The Track is where it All Began...
We wandered up the road last night to the restaurant we eat in a lot, the one that serves us a wholesome plate of local food, piled high with vegetables and salad too... The one that is right opposite the bar with the very loud music!
We know the staff well now and we were greeted warmly as we arrived.
One of our regular ladies came over to take our order, 'have you any local juice?' I asked, they did - and 'rum punch please' Anadi said...!
She stayed chatting with us and then started to tell us about her sixteen year old son... He is a good runner, she told us, he was on the television in a 200 metre race and he won it. She was so surprised, she didn't recognise it was him at first... He has no shoes because he runs barefoot, and so he borrowed some from the school... He lost the shoes, she had to replace them and now she has to find a way get him some more to run in...
There are training camps the school want him to go on, but they are not happy he does not have track shoes...
'I'll sponsor him for some shoes if he would like', I said suddenly...
And so I am meeting her today in the sports shop later today and I will meet Janai too...
Earlier in the day we were drinking a coffee in the ice cream parlour, before our evening run along the main road!
As we sat with the sun setting fast around us, I told Anadi that I was feeling full of plans... My running is suddenly feeling a lot more balanced and strong, and this is opening up my dreaming window... 'If can get truly free of imbalance' I said 'I would really love to run on the track again... I could buy myself a new pair of track spikes'! I smiled feeling sixteen again, imagining the light lean feel of a brand new pair of track spikes in my hands....
The track is where it all began for me...
Like Janai I ran barefoot... The very first day I ran with Haslemere Border Athletics club was on July 4th; the year was 1974.... I had decided I wanted to get faster at running and had asked my mother to find out about an athletics club...
It needed to be somewhere that I was able to get to on the way home from school, because my Mother was ill, so she wasn't able to drive me anywhere...
Haslemere Border was an all male club, but it was near my school, and the club captain Tony was encouraging on the phone to my mother... 'Tell her to come along on Tuesday evening, we are looking to start a female section...'
My best friend Wends came with me on that hot summer evening in early July, and she lay on the grass while I ran...
The session was 300 metre repetitions on the track.... I ran like the wind, a teenage barefoot girl, with a group of men and boys I had never met before that day... I loved every step!
Anadi and I were at the ice cream parlour because we had gone to meet Fenella and her little running daughter Arianna - Fenella was our wedding planner. She and Amy worked together across the seas to create our amazing day.
When we met Fenella last year, she told me of her little seven year old daughter who liked to run everywhere...
'She is like me' I said, 'I liked to run everywhere as a child...' I still do...!
We hadn't seen each other since our wedding day last year.
But it was like we had met for a coffee last week...
We all chose ice creams, and it is evident I need more practice, as I did too much talking and not enough licking! I didn't pay attention to where the ice cream was going... I learnt from Arianna who had it down to a fine art, that there is a method to eating an ice cream cone that I had forgotten...
She whispered to her Mum that she wanted to climb a tree.. 'Do you like to climb trees?' I said', 'I do' she replied nodding... I said that I loved climbing trees too, and I told her the story of when I was her age, and we were on a trip to the museum to look at the flora and fauna in the ponds in the museum 
grounds... I saw a perfect tree to climb, so I left the ponds and instead higher and higher I climbed to the very top, where I got stuck! The whole school outing had to be abandoned. The children were taken back to school and Mr May, the groundsman, was fetched with a ladder to rescue me...
'Anadi, you liked to climb trees too didn't you? I said as we were all making our way to Arianna's tree.
'Yes, but I didn't get stuck...'!
We all wandered through the marina until we came to a beautiful 'sea grape tree', and then we stood chatting while the little girl climb happily into its branches....
