I am not the greatest fan of mobile phones mainly due to the frustration caused by hearing people say over and over again, usually straight away as if it where the most important thing in the world "I'm on the train, bus or whatever". However occasionally they do provide us with the chance to enjoy other peoples cringefull moments.

Why is watching someone else work so tiring. I have done next to nothing at work this week and I have come home worn out. I have had a little person assigned to the machine I work on with the idea what we will train them up. Quite ironic really since I hardly know what I am doing most of the time. You spend the whole time watching the little one to make sure they don’t do something stupid and then you go and bodge yourself. Paper everywhere.

Oh well least my error was easy to fix. Little sis heard the reports coming out over the last few weeks about drinking too much water. This clearly concerned her greatly as she decided the mineral water she was drinking shouldn’t pass her lips. Much better for the health conscious to pour the water all over her works 6-month-old laptop. It was a close call, think if she had drunk that water, she could have suffered the same fate as her laptop, and died.

You do cheer me up sis, its good to know that others can make more stupid mistakes than myself ;)

When the cats away the mice will play. Except this mouse has no energy left and will probably fall asleep in front of the tv soon. Maria has taken a day trip down to Stockholm to see allsång på Skansen. A Swedish tradition where folk gather in one of the cities parks and have a communal sing song. The middle of summer, blue skies, happy people singing along – that was last year. This year it’s raining cats and dogs. They don’t seem to mind, its being shown live on Swedish television and they are all happily bopping along, singing songs celebrating the summer, with stupid faces which people can only produce when they know a camera is pointing at them.

People have been asking what it feels like to be married. Knakering is the word I would choose at the moment. No one told me that tying the knot would involve so much digging – well what did you think I was going to say? We have acquired our own little allotment patch. It was in a bit of a state when we took it over and guess which muggings agreed to help turn the soil over. Its done now, and we have various vegetables waiting to spring up. Nothings appeared yet, I guess it’s too early, but being part of the sim-allotment generation I am starting to get impatient. Just a little something to peak out of the ground and I will be happy. Mind you the first plant that does appear risks being taken away as weed by my good self so I can kind of understand their reluctance to appear.

Before I sign off for today has anyone a copy of unchained melody online? The 1995 version by Robson Green and Jerome Flynn. If anyone has, and they are willing to admit it, would you send me an email.

Well its just 75 days left to go now and I have finally got my backside back into gear. My training graphs had developed a nose dive that would have had any pilot praying for divine intervention. It seems that those wishes have been answered and this week I managed a weekly total of 45 kms with 2 new personal bests over the longer distances to finish the week with.

Saturday was the day of this years Stockholm Marathon, so a quick well done to everyone who made it around. Ask a marathon runner who fancies themselves as a bit of a comic how the race went, and the chances are they will reply with something like the race went fine, but the lap of honour finished them of. How the winter nights must fly by. It wouldn’t be so bad for them in Stockholm however. The course is made up of 2 laps of more or less the same route. This does provide the wag with an extra joke to giggle, you gonna get lapped you are, chortle chortle. Yeah thanks for the support, side splitting stuff.

I hadn’t really given it much thought after that, until when I watched the race on the television this weekend. It suddenly dawned on me that not only was this a particularly poor joke, it was also the truth. I am going to get lapped. When I get towards halfway the elite runners are going to come flying past looking as if they have only just started. So these are some of the best runners in the world, so there isn’t really any shame in that, but I cant deny that it is going to get on my nerves. I guess the gods are having an ironic giggle to themselves. My punishment for the pleasure received lapping the slower runners in the school pr lessons where the class were forced on mass to run 1500 meters.

So in a year my 3 race challenge will be over and maybe I can return to a normal life. For the time being I must get out there training, I don’t want to be lapped.

My details are in and they have taken my money, now all I have left to do is run the race. The races website kindly informed me that there are only 86 days left to go. Slightly worrying that, don’t they mean 185 days or maybe even a few more? That’s less than 3 months, which quickly becomes less than 2 months...1 month...and then turns into a drastic ohh shite. I’m starting to get a touch of nerves. I shouldn’t really, I have run 16kms non-stop several times now without any problem, so to add the extra 5 kms to that shouldn’t cause too much of a headache. If it was next week and I took plenty of rest, together with the race day atmosphere I believe in the back of my mind I wouldn’t have any troubles in running the distance. So what is it with this nagging self-doubt?

With the build up to our wedding and then the honeymoon that followed I missed about 3 weeks worth of training. It didn’t bother me, there were bigger events and more important things happening, but I did have the believe that when I returned to the trails I would be pleasantly surprised by my times. After all my legs had 3 weeks rest, they would surely be begging to get back out running again. No tired muscles to worry about, it would all be easy. Ha! The memo to my legs that this was just a temporary break had got lost in the internal mail, they had been busy choosing a retirement home in Bournemouth and dreaming of talking it easy. They had to be dragged around for my first run yesterday (well technically they had to take it in turns to drag each other around otherwise we wouldn’t have got anywhere at all, but you know what I mean). I only ran just over 6kms but I felt wrecked afterwards. I’m sure its only a temporary thing while I get back in the swing of running and working once again, but 86 days, that’s kinda soon..........

People that are genuinely pleased to be helpful can make all the difference. We could not have been luckier with the staff at our hotel. From the moment we arrived and were picked up at the airport to the return trip they were there willing to help in any way that they could. We were a little curious to see who would be there to collect us. The blurb that we had been sent said that our driver could be contacted at any time in his cell. Was one of the munsters going to collect us? Had we scrolled down a little further after the page break we would have seen the word “phone” followed on, but why let facts like that stop the imagination running wild.

The room itself was lovely, but best of all were the views. On one side a view over the old section of Prague; being on a hill we could see many of the sights and the river(that i somehow managed to miss with this shot). Straight ahead we had a view of Petrin park, hillside trees and an old orchard. Despite being very close to the city centre we had a very peaceful location that could have almost have been in the countryside. Apart from the monastery and church bells that is. It soon came to my attention that the nuns were required to be ready for morning prays at 6am sharp. They marked this moment by running the church bells for 5 minutes at this unearthly hour. How Maria managed to sleep through this each morning is still a point of annoyance!

And then on the final side we had a view of the monastery itself. For one short 15 mins when pray wasn’t required of the nuns, we also had the chance to watch nuns playing volleyball.

I did take a short film of the wonderful view we had but in the style that I manage to do so well managed to rotate my camera 90 degrees. If anyone knows a programme that could rotate this back for me the way it should be I would be truly grateful. Oh and before anyone asks, no I don’t have the nuns on tape…

If you are looking for a place to stay in Prague, I can fully recommend the Domus Henrici

Have you ever felt like you are being followed? The sound of footsteps behind you echoing in your head. Most of the time it may just be in your head, but not this time. A glance behind revealed three soldiers marching at pace towards us with bayonets swaying. For some reason the first thing that sprang in my mind was Corporal Jones running around shouting they don’t like it up em, they don’t like it up em at all. Okay so it was only the changing of the guards and the cobble stones where more likely to harm me than the young men dressed up like toy soldiers but still.

Apart from the short march from the guards house, were the guards get the chance to attempt to make a human kebab, it looked a pretty tedious job. Standing in the 30-degree sun, just stand there, with annoying tourists buzzing around you like flies around dog mess sounds like hell to me. Hell it may be, but it is also a neat way of linking into the worse job of them all.

If you happen to have landed a job in Prague and your employer hands you your green work overalls, run. Run very quickly and don’t ever return. You know when your teachers, parents and general busy bodies told you that you must tried hard at school otherwise you would end up with a shit job. They may not have had this in mind but it would have been more effective if they had. Prague has a small army whose job it is to suck the dog turds off the street. Of course they have a vacuum to do this with, but still. In 30-degree heat you can imagine what that smelt like at the end of the day.

As you may or may not have noticed I havent blogged for quite a while now. This is mainly due to the time taken to walk up the close to 300 steps to take the photograph below for you. There was of course the matter of our wedding and the rest of our honeymoon that has also kept me away from the keyboard. Over the next week or so I plan to tell you all about it (apart from the bits that i wont be telling you about of course) but for now I have uploaded a small section of our honeymoon snaps - Photo Album