Watching the Collectives

While the rest of the house is plumped up in the front room with the tennis on, I am propped up in the back garden, cushion against the ivy clad brick wall with a glass of Greene King and William Boyd’s well crafted novel in my mittens, slowly baking.
The sun is high, the sky is blue. It must be summer.
The sound of Sinatra on the radio is wafting out the kitchen window. He’s crooning out something about ‘Saturday night being the loneliest night of the week’ but as it's Sunday lunchtime, I guess he’s got through Saturday night reasonably well.
We spent the last two days in Glasgow watching the young'un swimming. I had plans to do the Whitetops race on the Friday night but a long, lingering attack of apathy rolled in off the Clyde and I went for a 13 mile jog instead. The route took me up Pollokshaws Road, past Victoria Park to Clarkston. I was going to run along the Clyde, but small edgy collectives of the burberry clad fashionistas were encamped with inconvenient regularity along the banks of the dark waters and I soon made the strategic decision to veer right at Bridge Street.
Later I retired to bed in our clean, functional but tiny room. In contrition for the earlier attack of race lethergy, I had every intention of making the parkrun at Strathclyde Park the next day after dropping off the fish people at Tollcross. Regrettably, there was a noisy bunch of drunken revellers who kept most of the hotel up all night so I spent Saturday with a thick head from lack of sleep trying to find a quiet corner to doze away the hours.
We did manage a perfectly well behaved lunch at Bothwell though. I feel I have an affinity with the place. I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
It was, however, great to get back home and have a good night’s kip. Celebrated with a 1:40 run this morning before escaping to the garden under the guise of 'pottering', whatever that is?!