Good news! Lucy finds another kayak for us! Great! But it needs to be picked up before 7pm so we can use it this weekend and because the guy who owns it is away all weekend. So I dash home from school and jump in the car and that is all the dashing I do.
Two hours later, Friday evening rush hour, I have crept in fume-coughing, stress-inducing, time-frittering first gear gridlock to the edge of London, a journey that takes 30 minutes on a bicycle. I reach the M3 and floor the throttle, happy to be hammering forwards at last. My phone rings (hands-free of course!) and the guy on the end tells me that, sorry, he thought we wanted a Canadian canoe and that they have no kayaks. Crossed wires somewhere. I turn around and creep back through London to home.
The challenge of this marathon for us is to be to get to the start line, to not surrender to the obstacles of preparation, to not think how much easier it would be not to bother. The race begins a week today. We have no boat. The odds do not look good. But I won’t stop trying yet.