Dear Mum (4)

Dear Mum,


This Easter I took Husband up to Aberdeenshire to see our family home. To visit my old primary school and walk around the village we lived just outside of. 


I cried. 


I didn't expect to but I did. 


I remember Dad telling us on a Monday night after Gymnastics that we would be leaving to go to Edinburgh. I remember you crying a lot. You were very upset at leaving, seeing our home all packed up and empty and bare. You seemed inconsolable. I think you told Dad to tell us alone - you were not going to be there when he broke the news. I am pretty sure now that was a deliberate move on your part. He didn't have your support.


I can only guess the reasons why. 


I know my reasons for crying. It was the last place we were a family. Properly. We were happy. All of us. 


I cried for that family. 


I cried for the waste of a life.


I cried for the loss of potential.


I cried for you.


And I cried for us- your Wee Angels.


I didn't need to knock on the door to know what the smells and sounds of the house would be like. We sat in the car, parked in a lay-by on a road across the river from the house. And looked on. The tears quietly and unexpectedly rolled down my face. 


Husband told me not to apologise and held my hand as the tears fell and the explanation and memories came.


Our old tyre swing still hangs opposite the house. Where it has hung since Dad and Uncle spent an afternoon hanging it and testing it thoroughly before 3 hyper-excited bouncing little girls clambered on it.


The games we invented in the garden, the woods and fields around the house all came flooding back. The feel of the ice cold water on our skin from the paddling pool in the summer. 


My childhood.


I was to grow up quickly when we moved to Edinburgh. You saw to that.


Love


Cass
xx

My First EVER Marathon- Pre Training Schedule

and possibly my only ever marathon.

I am two weeks from starting a 16 week training programme which culminates in The Snowdon Marathon.

I have had the best reaction to this and it has pretty much consisted of "Wow you are going to run up Snowdon?!" There is a huge amount of respect in the delivery of that remark.

Too much, so I quickly re-assure them that I am going to be running 26 miles around this beautiful Welsh mountain. But having seen the profile and driven the route I can assure you the inclines certainly look, and I suspect will feel, like I am running up the mountain.

I have only ever run 6 miles and racked up an array of t-shirts from my various 10k runs so I am taking this marathon very seriously. Hence the swim and the personal training sessions. And the alcohol.

This is a strange one for me. For at most 12 years I have enjoyed at least a glass of wine every week, if not a smidge more at the end of a particularly tough week! Not a huge amount of alcohol and there may have been the odd stint when I didn't have any alcohol but nothing like this.

As I write this I am at 21 days of being totally alcohol free. And I am quite proud of this feat and plan to make it to the 29th of October on the wagon as it were. However I have Lil Sis's Hen, followed 7 days later by their wedding, 2 weeks in Greece and my own 30th birthday. Peppered throughout with the occasional works night out where cocktails and glasses of wine tend to flow freely.

I am also slightly disturbed at how I have at times obsessed about how much I have longed for a rioja, chilled white wine or G&T. And by obsessed I mean I have had to find alternative ways to "relax" of a Friday/Saturday evening. Hot baths are quite good, reading and blogging of course seems to take my mind off it and the level of pride I am feeling is almost a bit scary.

If I can keep this up and stick to my training schedule then I am going to be at my absolute fittest. Things can go down hill after then if they like I'll still be able to hold my head high and say I have run a full marathon and that has included 5 months of being alcohol free.

I can't not toast my Lil Sis future happiness at their wedding but other than that this little girl is going to be T total for as long as possible!