Love, Life, Hate and Murder

So I started this blogging nonsense some three years ago. It was initially intended as a foil to those that took their blogging, and their running, far too seriously.  Me and my old mucker Jon Vann would run along and laugh at how, if we kept a blog, we'd log our beer consumption as opposed to our mileage and record our hangovers rather than our minor injuries.
Then my blog became a reality.

After what I considered a fair start and a developing blog habit that amounted to a post every other day, I had my legs taken from under me by Big Brother. After a close shave where a change in profession became a clear and present danger my blog posts were subsequently deleted and I am now obliged to consider the ramifications of anything I say online.

This has resulted in a dearth of blog posts but an increased threat from the Romania based King of Essex in exile, Mike Mason. Mike has decided that an appropriate sentence for my lack of blogging is to drive an electric power drill through my hip bone.

As far as I'm aware this is an innovative gangland punishment and one Mike devised while attaching the bride and groom statuette to his daughter's wedding cake. You see it involved a screwdriver and a fixing through the hip area of his son-in-law's plastic representation and bingo! Mike came up with a new and untested means of persuading anyone on his radar that Masonic Law is one that is never tested.

As far as I'm aware Mike's son-in-law is a loyal and doting husband which is proven by the fact that he walks without the need for crutches. And as I'm now attached to my computer and logged on to the blogger website I'm hoping to avoid a visit by a couple of black clad, steroid-fuelled lunatics with Essex accents and a Black and Decker.

Old Mike has a funny way of mixing life, love, hate and murder.

Anyway, onward and upward. The author of the wonderful blog The Beirut Taxi, recently brought to my attention the odd practise of Geocaching. After seeing what it was all about I realised that I have other friends that already engage in this activity. Martin Antoninus Horatio Hooper had a pretty adventurous go at it when he secreted his missus's tiny (for tiny read finger sized; the thing cost a fortune) engagement ring on the biggest mountain in England.

And of course a book dedicated to the late, great Dario Melaragni rests in a secret place on the West Highland Way, planted there by our leader, Murdo The Magnificent.

If you don't know what geocaching is all about, hear this: There are nerdy treasure hunters all over the country that spend their time creating caches of junk to be hid in remote places of natural beauty. Personally I think this is simply the thinking man's means of getting past the littering laws and emptying the kitchen drawer of shit. And having now engaged in a wee bit of geocaching myself, I have to say that it goes against the grain to retrieve plastic lunch boxes full of crap from tree stumps and not throw them in the nearest bin.

But it's got my daughter out the door and up to five-mile walks and Mason (dog) is getting more exercise than Myleene Klass on her wedding night. It's also got Yours Truly out the door and doing a bit of running in preparation for the Glen Ogle 33 Ultramarathon.

That, Dear Reader, is enough about running.

On to the food of love....music.

Occasionally you happen upon a new band and they go right ahead and change your life. The Airborne Toxic Event did that. Well, I was tripping about on Youtube the other day and came across a band whose most recent album is described as 'fourteen songs of love, life, hate and murder.' They are brilliant.

I'm not sure Mike Mason is as yet a devotee but I'm sure the music could be the soundtrack to that snowy night in Rettendon back in 1995.

Ladies and Gentlemen, have a listen to The Hillbilly Moon Explosion.

Laters.