Tell you tomorrow?

No, I won't, I'll take a mysterious two-week hiatus.

There was really no good reason for not posting. I haven't thrown in the towel. I've been going to the gym like a good girl, and although the weight isn't going down very fast, it is going down (190lb). My legs are definitely toning up a bit - you can see the muscles in my calves. For some reason, however, I've been completely worn out in the evenings, and only fit for sitting around in a heap then having an early night. As I am usually a complete night owl, this means I don't get nearly as much done as I should.

I also seem to have been shopping like a mad thing. Some of it is stuff I needed - new running shoes, tracky bottoms (Scottish for jogging pants). The rest... I don't know. It seems stupid to buy new clothes when I'm hoping to be much smaller. But I now have a spring coat (on sale) and a very cool stripy wrap skirt which is flattering and cheers me up a lot. I think it's a reaction against the near-unrelieved black I've been wearing all winter. However, I shall try leaving my Switch card at home for a while.

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I was a bit worried about buying running shoes, as I always have trouble finding trainers I don't hate, even when they're just for walking around the place. My perfect trainers would be black and as un-girly as possible. As I have small but broad feet, I've ended up with little boys' trainers for the past several years.

Not knowing a specialized running shoe from a moon boot, I was rather dreading exposing my ignorance to the shop assistants. Looking lost may have been an advantage, because as soon as I got into Allsports I was gathered in by a very helpful guy (shorter than me again. Is this some kind of requirement for working in a sports-related job in Edinburgh?) who was quite prepared fetch several sizes of the same shoe and tell me all about the different advantages of each design.

"Any style preferences?"
"Oh, anything," I said, trying not to be difficult. "So long as it's not pink."

Wouldn't you know, none of the boys' trainers, which (going on past experience) I was starting out with, fitted - too loose at the heels. So I tried on some girls' trainers. They were white with large hot-pink panels. And they were too small in my normal size. The assistant went off to get them a size up. "Sorry, we only have the black version left... I don't suppose you want that?"

They fitted, they're black, and for some reason the pink element has been reduced to three little Adidas stripes which I can easily live with (like this. Imagine the stripes are pink.) I've been running in them three times (on the treadmill) and they don't give me blisters.

Cultural rundown of the past two weeks? Lots of Lindsey Davis books, all re-reads; now reading The Magical Maze by Ian Stewart. Went to see Sahara with my brother at the weekend. Very silly indeed - we enjoyed ourselves immensely... The plot is ludicrous, but has the best McGuffin I've seen in ages, while we felt the main characters worked well together. By the end we didn't care about the occasional cheesiness - we were just having too much fun.