New Year

In spite of my worries, New Year turned out great. I started thinking it would sometime in the early evening. As I was walking near Newington Green I saw someone coming towards me walking their pet ferret. As uncommon a sight as that just has to be a good omen doesn’t it? I did say hello too, and got a lightning fast exploration of my feet and the chance to brush his fur with my fingertips before he began to pull his owner onwards. He seemed a determined little beast and didn’t look as silly on a lead as you might think.

In the evening I watched Monty Python then turned on my computer to see in the New Year on a message board, while watching the London fire work display courtesy of the BBC. The fireworks were spectacular, and as per usual I’m toying with the idea of actually going and seeing them in person next year. I think I might. The message board crashed, though I still stayed up till half one before I gave up on it. Besides the big fireworks down the river, London was, of course, exploding until well after twelve. But here’s the strange thing. After that silence descended. There were no loud parties in my vicinity this year. Someone let off a load of fireworks around three am, but other than that, everything went quiet. It’s unheard of, and though I was wishing for it, it’s weird.

I know the council did a big sweep last year and evicted a lot of people for rent arrears. Maybe they were the noisy ones too (I know of one case at least where this was true). But other people I’ve mentioned it to have said things were subdued around their way too. Maybe it’s twenty four hour drinking keeping people in the bars, or maybe it’s squeezes and worries about borrowing. Or maybe it’s because so many are sick (people coughing everywhere…). Anyway, when I dragged myself out of the house at six fifteen am (yes I made it, after about three hours of restless sleep…) there were a fair few nauseated looking folks just making their ways home, so I guess partying did happen somewhere.

Normally when I go to Bushy Park for the time trial I arrive minutes before the start, end up running from the bus stop, thrusting my bag on to some spectator and asking them to leave it for me at the finish, and starting the run with my breathing still fast. It’s a long journey of two hours plus, and any delays mess things up badly. Of course this time the journey went fast and easy, and I arrived an hour before the start. I was hungry and everywhere from Richmond Station to the park was closed. Luckily I did finally spot a petrol station and managed to rouse the assistant.

The park was amazing when I arrived. The sun was creeping up slowly, with no bright colours but lots of mist. It was pooling and drifting through the park. At one point I saw it had raised up slightly so there was crystal clear air at ground level, with a layer of cloud starting at a definite line in the lower branches of some trees then fading out upwards. I wish I’d had a camera, but it’s not practical to bring one to a run really, and it may well not have captured it anyway. Mist is very difficult to photograph.

As time went on more people gathered. Families in some cases: there’s quite a few kids run at Bushy. I knew I hadn’t a chance of doing a PB (personal best), with lack of sleep and the tail end of a chest infection, so I set myself another target. I decided this would be my first five k without walking. Though I’ve done three miles at home, five km is slightly longer, plus there’s pacing issues. If you are as slow as me it’s easy to get tempted to go off too fast and end up gasping. So it took some discipline at the start to let the field pull away while I maintained a pace I knew I could keep up. I just kept chugging along. As it happened I soon passed some folks who had slowed for a walk break. For the rest of the run me and one couple passed and re-passed each other. As we turned for home and onto the last long grass stretch home I pulled away from them. I came home three minutes slower than my pb (running constantly rather than run-walking does slow me down…), but I’d managed to run all the way. Very happy!

Afterwards I got a lift to the café, and spent a lovely hour or so chatting with other folks from the run. They are a nice crowd, though the café crowd are all regulars who are able to attend more often than me, so the names thrown around in the stories tend to go over my head!

After a journey that long you can’t just do a run and go home, so I walked off towards Richmond Park. I crossed the river at Teddington Lock, which is something of a landmark, and walked up through Ham. There’s pedestrian cuts through the houses all the way. Once at the park I decided to walk across to Roehampton Gate, then walk round the North of the park. The park was actually busy with walkers, cyclists and riders. Halfway across, near a car park, I found myself walking alongside a road just as a small herd of fallow deer came across. I stopped and let them walk all around me. I also did a little trick, and got my biscuits out and started eating. The theory is that if a wild herbivore sees you eating it’s going to reassure them that you are not thinking of turning them into lunch. Unfortunately it worked perhaps too well, as some of the deer had apparently been fed by naughty folks, and so they reacted by standing round me staring at me fixedly while I ate. I decided to put the food away… and one of the deer tried to creep up on me and make a snatch. Of course I’d seen him and shooed him away. He wasn’t so tame that he didn’t move pretty smartish. Anyway I stood and watched them move close to and even around me for a while. Very pretty with a variety of colours and some of them dappled.

I’d just decided to move away (most of the herd were quite happy to have me close, but I’d noticed some seemed to be put off grazing), when they got scared off anyway. Heads and tails up, eyes fixed up the hill, then they wheeled and bounded away, a large grey dog in pursuit, followed by a woman yelling ‘Dennis!’ and sounding if anything more scared than the deer. The chase went on for a while up and down the hillside on the other side of the valley. I don’t think any actual harm was done, but definitely the only one who got any enjoyment out of it was Dennis, and his owner was right to be worried, for him as well as the deer. Had he picked on a mother with young, or a red stag with full antlers he would have been in real danger.

With that all over I walked away up the hill and through Spanker’s Wood, with whole flocks of bright green parakeets wheeling overhead (they do get a bit noisy). Out the other side I found the path ahead flanked by a huge herd of red deer stags with antlers fully grown. Slightly pushy bare-headed fallows are one thing, but these had serious weaponry. I read somewhere that in zoos and safari parks it’s deer and antelope that kill more keepers than any other category of animal. You really don’t want to get on the wrong side of a horned beast. I walked past slowly, stopping occasionally. I noticed they were actually sorted among the herd, with animals with similar numbers of branches to their antlers seeming to be staying together. The young bucks with single prongs were all up one end. I did have a slightly nervous moment when two of these angled their horns at each other and rubbed them together in a threatening caress. They were probably less than ten feet away and had it turned into an actual clash I could easily have had one of them backing straight into me. I was thrilled to get so close, I’m not scared of large animals and understand them pretty well. But it is a good illustration of why tamed wild animals can actually be more dangerous than those that are truly wild. Anyway, I don’t know if it was because more people seemed to arrive, but pretty soon the herd moved off, and I continued on.

All in all I had a lovely day, finished off by the walk down Richmond Hill with it’s spectacular views. By the time I’d got the tube home I was exhausted and it was dark again.