Team Lucy

The Black Eyed Peas woke me up from my slumber, early on Saturday morning. It felt and sounded like Fergie and will.i.am were actually standing around my bed, belting down their microphones but, surprisingly enough, it only turned out to be Angela calling on Ka’s unattended mobile phone. It was half past seven and still concussed from a weird dream, I opted to leave the phone and merely shouted on the wife, telling her of her sister’s early buzz.
It was the day of our fundraising big Fun Run in Bellahouston Park, and after Ka had spoke to her sister, it was decided that Angela would come over to EK with Grace and Dougie in her car as she was unsure of the route to Bellahouston. This meant Angela having to follow us, on our twisting route through the hills of EK, as we were picking up fellow runners, Claire and Pauline, on our way to Glasgow.
After appearing at the door in her silver Vauxhall, Angela gave me a whistle from her driver’s seat, obviously liking the sight of me in my shorts, as Ka and myself jumped in our car to begin the journey on which I drove slowly and carefully ensuring my dearest sister-in-law didn’t get lost on one of the many roundabouts of East Kilbride.
We picked up Claire first, who left a teary Olivia behind with her Dad, and then headed for Gardenhall, and Pauline, who ran back into her house for a large pile of towels, unsure of the darkening clouds above us.
On our two car trip down the M77 Pauline took a rather urgent call from a slightly stressed Angela who informed us her tank was empty. So pulling off at Silverburn we made our way to the garage were we topped up our tanks whilst Grace decided to go for a wee wander around the pumps on her mobile phone. Colin was on the other end of the phone informing her that Jillian and himself had already arrived at Bellahouston Park and were successfully parked and ready to go. Ka and Claire quickly warned Grace to put her phone away in case of an explosion.
Old myths die hard and the possibility of an explosion caused by a mobile phone call in a petrol station is still, apparently, a possibility even though nobody has ever heard of it happening, anywhere.
Imagine standing innocently locking your petrol cap up when your phone goes off in your jacket pocket. Just as you huff and shake your head at the unfortunate timing of the caller, a tremendous explosion sends you, and all the gathered motorists, up into the grey clouds over Silverburn, in a rising ball of flame.
I’m pretty sure I wasn’t warned of such dangers when I bought my phone and signed the contract.
Anyway, as we left Silverburn’s Tesco station quite safely, and without any fireballs created from Grace’s mobile, we made our way out on to the first roundabout, turned left and lost Angela.
Angela had successfully navigated the streets of EK, followed us down the M77 with care on an empty tank and was now, after one left turn, nowhere to be seen. We stopped at some red lights, that were taking us back out on to the motorway, where various urgent phonecalls were made, but, by this point there was no turning back for us and before we knew it we were approaching Bellahouston, Ka shouting at me about where Colin and Jillian were park in the street from the front passenger seat. Taking my own lead and seeing one of few spaces left, I pulled the car up in the park’s Sport and Leisure Centre’s car park where we piled out to make some calls and wait on a silver Vauxhall.
Both Claire and myself were in dire needs of a loo and, finding ourselves unable to wait any longer, we left Pauline and Ka standing in the car park with the phone whilst we headed off to find the sports centre’s toilet.
There was one of each just outside the café and Claire and myself stood in the small square room between each toilet, politely waiting on the slow occupants within, Claire just missing out as a family of three entered the female toilet just as we arrived. I tried the male toilet handle only to get a huffy shout from within. Claire and myself waited politely, myself shuffling a little on my feet, but trying desperately to control myself before the eyes of one of my wife’s best friends.
After a good five minutes a toilet flushed from within the male toilet. I almost punched the air eagerly. Another toilet flushed moments later. There was a click, and a turn of a handle. But it was the wrong handle. The family of three bundled out from the female toilet and allowed Claire access, leaving me standing awaiting the male door to swing open. Five minutes passed. Suddenly the toilet flushed once more from within. More waiting. Then it flushed once more and eventually a rather tall man in glasses, a luminous yellow jacket and shorts appeared from within.
“Sorry, had a bit of trouble there!” he let me know. “I was struggling to get that clear!”. I nodded with an uneasy laugh and elbowed my way into the toilet before the question occurred to me. What was he struggling to clear? I gulped nervously as I looked at the closed over toilet seat below me.
Angela, Grace and Colin eventually arrived moments before Colin and Jillian strode over from the other side of the park and we all pinned a copy of one of Lucy’s pictures to our backs, alongside our various charities logos. Colin complimented his Dad’s athletic figure complaining about his own jelly belly as he made sure he had his iPod and cigarettes for the run whilst I struggled with the clothes pins and everyone piled their belonging into the back of the car.
Everyone was running for Sands with the exception of myself. When I booked up I thought I’d be different and try and raise money for Yorkhill Children’s Hospital, just so they didn’t feel left out. So instead of Sands’ white short sleeved T-shirts, I was wearing the Yorhill blue vest, but over a normal white T-shirt. I didn’t fancy exposing my armpits to the gathered running masses.
Approximately 600 folk were present on the day and as we all milled around awaiting the run to start we commenced a general warm up on the park path behind the sport’s centre and the Run’s Start and Finish line.
One lady asked Ka who the little girl was on all our backs. Getting a little teary mid stretch Ka she explained about our wee Lucy but held herself together well as the woman immediately apologised and then commenced to give the usual compliments referring to our beautiful wee girl.
Steven, Morgan and Joshua then turned up waving from the side of the track as ‘Walk this way’ started blasting out from the starting line’s speakers whilst the warm up girls punched the air repeatedly with their fists, photos were taken and Colin gave more of his comedy breast hooter impressions. Eventually, at around twelve to thirteen minutes past eleven, we were off. The first few minutes were slow as the crowd got going, people moving slowly apart, finding their feet and their preferred speed for the first quarter of a kilo. As I started getting into a steady pace I suddenly heard a familiar shout from behind a fence to my right.
“Yoohoo!” Mum was waving from behind the fence, Dad walking up and waving behind her, appearing at the last minute to cheer us on.
Round and up Bellahouston Park we ran, over the large, grassy but pathed flat and then up into the trees and over the steep hill which took us up and round the House for an Art Lover, past it’s back portico which leads into the large garden and the Giant foot where Ka and I spent a rather day and evening back in July 2009. After this we headed for the main road and Ibrox before turning off and moving round the perimeter of the park. I think it was around there that Jillian said she met one of her ex-boyfriends mid run. Apparently he was one of the guides, who stood at various route corners and pointed you in the right direction with some words of encouragement to spur you on.
As I neared the 3km mark I looked up to recognise one of the route guides myself. It was the tall, bespectacled man in shorts who’d had the struggle in the toilet. He seen me and looked away rather quickly, faltering on some words but then shouting encouragingly at the runner that had passed ahead of me.
Chris and her pal Sandra, who always has her camera hanging from the strap around her neck whenever I see her, were at the finish line to welcome us at the end of the race, along with a hastily arriving Mum, Dad, Steven, Morgan and Joshua who’d followed our progress from various points around our route.
Everyone finished, happy, a little tired, some a little sore, but probably a little fitter.
We all collected our goody bags and medals whilst more photos were taken, Morgan and myself got covered in mud, running back through the park and Mum met a long lost neighbour in Sandra, Chris’s photographer friend, who, it turns out, grew up in the same street as her and used to hang out with her and my Auntie Tricia. Another one of those strange, small world like incidents that take you by surprise.
27 minutes. That was my initial thinking of my time. But, due to a lack of clock at the finish line we’re all a little unclear as to what our final times were. As it turns out my time may have been a good few minutes shorter than 27, as Ka crossed the line around four to five minutes after me, and Jillian followed around a minute or so after her, and Jillian tells me her tracker tells her she took 29 minutes. So nobody knows for sure, but nobody really cared.
Pauline crossed the line moments later followed by Angela, who was last on the running track over a year ago but found it a walk in the park. Finished next were Claire and Colin and then, around ten minutes later, Grace and Dougie. We’d all ran for Lucy and the chosen charities, collecting at least a good seven hundred pounds between us, thanks to a lot of generous family, friends and colleagues.

Ka and myself have even talked of making it an annual event, making a yearly effort to raise some money for our charities in Lucy’s name. Jillian responded by text later in the day, rather optimistically, suggesting next year’s Glasgow half marathon.
We’ll see.
5km may not be a lot to some but Team Lucy did well.

Nicholson's chin and the supermarket tannoy

“Customer attention please. Customer attention. Could a Kelly Ann Reid please come to the checkouts please. A Kelly Ann Reid, please come to the checkouts. Thank you”.
The voice reverberated around the aisles of Stewartfield Morrisons today after I failed to find her within the bowels of the busy supermarket on this rainy Saturday afternoon. We were in search of Christening wrapping paper and stopped of at the local Morrisons. I dropped Ka off at the store’s large, pillared front doors and swerved off to the adjoining petrol station to obtain some more ridiculously expensive unleaded while she popped in for the paper. After buying the petrol I drove back to the pickup point, knowing that the paper/card buying area was at the store’s front newspaper checkout and believing that it wouldn’t have took too long for Ka to purchase the required gift wrapping while I bought the fuel.
As always with these things though, nothing is that simple.
The wife always finds a way to complicate things. Ka was nowhere to be seen. We both had no phone on our person so, the car had to be parked. After slotting the car into one of the carpark’s tight, awkward spaces, I started a whirlwind tour of the supermarket’s vast innards. Starting at the gift wrapping/birthday card/newspaper/lottery ticket checkout at trhe front of the store I then proceeded to the main checkouts where, again, Ka was nowhere to be found, so, there was nothing more that could be done, except the obvious. An exploration of the aisles. Fifteen minutes later she was still nowhere to be found.
So, I hesitantly approached what resembled a store manager at the help desk where the tannoy microphone stood waiting.
Ka eventually appeared, tottering up towards the checkout with a basket full of products, which we had not come in for, looking a little disconcerted and embarrassed. Apparently she had been at the fish when the tannoy announced her name. Needless to say a mild argument occurred where Ka voiced her disbelief and I repeatedly gave my argument for approaching the store manager and requesting an announcement for a missing wife.
It’s the end of a rather relaxing week off from work. It’s flown by even though I’ve not been up to anything particularly interesting. Just the usual. Gym, cinema, jogging and painting. Painting of the canvas kind.
I’m three quarters of the way through a Walken, just about finished a Nicholson and struggling a bit with a Pacino.
As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I’ve started painting movie stars. Walken was the first and since then Ka, Pauline and Chaz have all eagerly spurred me on to paint more, so it’s thanks to them I spent the first half of the week struggling over Jack Nicholson’s chin and the bare bones of Al Pacino’s face. I thought Pacino would actually be a little easier than Nicholson, but how wrong I was. I feel like I’ve been painting and repainting the main structure of Pacino’s face for three days now. I’m sure it’ll get there in the end. Wherever, ‘there’ is.
On Wednesday, after a day of trying to get Pacino right, Pauline, my cousin’s ex wife, who just happens to be an old friend from Primary school and is now a good friend of the Mrs, popped round for a 5k jog around the block. Or rather, jog around a few blocks. Both the St. Leonards and Calderwood areas of EK to be precise.
It’s all in preperation for the Big Fun Run taking place on the 29th October. Ka is running it for Sands in memory of our wee Lucy Reid, as are myself, Pauline, our pal Claire, the in laws, Grace and Dougie, Ka’s bro Colin and his Mrs, Jillian and Ka’s sister, Angela along with, I imagine a great number of other folk. (I’ll take this opportunity to spur folk on to please sponsor the Mrs in her 5k endeavour. Please visit this site to sponsor – any amount of pence or pounds is gratefully accepted for this great cause!)
Pauline, who apparently does not run, was keen for a practise jog and managed the 5k easily in 35 minutes and, although we thought she’d be cursing us, she did insist that she still loved us. Well, most of her did anyway.
Apparently her lungs didn’t.
They’ll get over it.
Last night I was back in the O2 Academy for another visitation from The Wombats. Having recovered from her run the two nights before, Pauline accompanied me to the gig, after Ka took a rain check, and the two of us jumped away to the tunes undeterred by the amount of kids surrounding us in the crowd. The Liverpudlian threesome put on another storming performance for Glasgow, playing a lot of their most recent album, a lot of which I wasn’t familiar with yet. I purchased the album months ago and have listened to it about thrice. Don’t spend as much time listening to music as I used to.
Too busy painting, jogging or looking for the wife in supermarkets.

Restaurants, rehearsals and running

We’ve not heard back from Chaz yet. Both Ka and myself text him a message yesterday to ask him how he got on with his casting audition to be in the next big Brad Pitt movie being filmed in Glasgow.
Chaz and myself ordered dinner in the Crooked Lum on Thursday night, two three course meals, taking full advantage of a 25% off voucher Chaz had procured from a taxi driver. I ordered a fillet for my main but Chaz had to do better. He challenged himself by ordering the steak platter, a massive square plate of food which included a large sirloin, fillet and ribeye along with a mountain of chips, a massive mushroom and a giant half tomato that looked like it had been grown in some kind of mutant vault in a local Nuclear facility.
Over dinner Chaz informed me that he was to go along on Saturday in a suit and tie for a movie audition to be an extra in a forthcoming Brad Pitt movie production which apparently involves zombies, being zombies or being attacked by zombies. I’d always thought Glasgow was the perfect setting for a zombie movie – although I’m not sure we need more of them diving about Glasgow than there is already.
By trade, Chaz is a car salesman but I’d also always thought he’d have made a rather good actor. Chaz lamented the end of his drama days over dinner. His best part to date being the role of Lead Pharisee in the school Easter play in the late eighties. Chaz managed to turn the part of the Chief Pharisee into a sort of flamboyant Police Informant type Government spy character. His biggest scene, pivotal to the capturing of Jesus, included Chaz skidding on to the stage and informing the gathered characters that:
“It’s alright, he’ll do it, at ten o’clock tonight!”
Unfortunately his adventures in drama ended during the final rehearsals for that particular scene with the skid on to the stage not quite ending where it should have, resulting in a continuous skid off the stage and the bashing of an eye off the end of a gym bench below.
Let’s hope he gets on better with his zombie audition. I hope he’d done his homework and watched Sean of the Dead, Land of the Dead or has just simply walked up Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night.
Or the Hamilton town centre on a weekday, for that matter, a strange, destitute place into which my work has just moved and is taking some getting used to. Ka and myself met for lunch last week, my first week in the Hamilton office, and we sat on a bench in the middle of the local shopping precinct to eat our lunch. Strange, smelly, lonely looking characters soon began to circle us like vultures, eyeing either the bench, our lunch or the very flesh which clings to our bones. I wasn’t sure which, but it was enough to put me off my ham sandwich and Irn Bru.
Thankfully, Ka and myself ate in far nicer surroundings yesterday. Once again, we found ourselves dining out, once more in a restaurant, Grace and Dougie treating us to a meal for our anniversary, which was then followed up with a few coffees and shandies at a local pub.
With all this eating in mind we woke this morning finding our usual trip to the gym a bit of a stretch, so instead opted for a run round Calderwood and St. Leonards, circling around the neighbourhood, one lap being just over 5km. It went well considering it was our first jog in months, since before Ka fell pregnant. So Ka and myself are feeling rather pleased with ourselves. Next time we’ll make it two laps. Mum, Dad and Lynsey were popping round for a cuppa though so we had an excuse today to make it a single lap. We’ve promised ourselves to go running more often, especially in the run up to Ka’s run for charity in October (details of which can be found here http://www.justgiving.com/Kelly-Ann-Reid).
There is a turn off, halfway round, where you can trim a good half a mile off the whole lap. Ka was tempted to take this route as she was knackered, struggling for breath and generally getting grumpy after fifteen minutes running and stressed that she may have to ease herself back into the running by taking a shorter route round. When I refused to go this way and told her she would be fine with various other words of encouragement she swiftly replied with a barrage of abuse, just as we passed a row of quiet houses. The occupants of these houses had probably been enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon up until that moment when they spilt their teas, woke from their naps or jumped from behind their Sunday papers to the loud, shouting couple jogging by their front window.
No pain, no gain, they say. Although I didn’t believe it was the pain of the hurling abuse from your stressed wife as she runs around the block after you. So with little argument after this I reluctantly agreed to take the shorter route only for Ka, not more than 5 minutes later, to agree to carry on with the full lap, missing the halfway point turn off. Typical Ka. She was either fiercely determined to complete the planned route, or was simply refusing to go along with anything I agreed to.
It’s all well and good running for miles on a treadmill in a gym but when it comes to real outdoor running it’s very different. Hills appear on your route spontaneously before you, inclines that you did not even realise were inclines when you usually drive along them in the car. Midges and bugs are everywhere too. On passing various clusters of bushes and foliage various sizes of insects would instantly decide to aim for you face, particularly the eyes, nostrils, or even worse, the mouth. You’ll be chatting away to your fellow jogger, or arguing, as you tackle the latest incline when all of a sudden a passing midge that had previously been buzzing about a local bush, would take a notion for a kamikaze mission with your tongue, stopping and firing itself straight into your oral cavity.
Something a little more pleasant is the nodding to and greeting of fellow joggers. You notice this when you’re out walking on the hills too. You’re all complete strangers but you follow some sort of unspoken code with which you nod or greet passing joggers, as if acknowledging each others’ athletic prowess and sportsmanship tackling the dangerous pavements and grass verges.
A greeting of a different kind I received today was a wolf whistle. I’ve never been wolf whistled before but managed not to get too excited about it as it was from a trio of giggling 12-13 year olds who passed by me giggling. A few moments later their giggling was interrupted by the jogger they’d failed to notice behind me, elbowing them off the pavement. Ka mumbled some more abuse as she caught up, running up behind me just as the rain started to fall and a jeep carrying our former neighbour Kay, passed by. The horn tooted as the neighbour waved at us, grinning smugly over her phone from behind her windscreen in her nice, warm, dry 4x4.
With the exception of the interfering insects, the threatening rain and the teenagers, the 5km was a bit of a breeze to be honest and I was pretty surprised at how easily I managed it.
Well, when I say easily we did finish the run with faces the colour of tomatoes. I was suffering with weird blurred vision after coming to a stop outside outside our front door, wiping the dead midges from my face as the old legs began to quiver a little with exertion. The walk I performed going up the stairs to our front door wouldn’t have looked out of place in Chaz’s zombie movie.

The call of fatherly duty

"Phew, Ka's got her work cut out for her", I sighed, talking to Grace on the phone on Wednesday night after our first trip to the Hunter Health Centre.
We went along to our first antenatal class, or 'parent crafting' class as it's now called, for some reason, on Wednesday night, and Ka found herself kneeling against a chair, sitting facing the back of a chair, bent over a bed, balancing on gym balls and cuddling whilst standing. All different positions to be in when handling the pains of contractions. It's all very different to how I'd imagined it. Apparently there shouldn't be any tensing of the muscles, struggling for breathe, shouting, swearing, cursing or breaking of the fingers. I'm not convinced but I'm sure I'll find out when January comes around.
Breathe. Breathe. Ka and myself were in a large wooden panelled office, littered with desks with computers and treatment beds. We were shown in with around ten other pregnant couples and all sat in a semi circle of chairs before the nurse started teaching us how to breathe, stretch and exercise our pelvic floor which is to help make your pelvic muscles stronger and thusly help lessen the chance of requiring a colostomy bag in later life.
We learnt that labour should, apparently, all be stress free with no rushing to the hospital at the first sign of labour contractions. All midwives should be perfectly helpful and the whole process should be naturally timed. It should be clearly and easily defined by a timetable of events involving various mucus' and liquids being dispersed from the pregnant woman's nether regions.
The midwife stressed the point of insisting you stay at home for as long as possible so as not to waste the time of our hospital staff and beds. That's what they must have told my Auntie Maria who very nearly ended up delivering Lauren on the hall staircase before making it to the bathroom to pop her out. Ka is considering a pool birth at the moment. I'm pretty sure a bathroom birth is not on the cards.
It's now seven weeks away till the due date and some of the hints, tips and information we were getting on wednesday night may have been more useful twenty weeks ago. How to cope with a growing lifeform in your body, how to exercise your body whilst pregnant, how to stop him or her punching your ribcage etc. It would have certainly made Ka's life a little easier if we'd have been told how to deal with these things more than a few weeks ago. The midwife even stressed the fact that the mothers may get a little tetchy in the next few weeks. The next few weeks? That started ages ago! And 'a little tetchy' doesn't quite cover it. I'm glad we've got midwives to point these things out, I would have never of realised.
The midwife also made it clear that besides driving the mother to the hospital there was nothing a partner/husband could do to help and may as well relax, look after themselves and go home and have their dinner. One of the future Dad's, a heavily tattooed bloke with thick black glasses, mumbled at this from under his woollen hat saying that he would go home and play Xbox. His partner snorted at this, insisting she was taking the Xbox to the hospital with her. Nevermind the nighties, the nappies and the sleep suits, this couple have a case packed with games console and Call of Duty. I wonder what their house will be like when their baby pops into the world if they already spend their time fighting over who gets the Xbox on a night?
Another future Dad asked if it was just like the movies and you have the right to bomb down the A721 at great speeds using the excuse of their wife being pregnant. Is this the reason he got his wife up the duff? So he could drive through Wishaw at a stupid speed?
Then again, once the baby is here these small moments of unadulterated pleasure for a Dad, will be few and far between so I suppose all fathers should take them while they've got the chance.