Reasons to be Cheerful: Nostalgia, Fells and Garden #R2BC

It is the end of August today (where has this month gone?) so I will be handing back over the lovely Michelle for September as the hostess with the mostest. I will still be joining in and visiting you all though to watch out! Here are my reasons to be cheerful this week:
1) Nostalgia
One of the great things about sorting out and completely rearranging a bedroom is that it produces lots of treasures from the past. This week one thing that emerged was my whole school photograph from Beaconsfield High School in the summer of 1987 - the year I took the last ever O level exams. There were 800 of us at the school at the time and they lined us up in form by height and then merged us in our year group as we went onto the school field. I have just photographed my Year 5 section (what year 11 used to be called!). Can you find me?

2) Tail Walking at Parkrun
My son and I volunteered to be Tail Walkers at Fell Foot. This is a fun role at the back of the event keeping the walkers company on the 5 km route. This time we started with a gentleman in his 80s who used to run marathons but is now on doctor's orders to only walk. It was lovely to stroll through the park and meadow chatting to him and encouraging other runners as they passed or lapped us. Plenty of time to take photographs too. Then he stopped at the end of lap 1 to be with his daughter an we had to leg it over a kilometre to catch the young runner who was now the tail:

I will definitely be tail walking again soon as its a really lovely way to help out at parkrun.
3) Grasmere Sports
I struck lucky this year and ended up as a Steward at Grasmere Sports which is one of the traditional Lakeland sport events over the summer. My role was to sign up the fell runners for one of the most iconic fell races in the world. There were 27 in the under 9s, 59 in the under 12s, 24 under 14s, 15 under 17s and 195 adults! As I knew quite a large percentage of the entrants I had a very social time and came out just in time to see the seniors start up the hill for their 1.5 miles:

4) Ullswater fun
I have already blogged about the fun we had on Ullswater and in Glenridding. You can see how much my son enjoyed being King of an islet in the lake:

5) Garden makeover
One of my biggest reasons to smile this week was yesterday's garden makeover. I am aching all over today but once again my garden has been rescued by the more green fingered members of my family and they are coming back to do more too! To see the photos you will have to go and read that post too...
I hope that even more of you will join in this month and visit each other's blogs to spread the happiness. 


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