Running around.

The promised cold spell got off to a good start this morning. It was more than a little cold when I went out for a run first thing. Later it got a little less cold but still chilly. However, it was bright and clear: blue sky and sunshine mostly, although the wind did keep the clouds moving. Autumn is coming along nicely. The predominant colour today was red, with a bit of orange and yellow, as these photos show. 

Out running you get to meet some interesting people or at least get into conversation. As I fastened my laces before setting off running, a workman going past congratulated me on my keep fit project. He went on to tell me about the Alexandra Park Run. Apparently there is a timed 5k run every Saturday morning at 9 o’ clock around one of Oldham’s parks. How good is that for promoting sport? This kind of conversation pops up all the time. 

  It’s just as well I go out running as I have managed to go out to lunch twice this week in Manchester, or I will have when tomorrow is over. On Monday I went out with an old friend to a place called “The Alchemist”, quite a nice restaurant rather pretentiously decorated with old, or would-be old-looking, alchemical equipment. 

 Tomorrow I am meeting some more old friends in central Manchester. We have made complicated arrangements to get one of the group into the centre as she has mobility problems and can’t manage to walk from the station any longer. She has been waiting for a hip replacement operation for longer than she really should. Something is wrong with our health system. 

Meanwhile in Madrid they are having a clamp down on what goes on in the streets. Buskers may well be fined as might people who set up camp in the middle of big squares to protest about things. This is a new anti-social behaviour law which will target almost anything from including being careless with pot plants on a balcony or for using a park bench for – perish the thought – “something other than sitting”. Maybe there will be a way to escape being dripped on from careless watering of balcony plants after all. 

I especially like the fact that this is an updating of a law from 1948, the ‘Policing and Good Government law’ which banned just about everything in Madrid from blasphemy (intriguingly defined in the legislation as ‘particularly forbidden’) to woodchopping in public and keeping poultry. 

Interesting stuff!