Day 48: Five Gow-wouldd Riings!

An early run as the sky is only just starting to flush with light.   First in the park, so I get to break the somnambulent morning seal - scattering birds as I run.  Moorhens, coots, Canada geese, swans (careful), herons.  Eight herons.  Yes.  Eight.  (It feels like a line from the Twelve Days of Christmas - 'Eight herons sleeping!'.)

And then a drive to Muswell Hill.  It's so odd going back - I walk past the flat, and the numbers I Tippexed above the doorbell are still there.  They've got to be fifteen years old.  All credit to Tippex.  Those streets are so familiar - walking them again is like dropping through a hole in time.  Some of the memories are like faded snapsnots in a shoebox, old and half-forgotten.  Others are a vivid emotional hi-jack, knocking the wind out of me.  Coffee with Jude, and then a ramble through the woods - Queen's and Highgate - and then to Hampstead Heath.  Urban parrots (three).  Pieces of cake (two).  Stones positioned rudely and childishly (one).  ('And a rude stoh-hone sat on a treeeeeeee!'). 

Two offers - chocolate cake from a small child in the wood, in a weird reversal of 'normal' grooming procedures (I realise how wrong it is to combine the words 'normal' and 'grooming'), and holly from a Hampstead allotment owner.  I am taken aback by the surprise randomness of both, so turn them down before even really processing what's happening.  Jude - in line with her current practice of saying yes to stuff - says yes (unsurprisingly), and is therefore ahead by one piece of chocolate cake and a bunch of holly.  (This last makes her festive, but also spiky, so dangerous as a walking companion.)

Interesting that my standard response to something unexpected is an unthinking 'no'.  Don't think I'm alone in this.  Wthout wanting to get all Jim Carrey 'Yes Man'-ish, might be interesting to re-think this.  I think it's quite unusual to get offered free items on a walk, but Jude says that since she's started saying 'yes', this happens frequently.  This could probably be explained through quantum physics, and algorithms, but that would involve Brian Cox and my head exploding again. 

Back through Highgate and a stop off at 'Ripping Yarns' - a second-hand bookshop an antiquarian bookshop.  The difference between the two seems to be mainly attitude and price-tag, though we are informed that these are books that are no longer in print.  I am very taken with the paperback titled 'Hunt the Toff'.  We also enjoy finding a book detailing the sexual exploits of a trucker in the 'Esoteric' section.  Perhaps antiquarian bookshops don't have 'Adult' sections.

 
And then to Sainsbury's in Muswell Hill.  When I lived in Mus, there used to be a man who spent most of his time in Sainsbury's, walking round the aisles shouting 'The BEST of luck!  The BEST of luck!'.  Emphasis always on the second syllable.  He disappeared a while back, but an internet search turns up a picture of him on location in Sainsbury's.  The man with him is another blogger, who posted this picture (thank you). 

On a day when I have learned the power of saying yes (cake AND holly), a fitting and positive end to a post.

The BEST of luck!