111/365 Look again at familiar places, you might be surprised

Hands up if you want a Sunday sermon. 

Ahem, anyone? 

Helloooo?

Oh well – I don’t really like them either. Especially not online ones. It’s usually some barely adequately photosshopped image of water crashing on the beach with a homily on the blindingly obvious.

• Pay your bills on time and you won’t get cut off.
• Be nice to the people you love because you’ll be miserable when they die. 
• Contraceptives will work better than wishful thinking. 
• You’ll get old one day, deal with it. 
• Gravity will get you in the end, whatever you do. 
• The more delicious the food the worse it is for you.
• If you measure something you will discover how long it is. 
• Rich and famous doesn’t happen to real people, settle for one or the other. 
• A trip to Ikea will always cost more than you planned. 

But today a real one came true for me.

• Look again in familiar places, you might be surprised.

Having realised it’s only three weeks until the Glasgow Women’s 10K I thought I’d better go out in the rain for a bit of a jog. 

We live at the top of a hill so every route from the front door will, at some point, necessitate slogging up a slope. Consequently I spend disproportionate amounts of time figuring out routes where the incline comes at the end, is gentle, or so steep as to justify walking. 

Then today just as I was bracing myself for the main up hill return I spotted a man stepping out of the bottom of a flight of stone steps. I must have seen these steps, as I have passed them probably several times every single day for at least a decade – on foot, cycling or in a car. 

However, I simply hadn’t noticed. 

I climbed them. Steep, mossy and chunked into flights, they took me out exactly at the same level as our house – but half a mile from home.

Now I’m rather pleased I’ve found a quick way of getting from down there where the village and the good routes are to up here that, done briskly, is enough exercise to justify not running. 

It just goes to show – quite literally – that if you have a closer look at somewhere nearby you might well find something surprising. 

Here’s ends the sermon.