Day 336

Molly of the large tongue.

This is how we both feel after the run.  

Well, after running my best time a few days ago, today my pace was 8.43 minutes per km for 4.9 km, which is probably my worst time!  It is only very occasionally that I experience that flying feeling runners speak of, where the endorphins kick in and you float along like a piece of music. 

In the morning the whole big beautiful day spreads out before you, like a canvas ready and primed, all your options wide open, sunny.  But you soon find that there are already so many things which have to be done which fill it up in no time, and in fact it becomes over-crowded so that some things have to be set aside overnight and deposited on the new canvas of the next morning.

I noticed that the flowers Tim gave me yesterday have the most wonderful scent, and all day they gave me pleasant surprises with their slow opening in the warmth of the house. There are lilies and real roses into which you can pour your nose to your heart's content, sniffing that sweet rosy smell.

I went to an a cappella concert in which Nick was singing this evening, put on by the H.E.A.R.T association in Manchester, which was started by a group of mothers with gay children 5 years ago.  It stands for Honouring Equality, Acceptance, Respect and Tolerance.  Which is wonderful.  As one of their fliers mentions, when a 19 year old kid came out to his mother, he said, ""Mom, you need to know that I would never choose to be part of a population where half the world wants you dead.  This not a choice I have made.  This is who I am."

And of course I have personal experience of this as my first husband was gay, and is, of course, still gay.  And he knew he was gay when he was eight years old.  It is not something he chose either.  

And I think our encounter is like any other hard life lesson, you suffer through the relationship and all the sadness it brings, but afterwards you are more knowledgeable on the subject of homosexuality, you are more tolerant, (and you have two gorgeous daughters without whom you could not actually live), and so you have gained so much that really, what good would regret or recrimination do for you?  And it allows for the growth of magnanimity and an amicable ending.  And the very fact of this marriage just shows how strongly people want to conform to society, that many men still get married to women because the alternative is, even in this day and age, (isn't that a lovely phrase?) still not accepted by so many ignorant and stupid people.

Nick's school a cappella group, SoundWaves, is magnificent, the pure notes rush out of those mouths and curl into our ears, pleasure fills our hearts and tears well up in our eyes.

These are the base and tenor singers.  Nick is the tall fair one whose hair is too long.