the last book I read

Staying On by Paul Scott.

It's the early 1970s, pretty nearly a full quarter of a century after Indian independence and the end of colonial rule. Lots of British people involved in the old system of colonial rule have packed up and gone home, there being no need for them to stick around among a population less inclined to consent to being subjugated and abused. I mean, where's the fun in that? Honestly, if you can't even find a decent punkah wallah to keep you cool while you're sipping a pink gin then you may as well be in Swindon.

Some have stayed, though, and will have a variety of reasons for doing so - maybe they have business interests in India, maybe they've married into Indian society, maybe they just like it there. For some it's more about having been in India for so long that they wouldn't feel comfortable in British society any more, and maybe because the cost of living over there is higher, plus the cost of getting there in the first place, plus perhaps a bit of laziness about uprooting oneself from a reasonably comfortable life and sailing off into the unknown. 

This latter category of people definitely includes Tusker and Lucy Smalley, eking out a just-about-comfortable existence, mainly facilitated by Tusker's military pension, living in the lodge attached to a fairly dilapidated old hotel in the small-ish town of Pankot. The hotel is run by the comically rapacious (money, food, sex, you name it) Mrs. Bhoolabhoy and her somewhat downtrodden husband; Mr. Bhoolabhoy maintains cordial relations with the Smalleys and occasionally enjoys a few drinks with Tusker, but Mrs. Bhoolabhoy regards them generally as an inconvenience and a potential problem should she wish to sell the hotel, something she has considered doing as profits have diminished since the building of a newer, swankier hotel just down the road.

Obviously during the Raj the social structure was nice and clear: the British are in charge and the natives do their bidding or expect a damn good thrashing. But 25 years later it's considerably less clear - some residual deference remains, and some residual expectation of deference remains in people like the Smalleys, both in their early seventies and fairly set in their ways. But for younger Indians in particular there's less of a sense that they should do as they're told by a bunch of elderly foreigners: after all, why should they?

The Smalleys' financial position is in a state of constant precariousness, not helped by Tusker's past unwise business dealings, some gambling problems and ongoing fondness for a drink or two. As befits people born in the early years of the twentieth century it's been Tusker who has held the financial reins with Lucy - objectively the more sensible and responsible of the pair - having precious little to do with it, and in a position of knowing very little about the details, including what her position would be if Tusker were to die, something that's been on her mind since he had a mild heart attack a while back. 

The Smalleys (mainly Lucy) maintain some correspondence with Britain, mainly people they knew from India who've now returned, or in some cases their children, and via this route Lucy learns that a vague acquaintance of an acquaintance, Mr. Turner, is visiting India and wants to pop in to say hello. This prompts a frenzy of excitement about what stuff they can get him to bring from home - with some it'd be Marmite, for Lucy it's a particular brand of blue rinse hair dye - and how they're going to make him welcome when he arrives, resources for lavish banqueting and the like being a bit thin. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Bhoolabhoy has seen the writing on the wall regarding the future of the hotel and has decided to sell up. This means that someone is going to have to write a letter to the Smalleys telling them that their tenure of their little lodge at preferential rates is at an end, and they'll have to find somewhere else to live, and that someone is Mr. Bhoolabhoy. And it turns out that it is the receipt and reading of this letter which is the thing that finally finishes Tusker off, his body being found later that day after suffering a massive heart attack, his hand still clutching the letter.

Paul Scott is of course most famous for the Raj Quartet, which is in turn best known for its 1984 TV adaptation, The Jewel In The Crown. Staying On is a sort of footnote to this series of much chunkier books, and the Smalleys feature as minor characters in the later novels in that series. I didn't know this when I bought my second-hand copy a few years ago and I can tell you that you have no particular need to plough through the quartet to appreciate this, unless you want to, of course, in which case have at it. Staying On, despite being written later, was actually adapted for TV first, in 1980, and the whole thing appears to be available on YouTube. It stars Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, more famous from Brief Encounter, as the Smalleys.

None of the great sweep of history that I imagine (possibly wrongly) features in the Raj Quartet here, just two fairly unexceptional people eking out the last few years of their lives (the last few days, in Tusker's case). No suggestion that Tusker was a particularly good soldier, despite eventually rising to the rank of colonel, nor a particularly effective businessman, nor even a particularly attentive husband, though he clearly does love Lucy in his own gruff and inarticulate way. There's an odd mix of comedy and pathos here with the two sometimes clashing with each other a bit, but you do feel a pang of sympathy for the Smalleys, desperately hanging on to the only life they've ever known while the country reinvents itself under their feet. I do agree with this Guardian review that Mrs. Bhoolabhoy is something of a grotesque caricature, but overall I enjoyed it; the 1977 Booker panel evidently felt the same way. Scott was unable to attend the presentation as he was already ill with the cancer that was to kill him a year later; he was also apparently a chronic alcoholic which probably didn't do much for his general health.

Previous Booker Prize winners on this list are: G. (1972), The Siege Of Krishnapur (1973), The Conservationist (1974), Midnight's Children (1981), Hotel Du Lac (1984), The Remains Of The Day (1989), Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993), The God Of Small Things (1997), The Sea (2005), The Gathering (2007), Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up The Bodies (2012). The Siege Of Krishnapur, Midnight's Children and The God Of Small Things also feature in the list of books set primarily in India, a list that I would have expected to also include a few others off this blog, but the only one I can think of is A New Dominion; novels that tangentially feature India would include The Marriage Plot and Around The World In Eighty Days. 

rolled turkey has got me on the run

I'm pretty sure that the last thing the world needs in January, or really at any time, is some more tips on cooking Christmas dinner, but I had a go at messing a bit with the standard formula for Christmas 2025 and I was pretty pleased with the way it turned out, so I'm going to share it here. As always this is as much for my own amusement and future reference as anything else; the links I'm going to include will give a far more comprehensive description of the method than I'm going to bother with.

Anyway, the principle is this: a standard turkey of whatever size is an awkward and unwieldy thing to cook all in one piece in a standard oven and pretty much always ends up being overcooked, not least because different parts of the bird are different thicknesses and cook at different rates. So while tradition says you must have a giant single golden steaming monolith of meat to present to your jolly apple-cheeked multi-generational crowd at Christmas lunch, a more pragmatic alternative viewpoint says: fuck tradition, I would prefer to eat something that's actually pleasant to consume, quicker to cook, and leaves some oven space free for the host of other stuff that I need to put in it.

So the principle behind the deconstruction is: the legs are awkward because the drumsticks in particular are thin and tend to overcook, in addition they're very bony and sinewy and a lot of people can't be arsed with that. Also the giant cavity and the creature's back aren't really doing any good except taking up valuable oven space and slowing the cooking down. So what we do is: take the legs and wings off, debone them and roll them up into giant sausages (you'll need some string, ideally culinary/butcher's string (rather than, say, gardening twine or cable ties) - I kept it pretty simple but you can add some stuffing or other filling as you do this). The deboning is a fiddly job, particularly in the drumstick area as those partially ossified ankle tendons are a pain to detach, but it's worth the effort. Then detach the crown from all the unwanted remaining bones and skin and connective tissue and get rid of them, or make stock or something with them if you must. That leaves you with a crown roast and two chunky leg/wing sausages.

I also wet-brined the crown for about 24 hours before cooking it. This is another advantage of the deconstruction: a trimmed crown plus brining liquid will fit in a large-ish bowl which will go in the fridge; a whole turkey will require a large bucket or a bathtub and obviously won't go in the fridge, though the shed or somewhere similarly cool will probably do for 24 hours, unless you're living in Australia and it's the middle of summer.

The other thing you should invest in is a meat thermometer. I have a simple analogue one, nothing fancy, and it is invaluable for this sort of thing. What you will find is an hour and a half is ample to cook all the meat - mine was gratifyingly succulent and delicious but even then could probably have come out of the oven ten minutes or so earlier. Opinions and guidance vary wildly regarding what's the optimum temperature at which to hoick the turkey out of the oven and let it rest, but I reckon 65-70 Celsius is about right, probably the low end of that range, if you dare, for maximum juiciness. 

The other thing about turkey is that whatever you do on Christmas Day unless you've calculated the amounts absolutely perfectly you're going to have some leftovers, and those can be a dishearteningly dry and joyless experience, with the resulting sandwiches needing a surprisingly large amount of wine to wash them down. In this particular case, though, I'm happy to report that the leftovers were themselves delightful and a positively pleasant prospect for consumption on Boxing Day and afterwards. Eventually we got bored and just chopped the remainder up and put it in a pie; that was pretty good too.

stats the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it

So here's part 2 of the annual book blogging stats round-up. Part 1 was the barely-there starter, a single quivering cube of beetroot jelly with a dab of blowtorched anchovy foam served on a roof tile; this is the entire haunch of venison with a bucket of gravy that follows.

Highlights to note: number of books read was pretty much the same as the previous three years but average length was down a bit at around 309 pages (longest book of the year was The Lay Of The Land at 726 pages, albeit with a few missing), so overall page count was also down a bit as a result. 2020 and 2021 in particular were bumper years (partly lockdown-related I assume) and 2022-2024 were steady at around 7500 pages in total; 2025 was a bit lower at 6805. Nonetheless once you get back beyond 2020 you have to go back to the honeymoon year of 2011 for a higher overall number.

Overall post count was pretty low at 51, only 2017 and 2022 were lower. As a result book reviews as a percentage of overall posts was the third-highest on record at 43.14%. 2022 remains the only year where that ratio has exceeded 50%.

7 of the 22 books I read in 2025 were by female authors; that percentage (31.82%) is the highest since 2016 and a great improvement on the testosterone-soaked, jism-festooned sausage-fest of 2019 which represents the nadir here at 11.76%.

If you've still got room I can offer you a little palate-refreshing dessert item with your coffee and cigars, again sex-related (no, stop it): Grass was the third female-authored novel in succession, just the fourth time that's happened in the history of this blog and the first since December 2015. As that linked post points out, even two in a row is relatively unusual, and a quick unscientific scan suggests that it's happened a further eleven times since the beginning of 2016. As with all three of the previous threesomes (no, stop it) there will not be a fourth as my current book is by a man. Sorry, ladies.

Grass was also the seventh one-word book title of the year, something I'm pretty confident must be a record (Kudos, Dalva, Jack, We, Trio and Day were the others). This post from late 2024 reckons I'd clocked up 84 in about 18 years at an average of less than five a year. I didn't manage to match the four in a row from early 2018 noted in that post, though. 

the last book I read

Grass by Sheri S Tepper.

It is the distant future, a galaxy far far away, yadda yadda yadda. And is mankind living in some kind of shiny techno-utopia with its every whim fulfilled? Not a bit of it. I mean, yes, we've done all the stuff that enables science fiction novels to take place in locations other than Swansea, i.e. invent faster-than-light travel and all that jazz, but there's still this outbreak of flesh-rotting plague to deal with that may be the cause of the actual end of humanity if left to spread unchecked. 

The actual end of humanity being an unpalatable prospect to those nominally in charge of humanity and its welfare, a cure is a priority. And so a keen interest is being taken in the planet of Grass, pretty much the only location in the known universe which seems to be free of the plague and the limb-rottage and associated unpleasantness. Grass? Pretty strange name for a planet, if you ask me. Well, I would ask you to note that a) nobody asked you and b) perhaps give some consideration to the name of the planet you're currently sitting on. 

Anyway, a party is rounded up from those still free of the plague on Terra, i.e. Earth, still very much Humanity Central in this particular future, albeit ecologically ravaged. The party basically consists of some high-ranking officials, largely chosen because they are horse-riding types and it is understood from the limited interaction the Grassians have with the outside world that they conduct some form of largely ritualistic activity akin to fox-hunting which the party may be able to join in with to ingratiate themselves into Grassian society. 

And so Rodrigo ("Rigo") and Marjorie Yrarier, their two children and a retinue of flunkeys (plus a whole stableful of horses) find themselves on Grass. They don't exactly get a warm welcome from the fox-hunting fraternity. though: these guys, the "bons", who consider themselves the aristocracy, are unhelpful, snobbish and weirdly twitchy and tight-lipped about anything that goes on outside the boundaries of their country estates ("estancias"), in particular any details of what happens on the hunts. By contrast, the horny-handed proles who inhabit the planet's only major town (and spaceport) are considerably more friendly, helpful and more generally knowledgeable about the planet and in particular its non-human life.

Most of the preconceptions that the Yrariers (and the reader) have about the hunts are blown away when they are (probably reluctantly) invited to witness one - not only are the "hounds" not really hounds but great slavering beasts the size of a small horse, but the "mounts" are also great slavering beasts the size of, erm, a freakin' massive horse, with deadly neck barbs that require the rider to stay out of their way or be impaled. Those humans who participate seem to enter a weird kind of trance where they remember little of what happens during the many hours they're out in the high grass which covers most of the planet, and there seems to be a kind of willed blindness among the bons to the fact that people occasionally arrive back minus limbs, or occasionally don't arrive back at all. Those who don't arrive back at all seem to include a disproportionate number of teenage girls, including, very recently, Dimity bon Damfels, a member of the family hosting the hunt when the Yrariers arrive.

Marjorie Yrarier, a bright and resourceful woman freed by her remoteness from the strict religious society that exists on Terra and stifles opportunities for women, makes enquiries in the town and starts to piece together a picture of Grassian society and wildlife, some of it wilder than she expected. Basically 90% of the planet (the grass-covered bit) is off-limits to humans and anyone venturing more than a small distance into it can expect never to be seen again. The town seems to be safe because it is located on a rocky ridge surrounded by a swampy forest and whatever lethal dangers exist elsewhere can't seem to get through.

Marjorie also discovers that there is a small sect of monks based in another grass-free location on the planet, mainly concerned with investigating the remains of a previous civilisation, the Arbai, who lived on Grass long anough to leave plenty of buildings and artefacts behind but who seem to have mostly died off in an abrupt and unspeakably violent fashion a long time ago.

Marjorie investigates further, being in the unique position of being able to hob-nob (to some extent, anyway) with the bons, talk to the townspeople and have enough resources at her disposal to have representatives of the monk fraternity brought to her. She also goes out riding on her horses, far in excess of the range deemed safe by most sensible people, and observes some of the ritual and lifecycle of the Grassian fauna. In particular she observes the hounds and the "mounts", known as Hippae, and determines that they are different developmental stages of the same organism. The Hippae are also clearly highly intelligent and able to exert some kind of telepathic hold on creatures in their vicinity, not least their human riders.

The time for careful investigation comes to an end, though, as Rigo and teenage daughter Stella participate (after much intensive riding training) in a hunt and, inevitably, Stella fails to return. Marjorie decides that the time for action has arrived and gets a posse together comprising her, various religious types and Sylvan bon Damfels - seemingly the one member of his family concerned by his sister's disappearance - and saddles up for a trip into the grass to find out what's going on. This is highly dangerous, as you might imagine, and the group is soon menaced by a group of Hippae, but manages to escape into the swamp where the Hippae do not generally venture. But why not?

Clues are provided when the party reaches an island in the swamp which houses a complex deserted treetop village, evidently an Arbai outpost, and also a group of "foxen", in their infant form the apparent target of the hunts, but in their adult form great giant cat-like creatures with even more well-developed mind-control capabilities than the Hippae. Marjorie strikes up a relationship with their seeming leader, whom she calls First, and learns more of the planet's history. Very briefly: the foxen are themselves the culmination of the hound-Hippae lifecycle, but the Hippae have evolved, as well as a destructive streak towards strangers, the ability to bypass the foxen stage of their complex lifecycle, and, the foxen being generally peace-loving and well-intentioned creatures, have decided to wipe them out with the largely unwitting help of the bons (i.e. hence the whole performative Hunt rigmarole). Not only that, but it was the Hippae who wiped out the Arbai, and not only that but it's the Hippae who were the source of the plague, using infected bats as a vector and the teenage girls as a delivery mechanism, their minds being seemingly just at the right delicate stage for wiping and re-programming, though the actual process is hand-waved somewhat, and probably just as well as there seems to be some slightly queasy sexual element to it.

There's a lot to process here, but precious little time to do it as it becomes apparent that the Hippae's merciless sweep of the planet is going to be extended to include the town, an extension of hostilities more than likely provoked by the Yrariers' presence and activities, and that a climactic battle is going to ensue. And so it does - the Hippae have managed to construct tunnels under the swamp to facilitate an invasion of the town with the inevitable savagery and killing, but are partly thwarted by a somewhat Dalek-like distaste for stairs (enabling the townspeople not ripped apart by the initial onslaught to take refuge on higher floors), and properly thwarted by eventual involvement from the foxen, once Marjorie has persuaded them that a cerebral distaste for killing must sometimes be overridden by a pragmatic view of the greater good.

While all this is going on the Grassian scientists have come up with an explanation of, and a cure for, the plague - some hand-wavey stuff involving right- and left-handed protein isomers which also accounts for the Grassian fauna's immunity - all they have to do now is avoid being sliced into tiny pieces by the Hippae or thwarted by religious fundamentalists and the universe is saved.

As with The Anubis Gates there's a tremendous amount going on here, and there really isn't room in an already quite long post to include it all. The book itself suffers from the same problem; as this review astutely notes it's got a beginning where all the world-building happens (and which is clearly the best bit) and an end where it all Kicks Off and much excitement happens, but arguably no middle, presumably just in an attempt to avoid it being 800 pages long (it's a pretty beefy 500 already). The observation that the sciencey bit of the plague stuff reads like something Tepper read in New Scientist the week before is spot-on as well, and the last-minute cooking of up some ancient (but miraculously still working) Arbai Stargate-esque teleportation portal as a beefed-up delivery mechanism is all a bit convenient, as if Tepper realised that naked teenage girls sneaking dead bats onto spaceships didn't really work very well on its own. 

None of that particularly matters, though, as this is tremendous stuff, and in any case as with much speculative fiction what it's ostensibly about is only partly what it's actually about: there's a strong feminist slant here with Marjorie clearly being the most intelligent and dynamic individual character, held back by notions like tradition and religious observance on her home planet. Commendably this doesn't mean that Rigo is portrayed as completely useless or an irredeemable bastard; yes, he has mistresses and a bit of a short temper but he is a fine and courageous horseman, offs a couple of Hippae in spendid fashion at the bon Damfels' estancia, and recognises Marjorie's newly-developed authority during the climactic battle. The feminist slant is quite reminiscent of Ursula K Le Guin, though it must be said that the one novel of hers I've read, The Dispossessed, still featured a male protagonist.

There is also much being said about organised religion, xenophobia, race and class struggle and the messy business of what happens when high-minded philosophical principles (like, for instance, thou shalt not kill) meet reality (like, for instance, Hitler), and action is required without, perhaps, the time to analyse all the possible courses of that action to determine with complete certainty which one is best.

There is also a really good usage of a classic narrative trope which I see I have cited here a few times before, usually using what in my mind is the canonical example, William Golding's The Inheritors (Rashomon would be the filmic equivalent I suppose): a second viewpoint of the same scene or sequence of events throwing a completely new light on it. We are offered a description of the hunt from Dimity bon Damfels' perspective early on which certainly hints at Something Not Quite Right going on but is very sketchy about the details (as befits everyone's addled mind-state), and it's only when we get the Yrariers' un-addled perspective that we get a glimpse of the full terrifying reality of what's going on: drugged-up riders unwittingly doing the malevolent bidding of a bunch of freakin' velociraptors. 

The other canonical example of a narrative trope which I would have assumed I'd mentioned here but don't seem to have done (although I've mentioned its parent book a couple of times) is Cowslip's warren from Watership Down: a society which functions OK as long as no-one mentions The Thing which occasionally claims one of its number and which even then we look the other way and Don't Talk About. Speaking of what would generally be considered a children's book, Tepper started off as a writer of children's fiction - other writers on this list to have taken that route include Penelope Lively and Russell Hoban. 

Anyway, it's really good, but, for all that, the news that it's the first of a loosely-connected trilogy doesn't fill me with an immediate desire to go and read the others. I'm sure they're all fine, though. 

buffering; please wait

It occurred to me after re-reading my earlier parkrun post, which included a picture of me lumbering sweatily towards the finish of my first-ever parkrun in 2013, that I was wearing my Welsh dragon Buff on my head and that furthermore there were probably a whole raft of photos from various outdoor activities over the years which feature me wearing a variety of Buffs in various of the many possible configurations. Moreover, having got a couple of Buffs for Christmas and, honestly, probably having enough of them now I thought it might be a good moment for an audit. So: pictured below is my Buff collection.

A quick run-through:

• The green bamboo-themed one at the top left is the OG, the first one I ever bought, from an outdoor shop in Keswick (possibly Rohan) in probably around 2008. Hazel bought one as well and we had an entertaining trip to a pub just up the road (possibly the Dog & Gun) immediately afterwards experimenting with the various wearing options, to the fascination of various locals.
• The red, white and blue one at top right is technically not a "real" Buff as I'm pretty sure it was from the middle aisle of Aldi, and was therefore almost certainly cheaper. Where it wins over the original one is in being slightly bigger; the extra fabric real estate is very handy if you want to make it into things like the pirate bandana or the beanie hat (see the linked video above for instructions) and have (like me) a freakin' mahoosive cranium. 
• The Welsh dragon one is probably the one I wear the most - you can see that I'm also wearing it in the Llanfoist Crossing parkrun photo in the previous post, for instance.
• The blue one was slightly bizarrely (but awesomely) given away as a free gift when I ordered some cheap maps from Dash4It.
• The one with the Norwegian flag on it was purchased in Oslo when we stopped there on the cruise we went on in July 2023.
• The YesCymru one is a recent replacement for one I had previously (further investigation reveals it was Christmas 2020 - I'm wearing it in the post-COVID Riverfront parkrun pic in the previous post), lost for a lengthy period of time, found in a slightly musty state in my golf bag to much rejoicing and then promptly lost again almost immediately. Commendably they are only a fiver on their website, though, so I just bought another one.
• The parkrun one was a Christmas present from this year, a sort of bonus item alongside the 50-parkrun commemorative T-shirt I also got.

A few bonus Buff-wearing pics, respectively these depict: the original green one, looking at a map with baby Nia halfway up Gray Hill; rocking a textbook pirate bandana cooking up some spicy noodles near the Ystradfellte waterfalls wearing the blue Aldi one; me (wearing the Welsh dragon one) and Hazel at the top of one of the Buttermere fells (either High Stile or High Crag); some heartwarming family shit featuring me wearing the YesCymru one (the old one, before the start of the lose/find/lose again cycle) and another parkrun one, this time of me wearing the Norwegian one while struggling to muster a sprint finish in (successful, as it happens) search of a PB at Riverfront. No pictures featuring the other two yet, though I expect I will wear the parkrun one to a parkrun at least once during 2026; seems only fair.

and now for something completely different: a man with three BOTYs

A few bits of traditional seasonal blog admin to get out of the way, so let's do the easier bit first: my annual Book Of The Year thing, started in January 2024 and continuing last year. 

Year	Author	Title	Comment
2025	Jim Harrison	Dalva	oh yeah, I shot some guys and hid them in the cellar, you might want to tidy up a bit
	Peter Carey	Jack Maggs	in the more Biblical sense of having indulged in a bit of highly irregular (for 1837 anyway) man-on-man bumsex activity with him
	Penelope Fitzgerald	The Beginning Of Spring	the letter he's just received from his wife Nellie telling him that she has left him, taking their three children with her. No hard feelings, look after yourself, yours etc., Nellie.

keep on running

A couple of follow-up items to the last post, which was getting a bit long anyway:

My general running career outside of parkrunning comprises a very small number of other events, spread over a large number of years. Most significantly, I ran two half-marathons in the space of about six months back in 2004 and 2005. As always, for someone who doesn't just naturally love running, as some maniacs appear to do, the interesting question here is one of motivation, and I think a couple of friends hatched the idea and I signed up in a brief spasm of enthusiasm, far enough away from the actual date that it didn't quite seem real. 

Of course it does eventually start to seem real, and among some of the endless slogging around the Downs on training runs I did compete in a couple of 10-kilometre races as a warm up: the Nailsea 10K which I remember being intermittently hilly but which I smashed round in 51:38, and the Frampton Cotterell 10K which I recall finding much more difficult despite it being flatter and which I ran in a slower (though still perfectly respectable in hindsight) 52:59.

The actual Bristol half-marathon was on a day of slightly odd weather - warm intervals broken up by one torrential downpour on the long out-and-back stretch along the Portway. I was suffering quite a bit by the end but managed to muster enough of a sprint finish to duck under the two-hour mark at 1:59:45.

I can't really remember what motivated me to then sign up for the Bath half-marathon in 2005 - presumably the desire to prove to myself that I could do a faster time than the first one. The main thing I remember was that the preparatory training regime was a lot tougher, since the training period was in the winter rather than the summer as it had been for Bristol (the actual races being in spring and autumn respectively) and entailed a lot of running in the dark. Anyway, I shaved just over a minute off my Bristol time at 1:58:40 and promptly retired from long-distance running.

That was basically it, 5K parkruns aside, until 2018 when Hazel suggested doing a challenge and came up with the Newport 10K. So we did that, and then discovered that a couple of friends had signed up for the Cardiff 10K, so we did that one as well. I ran a perfectly decent 55:08 for Newport and a slightly less impressive 58:04 at Cardiff, which I recall being very congested at the start and a much hotter day.

Finally, a few notes on parkrun courses I have run at, for the benefit of anyone thinking of having a go. Numbers in brackets are the number of times I've run there (as of today):

• Newport (18): At Tredegar House, mostly off-road, a couple of possible course layouts depending on season, weather and other things going on in the grounds, but all incorporating the section through the woods round the back of the artificial lake which can be quite muddy.
• Riverfront (17): Fast, flat, out-and-back course along the Usk in the town centre. Downstream and therefore slightly downhill on the way out, upstream and therefore slightly uphill on the way back but still a good one for a PB. As with any out-and-back course you have to be wary of runners (especially the super-speedy guys at the front) coming back the other way.
• Rogiet (7): at Rogiet Countryside Park, 3 laps, mostly flat but for one up-and-down hump at the far end of the course. Occasionally frequented by quiz maestro and possible canal-based murderer CJ de Mooi.
• Cwmbran (2): Occasional re-routings but usually starts by the boating lake and incorporates at least one lap of it. Fast and flat in the dry, off-road sections sometimes slippery and treacherous at other times. Ends by an ice-cream shop, though, which is nice.
• Wycombe Rye (1): Covered elsewhere but mostly flat, varied surfaces including grass at start and finish, bizarre little mini-section in the middle where you have to run up a series of steps in a wooded area and down again the other side.
• Severn Bridge (1): Out-and-back across the old Severn Bridge. As with most long-span bridges it's less flat than you might imagine; the turn-around point is just past the halfway point of the bridge so it's mostly uphill on the way out and downhill on the way back (i.e. the reverse of Riverfront).
• Meadowmill (1): Near Prestonpans, a few miles east of Edinburgh. Bagged on our Scottish holiday in the summer. Generally just a couple of laps of a field by a leisure centre with an odd little narrow out-and-back section to the back of Prestonpans railway station. 
• Tremorfa (1): Over on the east side of Cardiff, next to a giant Tesco which provides handy parking. Flat, fast, three-lap figure-of-eight course which I'd have been hoping for a decent time at had I not been struggling with a miserable cold. But it was the only available weekend so the challenge must take precedence. 
• Belvoir Castle (1): Off-road, out-and-back course near the entrance to the castle. Hilly. Downhill sections delightful (though you need to watch your footing), uphill ones, to quote myself, a bit of a bitch. 
• Llanfoist Crossing (1): New one (started in November) just round the corner from where my parents live. Mostly on an old railway line but nonetheless noticeably uphill on the way out and downhill on the way back, and with a little detour into a grassy park around the halfway point which can be slippery and involves a steepish hill to get back onto the main route. 

running joke

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, but one that I did make at the start of 2024 (pretty much the only serious one I've ever made, actually, thinking about it) was to get out to the parkrun a bit more often, and since "a bit more often" is unacceptably woolly and just invites weaselling out or retrospective redefinition of the challenge to accommodate laziness, I made it a bit more specific: at least one parkrun every calendar month during 2024. So that means every month of the year has to include a parkrun, no skipping March and doing two in April, for instance; that doesn't count. 

I am a tedious evangelist for parkrun as a thing - all you have to do is register, save your membership barcode in some form (this used to mean some physical format but as of recently includes just having it saved on your phone), turn up, and run five kilometres (a smidge over three miles). That's it; all the timing and collating of results is done for you, including collection and analysis of your own personal stats. It's great, and for the reluctant runner (something I would definitely class myself as) provides just enough structure and accountability to encourage participation while not making the bar to entry too high. Running with a large group of other people of extremely mixed abilities has advantages as well; some find the whole community spirit and post-run chat and coffee thing delightful, while some (like me) don't really go for that but find it helpful and motivating to run in a group including lots of other people who are not conspicuously thinner and fitter than them but who are nonetheless not succumbing to the temptation to walk for a bit or just jack the whole thing in and slope off for a pint and a fag.

My brief parkrun history is as follows: I became aware of it back in the early noughties when some friends from Newbury started going regularly to the Greenham Common one and (as people tend to do) evangelising their ass off about it to all and sundry. No disrespect intended to those people, but I looked at them and thought, well, I could probably do that. This was around the time that parkrun (which started in late 2004 in Bushy Park in west London but only added a handful of events in its early years) really started to take off, and my first one was at Tredegar House (which bagged the Newport parkrun name as it was the first in the area in 2011) in March 2013, at which I ran a perfectly respectable 28:58 (that's me approaching the finish line on the right). I did another in May of that year and then took a brief sabbatical for around five and a half years before doing my next one at Riverfront in central Newport (which had started up in 2017) in September 2018. 

That pattern of occasional dabblings continued until early 2020 when Nia, who'd been a reasonably regular participant at the junior parkrun (two kilometres) decided that she'd like to upgrade to the adult version. We did a couple, the second of which in March 2020 turned out to be the last one before the COVID lockdown regulations prevented large groups of people getting together to breathe heavily and sweat over each other for around eighteen months. We participated in the first one back at Riverfront in August 2021 (and got our picture in the paper!) by which time it was clearly evident to me that I was on borrowed time in terms of finishing in front of Nia, or even keeping up with her for any length of time. 

Even after that participation was a bit patchy, though - having done three in the remainder of 2021 and an excellent nine in the first seven months of 2022 I then did none in the rest of 2022 and not a single one in 2023, for reasons I have no recollection of and therefore must just have been apathy. And so by the end of that year I obviously felt that some structure needed to be imposed.

Anyway, long story short, having done a total of eighteen parkruns up to the start of 2024 I fulfilled the terms of the challenge by doing fourteen in 2024 - double-up months were the nice friendly summer months of June and August, the second one in August being my first proper bit of parkrun tourism as we went to Wycombe Rye and had a minor celebrity encounter as described here. In renewing the challenge for 2025 I added a couple of optional stretch objectives: do more parkruns in total than in 2024, and have a crack at getting to fifty in total by the end of the year. That second one would entail doing eighteen during the year, something I'm here to tell you I achieved by running the new Llanfoist Crossing parkrun in early December. I'm slightly reluctant to make a big thing of it, although it's significant to me, as I personally know people whose tally stands at well over a hundred and the guy I spent most of the December parkrun behind (though I'd like it noted that I had him in the sprint finish) was wearing a 250 T-shirt, and I have seen a few 500s at other parkruns. 

I fully intend to renew the basic one-per-month resolution for 2026, though I'm not sure exceeding eighteen for the year is realistic. 

A few random observations to finish:

• My personal best progression is a bit of an odd one: while some people spend years nibbling off a few seconds here and there I set a target of 26:11 at my first ever Riverfront parkrun in 2018 and didn't improve on it until May 2025 when I ran 25:44. Not wanting to have that stand for another seven years I subsequently lowered it again to its current mark of 25:29 (at Riverfront again) in August.
• The watershed of Nia's PB being faster than mine was crossed in September 2024 when she ran 26:05 at Riverfront and she has remained ahead since (and I'm sure will permanently). Her current PB stands at just over a minute faster than mine at 24:36.
• You'll notice that Riverfront seems to be a PB-friendly course, and so it is. This is highly dependent on gradient and terrain, and Riverfront is pretty flat and on tarmac all the way. The one at Tredegar House, by contrast, is mostly flat but there are roots and rocks and mud to cope with so it's never as fast. The hilliest one I have done is at Belvoir Castle up in Leicestershire.