another busy day

This weekend marks the fifth in a row where I would have liked to sit on the sofa but didn't. The first three, two friends traded places on my spare mattress. Last Sunday I did the half marathon. And before I go any further, let me add some words to what I already wrote about that day.

I had long gone home and started making rice-and-eggplant lunch when the last person to finish the race, well, finished. It took him exactly five hours and thirteen minutes. This is slightly slower than I would walk around London on a leisurely Sunday afternoon, if there ever were such a thing in my life. So this guy was slow, but he was the uncontested star of the race. He finished, took a deep breath, emptied a tankard of ale, and started signing autographs. What was the fuzz about? Well, Buster Martin, a plumber from north London, is 101 years old.

Now here's someone who really deserves a Sunday afternoon off, but Buster is not ready for retirement. In fact, he started working as a plumber three years ago because he was bored, newspapers say, and now he's training for the London Marathon. I'm far from envious that he got in and I didn't. I'm way too amazed at his effort.

That was last weekend. This weekend, one of the two friends that were kind enough to keep my company before the race came back, and once again my schedule was filled. We've just come back from a most delicious sushi dinner in Ealing, right next door to what is generally considered the best sushi in London. That place is also exceedingly small and frequently booked to saturation. Not having made a reservation, we didn't get a table. We weren't even asked to wait for an hour or two. We were told the restaurant was full, and that was it. Luckily, the other restaurant was larger, had a table (after a short wait at the bar), and offered sushi that couldn't have been much better, if you ask me.

With eating sushi, going to pubs and hanging out listening to Tchaikovsky and Dylan while drinking tequila, life could be flowing smoothly. Problem is that I'm still taking the Spanish class. This kills half of the Saturday, makes my brain hurt and effectively prevents me from relaxing. As much as I like the class, and as much as I benefit from it, I don't think I'll continue with it after the current session. I want to travel some weekends and maybe spend a leisurely afternoon in a coffee shop in a foreign land – or on a friend's sofa.