Running in the (prickly) heat

Yesterday I came down with heat rash, possibly the result of unwisely wearing a t-shirt under my shirt, and walking around in 33 degree heat, while still dazed, confused and sunburned from the junk on Sunday. Heat rash is vaguely disgusting, patches of inflamed bumps across your flesh, but it gave my fiancee some amusement as she held a bag of frozen peas against my back. Even strong men squeak sometimes, and I hold few pretensions about being strong.

A cold shower and some anti-bacterial soap helped a bit, but didn't completely cure me of the rash, so I was a little reluctant to go running tonight, for fear of exarcebating things. Still, the schedule rules everything.

When I got to the gym it was crowded, but I found an unused treadmill, and failed, as in the past, to realise it was calibrated for miles instead of kilometres. I was rather surprised at how quick my hoped-for easy 10.7 km/h pace turned out to be. Still, with some cheerful music on my ipod and a spring in my step (well, some insoles, which I'd foolishly omitted the last two times I went running) I did a quicker three miles than either time last week, and I felt better doing it too.

What I had failed to see was the sign at the changing rooms, saying that the supply of electronics would be unstable. At first I thought this was a rather strange notice about disruption to consignments of mp3 players, but it wasn't like there was a bunch of pallets full of ipods stacked up in the bogs. No, they meant the electricity was in short supply.

I hoped that was what they meant. A shortage of electricity in a room with a wet floor is one thing; a room where there's gushing water and "unstable" electricity is quite another.

They could have just said the 'leccy was up the spout, because there were no terrifying thunderbolts while I had my shower: if there had been, it would have been too dark to see anyway. But it did highlight a flaw in the changing room's colour scheme: when all the walls are dark grey and the shower curtains are all black and there's no lights, it's quite easy for somebody to blunder into an occupied shower stall.

Well, that's the excuse we all stuck to.

This is the second time recently there's been a queue for the showers at California Fitness, but at different venues. As I'm the common thing, perhaps it's my fault.

Glowing red with prickly heat, and determined to undo the benefits of the gym, or perhaps celebrating surviving The Great Power Cut of 2011, I went to Triple O's for a burger. While there, I saw some of the handbasins in the food court were out of order. Is the whole of Causeway Bay collapsing around us?