A Post That May Leave You Cold

These days I generally schedule my posts in advance, even the bad poetry, which means that I am guilty of committing those crimes against literature in cold blood. But this morning I woke up and realised I had no post scheduled. So this post is as close to a ‘live performance’ as I can get in blogging terms.

I could have elected not to blog at all, but I’m getting really close to achieving the hitherto unlikely feat of blogging daily for 365 days, a period of time that is commonly referred to as a year. I’m still a few weeks off hitting that milestone but it seemed silly to stumble at this point in the journey.

Having decided to post something, it was really a choice between an underwhelming haiku or a rambling post about nothing. I’ve resorted to both strategies in recent times but I feel that I’ve overdone the haiku of late, so my readers will have to content themselves with this. Not that either of them ever really complain.

I currently find myself sitting in my living room, feeling quite cold. This is partly because it is a cold day, and this is further compounded by the fact that the front door is wide open. This is to allow the tradespeople currently in my property to come and go from their van with relative ease. The tradespeople in question are heating engineers and they are replacing my boiler, which decided to finally give up its tenuous grip on functionality yesterday morning. The lack of a working boiler has also probably contributed to the general sense of ‘feeling cold’ in the last 24 hours.

Obviously replacing the boiler is quite a big expense. I anticipated it being a big expense, but the quote still left me feeling a sense of nausea and panic. Still, it’s not like there’s anything else to spend money on at the moment. I know Boris gave the UK the green light to make as many plans as they want for the summer, but I’m still operating with some caution on that score. It would appear that not all my compatriots feel the same way though as apparently holiday bookings are going through the roof at the moment. Of course this does mean there won’t be anything left to book when I do feel more inclined to do so, but that appears to be a non-issue thanks to the fact that the boiler situation has probably rendered the financing of a holiday as somewhat unrealistic until 2025.

Still, in a few hours Mrs Proclaims and I can turn the heating up, close our eyes and imagine we are in warmer climes, and of late we’ve become pretty good at imagining things are better than they really are. A good imagination is a helpful tool when trying to navigate a pandemic.

Another issue with the lack of boiler is that I can’t have a shower. I mean I can’t at the moment anyway because the guys fitting the boiler have turned off the water completely, but I couldn’t before because cold showers are horrible. I did brave it yesterday because I had to go into work, and even though I don’t really see many people when I’m there, I do still sometimes see some of my colleagues at a distance and I wasn’t sure that 2 metres was enough distance for me to risk not showering, what with also having exercised in the morning.

I did also exercise this morning, indeed I went for the longest run I’ve been on since I last ran a half marathon some seven years ago. I’m theoretically training for another half marathon, although the one I entered has, in fact, been cancelled. Which I knew it probably would be when I entered. I mainly signed up for it because I wanted to try and motivate myself to get back into long distance running and I didn’t think I’d be as committed as I could be without an actual event to train for. It appears I underestimated myself because the event was cancelled when I was less than a week into my training plan, and this morning’s run marked the completion of week six. Regular readers of my blog (both of them) will recall that I actually hate running, but my other efforts to get in shape during the past twelve months, while definitely improving my overall fitness, have not resulted in me losing any weight whatsoever. And I think I probably could stand to lose a quite a lot. My choices boiled down to eating less or doing even more exercise. And I’m pretty sure that the reason I endured so many long distance runs in my twenties was purely because it meant I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain any weight. The problem, I think, is that I continued with the eating but gave up the running. So for the sake of an extra slice of cake I’m back pounding the streets three times a week.

This morning I ran for an hour and a half. I ran very slowly but I still think that’s pretty good. I went out early so it was just me and the associated waterfowl along the Thames for the most part. I was passed by a couple of speedier runners towards the end of my efforts, but I find that when I have been running for over an hour I don’t much care that other people can run faster than me.

However, having run for that amount of time, it is unfortunate that I can’t currently have a shower. Mrs Proclaims has taken Little Proclaims for a long walk. She claims it’s because she’d rather be out when there are workmen in our house. However I can’t help but feel a little paranoid.