The Guilt of Not Running

I was supposed to be up with the larks this morning - if there were any around - in order to take myself to Parkrun and do my 5km Saturday morning penance prior to a welcome cup of tea at Rumbles.

Of course, it wasn't to be. My body gets exhausted after the 545am starts for work, and often my second day off is the one where the need for sleep catches back up with me. If you combine that with the fact that if was freezing cold, sleety and a slicing northern wind was blowing, well, it was easy to stay in bed, catch up with the dreaded "zzzzzzzzs" and read David Lindo's excellent book on his urban birding.

After a morning of hiding away from the weather, however, you begin to feel guilty about not getting your exercise in. I didn't feel up to running, but I could certainly go for a long walk instead. And I did so, well wrapped up against the cold and wind, and hoping pretties would descend out of the dusk, or leap out of the ground. They did do initially, when a pair of "seeeeping" and "zupppping" long tailed tits entertained me in the sycamore tree.

You get a very different feel when walking at dusk, as I ended up doing. The soft, fading light as the sun drops ever ever lower behind the Victorian townscape. The birds giving up for the day and flying home. The gladness that this exercise has overcome the guilt of not running.

At least partially.

Si

Berries by the church

Garden oddity

Life at the base of a streetside tree

Dusk ducks

Gorse in flower

Sunset over the defunct nature reserve

Beautiful aconite

The aconite bed

The old, and then taken from the same spot...

...the new

Long tailed tit