Today I played chicken with Juneathon.

My original intention had been to get up early and try to spot a Parkrun t-shirt at Pennington Flash Parkrun. Unfortunately, I overslept. I then realised that I didn’t actually want to do a morning run despite that fact that I was due to have my hair cut at 12. This might be a girl thing, but if I’m having my hair done I don’t like to do anything to mess it up afterwards – I just enjoy basking in the all too brief hours where it has been blow dried by someone who knows what they’re doing. Unfortunately, last time my hair had been cut, I had to have a little cry afterwards and I was absolutely petrified about this appointment (my hair has just about grown out to the length that I wanted two months ago. And my hair grows fast). Anyway, I figured that if it was just as traumatic, I could always go for a run afterwards and see if that helped.

As it was, my hair turned out exactly how I wanted to and I celebrated by buying a new frock and some soup. You’ll notice how none of this counts for Juneathon. I went home, I ate my soup, I mixed up some chocolate and black treacle biscuits from Marian Keyes’ book Saved By Cake, I realised that leaving the page covered in splatters of biscuit mix is bad form when it’s a library book (you can tell all of my favourite recipes by the fact that the pages are like a Jackson Pollock rendered in butter, sugar and flour), I ate the mixture off the spatula more times than I should have done, I did many things. None of which were Juneathon.

One of our local pubs is having it’s annual folk festival this weekend (the weather is always rubbish this weekend, it’s as if god doesn’t like banjos) and I do enjoy embracing my inner folky. Conveniently the pub is bob on a mile away from our house (I know where the half mile markers are located in all directions from our front door) so we pootled up, listened to a nice bit of folky bluegrass and enjoyed a few pints of Hobgoblin (Ginge) and Marston’s Pedigree Diamond (me). Sadly these aren’t local ales for us (they’ll be local to someone though) otherwise I’d be able to tick that one off the list.

Special drinking beer outside gloves – to be blogged about at a later point

There had still been no Juneathon action at this point. I had however made preparations; Miles was in my bag, I was clad in appropriate foundation garments and I was the height of sartorial elegance by wearing running shoes to the pub. Keeping an eye on the clock like Cinderella at the ball, I was playing Juneathon chicken right up to the wire. I wasn’t helped by my last minute nip to the loo being held up by the woman in front of me seemingly having a bladder the size of a zeppelin.

If you look closely, Miles says 23:41

Despite this, I made it – a one mile run (in a surprisingly decent time, all things considered) from the pub (suggested by the Queen of the Athons herself) arriving home with 3 minutes to spare.