Spring?

Spring or what in Japanese they call 'Spring'

The seasons seemed to have accelerated this year, skipping a couple of gears from a wintery first to a full on summery fifth. Last night was the first time we have had rain since April 9th having enjoyed day after day of sunshine. Last weekend saw temperatures hit 23 with beautiful blue skies and warm, dry winds. Today saw normal service resumed with stiff onshore breeze keeping things a tad more chilly and necessitating a quick blast of the central heating this evening (us middle-agers like our creature comforts). Anyway the flip side to all this good weather is that I have purposefully neglected this blog. After five months of winter sunshine and 23 degrees is going to have me back in the water reacquainting myself with the waves and my surf 'brahs'. And then there is the garden, that foot wide strip of foliage that runs along only two sides of the house but takes a surprising amount of time to weed and tidy up.
Oh, and there was the 21km jog around Date which I, ahem, completed in a time of 1:54, some, ahem, 13 minutes slower than last year. But those extra 780 seconds can be chalked up to hard earned wisdom. Last year after Date I ran another half marathon in May in almost the exact same time (22 seconds separated them), which was an incredibly stupid thing to have done so early in the season. By the middle of June I had torn the achilles tendon in my right foot, by August the left foot, all of  which left me hobbling through the Gaelforce West race and having to forego all the events I had planned for the autumn.
Not this year. Slow and steady is the approach peaking on top of Croagh Patrick on the third weekend of August.

The post-Date victory parade

"The Memuro Mucker" as she's called round these parts

Twice on Saturday, yes twice! That's how good the weather was.

Got himself a new set of wheels.