March

Bah. Leave a blog for a month and all these weeds start growing. Not a lot to report since my last entry. There has been no running, unless you count the half mile dash through Southwark to get to London Bridge tube station, only to find all trains out of London from Euston were cancelled. Very late home that day.

I've kind-of kept up with training on the elliptical. The past 2 weeks though have been not so good as I've been away on business (I did get one session in a hotel gym) and then the Easter holiday and the kids home. I restarted this morning and certainly felt that two weeks off plus chocolate eggs had taken their toll.

My Achilles remains not too good. I have been icing and stretching, especially over the past week, and got a doctors appointment last week to get yet another physio referral. The tendon still has some thickening, which I know has been reduced by ultrasound before, and still aches in the morning until it gets warmed up. We'll see how long an appointment takes.

On the home front, my five year old daughter has had an ear infection resulting in a perforated eardrum. A couple of weeks ago, I sat with her and told her I wanted to do a little test of her hearing, I'd whisper a number in each ear and she had to tell me what it was. I started with the good ear, the right one and whispered "eight". "Eight", she says straight away. I try again - "two". "Two", she says. Then I switch to the left ear. "Four". "I can't hear that", she says. I try again, "Nine". "I can't hear you", she says.

I start to panic. I go through a couple more, to each she says she can't hear what I'm saying. So I say to her, "You must tell me if you hear anything, because if you can't we'll have to take you straight to the doctors". She waits a moment then cracks a huge smile and says "I was only tricking you dad!" Total poker face all the way through. She can be so cheeky sometimes.

---
We've been on a few local walks over the past couple of weeks - having joined the UK National Trust, we're working our way through as many places as we can get to. Certainly had our money's worth already! I'll grab some of the photos and post them up over the next week or so.

All the best.

Mr Stumble.