The Gallery: Lawn swimming

This week's theme for Tara's The Gallery over at Sticky Fingers is 'show me the funny'. I'm a day late with this (I blame an inset day on Monday; I think today is Wednesday) and I had a look at the other entries and despaired - they're fabulous.

But then I thought of the funniest member of our household. The one whose whole life is based on the joy principle and thought there must be a photograph of him somewhere doing something funny.

There was.

This is Mido* indulging in his favourite summer sport of lawn swimming. Basically all you do is lie on the cool grassy lawn on a hot day and pull yourself around by your paws saying "arf, arf, argh, arf" or words to that effect. You can do it for hours, if you're Mido and apparently it's the Best Thing Ever. And it makes me laugh.

*He's a rescue dog and arrived with *that name* already intact. In private I call him Mido. In public I refer to him as 'the dog', 'oi you' or (and to give him due credit he came) 'Shadow'.

How to win £40,000

What would I do with £40,000? Humour me for a moment while I take off on a flight of fancy with forty grand in my pocket.

The cash, by the way, would be courtesy of Paypal which is currently running a weekly draw to win a year’s salary. I’m not sure whose salary (not mine, obviously) but it would be a nice sum of money to win and all you have to do to enter is to use Paypal to make a purchase.

So would I blow it on one big lovely thing just for me? Or would I squirrel it away in a nice safe little bank account somewhere and watch it grow?

No, I know exactly what would happen. I’d tell my children about it and they’d spend it for me.

Would £40,000 buy a seven seater Land Rover Discovery (for me to drive as a taxi for them and their friends), a sports car for Daddy, a Nintendo Wii, a trampoline, Apple iPods, laptops and the entire contents of the Mini Boden catalogue? Possibly – but only with very careful planning.

The Land Rover might have to be a second hand purchase from Ebay but it can then have a lovely new sound system and perhaps a DVD player too from Halfords.

The Nintendo Wii is easy. Woolworths has this lovely package on its website. Helpfully it also has the Apple iPods too and I think a subscription to Napster might then be a sensible option.

As for the trampoline, this one from Toys R Us looks as if it would fit the bill and Dell can supply a couple of very pretty Inspiron laptops so my two expensive little darlings can log on to the Mini Boden website once they’re all bounced out.

So that’s everything except the sports car…  here’s a nice Carrera but perhaps not the one Daddy had in mind…

So what would you do with £40,000? Every time you use Paypal you automatically get entered into the weekly draw, so the more times you use Paypal the more chances you have to win. This year’s Christmas shopping could change your life. Go on, tell me how you’d spend it.

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Things I have learned about running

A few things I have learned about running:

• Like Muttley you will be motivated by the promise of medals.
• Running does not make you thin. Actually it might make you thin, it does not make me thin. That's because I am Mrs Greedyguts. It has made me drop two dress sizes but far I'm from Paula Radcliffe proportions (except in height). I'd rather be a slightly - ahem - well covered runner and eat cake.
• The smaller the dog, the more it wants to bite you. The wraith that nipped you on the soft part of the back of the knee and then disappeared was a collie. The fiend hanging from your arse by its canines is a Jack Russell terrier. Labradors will bounce on you in the manner of the Dambusters but that's okay, they are "just playing".
• If you run in torrential rain and gale force wind well meaning people will try to rescue you. They will stop their cars, look concerned, offer you a lift and ask "ask you sure" when you decline. They will then watch horrified from their cosy dry cars while you take off your waterproof jacket because you are too hot.
• One day you will set off on a nine mile run in the full knowledge that you would rather stay at home sticking pins in your eyes. After mile seven you will suddenly feel like a running machine, nay a gazelle, and you will fling yourself along wondering why the whole world doesn't run, like, everywhere man. You will feel peace and goodwill to all men (and women) and even smile at dogs.
• The next run you do will be hell and you will consider throwing your trainers in the dustbin and taking up the sport of tiddlywinks.
• Never breathe in as you are passed by a diesel car or a smoker or (worst of all) a smoker driving a diesel car.
• In the most beautiful, remote and isolated point of your run you will find a used condom.
• Horses will behave as if you are making towards them down the road with the sole intention of causing their early death. If you run up silently behind them they will run away and their riders will hate you. Riders who have never encountered you running before will think they can out trot you. They are wrong. You will catch them up and piss them off.
• Those same horses will snore quietly in their fields without batting an eyelid as you run past them. With no rider there's no point in making the effort to act scared.
• When the sun is out it's too hot to run. Snow and ice is impossible to run in. Rain is a pain because you get wet both inside and out in a waterproof jacket. On two days of the year conditions will be perfect. Those are the days on which you will have dental appointments.
• You will see masses of wildlife. Most of it squashed flat on the road.
• Running is the answer to most of life's problems unless your problem is a broken leg and then it isn't.

A heck of a good time

We've just been to Devon (and Dorset) to stay with our lovely friends N and A and had, to quote H8: "A heck of a good time".

We sought (and found) fossils on Charmouth beach, greedily scoffed fish and chips at West Bay, struggled around a wind swept Lyme Regis (too rough for a trip along the Cob - remember how it looked on ITV's Persuasion? That's how it was on Friday.)

We had a barbecue (yes, really. It was raining, but A is a true Scot.) We made Jack O'Lanterns and we wrote on the night sky with sparklers and fireworks.

Did we want to come home? Heck, no.

Buried treasure

I have whinged in a few sympathetic ears recently about my frustration with the limitations of my Canon PowerShot point and shoot camera and my lust for a brand new digital SLR.

I'm an SLR girl at heart. I used to have an ancient Zenith SLR and a 135mm lens which I took all my pictures with in my youth. I even had it with me when I photographed the Queen on her visit to Solva many years ago. My main camera that day was the newsroom's Canon EOS and it's that one I used to take the shot of Her Majesty for the front of the paper's Royal visit supplement - a copy of which is by Royal appointment in the Buckingham Palace album.

Then our lovely friends Nicola and Andrew lent us a Canon EOS to take photographs on our honeymoon in Scotland which was fantastic. I really didn't want to give it back and today my love affair with the Canon EOS remains undimmed but unrequited.

When the girls were babies we sold all our SLR equipment to a camera enthusiast and used the proceeds to buy a digital point and shoot - which was entirely the right thing to do at the time - but I miss my SLR. I wanted to take pictures of the diamond-like raindrops on the fennel seed heads. My point-and-shoot managed this on its macro setting after several hundred attempts.

Nearly - but not quite - what I was after.

So yes I've been whinging. Have you seen the price of digital SLRs? The current entry level digital Canon EOS is £343.70 on Amazon which isn't horrendous but I haven't got that sort of cash for a camera at the moment.

Then my mother, who is probably immune to most of my whinging after 44 years, suddenly had a lightbulb moment.

"I've got a Canon EOS," she said.

"You've got a WHAT???!!!!"

She then rummaged in the space underneath the stairs and produced this little hoard of buried treasure*:

A Canon EOS 650D and on the left a Canon T70 attached to its macro lens. Oh joy! Neither of them digital, but I had a roll of film left over from pre-digital days and batteries and Bob's your uncle. I have already been out to photograph the fennel with the T70. I can't show you here, of course, because the film has to go to be developed, but it's an SLR (or two) and so many lenses I don't know what half of them are. They'll keep me quiet and stop me whinging while I save up for a digital. All I have to do now is remember how to work them...

* The EOS belonged to Mum's late partner Michael and was put away - as things are - after he died in 1997. I don't think he'd mind me using it now. The T70 is Mum's.

Red

I've been meaning to take part in Tara Cain's Gallery over at Sticky Fingers for ages. This week I finally got my act together. The theme is red, meaning Halloween which isn't really my thing, or just red, which is.

Clockwise from top left they are:

1. Me in my running vest at last Sunday's Cardiff Half Marathon.
2. The doors to the lambing shed and the old dairy.
3. My back door. We have a new door with a stained glass rose panel waiting to go on. One day.
4. One of my blueberry bushes. Lovely fruit in the summer and gorgeous autumn foliage. They need acidic soil to grow which is why they do so well here in the Preseli hills.
5. The old churn shed. Nature is taking over here now but this a a relic of agricultural history. This hasn't been a dairy farm since the early 1980s. A stream runs through the bottom of this shed and after the cows had been milked the churns of milk would be placed in the running water to cool them before they were taken to the bottom of the drive to be collected by the lorry.
6. Hawthorn berries. We have a bumper crop on this tree in my garden this year.

A Premier run

Cardiff swans completely unaware that 15,000 runners are pounding past them.

That that was the weekend that was. We went to Cardiff, stayed in the City Centre Premier Inn and I ran the half marathon on Sunday.

This weekend is becoming a favourite family annual trip. We do Cardiff, have pizza, watch the X-Factor on the hotel TV, fall asleep ridiculously early and wake up to scoff a hotel breakfast. Then I run for a bit while Brian and the kids watch, hang around and do stuff and then we all go home.

Last year I dithered over entering the half marathon and by the time I did city centre hotels could not be had for love nor money - unless you were a single smoker which as a non-smoking family of four we weren't. This year I didn't dither and I booked the whole thing way back when, including the room in the Premier Inn having seen Lenny Henry on TV promising comfy beds and a good night's sleep.

Admittedly parking was costly but for the convenience factor it was worth it. The car, hotel and John Lewis were all cheek-by-jowl with just a short walk down to the Bay area for the start of the race.

The hotel was lovely which came as a huge surprise. Last year's Express by Holiday Inn was a bit University Hall of Residence by comparison. The room was quiet and comfortable - especially the beds which were a double and - hallelujah! - TWO singles. My children hate sharing a double and it usually involves some kind of bed swapping in the wee small hours. They didn't budge out of the Premier Inn beds and neither did I having fallen asleep somewhere towards the end of the X-Factor when Tesco Mary sang something soporific.

Breakfast was good too, properly good, so Brian ate two.

R6 said, surveying the room: "Can we come and live here?"

The pizza the night before was good too. We had planned on Pizza Hut but Pizza Express was but a short escalator ride so we plumped for that instead. We were attentively waited on by friendly staff. H8 knocked her knife on the floor and a clean one magically reappeared seconds later. I like restaurants with that sort of service. It had proper front of house too and the food was lovely. I'm sure the bambinocinos contributed to the kids' good night's sleep.

Race day was sunny and cold - perfect conditions. A happy crowd of runners walked in an orderly manner to the start, queued and ran. The race with a field of of 15,000 runners is like a tube train emptying at rush hour through an underpass at running pace. An interesting experience but you get used to it.

I ran the 13.1 miles in two hours 17 minutes and nine seconds which is eight minutes faster than last year. If I could have found those two extra minutes to finish in two and a quarter hours I'd have found them but I spent too much time looking at the view from Cardiff Bay barrage and dodging slower runners.

I collected my medal and goody bag and even found the jumper I threw at a tree just after the start. The 'tree' turned out to be a whopping street lamp which proves just had madly hallucinogenic the start of a half a marathon can be.  I was convinced it was a tree...

I was proud of my time though. I ran the first three miles in a burst of enthusiasm in 27 minutes which is an unheard of turn of speed for me. If I had kept it up I might have caught up with Chris who was in her usual position which is in front of me. I narrowed the gap this year though - if I do the same next year I might just catch her up...