the things on the other side

Another day, another species of cervid, another session of paying almost zero attention to them in favour of picking up pine needles and leaf litter and poking it through holes in the fence, though at least this time it was sometimes the fence on the other side of which lurked the purported target animals. After trying and failing to find a way of packing the car which allowed the bike to be tucked between front and back seats (for easy removal-and-chaining-to-something) whilst ensuring all boot-luggage was concealed beneath the boot-cover (so that it would at least be covered by insurance when stolen) I packed everything (grimacing slightly every now and then as my impact-unaccustomed quads remembered what I'd done with them yesterday) back as it was on the journey up and then shoved the bag with the laptops in into the child-space of the child-carrying backpack (as they wouldn't fit under the buggy and the bag-space of the child-backpack was occupied with lenses) to keep them out of danger whilst we trundled around the reindeer centre (pop. 2, as the daily mountain walk was just leaving when we arrived). It wasn't quite as underwhelming as I had been expecting and the deer looked much happier than the shabby-looking depressed things which sometimes turn up in Princes Street Gardens during winter festive period faffery. The drive back was similarly less unpleasant than it could have been though by the time we got to Kinross and swapped duties my legs had stiffened to the point where I had to spend a few minutes wincing and stretching before leaving the car to get a coffee. I must start mixing the odd bit of trotting in with cycling to prevent this happening again - I was pleased at how effortless the uphill climb had seemed yesterday despite the infrequency of my climbing of mountains and didn't notice any deterioration in my hopping-about-over-rocks abilities at the top but always notice a similar oochiness after resuming running after not running for a while, even back when I had time to walk eight miles a day and thus had some impact-habituation.