unironedman

Well, given the last few weeks of itchy misery here, it was inevitable that I would concoct such a cheesy headline. And so, here it is. My curious incident with the dog in the park was not, as it turned out, my biggest problem, but the rather strange and unexpected reaction to penicillin I was given afterwards to counter any risk of infection. It may just have been the overload; after all, I was given two lots of penicillin-based antibiotics on Sunday, and then that was swapped to Augmentin on Wednesday – another penicillin drug. Who knows? The doc did say, in the aftermath, that you can develop an allergy to penicillin.

Hey ho. All I know is that I was on fire with a horrible red rash that started in the lower torso and gradually ate me alive from my ankles to my scalp within the week. Sleep became a luxurious commodity, and hard-earned. I had by that stage stopped taking the antibiotics and was now taking steroids which kicked in fairly quickly.

And so, three weeks to the day, I managed to get back out running. Fittingly with my mate Mark, who dragged me out of bed for a 9k saunter around the houses. It’s good to be back out again. I can report that the legs are still working. Even the Garmin watch still held a charge. It was a pleasant, non-eventful run at a reasonable 4 hour marathon pace. A nice ‘welcome home’ session.

With my break, we have been enjoying a little Scandi-noir on Netflix. We’re fans of the genre, and our latest feast at the smörgåsbord was Bordertown (that Swedish food reference doesn’t really work. Ed.). It’s set in Finland, so I suppose you could argue it’s not really ‘scandi’, but we’ll take it. It’s classic police procedural, and in keeping with other Scandi-noir thriller detective programmes, the central character is not your run-of-the-mill detective. Kari Sorjonen has Asperger’s and is teamed up with the polar opposite in hard-nosed, ex-Russian FSB agent Lena. Give it a go; if you’re into that sort of thing, you’ll like Bordertown. And at one point in the last series, Kari is wearing a fur hat, and it reminded me of a pic from a few year’s back, so I had to root it out…

I am hoping they might use me for some stunt work or something. A few weeks in Finland would be good craic. Here’s hoping…

Also, I read a very decent book. It’s The Running Book by John Connell. It does indeed talk a lot about running. It is a rather slim volume, so you can read it in one sitting if you are keen, or, do as I did, and leave it on the bedside locker and dip in of an evening before bedtime. The author takes us on a rambling run around the lanes, roads and farmsteads of his native Longford. As he completes a long distance journey, he reminisces about other runs he has undertaken around the world, and as he reaches each new milestone, marker or village, he ties it in beautifully with the rich history of the area that has become the preserve of the truly local. The ties we have to the land have been largely lost in our inexorable move to the suburban, and that is to our detriment. John reminds us of this important history. Even if you don’t have an interest in Irish events in the last hundred years or so, you can’t read this book and not appreciate how important it is to maintain these links to our recent past.

And so, whilst I am not fully fit, or anything close to it, I am hopefully only a few weeks away from where we were last month. Having said that, I am due to get the first Covid vaccine tomorrow evening, and others in the crew who have had it have all experienced unpleasant side-effects (‘flu-like symptoms, mainly). So who knows? I couldn’t get it last week because I had been given the tetanus booster. Hopefully I won’t break out in a mad rash again…

And so I leave you with this homemade gag. ‘Covid has been hard on us all’ gags are ten-a-penny. The meme didn’t really need another one added into the pot. But that’s how I roll. Maverick to the end…