After an intense Christmas and freezing cold New Year, things are seriously hotting up in Rhal-land. 2012 turned out to be a tricky year, so towards the end of it I was feeling fed up. Relocating to the wilderness 400 miles away from friends and family with no reliable income, no transport and no idea was bound to be challenging. But then my one saving grace (running) started playing up (dodgy knee) and I really began to lose hope.

I rely on running a great deal to sort my shit out. It makes me feel good about myself, look better naked, and I find the process meditative and incredibly healing. Not being able to run is a bit like having a limb removed or losing your iPhone. IT JUST MAKES EVERYTHING HARDER. Pray for my poorly leg, dear friends.

Add an injured Ultraboy into the mix (he recently had arm surgery following a kayaking accident, and can’t even tie his own shoes right now) and you get a serious case of cabin fever. But aside from a limp limb and an armless ultra runner, I’m pleased to say that, thanks to Divine Providence, Chaka Khan and the back up of some truly excellent girlfriends, things are on the up. Okay, Chaka Khan didn’t actually do anything. But her mere presence in the universe makes everything better.

I was recently offered a job at The Hawick News, my local Scottish Borders newspaper, and it has made the world of difference to Operation City Chick in the Sticks. Writing for a weekly paper is immensely challenging, fun and interesting and a great way to get to know the area and the lovely people in it. Plus it gets me out the house and away from those chickens. Learning to communicate with human beings again has been fun… Bekerrrr.

I’m also delighted to have been asked to speak at Write This Run, a cool new running blogger event in May. You can still get tickets Here so come on down to London and listen to me crack jokes about chickens, err, I mean talk expertly about hill running. And by May my bloody leg is bound to have healed, so I’ll be running about the fields with the baby lambs and will have loads to say.

Running = sexy

On that note, I should probably write a blog about running too. But I caved in and bought a scooter instead. Balls to running up hills, from now on I intend to breeze up them at a comfortable 30 mph. In the absence of anything useful to say about my favourite sport, go out and buy the latest issue of Women’s Running magazine instead. I heard a rumour that someone might have managed to persuade the editor Chris to publish an article on the two greatest pastimes ever invented, sex and running. Oh yeeeeah.

 

After showing the World Wide Web my bare naked bottom, I’m not sure I can top my last blog. I admit I was being deliberately facetious. I am well aware my nudist utopian vision of the future was slightly fanciful. Apart from breast and testicle support issues, which would seriously hinder recreational sporting activities, the seasonal nature of UK weather does make excessive nudity rather impractical. Especially for those of us lucky enough to live north of the border.

Now that winter is firmly on the horizon, I’m actually wearing twice as many clothes as usual and have no desire to be naked. I even have a hot water bottle tucked beneath my jumper as I type so that I don’t incur excessive daytime heating bills and piss my boyfriend off. It’s only October and I can see my breath. Being naked suddenly seems like a really bad idea. Oh how I miss those halcyon days… On the plus side, living in The Borders (AKA the knitwear mecca) I have easy access to cheap cashmere jumpers. Fluffy Mongolian goat’s wool on your skin is arguably the next best thing to being naked.

I am a robot

In my new winter mindset, this week I have mostly been thinking about gadgets. Running gadgets, cooking gadgets, texting gadgets and chicken coop gadgets. I’m a hippy and I want to run naked in the fields, while secretly relying heavily on modernity. I live in the wilderness and yet my life is suffused with technology. Ultraboy is a self-confessed ‘early adopter’ (gadget freak) and insists on having the very latest of everything. Consequently we own a microwave cooker that creates four-course meals in six minutes and cleans itself afterwards, a television the size of a small country and a chicken coop that automatically closes itself at dusk. And don’t get me started on the ridiculous amount of fancy equipment required to go out for a run. Despite technically living in the countryside, I am the commanding officer of a small but perfectly formed spaceship.

I have embraced modernity, but we have a love/hate relationship and sometimes I really fucking hate it. Especially smart phones; or Twitter to be more precise. Oh Twitter, the wonderful social media site which brought me true love, hourly inspirational philosophy, re-housed my wild cat Rocky with Bangs and Charlie Dark and enabled me to acquire two budget iPhones. Twitter you are my greatest friend and my loathsome enemy. I love you when I’m racing and you bring me motivation and encouragement, I cherish you when I’m lonely and you bring me cyber love. But I hate you when my boyfriend ignores me in favour of discussing minimalist footwear with you in minute detail late at night, and I absolutely loathe you when all my friends down south are clearly having a better time than me.

Like last weekend for example, when the Run Dem Crew all jetted off to Amsterdam to run marathons and party like mad, and I did not. Stupid Twitter, taunting me with your euphoric post-race tweets. I suppose I should be grateful, as I would not be here in this crazy, beautiful, technology-obsessed paradise if it wasn’t for you. But sometimes I secretly wish you’d just piss off and let me read a good book.

Alas the lure of the twinkly little bird button is strong and I find myself sneaking a look at you every damn day of my life. Especially as I work from home and my only companion is a small gang of quirky chickens, who don’t particularly care for human interaction, even in 140 characters, unless it involves a fistful of grain and a hasty exit.

Before emigrating to the wilderness, I thought country-life would involve log fires, permaculture and embracing survival basics. But it turns out I am incapable of rejecting modernity. In fact, out here in the hills I need it even more. I moved to the country to be a naked hippy and accidentally turned into a robot. I rely on the Internet heavily for human interaction and now I’ve grown used to a big sexy HD TV, I just don’t think I could ever return to my television-less life. Especially since there are considerably less people up here to distract me from X Factor.

However, in my bid to convince Ultraboy that my freelance career is an effective way to survive, until there’s frost on my laptop, I will continue to eschew central heating during the day. Thank God for running base layers. Two or three ultra tight wicking tops twinned with a fancy cashmere sweater and a hot water bottle make a workable solution. I look like a lunatic, but nobody can see me on Twitter. For all you know, I could still be tweeting naked.

 

Week two of Operation Rhalou in the wilderness and I seem to be settling into country life okay. Thankfully last week’s Chickengate was solved by a quick visit to the local donkey sanctuary that doubles up as a chicken petting zoo. They kindly took Monty the evil ginger cock off our hands in exchange for three considerably less threatening Silkie chickens, who I’ve collectively christened Chaka Khan.

Chaka Chicken Khan

Curiously, since we waved goodbye to Monty, his fellow rooster Freddie has stepped up to alpha mode and started lording it about the garden. What is it about men? Even in chicken form must they be forever locked in an archaic battle for supremacy?

I was hoping to have something a bit more rock ‘n’ roll to blog about this week than poultry. Life may be quiet in the country, but chickens alone are not enough to sustain a blog. Unless you write a blog specifically about chickens that is, in which case, my apologies, chickens are great. My intention was to write about running, but I haven’t done very much, due to a self-diagnosed IT band injury. But arguably self-diagnosis and doing sod all about it definitely makes me a typical runner, even if I’m not currently doing very much running.

I should probably stay in rival chicken bloggers good books anyway, because I suspect I may be inadvertently developing a chicken fetish. And since writing exclusively about running at Women’s Running magazine for nearly three years, maybe it’s time to spread my wings and write about something a bit more existential. Like birds.

If you don’t have anyone else to chat to, chickens certainly do start to take on a whole new level of importance. Those feathered friends have become my family. I eat most of my meals in their company, I study them obsessively (they’re like mini dinosaurs!) and even meditate amongst the mystic chickens. Okay that’s a lie, I find it impossible to sit still for that long, but their mere presence is quite meditative. If only chickens could run 10K at a comfortable pace, or bitch about boys over a glass of Merlot on Thursday nights.

Anyway before I change the name of this blog to City Chicken in the Sticks, let’s get back to the job in hand. The next obstacle in Rhalou versus country life is only marginally less pathetic than being scared of maverick poultry. This week I have mostly been grappling with the fear of being alone. Not in a spiritual sense (I welcome spiritual enlightenment, hence the bold move to the wilderness) but the fear of actually being alone, all by myself, all night long, in the middle of nowhere, with nobody to hear me scream…

Ultraboy is off to run a race in the highlands this weekend, leaving me home alone with the chickens. Ordinarily I’d relish the opportunity for a bit of Rhalou-time, so I could secretly watch One Born Every Minute, get drunk, eat Rocky Road and paint my toes pirate red at the kitchen table. But that was when I lived in a flat surrounded by six billion people, so I could still hear my neighbours farting through the walls. There’s being alone, and then there’s being alone, in the wilderness, with no car and no sense of direction, and a rusty torture chamber in the cellar. Okay I lied about the torture chamber bit too, Ultraboy gets his kicks from torturing me in a hill running sense, but the rest is all true. I have to spend one night on my own in the house on the hill in the middle of nowhere in Scotland, and I am shitting myself.

I know the crime rate in The Borders is considerably lower than London. Plus after finding a dead body in my back garden in Hackney a couple of years ago and witnessing a shooting in London Fields (both true) I’ve probably used up my horror quota for a lifetime. But combine the house, the hill, the rain, the woman alone and the wilderness, and my weekend definitely possesses all the ingredients for a classic horror film. Except for the gang of horny young teens on spring break required to get picked off one-by-one by the serial killer/monster/tribe of zombies in the lead up to my gory finale, but that’s just a minor plot detail.

I’ve seen The Evil Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre enough times to know slutty redheads rarely make it out of the woods alive. The surviving role is almost always saved for the brunette. And when the aliens do land in the garden, I can’t even run away! My IT band injury is practically begging for an axe-wielding murderer to chase me limping through the undergrowth. I’m just thankful I’m not a blonde; they always get chopped up before the intermission.

Arguably I could just jump on the train to London, or call my Dad who lives 20 miles up the road, or beg Ultraboy to take me to the highlands to share a tent/car/hostel with his sweaty ultra runner mates (sexy). But as shit scared as I am about being on my own in the arse crack of nowhere with nothing but a flock of chickens to protect me from the antichrist, I need to suck it up and be alone at some point, so it might as well be now. If I’m really going to morph into a fully-functioning country girl, I’m going to have to man-up and I’m going to have to do it fast.

If anyone reading this does happen to be a serial killer/monster/tribe of zombies, please don’t come to The Borders and kill me in a complex yet visually exhilarating way this weekend. But do feel free to come and visit! I’d love to have a guest or two for the weekend. We could have a nice cup of tea and talk to the chickens. Chickens are really great.