Z lazes and does as she is used to

I'm on holiday this week, I've decided. Other than the five days I spent in Madrid in April, I haven't made any plans to go away this year and so I shall holiday at home for a few days. I took breakfast - plain yoghurt, a banana, a nectarine and some apple juice - onto the lawn with the papers and I only came in a while ago because the phone was ringing.

The phone rings only six times before the answerphone cuts in, so I ran. I ran yesterday too - just down the aisle of the church, because I was both playing the clarinet and making the coffee (this was my own fault because I cocked up the rota) and I needed to get into the kitchen before a queue of coffee-seekers formed. A twenty-yard run may sound unimpressive, but it's more than I've been able to manage for a year. It isn't just that it hurts, but I can't physically do it as, by the second step, I'm lurching so awkwardly that it's quicker to walk. So I'm very cheered by this improvement. I know it doesn't mean anything; that is, it's not going to get spontaneously 'better'. But, while I like walking in the 'going for a walk' sense, I've always run when I'm on my way somewhere. Plodding down the garden to pick some vegetables is boring. So I feel splendidly normal, in an ordinary sense, at present. I think I'll go and start on the Times crossword to celebrate.