Warming Up

I’ve been ill/in a weird torpor (long Covid? Don’t think so, but it’s been a bit weird) for most of this year and the exercise has dropped off and the weight has plonked on. I have done two short runs this week (4km and 3km) and have been keeping up with the weekly personal training sessions (illness allowing), but I have really let things slip. Today, pretty much on a whim, I decided to take part in the local May Day Fun Run. It was 10k, which I knew would likely be a challenge, but I was keen to see how I would get on and hoped that being part of a group would make it a bit easier.

There weren’t huge numbers taking part and my hopes of being pulled along by the crowd were quickly confounded. After the first couple of kilometres on this windy pathed run I found myself running alone, or occasionally with one person in the distance ahead of me. 

I felt a bit stiff and tired for the first ten minutes, but then settled into things and the run became more fluid and less painful. I knew I would be running for about an hour, which at twenty minutes felt like an awfully long time.

It was a route I was familiar with as we’d run these paths quite often during our half marathon training and I wondered if this race would include a rather brutal hill that was long and steep and always the biggest challenge of my training. That hill turned up at about the 5 or 6 km mark, just at the worst possible place, but I managed to keep running - unlike a few people who I managed to pass at this point. 

I finished strongly and managed to come home in about 61 minutes and 20 seconds. Given my total lack of training for the event I was pretty happy with this. I’d done over twice that distance in just 1 hour 55 back in November, but we’d worked for that run and I was a good half a stone lighter (possibly more), so today’s result was pretty satisfactory. I have signed up for another local 10k in June. Hopefully it will encourage me to get back on the fitness path and shed the weight that I’ve annoyingly put back on like a wholly predictable twat.

Phoebe was reading the story of Rumplestiltskin tonight and I have to say the whole thing is pretty fucked up and unfair. Rumplestiltskin is the wronged one in this whole thing and I am furious on his behalf. He has spun gold from straw on three occasions for a woman who can’t spin gold for shit and each time he makes it clear what the conditions of his spinning shall be. I am not sure why someone who can spin gold from straw is wasting his time making deals for rings (or even babies) when he can presumably just spin gold all the live long day and then become super king of the world. But it’s up to him to use his skill as he seems fit.

But the woman he assists goes along with all his conditions, including giving up her first born child - on the rather flimsy pretext that she might never have a child and even if she does Rumplestiltskin might forget about the contract. Now if I took a loan from the bank in the hope that the bank would forget that they leant me money, I don’t think anyone would be sympathetic to me. And that would be just a monetary transaction. If I’d said I would give up an actual human being in return for gold, then society would judge me harshly. She wants the gold so she can marry the king, even though the king is the kind of cunt who will only marry someone if they spend three nights spinning gold out of straw for him. No one comes out of this well. Apart from the helpful Rumpelstiltskin who steps in to help out, generally for rewards that are not equal to what he wants in return.

Sure asking for a first born child is a bit creepy and we have no clue as to his plans for the baby, though perhaps prejudice against goblins makes us think we know what he wants it for. However there’s every chance that he’s just testing the suitability of this woman to be a parent with a wisdom greater than that shitbag Solomon who thinks cutting a baby in half would reveal who was the best parent (on the off chance that one of the prospective mothers might go along with that - which is of course bullshit). If this woman will give up a baby for gold, then she must not be allowed to be a mother. I think Rumpelstiltskin is only doing this to give the child a loving home. And it disgusts me that you are so close-minded that you think he’d do what you are thinking he’d do. This goblin is a fucking saint.

Even when it comes time to pay up on the deal Rumpelstiltskin is incredibly fair, giving the woman a totally unnecessary second chance by allowing her to guess his name to wipe out the debt. He doesn’t get anything extra if she fails, just the child that he is owed. The child that the mother cared so little about that she bargained away for gold. 

And he gives her three days to come up with the answer. If it was me I’d say she had three guesses max. The goblin man is beyond fair here. 

He does make a very stupid and avoidable error though. If you ever challenge someone to guess your name and they are nowhere near getting it, then absolutely DON’T go to a little clearing in a forest, dance around with glee and start shouting out your name. Sure, it’s unlikely you’d have been followed, but it’s possible. Equally someone else might be passing by and be able to go and tell everyone what your name is. Literally all you have to do is not say your name for three days. If you want to dance around, fine, just think your name, don’t say it.

Also if you really want the baby then don’t make an additional unnecessary deal. You were already owed the baby. Just take the baby. And raise it well. Away from its absolutely awful parents.

Anyway Rumpelstiltskin makes that silly error and loses out on getting a baby and then to add insult to injury then stamps his foot through the floor.

And we’re supposed to be happy about this.

He has behaved honourable and been wronged and this baby is left with a dad who will only marry someone if they can give him more gold (even though he has loads anyway) and a mother who would willingly give up her child just so she can marry a horrible, mercenary man. Sure the baby might have been bummed and eaten if it had gone off with the goblin (sure, it’s a stereotype, but sometimes there’s a reason why stereotypes exist), but it might have been OK. It might have learned a trade. Spinning straw into gold. And then used the money to help poor people, rather than themselves.

Justice for Rumplestiltskin, the most unfairly maligned character in all literature.