• Kids parties are a tapestry of different conversations, all had while never fully covering a subject because various participants in the conversation get pulled away to help their offspring. This week I went to a party where people commended me on my running puncture repairs, which I then realised I’d not done since last year. It seems like Punctures are seasonal. If you have one, please make sure you have it on Tuesday or Thursday morning between 7.30 and 8.30 am on cycle super-highway 1. Thank you.
• Busuu Running Crew was very low turnout this week, need to work on building the vibes.
• It’s purim in the local jewish community and nothing warms my heart more than to see a group of young jewish men gathered around a flat bed truck in a brutalist car park. The truck piled high with a huge stack of speakers. Them all dancing energetically to exceedingly dirty techno.
• The eldest had a neurodiversity-ignited meltdown while lying on the dining room table. Very inconvenient, it being a table that we all use, and also rather unsafe. It was also the lowest part of the parenting week for us all, none of us acting in the way we know we should. But we got through it and the hugs were very deep afterwards. Parenting is hard, but so is being a kid.
• Our youngest was offered by her football coach to move to a class that was a level up from hers. This was more of a convenience thing (better for us to go to both of our daughters classes on one day rather than spend every weekend day huddled around the football cage). I was concerned for her as the older class is “mixed” (90% male) and every other kid in it is about a head and shoulders taller than her. But I needn’t have worried. She’s like a rocket. Taking every tackle and pass in her stride. I’m not a football fan and we’ve never pushed her to play, but she just really loves football.
• After the youngest played, the eldest’s training started and a few of the other dads + I played football with some of the younger kids. Somehow we ended up getting one of the kids footballs stuck 40ft up in a tree and we all regressed into teenagers giggling and laughing and generally failing to deploy various tactics to get it down again. It turned into the most enjoyable 30mins of the week.
• Finished the week off with a lovely early 50km bike ride through Epping with Dan. (Hi Dan!) He humbled me on all of the climbs and provided a very slippy slipstream through most of the flat sections.