I thought weekends were supposed to be relaxing

I ended up yesterday with the headache from hell. I had to go to bed before my 9 and 11 year old children because I just could not stay upright. And I am convinced that this was caused by the action-packed weekend I had. Well, action-packed in my terms in that it did not involve much lazing about reading blogs and drinking tea.

On Saturday morning SB had a birthday party to go to halfway across town at 10am. 10am! Who has a party at 10am? Sheesh. So I dropped SB off with presents for his friends and spent the time usefully ie doing the weekly shopping. Which was pretty awful. Edinburgh is having a little heatwave at the moment and it seemed like the entire population of the city was in Asda buying ingredients for a barbecue. Which was, as it happens, what I was trying to do. It was like a superficially polite game of rugby with trolleys. Violent and ruthless but with a lot of apologising.

Having fought my way to the checkout, I scooped up SB and headed home where laundry awaited my attention. As did a couple of bran scones I had bought earlier (I needed some incentive after all).

Then later in the afternoon, we started to get ready for the barbecue. It was my birthday last Wednesday and my sister-in-law's partner's birthday on Saturday itself, so a joint celebration was planned involving all 4 of us, SIL and partner, and my mother-in-law and her husband. It was a lovely evening, the food seemed to go well and the boys enjoyed themselves telling their vast range of Scottish jokes (sample: Ten cows in a field, which one is a country? Coo 8.)

On Sunday morning I was up and about early to head out to Musselburgh for the Edinburgh Marathon. I was again allocated to the finish area for the relay teams and spent the day laying out 4000 medals and then helping to remove 1000 timing chips from 1000 sweaty legs. The weather was very hot by Edinburgh standards (about 24 degrees or so) and sadly many people did not finish and the first aiders and paramedics were kept very busy. Fortunately the guys from my office did well and all finished, raising about £2000 for their charities in the process. I did my bit by supplying the finishers with jelly babies. The organisers supply sports drinks, water and bananas at the finish but sometimes bananas just aren't enough and only pure sugar and food colouring will do!

I heard later that many people along the route of the race had been out in their front gardens with hoses, showering the runners as they passed - very thoughtful and very gratefully received by the runners!

I limped home after about 6 hours on my feet and we finished off the leftovers from the barbecue in the evening. By about 8.30pm I was dead on my feet and eventually wandered off to bed, only to wake up with the aforesaid headache. Fortunately that has now gone, headed off by about 18 hours of sleep!

Encouraged by all those fit people running around on Sunday I finally got around today to signing up to the new gym to which I have access as a perk of my new job. I have my induction session tomorrow. Wish me luck!