It was very cold and very slippery first thing this morning because of all the ice, which meant that I tottered with little baby steps the entire distance to avoid going arse over tit. About midway through the run I realised that we're only one week away from the culmination of what we've been building up to since the festive season first started sometime back in late August.
In a week's time, you'll be sat in an arm chair feeling bloated and a bit woozy from the excesses of another Christmas Day. Nauseous from the over-eating and binge drinking, bruised by the family fights and bored by yet another Christmas TV Special; you'll be looking forward to Boxing Day when you can queue at an out of town store's customer service desk in order to return your unwanted gifts.
To see you through this final stretch, I thought I'd tell you a Christmas horror story from when I was a kid:
This next week I'll be wishing my life away to get to the other side as quickly and painlessly as possible. And I won't be eating any foil wrapped chocolate Santas...I must've been about eight years old and during the run up to Christmas my Grandmother, who worked in a shop, used to supply my younger brother and I with festive treats such as foil wrapped chocolates intended to be hung on the tree. Of course, they were never hung on our tree; they never made it that far - my brother and I would greedily devour them when we got home after school, ignoring my mother's warnings that we'd ruin our appetites.
On one miserable and grey afternoon in December we arrived home from school and rushed to the cupboard to share out our chocolate spoils. It was sheer heaven; sat there on the floor infront of the telly ripping at the foil to reveal the hollow chocolate bells, balls, snowmen and santas. We didn't stop to savour this cheap confectionary, we ate it quickly and mechanically while our attention was almost wholly focused on Scooby Doo or Hong Kong Fooey. Occasionally we might pause slightly or relax our feeding frenzy as my mother's voice echoed from the kitchen, "I hope you two aren't eating those chocolates yet?" My brother and I would grin at each other for a brief moment before picking up the pace again.
During my trance-like state I'd half noticed that one of my chocolate santa's foil wrapping had been punctured. I thought no more of it. I tore off his shiney red dressing and bit his head off. I then lifted his decapitated body to my mouth and tapped so that any chocolate debris that had fallen into his body fell into my mouth. I swiftly followed this with two bites at what was left and the whole santa was now in my mouth. I chomped away at it, the chocolate melting away between my teeth. However, this one tasted a little odd. It was an alkaline taste; the taste you get from silver paper. Rather than pull the paper out of my mouth I decided to chew at it a bit more and suck the melting chocolate out of it's folds. After a few more seconds I decided to retrieve it as the taste of the metal was beginning to spoil my enjoyment.
With my fingers I reached into my mouth to remove the chocolate sodden foil that had become mashed on my molars. I held it up so that I could have a better look at it. However, grasped between my thumb and forefinger was not the foil I'd been expecting to find but instead the biggest, blackest beetle I had ever seen. Its body was pretty much mutilated, crushed by my teeth, but there was enough of the animal left to identify it. Two of its legs were still twitching. My brother had stopped eating and looked on in silent horror. This silence was eventually broken by my hysterical screams as I tried to retrieve any remaining beetle body parts from my mouth. I cried and cried and continued to cry for the rest of the evening. Eventually, my mother lost patience (and any sympathy she might've had) and smacked me so that I'd shut up.
| Today's run at 8:16 | |||
| Distance | 3.86 km | Time | 22:26 |
| Pace | 5:48 min/km | Cadence | 80 spm |
| Comments: Very cold and slippery because of all the ice. | |||
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