Cleaning a giraffe

Chilly for June.


I have one job at parkrun: give out the finish tokens to everyone who completes the course. One job.

This morning, the funnel team cheered on the participants at music corner until the fastest runner came past the second time. That’s our cue to shift ourselves to the finish funnel.

At the finish funnel, I went to get the first few tokens off the pin hanging on the ribbon round my neck ready to give out – but it wasn’t there.

I’d put my hi-vis on, but I hadn’t put my tokens on. The first finisher would be finishing pretty soon; I didn’t have much time.

‘Come on, Luna,’ I said to lovely Luna, and we legged it back to the bike shed, the home of volunteer HQ, and wrestled the awkward lid off the Tupperware box the tokens pin (1–150) lives in with the extra set (151–300), pens and other bits and pieces.

I grabbed the pin, pausing only to check it was the right set, and legged it back to my post. I undid the pin, took a few tokens off ready. I gave Luna a sweetie for her sterling bounding alongside me, then I was ready with token number one like I have been every other time I’ve done the tokens (apart from the one time when the tokens were in the wrong order, but that’s another story).

No one took the mick at all. Not one person, including the couple I told – each member separately – when they finished. While I was talking to them, someone came up the funnel.

I smiled, ready with my usual ‘Well done!’ and a token, when I saw who it was – a blast from the past. ‘Hello!’

She stopped right there in the funnel; stared at me for a second. Then the penny dropped; the light bulb switched on. ‘Hello!’ She was the partner – now wife – of someone I used to work with back in the days when I had a proper job. (None of you knew me then!)

I showed her where to get scanned, then she came back, and we caught up with some of the last twenty years until I gave the tailwalkers their tokens, signalling the end of today’s parkrun. We hope to meet up some time soon for more catching up.

Back at volunteer HQ, I gave the tokens pin to the token sorter to refill. No one mentioned my boo-boo. No one took the mick at all. After all, it’s only the eighty-third time I’ve given out the tokens. Honestly. One job.


This afternoon, Mr Pandammonium and I went to the pub to see if we could make any further progress in any of the first three cryptic crosswords in my book of cryptic crosswords that we started some time ago. We made some progress in each before we went home for a tale of abandonment and neglect and woe from Mr Perkins.