Features and blogging

Here’s Mr Fairy, leading me up another steep trudge on the last day of the year. As usual, I’m several paces behind, watching him pound the steps two at a time. I clamber up like an old dog with gammy legs, grateful I don’t have a rear view of myself.

We differ in so many ways. As a couple we are two controllers living in a state of constant yin-yang counterbalance. I suggest and he weighs up. He presents, and I waver. He says blue, I prefer orange. He has 8:30 in mind, I’ll book the table for 8:00.

Now and then we reach an easy conclusion, and when that happens it’s reassuring and warming, but mainly we plot a course through a never-ending map of diplomacy and debate, forever on our toes. Somehow, it works.

There is one area, however, in which I always take a backseat and allow Mr Fairy to lead, and that’s when it comes to Fitness. He’s my trainer and personal health counsellor, running backwards in front of me, stopping when I need to stop, guiding me up the shorter route with the bigger hill, skipping along just ahead doing Ministry of Silly Running steps to make me laugh, then dropping me at our front door and giving a little wave as he lopes off on his longer route.

He is the half-full to my half-empty, in fact this image of him steadfastly ploughing along a dank railway in the grey morning of 31 December 2018 is typical.

We’re both ready for 2019 on many levels, not least with running. I have a new Fitbit that’s locked and loaded, set to nudge me off the sofa every hour with a polite but insistent buzz on the wrist. If I’m busy writing when it bleeps at me through 2019, I can ignore it for a short, while but I know I’ll have lots of support when I do decide to lace up the trainers.

Tonight, for the first time in ages, we’re staying in on New Year’s Eve, with a pint of Baileys and the telly. I might do a spot of writing (personal, not work). I might not. I will ignore any wrist buzzing.

Tomorrow we’ll do another lopsided run, then drive to Grandpa’s care home for a little visit, then spend the afternoon back on our sofa, Fitbit on a high shelf. And that’s it.

Happy New Year to you all – near and far, with or without, better or worse, running or sitting, lying on a beach, halfway up a track, trekking through a jungle, standing in a kitchen, waiting in a queue, dashing for a Tube, halfway up a mountain, wherever you are.

PS just after this picture was taken we had a bit of a debate over direction, which ended with me forgetting to look and sliding to a halt knees down. Mr F said I grabbed wildly for his leg as I went over, while I remember it more as a graceful glide to the floor. We both saw the funny side, luckily.