Not a great day. Had to shorten and slow my run due to sore, tight calves and the desire to exercise some caution at this point.
Worse still we received an invitation to visit my mother for a BBQ on the weekend. Invitation of course conveying a theoretically optional element that in practice is only the thinnest of veneers. RJ suffers the most, his still-developing jaws are never a match for those sinewy, cheap beef fillets she over-cooks and then slices into strips so tough you could rappel from them, with the gravy accompaniment serving more as a lubricant than a flavor enhancer.
On our last visit RJ made the most valiant of attempts to swallow a piece he had been masticating on for two full ad-breaks of The Voice. The first I knew of his struggle for oxygen was a reddening face and a gurgling sound that I initially mistook for his attempt to mimic one of Delta's show-stopper high notes. She always asks him whether he liked his dinner, and his desire to preserve his Nan's feelings always results in a hearty smile and thumbs up. Which of course perpetuates his discomfort across successive visits.
At least to-date I've been able to shelter him from her famous apricot chicken, which may well have been a contributing factor in the great North African famine of 1998. It wasn't so much a shortage of food as a fundamental unwillingness to ingest the apricot chicken my mother sent in aid packages.
Don't have the heart to tell him we're going back so soon. Tuesday: gym in the morning, 7.5 easy in the evening.
hope your mum never becomes an avid blog reader
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how did you get the tubby moniker if you had to spend your childhood under fed?