While I was out at the choir the other night there was a rattle of the letterbox and a plop as an envelope landed on the mat, it scared the life out of the cats and stopped Noel programming, but only for a nanosecond, he was in The Zone. Inside was a handmade card, stamped with Easter images with a message from the village Brownies. A simple ‘Happy Easter’. A simple card. I was simply overwhelmed, it was so unexpected, so kind. The Brownies are very much a part of our village life, they cultivate a raised bed at the allotments, and they run the pay-as-you-feel cake stall at the village show ..read more

Dear Young Anne, hello from the future, this is Old Anne, you, or rather me, only older and wiser. When I say wiser, I’m talking about life experience, the lessons learned by doing, or not doing and the wishful uttering under the breath, ‘I wish I’d known then what I know now.’ Well thanks to the magic of the internet, and the contrivance to write a blog, I’m speaking to you from 2024, more than 20 years into your future and I have a few words of advice for you before you set off on your first ever ski holiday. I know you’re excited. Before you pack, remember this, the more of a beginner you ..read more

They say you can’t get wetter than wet, I mean, skin is waterproof, but water has a habit of filling your shoes, gushing between your toes and saturating your socks. If that’s not wetter than wet, I don’t know what is, and that’s what I was on Saturday, my 450th parkrun volunteering stint. It used to be that our parkrun at Woodhouse Moor, Leeds, had its own microclimate every Saturday at 9am. Whether it was a stormforce hurricane collecting trees in its wake, or rain creating newer and bigger puddles, come 8.55 it would all stop, the sun would burst out from behind the clouds and we’d all be ..read more

My mate Bev appeared from over the hill, a small plastic number 9 in the shape of a red wellington swinging on her running shirt. She was staggering slightly. ‘Oh my god, it was surreal,’ she said to the dozen or so others standing around with their own welly numbers dangling at various angles. ‘I just ran 200 metres carrying a child’s wellington boot.’ The others nodded, they’d either already done the same, or were about to do it. What was going on? What was going on indeed? This is the story of the Red Welly Relay, students with paint and how maths was the winner by 16 seconds. We’ve run 77 ..read more

There’s a rainbow drying on the floor in the lounge. Socks Akers has sniffed at it suspiciously then headed for the comfort of Katja’s food which he eats, then looks at his own, which he ignores. She stares at him from her perch on the cat tree, she has no intention of walking over a damp rainbow. It’s true that there are no rainbows without rain, but honestly, the deluge as we set up for our annual Pride parkrun at Woodhouse Moor made enough rainbows for an entire season of The Wizard of Oz. It’s our most joyous event of the year, and definitely the most colourful. Leeds City Council usually ..read more

Socks the mighty hunter If lockdown has taught me nothing else, it’s the importance of having a routine, something to mark the day, to give it that bit of umph when everything else is going weird. Breakfast in the conservatory is a sacrosanct start to my day, eating my muesli and sipping a mug of darjeeling while watching the birds flitting around the feeders, the flowers pushing through, or one of the cats taking a massive dump, sniffing it and looking very pleased with themselves. Cats have no shame when they are about their toilette. But on this one day, parkrun day, Noel was in the dining ..read more

Thanks to Steve Brown for the photo As we dumped the signs, stakes and tatty plastic tape in the stores and turned the key, we sighed. Ah well, we said as we tucked our barcodes into our pockets, we’ll be back by Christmas. Little did we realise that Christmas would come and go and the parkrun kit would remain untouched by human hands for months and months. Our weekly 5km bimble around Woodhouse Moor came to an abrupt halt in March 2020, along with every other parkrun thanks to the covid pandemic. We couldn’t meet, we couldn’t run together, we couldn’t volunteer and we couldn’t go for coffee a ..read more

Measuring our new parkrun course with the wheelie clicky thing I know I really do bang on about parkrun, and with not long to go until the Great Return, I make absolutely no apologies for another bit of banging, or rather clicking. For the time has come for us to measure our new course and that means unpacking the wheelie clicky thing. Oh my goodness I’ve missed parkrun so much. The people, the park, the coffee oh yes and the running, definitely the running. Our lovely Woodhouse Moor has missed us too, though if truth be told, the lovely lime tree at the finish line breathed a sign of relief t ..read more