More drastic measures with the tyre

I had gone to the tyre centre on a Wednesday. I hoped they would sort out my slow puncture forever! But by Sunday, my tyre pressure had already dropped to less than half of what it is supposed to be. I needed to get back. 

Not good

On the Monday, I loaded my spare bike into my car, and set off. That I wanted to bring a bike to work without sitting on it had nothing to do with the car, by the way. More about that later. At the tyre centre I didn't have to wait long. Another chap took my wheel off. After a while he came back and told me there was nothing he could do for me. It wasn't the tyre; was the rim. They could try to seal it, but that had already failed twice before. So he said they wouldn't charge me anything, but they couldn't solve my problem. So I just continued to the office.

In the office I looked up some scrap yards. I knew there was one in Gaerwen; I had scrapped my Fiesta there, back in the days (can't seem to find the blog post about this, though). And I phoned one. They said they did indeed have rims in the right size in stock. So I decided to leave work a bit earlier and go and pick it up.

The people I had phoned turned out not to be the scrap yard where my Ford had gone. Oh well! They still had a rim for me. They said it wasn't the same shape, but it was the same size, and I don't have that car for good looks. I bought it. And with the bike having been delivered in the office, I had plenty of space in the boot. And I drove it straight back to the tyre centre. 

The scrap yard

Replacement rim!

There all the men recognised me by now. And one of the chaps who had already had a try earlier now swapped the rims over. It didn't take him long! And then he popped into the office. When he came back he said they wouldn't charge me for this either. He felt bad that I had come there four times before my problem was finally fixed! That was kind of him.

While he had been in the office I had had a good look at the car. To be honest, I couldn't spot that one of the rims was different from the other ones. It's not obvious at all!

But with material change now having been made, I hope that this is sorted now, and that I can stop spending my time inflating my tyres. If this topic doesn't come back, it will have been a success!

Looking for a catsitter

I will be going to Finland this summer! And not just anywhere in Finland; Finnish Lapland. That means I will spend quite some time getting to Helsinki, and then a lot more time to get to our final destination. So I will be staying away longer than I normally do when I go to the Netherlands. And that means that I was feeling bad for both the cat and the neighbour; the cat, because she would have to do without me for quite a while; and the neighbour, who is perfectly happy to pop in every day and give her food and snuggles, but who I do not want to burden was too much of that.

Kate travels quite a lot, and she nowadays has a dog. So she has the same issue, but worse. And she had just registered herself on a pet sitting website. People just come and stay in her house for free, and walk the dog. So far she only had good experiences. And if it works for dogs, it probably works even better for cats, as they are less hassle. Basically people get a generous pied-à-terre for free in a busy time in Eryri. And you get snuggles with the best cat in the world! Who doesn't want that?

I did kick the can down the road for a while as things were busy, and you need to upload pictures of your house, and some bits were not very presentable after this busy time. But time was running out, and I sorted it out. My listing is finished! I hope someone will be attracted to it. I will report back!

Some garden progress, finally

One of the first days of April I started a project in the garden. I tried to reclaim the raised bed closest to the river from ivy. I didn't make a ludicrous amount of progress, but I hoped I could just keep pushing it now and then in the evenings and weekends. But my evenings and weekends just vanished like election promises.

It was practically mid May when I finally found time again. After the Snowdonia half marathon I had nothing else on that afternoon. And in spite of my sore knees, I did a lot of satisfying work. I did make some ivy progress! The ivy is pushed further back. It is starting to look like a raised bed. And some totally rotten tree stump appeared from underneath the ivy, and spontaneously disintegrated.

I will still have to find time for pushing this even further. And I just have to hope I can enjoy that raised bed, once it has been populated with plants, for a while, before the whole shebang collapses into the river. Because it could! 

By the time I did get around to this, it was sunny, and the days were long, and it had been raining sufficiently, so everything was growing like there was no tomorrow. There were so, so many other things to do in the garden as well. I did a lot of these too. And the garden started looking again like a garden, rather than some embarrassingly wild place. But I can't stop here! I really hope I can come back to this topic on this blog quite soon!

Snowdonia half marathon: torture with reward

I hadn’t done a half marathon for a while. I had become quite comfortable in the 10k races. But then I won a race voucher in the Bangor 10k. What race to use that for? It had to be a race of the same organisation, of course. And I settled on the Snowdonia half. It’s a beautiful race in a suitable part of the year. I'm not sure how much longer they can call it that though; the National Park is now officially called Eryri.

I had done some longish training runs. Running short distances with a lot of uphill only trains your heart and lungs, and not your legs! At least not for half marathon purposes. But my training runs had never been more than 14 km.

On the day I drove to Llanrwst (alone, as Marjan was elsewhere) and parked, as had been recommended, by the local school. The start was a bit of a distance away, so I just left everything I wasn't going to bring with me on the race in the car, and went straight to the start. There I got my race number. I also wanted to go to the loo, but I saw the size of the queue, and I decided to go for a little warm-up run instead. The outskirts of Llanrwst are very wooded! I was sure I would be able to find a suitable copse for a wee. And I did. And then I went back to the start. I wanted to start quite close to the front!

the Llanrwst bridge

Ready to race!

At the start. Notice all the snazzy shoes!

The horn sounded and we were off. The race goes up quite soon, so I was in my element. And it is a road race, but a very beautiful one! I was enjoying it. It was a bit hot, but not unbearably so.

After about 3 miles I realised I was having a lovely runner’s high. Excellent! The weather was beautiful, the area was beautiful, and I was feeling great. All good. And after while, Llyn Geirionydd came into view. It is quite pretty.

I had a little bottle of water with me, but it was such a hot day at that two of the water stations I actually accepted a bottle in addition to that. 

From the FB page of Daniel Hill: me after some 3 miles 

We ran around the lake, and then for a short while, the road was used in both directions. I was running past the stragglers still making their way to the lake. I was happily thundering along, and I saw some expressions of disbelief in the people coming the other way. I suspect some people had seen me at the start and didn't think I was going to be so fast.

We then ran towards the second lake: Crafnant. Still very beautiful! And I decided to eat my gels. I had brought some; I don't normally use them, but I had won them in an earlier race, and this was an excellent opportunity to use them. A half marathon is enough to run yourself short of sugar, but with these gels, that is not going to happen.

From the Run Wales FB site: Llyn Crafnant

At some point I suddenly heard laughing behind me. What was so funny? And then I saw I was being caught up by the bloke with whom I had battled it out over the last kilometre or two of the Trawsfynydd race. He thought it was funny the same thing might be happening in this race. We had a little chat. Then I left him behind again. I was still on a roll!

Towards the far end of the lake it was getting quiet. For quite some distance, I could see no runners in front of me, and not hear any behind me. I suppose it was a good sign.

What wasn't such a good sign was that around the 10 mile sign, I started to really feel my knees. If I run, it is fairly standard that my right knee feels a little bit out of alignment; something on the outside of the knee doesn't feel quite right. But that never gets bad. But now it was getting bad. And my left knee was joining in!

I could also start to hear people behind me. The Trawsfynydd bloke, and a chap in a green shirt, approached, and then overtook. And then we hit the infamous last hill. Normally that is where I shine! I have no problem whatsoever to run up hills of that size and steepness. But now my knees felt like they were not going to hold my weight. I had to walk little bits. It was frustrating! I had all the breath in the world, but still couldn't get up the hill. I suspected it wasn't going to get better when I got to the top.

If I can barely run I can take pictures!

Me and the bloke in the green shirt

Indeed it didn't! My knees were still protesting. I tried to jog, but especially on the fairly steep downhill bits I just had to walk. Frustrating! This is where everybody else accelerates like the clappers. I was starting to get overtaken by loads of people. Two separate ladies who overtook me asked me if I was okay. It was very kind of them to ask!

I sort of hobbled onwards. Not far now! And I was overtaken by a swift woman just a meter or two before the finish. But she looked young. Not my category! And that was quickly proven; the bloke with the clipboard at the finish told me I had won in my category. Wow! In spite of the knees!

I collected my T-shirt and medal, and went to congratulate the Trawsfynydd bloke. This time he had beaten me. And then I went back to the finish to cheer other runners on. And drink lots of water! And admire a little bloodhound who seemed to think it was a bit too hot in the sun…

It had taken me a bit less than two hours, and two and a half hours after the start they would do the medal ceremonies. I stood on the side next to a lady with elaborate glitter in her hair. I had seen her early in the race! I thought it was quite charming. I didn't ask about the environmental credentials of the glitter; I hope that was exemplary. But either way, it looked very cheerful.

Then the ceremony started. Glitter lady had come second overall! And the woman who had won gold I had seen at the start; she looked really fast. And I was proud to get a medal and a voucher for being the fastest woman over 45, at 1:57:44. I can pay for my next race with that voucher! Which race will that be? This same race next year?

After the ceremony. Pic kindly taken by Silver Glitter lady

I hadn't been comfortable these last 3 miles, but it could have just been a lack of long training. I remember one of my early training runs for the marathon. My legs really didn't want to collaborate anymore towards the end of the run. But I just trained more, and all was well. I suppose it is worth finding out if my knees are really too old for the half marathon distance, or whether I am still completely fine as long as I properly train. But I suppose I have a bit of time to think about that.

When the ceremony was over I had to rush back to my car. The organisation had warned that the school where I had parked (on their request) would close its gate at 13:00. I didn't want to end up locked in! So I briskly walked back, chucked my clobber in the car, and drove off. I got through the gate at 12:58. Only when I got home did I take off my running shoes. And then I was ready for a sizable lunch and a lot of water!

Tyre sorted, hopefully: part 2

In November, I hoped I had my tyres sorted for the foreseeable future. And that was almost true! Three tyres were ok after that, but one wasn’t. I basically had to re-inflate it every time I used the car. That got tiresome (pun!). So I decided to go back to the tyre place. And I chose a day when I had a meeting at work in the afternoon, and a cave rescue committee meeting in the evening, for that. In between I could get it fixed.

Awaiting my turn 

The queue was short. Soon a young chap was on the case. He needed some violence to get the wheel off. And after some tests he concluded the problem was with the little lead weights. He took them off and replaced them with a different type. And he said he’d not charge me as it should have been sorted in November. If all’s ok now I probably won’t blog about it again. Not very newsworthy! But if it isn’t, the topic will come back up. Let’s hope not! 

Material girls

I was reading two books at the same time. I had started ‘material girls’ by Kathleen Stock, which Miles had given to me, but I found it unsuitable for bedtime reading. It is basically a philosophical polemic about feminism and trans activism. So I read a different book as bedtime reading, and I read this book during the day. It was almost an equal finish!

I am aware, by the way, that only reading the book by this author can get you ostracised by some. But so be it! I've read it.

So what is it about? The author argues that trans-activism these days strays into territories where it doesn't belong. She thinks that the excesses thereof are getting in the way of feminism and gay rights. And you can probably see most of her arguments coming; I'm sure most of us have talked about trans people in professional sport, and in single-sex spaces, such as changing rooms and prisons. She is all in favour of trans activism, but she is not so keen on mission creep. And there are no easy answers!

I suppose sport is just a simplification of life, and not all the complexities of life fit in it. If I run a race these days, there tend to be two categories you can register in: the open category, and the female category. This allows anyone to register, whether they identify as male or female, or not. And for anyone who is cisgender this is easy: males in the open category, females in the female category. But what if you are a trans woman? You would be totally welcome in the open category; it is open, after all. But would you? If you consider yourself a woman, you might very well register in the female category. Would that get you into trouble? I don't know! But registering in the open category comes with its own problems. Most people will equate it with the male category. You might not want to be associated with that. And if you had any artificial lowering of your testosterone levels, you probably wouldn’t do very well in it. But what can you expect an organisation to do otherwise? And this is a summary of my view than Stock’s, but I think it is relevant in this context.

Decision-making on trans rights and obligations in sport is clearly difficult, but Stock strongly argues for keeping the female category for cisgender females. And she argues that. And I see her arguments, but I'm not convinced by the introduction of third category. It would be so small, yet populated by such a wide variety of people! 

It's not all this practical, of course. Stock is a philosopher, and it shows. She discusses the concepts of sex and gender and suchlike in detail.

She also argues against letting people declare their sex themselves. As soon as you allow that, you would let basically anyone into single-sex spaces. A lot of trans women present as rather feminine, but if anyone can legally be a woman just by declaring themselves to be, the problem is you can't really have single-sex spaces anymore. Self-declared trans women who present as male would look indistinguishable from cisgender men. So if you have a single-sex changing room, for instance, you can't tell anymore who belongs there and who doesn't. And that's scary. And the chance of anything going wrong is small; most people, be they cis or trans, are of good faith, but I think all woman are aware that you always have to keep an eye out for those rare people who are not, and might not be able to resist a loophole if they spot one.

In this example I focus on trans women basically because men are on average so much stronger than women, and have such higher occurrences of an inclination to engage in sexual violence, it makes sense to be more nervous about men having access to women-only changing rooms than the other way around. But the argument does go both ways, of course.

In daily life I am fine with people just declaring their sex themselves, but I agree with Stock that as soon as you are talking about protecting vulnerable people, protection trumps identity. If you have a woman prison, you have a very high concentration of vulnerable people, and a lot of them will have suffered sexual violence. So I would agree with the Scottish decision to not let trans women with a history of violence awards other women serve in a female prison. The safety of all the other inmates then trumps the right of the perpetrator to serve in the prison that aligns with their gender identity.

And where do the gay people come in? She basically argues that being gay and being trans are too different things, and of course you can be both, but she just thinks that gay issues and trans issues are not the same. I can’t remember an example off the top of my head. And I'm not going to reread the whole book to find one.

There was one detail in the book that particularly struck me. And that was the suicide rate, and incidence of violence towards trans people. Stock mentioned an often heard statistic of almost half young transgender people having attempted suicide, and traces it back to its root. And it turns out to be the rate of a non-random selection of young people of which a big majority is not trans at all. It is still a shocking statistic, but it doesn’t say anything about young trans people at all. 

The violence statistic she digs out is presented as hate crimes, but it turns out it actually concerns self-reported incidents, and that could just be someone purposefully misgendering someone. And that is hurtful, but not the same as crime. She also deals with the murder rates of thans people versus the total population in the particular time period, and concludes according to these official figures, you have a decidedly lower risk of being murdered if you are trans in the UK, but I am not sure whether the police would necessarily know if a murder victim would be trans, so I'm a bit sceptical about these numbers. But anyway; Stock says there is no good reason to make anyone think they are at a lot more risk of suicide or assault than they are. The nocebo effect is real! 

And she says that she hopes that activism in the future comes with less philosophy, and with more data, and acknowledges that that might be a bit of an odd declaration for a philosopher, but this is an example of what she means. And I fully agree with the power of data!

So now what? I think the philosophical bit of this book is going to quickly gather dust in my brain. And the more practical parts of the book haven't really changed my opinions. But it was interesting to read someone really going into detail on a topic that is so hot at the moment. So I am glad I read it! Maybe especially because she ended up in such hot water for her opinions. The best way of finding your feet in heated debate is to make sure you have actually looked at the evidence, after all…

Het duister dat ons scheidt

I was still reading through my pile in the living room, with books people had lent me or given me. I had reached a Dutch novel by Renate Dorrestein: het duister dat ons scheidt (the dark that divides us), which my sister had given me. I had been reading two books at the same time, as I thought the other one was a bit too chewy for a bedtime reading. And this was fiction.

Warning: spoiler alerts.

I didn't know what to expect. It just started with a new housing project by an old small village. (Well actually, there is one scene before that, but I'll skip over that for now.) It is the late 70s or early 80s, and the new housing estate is full of young couples that all have children at roughly the same time. Of this part of the book, the protagonist is the collective voice of all these children. It follows them for six years. All children except one: Loes, who lives in the old part of the village, and who the children look up to.

I quite liked this part! You get the sense of the pioneer mentality, and the sense of a new slate for all these people that moved to a new neighbourhood, all at the same time. And then the novelty wearing off. And the children not quite understanding what the adults are doing and why. And then the suburban standards in the housing project contrasted with the more unconventional household Loes is growing up in. That's enough of a book for me! But then things got spectacular.

The father of one of the children gets murdered, and Loes’ mother ends up in jail for it, although in the book there are hints that she just took the blame, and that it was Loes who actually did it, although she is only six years old. She stays where she is; her mother was living with two men who are assumed to be tenants, but who actually are Loes’ mother’s partners (yes both of them), and therefore probably also Loes’ father (just one of them, obviously, though). The men are barely domestic gods, but they make it work somehow.

All the children in the village turn against Loes with her murderous mother. And six years of relentless bullying starts. That was hard to read! She just puts up with it.

At the end of the six years, Loes’ mother returns; probably released early for good behaviour. And then the family dynamic turns a bit strange. The newfound equilibrium is broken, the mother has changed, and things can never get back to what it was. Loes’ mother also finds out her daughter is being bullied, and wants to put an end to it. Unfortunately, she only ends up being bullied alongside her daughter. And she decides they have to leave. Leave to somewhere entirely different. And they pick the Scottish island of Lewis. And entirely different it is.

Loes has unlearned to socialise with other kids, but she finds solace in the baby next door. Overtime, though, she does end up in the community of local children. In the beginning she just keeps her head down. It doesn't entirely work, and there is a bit of a vision of even worse abuse than what she had been trying to escape. But it doesn't come to pass! The kids here are less cruel. Sometimes one gets ostracised, but that never seems to last very long.

In spite of the new environment, harmony never really returns to the family, and at some point, the mother just leaves. It is suggested later that she wants acknowledgement for her sacrifice, but never gets that to the degree she would like. And then just gives up on the situation. And again the remaining three make it work somehow.

In the last part of the book, Loes is 18, and is about to go to Amsterdam, to get a qualification in childcare. She gets there without problems, but her past is never far behind, of course. And she also finds out that her mother now has a job in the jail where she used to be imprisoned. And she decides to go and meet her. And they have a discussion about everything that has happened. Only then do both Loes and the reader get the final jigsaw pieces. The reader finds out that it was the two men who committed the murder, with Loes witnessing. Loes find out what the reader has known for a long time; her mother had had a heated affair with the murdered man, way before he moved into the housing estate. He may very well have been her father.

This makes Loes think a lot, obviously. She realises that in a way, she always let the other kids just bully her because she felt guilty for letting her mother take the blame for the murder. If you are guilty, you deserve punishment, right? And she thought the murder was mainly to protect her. Now she realises it might have been ordinary revenge on a love rival. Her mother may not have sacrificed herself for her daughter, but for her partners! And on the other hand; these partners might have stayed around only for her; not for her adulterous mother. A lot of her perspectives are abruptly changed.

The book ends there. The reader doesn't find out if Loes finds her feet in Amsterdam. And is basically left to ponder things for themselves.

Did I enjoy it? Yes and no! It was a very gripping book, but as I mentioned; the bullying scenes are difficult, even though most of them are never specified but largely hinted at. There is some glimpse of redemption at some point, though, but I figured the summary would be a bit long if I included that. 

I tend to like my books with less action, but this one kept me thinking about it for quite a while afterwards. And that is a success! So altogether I would say this was a good choice. Not all good choices have to be easy…