Good Grief 280

I got going and even managed to negotiate my way to the marathon venue (after asking about ten people, all of whom had no knowledge of it....in the end I had lost confidence sufficiently to ask if I was in the right town!). I was too late for the start but in good time for a finish within my step daughter's average time, so I waited....and waited. Then I asked a race official who said most had come through so I rang and discovered she'd dropped out after the first mile because of back trouble. Poor thing, she's not having much luck at the moment. So we had completely missed eachother. I said I'd press on as I could feel momentum ebbing fast.

After Eleven hours on the road. I ended up here. If I hadn't been exhausted I'd have driven straight back home. Remarkably I managed not to sleep. You wouldn't think it possible. But, in a way, it was that which stopped me from heading back. I went and found the old shop where I bought an orange haired troll for the top of my pencil when I was about seven or eight perhaps. My aunt gave me some pocket money and I remember walking alone along a small dry river bed into the village to the shop. I seem to remember feeling very independent. Today I asked a woman in a deli (no such thing in those days!) if she knew of a dry river bed and described the row of houses as I remembered them, a child's memory of about 45 years ago. She sent me off in what she thought might be the right direction. Amazingly, I knew it when I got there. Why the need to go there? Goodness only knows. Some sense of connection? With no feeling of life now going back over past life, moments remembered? Finding them, locating them in reality? I don't know....
Afterwards, I pressed on, fighting futility.