Housing Estate Run

It was Tuesday, so time for my usual running club run. I arrived at the pub moderately early, which was good as Easy Rider, and old friend of mine, was unexpectedly there! Easy Rider now lives in Edinburgh, but was down in London for a couple of days on business. Hence she'd come out to the run to say hello to old friends, and it was great to see her.

Admittedly it was a very small pub that we were gathering in, hence it was rather hard to move around in with the large crowds that we were bringing out. Still, on a non-running night, I can imagine it being a really lovely, cozy pub.

One of the runners, Roger, brought a dog with him on the run, a really cute chocolate lab. I learned later that this was because a friend of his needed to arrange his father's funeral that week, and so had asked friends to baby-sit his three-year old child and three-year old dog. Roger then decided that in a choice between the child and the dog, he would take the dog for a few days.

We ended up running through an old boarded-up housing estate, that apparently they were shortly going to be tearing down. It confused me however as to why I could still see a few lights on here and there within the building. Were people really living there, or were they squatters? I couldn't figure it out.

After a while of running, I just got bored, and so when Easy Rider and Anna said that they were going to be walking straight back to the pub, I thought, "Why not go with them?" And so walked back just chatting and catching up.

Given that I had to pack that night and didn't feel much like drinking, I decided to continue on with the money-collecting responsibilities, as at least that way it gave me an excuse to circulate and talk to lots of people. However, on the whole, I found the crowds to be rather uninteresting, so I figured I might as well spend most of my time talking to Easy Rider, as she was only there for a brief amount of time.

Finally I was determined to head home at a reasonable hour (not being the last one to leave as usual), so at 9:50, I said good-bye to Easy Rider, and told her that I would see her in December. Yet as I tried to make my way to the door, I ran into Ross, Cookie and Kitty, and so of course I had to stop and talk to them a bit about Thanksgiving and my departure the next day. They seemed quite curious about the whole concept of Thanksgiving, and asked me to take lots of photos.

Then finally when I thought I was just out the door, I ran into Steve Morris, who also stopped to ask me tons of questions about Thanksgiving. Goodness, I had no idea that so many people were so fascinated by this holiday! (And it was a full 30 minutes after I'd originally said I was leavin that I finally made it out the door!)

I finally made it to the Tube, but then totally overshot my station (Bank) on the Northern Line just because I wasn't paying attention, and so had to get off at the next stop and go back in the other direction. So finally I got back on the Central Line and made it all of the way home. Goodness, for all of my efforts to leave early, I had really blown that one!

Then at home, because I hadn't done any grocery shopping due to the fact that I was about to leave the country for a week, I had hardly any food. So I scrounged up some cheese and some bread from the freezer and made some grilled cheese. Not much, but it would do for the night.