Random acts of kindness
While I was out at the choir the other night there was a rattle of the letterbox and a plop as an envelope landed on the mat, it scared the life out of the cats and stopped Noel programming, but only for a nanosecond, he was in The Zone.
Inside was a handmade card, stamped with Easter images with a message from the village Brownies. A simple ‘Happy Easter’. A simple card. I was simply overwhelmed, it was so unexpected, so kind. The Brownies are very much a part of our village life, they cultivate a raised bed at the allotments, and they run the pay-as-you-feel cake stall at the village show, where they are very persuasive in getting us to part with our money, we always pay more than we feel…as I say, they are very persuasive. For Easter they each made three cards, keeping one for themselves and giving the other two to someone else, one of them was me, a touching random act of kindness.
It was my 400th parkrun on Saturday, 2000km of running, 374 of them at Woodhouse Moor, so I’ve made my own groove around the park, first in one direction then the other, as we changed the course post-covid. During that time I’ve also gone through several pairs of running shoes, quite a few sports bras that lost their elastic, five red hats and, if my maths serve me correctly, 1200 post-parkrun coffees. Then there’s the cake, it is a fact that post-run cake has zero calories, so I could say no cake was eaten, I could say that, but I’d be lying.
I didn’t want to make a massive fuss about my 400th. I’d worked it, more by luck than good judgement, so it coincided with the 800th Woodhouse Moor parkrun , which felt rather neat. It’s not even a recognised milestone, there’s no tee-shirt or fancy merchandise, I’ve another 100 to do before I can get any of that, so I scribbled the number on a piece of paper and pinned it to my back.
Contrary to my usual pre-parkrun routine, I didn’t stand around chatting and did what could loosely be termed as a warm-up, only to bump into the lovely Dave and his wife who’d come across from Boston (Lincolnshire, not Massachusetts) to visit their daughter Beth and, it turns out, to celebrate with me. How kind, how very kind.
There was more kindness to come, as Beth greeted me with the world’s largest Rocky Road, complete with my name and 400 spelled out in chocolate, biscuits, and gooey chewy rock and road. It was totally unexpected, I was gobsmacked, such a lovely surprise and such kindness. Thank you!