Minor miracles

Well, I feel a bit odd asserting some cheerful things this week amongst all the horror, but...

This week, readers, two miracles have occurred. As things always come in threes when they are bad things, I do not see why the same rule would not apply to good things too, therefore I am confidently expecting Miracle Number Three. What might it be? Will elves come and deal with the garden while I am sleeping? Will someone push an anonymous donation of a £50 John Lewis voucher and a slender Alice Starmore volume through the letterbox? Will Vogue ring and beg me to do a regular column for huge remuneration which just involves criticising things? I am quite agog. These are the existing miracles.

Holes that line up miraculously

You have to understand how much I hate knitting lace. Oh, God, I hate it, I hate the yarnovers, I hate the way when you cock it up you have to undo it because it gets all confusing, I hate the whole miserable tortured experience. Well, I have started the City Stole with, shall we say, some trepidation, because my yarn budget is now spent up until 2015 and I cannot see anything else I would conceivably want to knit with the yarn I have bought for it. So this pig has got to work. And guess what: it does. I can understand the (12) charts, I can read what I am doing, I have managed to correct mistakes without undoing it all and starting again, I sit crossing lines off with my biro, I am a happy bunny and am confident I may be able to finish it at some point in the next 6 years. City Stole designer, I love you and your comprehensible charts but I am not changing my allegiance and after this scary interlude will be scooting back to colourwork gratefully.

You have to understand how bad I am at running. I am so bad, when I was at infant school, I was once so long finishing the egg and spoon race that they couldn’t wait any longer and they had to start the next race behind me. And I didn’t even win that one. However, rather tragically, I would like to be a good runner. I see myself, slicing silently through urban environments like an elegant blade in my Primark tracky bottoms. Therefore I have been chugging away at Couch to 5k for longer than I am going to admit, and yesterday, I had a breakthrough and I ran for 10 minutes. 10 minutes! This is 20 times as long as I could run when I started! This is a proper distance, where you can run round the corner before the dog walkers you have passed see you collapse! This is unprecedented, and I almost feel like doing a version of Father Ted’s Twats and Liars speech: ‘well, Mrs X who said I would never be an athlete after the egg and spoon debacle, very much has egg on her face now that at the age of 36 I have managed to run for 10 minutes! Consecutively!’.

What will happen next? The rules are being entirely rewritten.