Every time I take my laptop out in public I attract derision and contempt! These Mac lovers can't understand that a laptop can still be useful even if it weighs more than the desk its sitting on (never, never attempt to rest it on a human lap - injury will follow) and is as visually appealing as a monkey's arse. I did get some kudos for running Ubuntu and doing my presentations from OpenOffice (I didn't admit I installed Ubuntu because the previous windows install had slowed to a crawl and I didn't have the disks to rebuild it).

Helen went away for the weekend leaving me with Tom and Edith. Tom has being saying Dada for a little while now and I was a bit nonplussed when I visited my mum's cousin and he started calling me mama. I just thought he had given up using dada for a while until Helen got back. He was very pleased to see her (ear to ear grin) but he insisted on hugs from me and still called me mama and didn't seem to call Helen anything. I couldn't work out if he associates 'mama' with whomever is supplying food and hugs today or whether he was punishing Helen for abandoning him.

Tom was poorly all weekend with a high temperature. He hit 38.8c on Saturday night. I was taking it all in my stride until I used the fancy thermometer Helen bought and it started screaming and flashing red danger high temperature. Its funny how having some figures can totally change your perception of a situation, correctly or otherwise. I rang the on call doctors to check out how I was supposed to double up Calpol and Neurofen and spent all of Saturday night getting up and administering more medicine. He was still hot on Monday morning but Helen reported him much better by that evening.

After a week where I was seriously considering throwing in the towel for my autumn marathon I actually managed a long Sunday run! I was hoping to do twenty miles but only managed eighteen in the end. It was hot and I ran out of water which didn't help so I walk the last two miles rather than push myself and spend the rest of the day puking.

It was a glorious morning at first, not too hot or cold and no wind or rain for a change. I stopped (naughty but what the hell) for a few moments when a flight of three large civilian helicopters came over and again to watch to largish brown hawks chasing each other through the trees in the woods. The hawks were making very odd keening sounds and I was able to watch them for a minute or so. I am not sure what they were. Too small for buzzards I think and they looked too large for Sparrowhawks though I think the female Sparrowhawk is pretty chunky.

Going along the disused railway alongside the river Lea (which looked beautiful and was full of big fish) I came across a large tree that had come down in the recent storms and had blocked the path. A family was cycling the other way so I did my good dead for the day and helped the dad get the bikes over.

I did quite a hilly route and as I was climbing the steep hill coming out of Wheathampstead I caught up with a group of cyclists. I had been running for two and a half hours and covered fifteen miles at this point but the temptation was too great so I pushed that little but harder and passed the stragglers on the hill. Joy! One of the tail enders took exception and started working up thru his gears and putting a real effort in. He managed to draw level with me briefly before dropping well behind. Come the brow of the hill even the crappest came whizzing past. I even had the breath to swap pleasantries with the guy I had past. If they had hung around they would have had the last laugh though. I only managed another few hundred metres before the effort caught up with me and I started to feel much worse for ear with stomach cramps and jelly for legs. It was all downhill (performance wise) from there.

No real damage afterwards other than a nasty sun / dehydration headache which lasted until Monday. I feel asleep for half an hour after the run and that was enough to ruin my nights sleep (along with visits from Jamie and Edith). I felt like shit the next morning. I wasn't too stiff though and managed an okay 43 minute run in to work on Tuesday but a pitiful 44 (six minutes slower than the previous week) minute run back in the evening.

I got back from a run on Friday to find Helen just finishing up a major cleaning exercise. Edith, who was supposed to be asleep, had suddenly started howling. Helen went to see what the cause of this major meltdown was and found Edith sitting in bed with her legs plastered in sudocrem. Sudocrem is a thick white creme which you can use to stopping babies getting chaffed bottoms etc. Clag it on your legs and its not going to do much good. Helen enquired why Edith was sitting in bed with now filthy sheets and legs covered in several millimetres of gloop. "I wanted to make my legs lovely" she wailed. Apparently it took ages to get the muck off in the shower and she still looked distinctly pasty.