Happy Plodder

I spent most of the week in London. I like going back to the UK and it's funny how you just can't shake all those cultural associations that you build up during the course of growing up somewhere.... I am not talking so much about my inevitable search for Ribena and Cadbury's chocolate whenever I'm back in Ol' Blighty. This time I am more referring to how happy I was when I stumbled across a local policeman when I managed to get myself lost on one of my infamous morning runs. (I was always brought up to have a positive view of "the fuzz" - how useless I would have been in the recent riots.....). Not many people can get lost in Hyde Park (especially given that there are maps every 100 metres), but this week that's exactly what I did. After about 1 hour and 10 minutes of running (in what later turned out to be ever increasing circles), and after having asked a number of random people directions back to my hotel, it was only after the local Bobby had told me where to go did I genuinely feel relieved and confident about being able to get back to where I had started my run 70 minutes earlier. In fact it also made me proud that my little brother is one of the boys in blue, although that feeling of happiness did nothing to relieve the cramp in my legs....