The Barefoot And Baffled Blog

   The sun was setting in the evening sky.    Above the hill the first stars were appearing.    A figure picked its way through the scrub and scraggly trees lining the slope leading to the top. It skirted around rust-red boulders, ducked under low hanging branches, and stepped over fallen logs.    At the top of the hill a small fire was burning, innocuously in the evening heat. The air above it wobbled. Another figure was sitting by the fire, back turned to the setting sun, facing towards the slope where the first figure was now approaching, moaning and grunting.    'Uuuurgh!' panted the first figure. It was a bloke, appearing to be of some uncertain middle age. He was dressed in football shorts and a faded checkered shirt. No hat, despite the day's heat, and no shoes either. His feet were covered in a coat of grey and red dust.    The second bloke stared at the first bloke quizzically, and raised a metaphoric eyebrow. Metaphoric, because his face could not be see

     It's that time where the arse end of the night slams into the front end of the day. But gently, like. There's a black sky overhead, with a sliver of dying moon providing bugger-all light, but with a huge spread of stars all over the Milky Way.    I can see well enough, and I know the layout of the track where I'm going, so it doesn't worry me too much. The shadows produced by the combined might of the moon and the stars are distinct enough to allow me to see any snakes on the road early enough to keep from stepping on them and picking a fight with them. It's a good thing to avoid.    My feet feel out the surface of the road as I run along it, looking for the most enjoyable bits to run on. They pick through the gravel, rocks, stones and hard dried-edged mud of wheel ruts, and find the soft sand of drifts of bull dust, across the road and off to the sides.     As the eastern sky starts to show signs of changing colour, with shreds of hard, bright orange lea