Take The Weather With You?

Seriously, this incessant shitty weather needs to fuck off. I honestly can't recall a period in my 30 years of life where it has been so constantly grey, windy, cold and rainy as it has for the past few months. Jesus - it's fucking August for fucks sake...and look at it. Look at it! It's blowing a gale, the sky is the colour of Rab C. Nesbitt's vest and the rain is coming down in sheets. I know there's been some talk of this 'jet stream' thing fucking up our summer, but to be fair I'm not interested. All I'm interested in is that its August and we've had one day of sunshine. Fuck - June and July were bad enough, but now we look set for yet another month of horrific weather.

It's an old cliché that us Brits are a little bit obsessed with the state of our generally miserable weather, but I feel I have special dispensation to be a little bit bored of it this year. I spend a fair amount of my time outside, what with my running, cycling and being a motorcyclist so I feel that it affects me more than your average moaning twat and it just seems that for every hour of sunshine we've been treated to recently, we've have to pay the penalty of 20 days of incessant torrential rain in lieu. It doesn't look like it's going to get any better any time soon either, so wet jeans, soggy money, water-damaged phones and sopping shoes are (sadly) going to be with us for a good while yet. Fucking weather. Fucking Olympic athletes jetting off home to sunny countries. Damn them. "Cheers for the medals, London - we're all off home to top up our tans by the pool..." is what I'd imagine most of them are thinking. Jealous? Fuck yes I'm jealous.

Speaking of London/the Olympics - that closing ceremony was pretty good. There were points where I was convinced that the acts were miming (One Direction most definitely were), but after a while I was happy that what I was seeing was just a delay between the performer singing and the sound catching up with the TV picture. I hope. And if they were miming and it wasn't just an audio/visual delay...then damn. That was some pretty shocking miming. So yeah, it was pretty entertaining and I think it was a very well put together concert/performance/thing. Don't really know what's happened to Liam Gallagher's voice like, but very good all in all. Apart from the bit with Russell Brand. And the Spice Girls. Ultimately though: Rio de Janeiro - the gauntlet for both the opening and closing ceremonies has truly been thrown down (in a puddle).

I had a slightly weird experience earlier on today. I'm currently staying with my significant other in the lovely (if wet, grey and windy (see above)) county of Dorset. This morning I went for a run that took me past the little graveyard in which TE Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) is buried. I went in, looked at his headstone, and then turned around to continue my run. As I turned the corner, I found myself on a very long, very straight country road that was completely enclosed by trees, and in the distance there was what appeared to be a white figure. I continued running onwards down this lane and the figure slowly but surely grew in size...just like the bit in the opening scene of the film Lawrence of Arabia starring Peter O'Toole! I must admit that I was a little bit freaked out by what was unfolding, especially seeing as this particular road was deadly quiet and there were no other runners or cars around due to the early hour. Was this an apparition of TE Lawrence coming toward me? Was it Peter O'Toole on horseback out for a morning ride? Was I hallucinating having just been to his grave? Alas no - it was a silver Toyota 4x4. But this experience just illustrates the kinds of problems I have when I put my contact lenses in the wrong eyes.

Speaking of running, I'm taking part in the East Manchester 10k race next Sunday. My third event of the year after the 20k and the half marathon and should be quite easy after those aforementioned races. So 10k...that's 10,000 metres right?! Mo Farah did that in 27:30 at the Olympics the other day. I did it this morning in 41:09. Watch out Mo...I'm only, er, a few minutes behind you...