set to kilometres again, and I wanted to know to *exactly* the distance I needed to cover in km, as I didn’t want to overshoot today.

I overshot. Hey ho.

As for where this leaves me virtually, although I’ve been given a certificate for having finished the course, I’m claiming that I both took an accidental detour between Chapel Stile and Tilberthwaite…

Must have taken a wrong turn because that doesn’t look like Blea Tarn behind me!

… and that I doubled back to the checkpoint when I realised I’d overshot it. So, I still intend to go out and run the last 3.5 miles (including ‘Jacob’s Ladder’) tomorrow.

<sup>(*It turns out that running whilst holding a phone in the air at arm’s length, as I did yesterday, can put a surprising amount of stress on the shoulder and neck muscles. Makes a change from DOMS in the thighs!

**I acknowledge that the correct term is ‘overbalance’, but it’s always seemed strange to say that you stumbled because you balanced too much. Surely you stumble because you didn’t balance enough?)</sup>

 

Virtual Lakeland 50 – Day 5 (Ambleside to Chapel Stile; 5.6 miles)

It was another unexpectedly early start. I woke up at five past four, lay around for half an hour, then thought I may as well get up and take advantage of the quiet of the morning.

My legs felt surprisingly fresh (especially considering what I’ve already done this week), but for the first couple of miles I battled a general feeling of sluggishness caused in part by the lack of sleep and not helped by the elevation profile of the first 2 miles of my route:

Two-and-a-bit miles takes me to the highest point around here. Paltry by Lake District standards.

I’d had no intention before the last 100 yards of that incline to video any part of my run, but then the idea suddenly popped into my head. I waited until I’d turned off the B-road … and then promptly forgot, only remembering right at the other end of that lane. As I finished recording the first piece, I thought maybe I’d record one other little piece towards the end.

An hour later I had 12 video snippets recorded and it proved to be the most excellent distraction from what I was doing – so much so that my 5.6-mile run came out at 9.4 miles, bringing my mileage for the last five days to 44.4 miles and giving me just 5.6 to cover over the next two days (3.5 of which will be on Sunday, giving me a nice (almost)rest day tomorrow).

As the run progressed, I felt sure I was producing a dreadful, disjointed set of witterings that wouldn’t be fit to be seen, but I was surprised when I watched them back that it wasn’t as cringeworthy* as I thought. So, I’ve just spent some hours on a steep learning curve as to how to edit video (all done on my phone, because my laptop is too old to run modern editing software).

The YouTube video below (click on play button on the thumbnail below, or on this link) is the result:

Top tip: YouTube has a handy facility to speed up playback, so a 10 minute video can be played faster if you want to have a look but don’t want to spare that amount of time. If you do that it’ll also make it look like I was running faster than I was!

Excuse the dodgier bits of camerawork – I’ve never tried to record anything whilst running before, either scenery or myself.

(post-blog note: Gah! Just realised the caption at the beginning of the video says 'Thursday 24 July'. Should say 'Friday'. It took hours to process and upload, so I'm not going to correct it just now.) 

^{(*although both Mick and I dissolved into giggles watching the penultimate snippet, (the immediately post-run one) as I talked about doing more today and less tomorrow!)}

Montane Lakeland 50 & 100

I’m taking part in the Virtual Lakeland 50 this week. It’s a far easier undertaking than the real thing*: rather than completing a set 50-mile route through the Lake District fells in 24 hours, the virtual event involves covering the same distance over the course of a week (between 20 – 26 July) in any location of the participants choosing.

After my mileages of April and May I thought “7 miles a day for a week? No problem!”. Then June went a little awry with the adductor strain. Then last week the organisers they would like as many people as possible to stage their week as if they were running between the real route’s checkpoints each day, which gave the following itinerary:

I liked the idea behind the request, so that’s what I’m doing. This is how it’s going so far:

Monday (virtually: Dalemain to Howtown; 11.2 miles):

My current go-to 11ish-mile route involves a mile along a pavementless B-road that can be at best unpleasant when it’s busy. It was fine during lockdown, but now that traffic has increased again, I reserve it for the quieter weekend mornings. As the event didn’t conveniently start on Saturday, and as I’m still avoiding the canal tow-path to the south of here (which was my pre-social distancing long-run location), my solution to this was to set the alarm for 0530 and be out the house by 0630, which would see me off the B-road before many cars were about.

What a treat the weather gave me…

Barely a hint of a breeze either

…and with my legs fresh from having had an easy week last week the miles passed easily by.

Tuesday (virtually:Howtown to Mardale; 9.4 miles):

I set my alarm for 0545, but woke up at 0300. When I was still awake at 0430 (the ‘why’ will tie-in with a separate post that I’ll write some time in the next week or so)  I thought I may as well get up, have a bit of breakfast and get on with it. I was out the door 0525.

This was the day I was most concerned about, as I’ve not been in the practice of running these distances on consecutive days. I can thank the weather again for giving me a mental boost…

Who knew there was a canal on the fells between Howtown and Mardale?!

…and I was happy indeed with how the miles again slipped by almost unnoticed.

What an unseasonably cool start to the day for mid-July, though! Just 7 degrees. It doesn’t come across in those snaps, but the canal was steaming.

My 9.4 miles were done, and I was back home, by 7am, stepping over the unread note I’d left for Mick. He’d not missed me at all, and I woke him with a cup of tea a few minutes later.

Wednesday (virtually: Mardale to Kentmere; 6.5 miles):

Late on Monday it looked like our week was going to take a bit of a swerve, some packing was done and Bertie was made nearly ready for a trip. At the point that I got home from Tuesday’s run, I was fully expecting to be on my way to Blackpool before lunch and to be running along the seafront in St Anne’s on Wednesday morning. This ties in with the reason for Tuesday’s 3am start, and I’ll come back to it in another post, but for now the important point is that I didn’t wake up in St Anne’s, but at home. I say that I woke up, but that’s an exaggeration; the effort and lack of sleep was catching up with me, and my thighs were sore too.  I opted for breakfast in bed, followed by a later start.

I had company as I stepped out of the door at 0845: Mick was to keep me company for the first mile and a half. I’d convinced myself that this was just a short day and would be a doddle, and that’s how it felt for the first couple of miles, but I didn’t have the distraction of a glorious blue sky (overcast, but at least it was dry and warmer) and I was also struggling with something really ridiculous – the notion of kilometres.

The organisers announced on Sunday that the results processing system required the evidence for each run to be uploaded showing the distance in kilometres. On Monday and Tuesday I ran with my Garmin set to miles, then changed it to metric to take a photo of the watch face to upload as evidence. I then decided that I could cope with the distance being in kilometres, so left it on that setting. Let’s just say that I didn’t do well with the sudden change of units and that this was not a good time to make the change!

The outing didn’t hit the ‘wow this is fantastic’ level of Monday or Tuesday, but neither was it awful. I arrived home thinking that Thursday’s run was an even easier one at just 5.6 miles, so it was a minor blow to realise my memory had skipped a day and that the next one was 7.3. The thighs weren’t getting any less sore, I was in need of more sleep than I was getting and I feared that Thursday’s run was going to be a grumpy “Let this be over right now!” sort of an affair.

Thursday (virtually: Kentmere to Ambleside; 7.3 miles)

How short a memory I have! Remember my comments on Monday about the B-road? Today I decided it’d be fine to go that way (only 1km along it this time) even with a start time of 0730. It wasn’t fine. Not at all. Particularly the bit where I had to hop onto the verge (mind those nettles Gayle!) to wait for a bus and 500 cars (it may have only been 8…) to go past. It wasn’t just the quantity of traffic either; the average speed of vehicles is remarkably faster than it was during lockdown.

Aside from the traffic on the B-road, I had an unexpectedly fabulous time! I skipped along seemingly effortlessly, even on the final cross-country-over-a-little-lump bit of the route (during which I wondered whether white road trainers were best choice of footwear in view of the amount of sheep poo littering the field). I got home happy, but fearing that my accidentally faster pace on this one may result in regret tomorrow…

Virtual progress to date

(to be continued - I'll report back on Sunday about the final 3 runs.)

^{(*The real event, of course, got cancelled this year due to coronavirus. Taking place at the same time (both virtually and, in a normal year, in reality) the Lakeland 100 is a far more taxing undertaking, by virtue of being more than twice the distance as, despite its name, it’s actually 105 miles. In a normal year, the cut-off for the LL100 is 40 hours (vs 24 hours for the LL50).}

Another Bertie Project: The final line of defence against mosquitos

Mick and I are in agreement that the worst night we have spent in Bertie was two years ago tonight, in the car park of the Erwin Hymer Museum in Bad Waldsee (Germany). What that night had in common with a number of other memorable sleepless nights was an invasion of mosquitos. The most recent such attack was on 26 February this year which provoked a blog foot note saying that I really must get around to making a proper mosquito net.

Well, that’s a job that I can finally tick off the to-do list!

The activity started a few weeks ago when I measured up and bought the materials. Our previous makeshift mosquito net was a piece of lightweight netting that I’d originally bought to make a fly screen for Colin’s sliding cargo door. As things turned out, we sold Colin before I got around to using the fabric and since then it has been used as a makeshift (and rather unsatisfactory) mosquito net for Bertie’s bed.

Previous makeshift solution: a flat piece of fabric onto which I tied a loop of ribbon, which hooked over Bertie’s reading light. Because of the position of the light, the fabric draped onto Mick rather than being suspended over him.

I was on the cusp of ordering another swathe of that material (not cheap, as it’s intended use is in the manufacture of lightweight backpacking tents), when I glanced up at the net curtain at one of our windows and thought that material would do just as well.

A few days later the necessary wire clips and a 2x3m piece of plain net curtain arrived and last week I spent a day designing and sewing.

I’m not sure that the photo of the end result does justice to how much work went into it:

Being modelled by Mick at the point that I decided to add (and pinned on) three more attachment points at the foot end (originally it was going to drape from the middle of the bed)

The finished item. The long side wall nearest the camera uses the original lightweight netting; the rest is the net curtain material that cost less than half the price per m2.

Possibly over-engineered, but it only takes a minute to put up and take down (and about five minutes to then work out how best to fold it!) and we’re confident that it will give us comfortable nights when under attack from biting whining little bastards insects.

Tuesday 21 July - Random Witterings from Home #26

Goodness, where has the time gone? Almost two weeks since my last post and three since I last wittered. It feels like a lot has gone on, some of the most trivial of which I’ll mention in passing here. The less trivial deserve blog posts of their own (and who knows, maybe I’ll get around to writing those posts in due course?).

Scrolling through the camera reel on my phone, here’s a varied collection of trivial snippets:

I ran a new 5km PB a few weeks ago, but this snap was taken the following week when I ran 21 seconds slower overall (it was a more undulating route) but achieved my fastest mile ever. My previous 1-mile record was exactly 7 minutes 30, which I ran down a mountain road in Germany two summers ago (note: I had run up it first!).

Sorry, it's too much faff for me to rotate it

Just a few snaps to remind me that there were some sunny days in July, even though it feels like it’s been almost exclusively overcast with quite a bit of rain and some unseasonal winds:

Many people don't approve of the taking of food photos in restaurants. As you may have gathered, I often take such photos at home too. This grated salad qualified for a snap due to how loudly it was shouting ‘beetroot’, even though it was one of four equal-parts ingredients (none of the rest of which was red). Significantly more visually appealing than the pink soup I made a few weeks ago!

The second row of potatoes dug up from the garden gave a slightly better yield than the first, although not by much:

Having discovered that Mate n Lok connectors (as used in Bertie’s electroblock – see my last post about adding USB points) require a proprietary crimping tool that costs several hundred pounds, I had an educational time experimenting with how to achieve a good crimp without the tool. Fortunately, the most economical way of getting the 2 male connectors I need involved buying a pack of 12 male and 12 female and I have no call at all for the latter, giving me fodder for the experiments.

Incidentally, see that multimeter in the photo? I either left it switched on when last I used it or it got knocked in my tool box, and the battery had gone flat. Last time that happened (around a decade ago, based on the date on the battery), I was almost bamboozled as there is no battery compartment and imprinted on the back is the message that there are no user serviceable parts and only qualified people are to remove the back panel. This is what’s inside:

A 9v battery isn’t ‘user serviceable?! I think the elastic band may have to be changed next time the battery goes too.

Yay! More produce from the garden (the one on the left is huge; the others are normal-size):

USB Sockets for Bertie - Preamble

A Bertie-related Post!

I was sitting today* pondering what to do with at least some of the afternoon that was stretching before me, and decided to pick up on where I got to last week in relation to the task of fitting some USB sockets into Bertie. After a ridiculously long chunk of time**, I’d filled a virtual shopping basket with all of the required items, at which point Mick asked me how I was going to be tapping into Bertie’s Electroblock and where the access was for the running of the wires.

In my head, the latter point was easy. Thanks to Bertie having a double floor, it surely wouldn’t be too difficult to run a cable across his width … would it?

“Come with me!” I said “Let’s go and have a look.”

Hmmmm. Okay, maybe not quite as easy as I was envisaging. There’s a decent gap between Bertie’s floor and sub-floor, but there are only two hatches in the front part of the vehicle from where you can access that space (there’s also a hatch for an under-floor storage locker , but that’s fully enclosed). The problem is that there’s a lot of heating ducting, plenty of structural bits, the walls of the under-floor locker, and great bundles of wires, all cluttering the space, so my ‘fling a wire across that big empty space’ became a question of ‘is it even possible to find a route through all this stuff?’. Then if a route could be found, there was the question of whether there was adequate access to ‘grab’ that wire and pull it up on the passenger side to the position where I want it.

There ensued a period of Mick peering into the electrical locker from outside whilst I contorted myself into uncomfortable positions to reach as far as possible into the floor hatches whilst calling “Can you see my hand?".  Mick then came inside with me and peered into the passenger storage locker whilst I first groped around then shone a light. There was great excitement when after a period of wiggling around Mick could see a strong beam from the torch.

We gave consideration to ditching the plan for the sockets on the passenger side and just having two on the driver’s side (after all, we’ve lived for three and a half years with none!), but I thought that if it was feasible to lay the wires, then it would be worth the faff. I disappeared and came back with a length of chunky scrap cable (my substitute for not having any electricians’ rods) and the long-handled litter picker.

From viewing as best I could on the screen of my phone, I knew I needed to get the cable through two gaps in structural members, and avoid a heating duct to get to the right place and after a couple of failed attempts (bearing in mind I was working blind) it did feel like an impossible task. Then, on the next wiggle of the wire Mick could see it. After a period of endeavour with the litter-picker (it was a small space I was accessing, with another heating duct in the way, I managed to grab the end of the cable and lift it into a place where I could reach it with my hand.

As of this evening, we have a piece of string now running the route of that cable run and I have placed the orders for all of the parts we’ll need to complete the job***.

I’ll report back again in another few weeks.

Peering into the external hatch of the electrical locker.  The white layer marked with ‘1’ is the sub-floor. The black layer marked with ‘2’ is the edge of the internal floor.  It’s a decent gap between the floors: approximately the height of a 95Ah battery.

The service hatch for the clean water tank (marked with ‘1’) is the only access to the whole of the front right quadrant of Bertie’s sub-floor – access that is hampered by the solid wall of the adjacent storage locker (marked ‘2’).  We needed to feed a wire over to the locker marked ‘3’.

Here’s another view of the destination locker (the one marked with a ‘3’ in the last snap), next to the passenger seat. It’s not a wide space (and when the base is in place, it’s not deep either).

Peering down into that locker. Without being able to see what we were doing, we needed to feed a wire from the water tank access hatch, avoiding all obstacles in the way, to hit the very small window of space circled in green in this snap.

On the other side of Bertie, we had both completely forgotten that this hatch existed (it’s hidden under the table, partly under a seat). It gives access to the back of the electroblock and will make running the wire to the other USB point more straightforward.

<sup>(*’Today’ was actually Monday. After typing the words above, I thought a few illustrative photos might be beneficial, but by then the light was too dull. Then it rained for three days. Now that I’ve taken the photos, I’m not sure they were worth waiting for!

** I have a ridiculous inability to just look an item up and buy it. I have to consider all of the options, in terms of their suitability for my purposes, the merit of the seller, and the price (i.e. is this an item that warrants spending more; is that more expensive item actually any better than the cheaper one?). I excelled in demonstrating this a few days ago when I was after six self-adhesive wire clips to rig up the new mosquito net that I’ll be making for Bertie’s bed. I kid you not, it took me over an hour of clicking away before I finally made a decision.

***I was just about to click to confirm the order when I realised that one of the items was on a 10 day delivery time. I managed to lose another half an hour considering other suppliers who could deliver sooner, including a few rabbit holes of ‘oooh, should I buy this model instead?’, before I lost patience and decided that having waited this long to do this job, it could wait another 10 days! I do despair of myself at times. (Edit: That item turned out to be in the first set of parcels to arrive, two days after being ordered. A package of connectors was also sent quickly, but weren’t what I ordered – the seller was very apologetic and has now sent the right ones. Only the USB sockets themselves haven’t made any appearance.))</sup> 

Thursday 2 July - Random Witterings from Home #25

Flours/Flowers
During lockdown I was delighted on two occasions to be given flours: first a bag of plain by a neighbour, then a bag of strong by Conrad. This week, I was chuffed again, this time to receive a more standard sort of flower gift:

 
I can’t remember the last time we had flowers in the house! Until 2007 Mick made sure that I always had a vase full on the dresser, but when we both gave up permanent employment and had to cut our outgoings accordingly, they were one of the first things I conceded to be unnecessary.

This bunch was also unnecessary, in that I didn’t consider that the few groceries I bought for the neighbour (particularly given that I was going to the supermarket anyway) warranted anything in return – but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t delighted to receive them. 

^{(I was equally pleased with the chocolates received from another neighbour, but as she added them to her shopping list, they were less of a surprise!)}

Budget
As well as cutting flowers out of our weekly spends, in 2008 I started recording every penny that came in and went out of our household coffers (we were never big spenders, but what an eye-opening exercise that was!). Initially I used pencil and paper, then I cribbed an excellent spreadsheet put together by a friend. Twelve years later, that spreadsheet has gone through various iterations, but is still a monster (it’s huge and very detailed!) and is still in use.

Being the end of June, this week I sat down and input the numbers and reviewed our half-year position. Well, what do you know: lockdown has been an exceptionally good period for the household budget! The ‘trips’ section is looking particularly healthy (no surprise there) and even ‘groceries’, where it has felt like we’ve been spending big*, is underspent. (*Another obvious revelation: shopping four times less frequently = much bigger bills for each shop.)

Batch cooking
Tangentially related to shopping, I went into the fridge on Saturday afternoon and saw that the mince, only bought on Thursday and still well within date, was looking rather sorry for itself. No way was I letting that go off, so a couple of hours later, I'd created a mountain of washing up and four servings each of lasagne and of chilli ready for the freezer.

I should have taken a snap of the lasagne before I tubbed it up. Incidentally, I bought those blue-topped plastic tubs in a shop called Wheelhouse in Hounslow in 1998 for 29p each. They’ve lasted well!

Lemon Curd
The reason I’d gone into the fridge in the first place was for some butter, so after the mince had been dealt with I got on with my intended activity: my first attempt at making lemon curd.

I should have scaled down the recipe. We didn’t need that much. 

Neither it, nor the lemon curd cakes I made immediately afterwards, came out quite as intended in terms of texture, but both were perfectly acceptable in taste.

The cakes were successful enough that another batch was baked on Tuesday.

Potatoes
The first couple of potato plants we dug up (after they’d bloomed and died back) didn’t produce quite the crop we were hoping for...

Pink Soup
Anyone seen the film ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’, when she makes blue soup? I managed a disconcertingly pink broth this week. It looked the colour of blended strawberries which didn’t match the flavour of the ham stock I’d used. It was the result of throwing some needs-using-up beetroot into my usual recipe. I would include a photo, except it looks so incredibly unappetising that I think I’ll keep that one to myself.

Vest
Finally, just a snap for Conrad, following on from our phone-carrying conversation, to illustrate my running vest. As well as the two chest pockets that can carry a water bottle each (on this occasion I had water in one and my phone in the other) there’s a waist pocket on each side and one stretch pocket on the back. I can’t reach the back one to get stuff out whilst on the move, but I can reach it well enough to stow my arm warmers when I’ve set out early enough on a cool morning to need them.