The best of starts

In the oh-so-slightly OCD world I live in, there is something wonderfully ordered and correct about the fact that tomorrow is Monday, and it is also October 1.
Not only does that bring together in such joyous harmony both the start of the working week and the start of the month, but in doing creates a very real point to identify heading into the next season, which is awesome autumn of course.
It’s the new school term, it’s getting back to work after the summer hols and it is very much the start of that whole new time of the year. The garden furniture which we kept out so hopefully through the sporadic summer months is consigned again to the shed, the jumpers that have lain at the bottom of laundry baskets are now coming back out and of course, the interminable run up to Christmas has started, signalled by the launch of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing and bloody X Factor. The advent for the 21^st century, it seems.
But, as well as all this, I do feel that it is the perfect point at which to really start putting in the hours in training for the Edinburgh Marathon challenge coming up next May. Not least as I have been feeling a tad guilty today about letting my Bristol Half Marathon entry slip past untroubled yet again, sleeping off a rather boozy weekend this morning while 14,000 lithe and hardy Bristolians put all us slackers to shame.
So, spurred on to a point, I did head out for a stumble around the Downs and spent 35 spluttery minutes walking and jogging round.
I am looking forward to getting my head properly into this, and hoping that some clear goals along the way will help, but this afternoon, while I swigged down some welcome water and stood heaving my chest more violently than at a TOWIE casting session, I couldn’t help but make a mental note of the scale of the challenge ahead.
Still, it is of nothing compared to the challenge faced by many millions of people around the world battling cancer, including some very dear people we have known and loved, and for that reason I know there really is no excuse now. As they say in distant colonies, let’s roll!