Note: this video will make you gasp and then grab the nearest cup so you can start learning it yourself.

This has been a tumultuous week.  You know the kind: peaks and troughs, moments of utter serenity, tears, throwing up, flashes of blind, heart-stopping panic…  Suffice it to say that I’ve rarely been so grateful for a quiet, hot-chocolate-and-good-book kinda Friday night in.  Plus, it’s preparation for the rock n roll weekend I’m planning: tomorrow I’m getting up at 6am to go and bag two Munros (I’m embarrassingly excited to use my new flask and the seriously warm walking gloves I found in a charity shop) and then I’m going to spend the evening soaking my aching feet in a basin of warm water, eating chilli and reading about Belgium by way of research for a weekend trip I’m taking there with a friend next month.  Clubbing?  What?!

For now though, behold the topsy turvy week:

Bad things:-

Food poisoning.  Think post night-out chips and cheese from a kebab shop that could perhaps do with being slightly more fastidious on the food hygiene front.  Naturally it’s all my fault for not waiting to make tea and toast when I got home, but no one ever thinks like that after the best part of a bottle of wine, do they?  Thankfully, it only lasted two days and by Wednesday I was well enough to lift my head up without the benefit of both hands.  Small mercies.

Rain.  Will there ever be any let up?  Honestly, I don’t mind it in moderation -- some must fall into each life after all -- but I’m starting to feel as though we’re passing the point of it being a joke now.  And, from a purely selfish point of view, too much rain leads to no cycling which leads to depression and having to get the bus, which leads to having to have change for the bus and be on time and squash in next to people when we’re all soaked from being outside and the whole place smells like wet coats and wet hair.  Eugh.

Related to rain: darkness.  There’s no halting the steady onward push towards Winter.  I realised this week that it’s now still really dark when I get up in the morning, and it’s starting to get dark by the time I’m on my way home.  Soon it’ll be dark while I’m on my way into work, and dark before I leave.  And then we’ll start to spend most of our waking lives in the dark, and then we’ll never see the sun again, and then…

Good things:-

Someone gave my flatmate an old record player.  We’ve been thinking of getting such a thing for weeks now and, as fate would have it, someone was looking to give one away at just the right time.  I can’t put into words my excitement at the thought of spending cold Wintery nights wrapped up in a big jumper and some woolly socks, surrounded by piles of records and utterly lost in another, simpler world.

I watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower at the cinema.  And LOVED it.

I decided to train for a half marathon next year.  Yes!  This makes the 10k that I found really quite difficult look like a ten minute jog around the block but there’s a weird, slightly sadistic part of me that’s well and truly up for the challenge I’m about to find.  I’m thinking May next year, which gives me around 7 months for the training.  Did you think the running-related posts on the blog were over?  Eeep, awkward.

I realised I can stand on my head.  Properly.  With both legs fully extended in the air.

What’s been happening in your world this week?  Tell me good, bad and ugly!