One unexpected side effect of getting married seems to be an increased capacity for shouting at the telly and moaning about the state of the world. We watched a bit of Glastonbury this weekend and complained about: bands that plunder Talking Heads but with sharper suits, the honking huge void left by John Peel and of course the mighty suckfulness of Coldplay. Everything was better back in OUR DAY, don't you know; even though our day was only a few years ago. Gareth declared that the last Really Good Glastonbury was 1997; and of course I agreed, having formed this opinion in Australia from an imported copy of Q magazine six months after the event.

I'm hoping this curmudgeonly behaviour simply indicates we're now nicely settled into our state of hitchedness. And the timing is good since we have to get married AGAIN next Saturday, aka The Night of the Hot Ceilidh Action.

SHAUNA:  Did you know that I've previously only been to four weddings in my whole life, but now I have to go to four weddings in one year alone? And they're all our bloody weddings!

GARETH:  Yeah? I'm really getting sick of getting married to you!

S:  Yeah? Well I'm really getting sick of getting married to you, too!

S & G:  Hehe.

Homesickness disguises itself in the most ridiculous forms. Today I had a pang of longing for catalogues. The ones that choke your mailbox on a Sunday morning - K Mart, Big W, Harvey Norman - all the big stores trying to woo you into their bargain lairs.

Growing up on a farm meant we had a P.O. Box instead a postman. So no catalogues! The Mothership would poach them from friends and we'd fight over them even if they were a month old. I'd spend hours gawking at all those crazy discounts; the weird prices like $5.49 or $9.87. There were horrid appliqued frocks, cordless drills, potted ferns and The World's Largest Cotton Undies.

I loved the models with their expressions permanently set to "delighted". Toddlers tottered across the page with their pudgy fists in the air. Women with sensible bobs grinned despite their elasticated skirts. The blokes, chisel-jawed and wavy-haired, all looked like the Gift Shop models on Sale of the Century. It was so unsettling to see them in polo shirts and khaki shorts, instead of besuited beside the BMW and Cash Jackpot.

The Retravision and Harvey Norman catalogues enthralled me with their gleaming whitegoods and small appliances. Multi-disc CD players were all the rage in the mid-90s, so each stereo had a little logo indicating its capacity. I'd frantically flip through the pages trying to find the beefiest machine. 3 discs! 5 discs! 10 discs! Sweeeet! It was no wonder I ended up with a 25-disc changer for my 21st birthday. Which is really the stupiest invention ever, for by the time you feed it you can never remember what you put in.

Best of all were the fridge and freezer pages. I would stare longingly at the carefully styled shelves, trying to pick my Dream Fridge based on its contents. I loved the rows of condiments and posh bottled water, the celery lounging in the crisper, the watermelon wedge smiling on a platter. And there were always elaborate parfaits in tall glasses. I wanted a fridge with parfaits, dammit. And a freezer full of Ski frozen yogurt. They always had Ski frozen yogurt! We had half a cow and Home Brand Choc-Coated Ice Creams in our freezer. Meanwhile in the fridge, vegetables turned to liquid alongside the brown orange juice and last year's salad dressing. I daydreamed that somewhere out there, these pristine perfumed devices really existed.

You just don't get catalogues like in the UK. I'll be home in three months, would someone save a few for me?

The ONE TIME I didn't Draft in TextEditor first and wrote an entry straight into Movable Type, I hit Save and I got an Internal Server Error so I clicked the Back button and then the entry WAS GONE and it's 10.14PM and I cannae be arsed writing it again so... BAH!

Speaking of being an idiot, I had a startling revelation yesterday upon reading this divine entry. Banoffee pie - a deliciously sickly combination of bananas, cream and caramel - is as commonplace on a Scottish restaurant menu as haggis, neeps and tatties. All this time I thought 'Banoffee' was either an ancient highland clan or obscure swear word but... DERR! It's BANana + tOFFEE! I have never felt like such a nong, except for when I was a kid and found out people committed 'suicide' and not 'silverside'.

Gareth's only been out of the country for 24 hours and already I've got a wandering eye. With every episode Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares I become more and more besotted with the Michelin Man. Gordon is arrogant, moody, filthy rich, Scottish and swears every five f*cking seconds. What's not to love?

So who have you been lusting over lately?

There was a touching moment last year when Gareth wanted to show me to his old high school. It was to be an incredible journey, he said. "It's a bit of a walk, it will take us about forty minutes to get there". We trekked past abandoned Irn-Bru cans, Hula Hoop packets and graffitied fences then arrived, breathless with anticipation... in five minutes.

"Well it seemed like a long way when I was a student," he said with a puzzled frown.

That was only the first surprise of the day. The second was that his beloved high school had been... completely demolished. All he could do was stand in the rubble of his precious memories, and forlornly point out random spots now cluttered with cranes and building supplies. "That was where the music room was. I think. And that's where we'd hang out at lunch. Maybe." You've never seen a more devastated face, I tell you.

In October we're off to Australia for a few weeks, and it will be my turn for educational nostalgia. The canteen line where the skanky kids used to pester, "Have you got five cents?". The science lab outside which a magpie shat on my shoulder. The basketball court where some boys asked if I was a redhead down there. And of course, the Fantasy Chairs.

Fantasy Chairs started out as regulation Australian government school chairs: red, orange or blue plastic, hard and unyielding and liable to stick to the back of your sweaty thighs on a scalding January afternoon. But then some obnoxious little shithead in Year 8 would decide to draw upon the seat of the chair, right at the very front in thick black permanent marker, a PENIS.

I was surprised when I started travelling overseas that there is a pretty much universal technique for graffitied blokey bits - the three scrawly loops, the middle one bigger and longer of course; and some short sharp lines if it's a hairy specimen. They're on the back of toilet doors; on the underpass near the train station. But I've never seen them on chairs anywhere aside from my alma mater.

I don't know who started calling them Fantasy Chairs, but you can imagine how traumatic they could be for a teenage girl. In the earlier years of high school we had a growing interest in the accessories of the opposite sex, but this did not mean we wanted to SIT atop an artistic impression of one during double English. This often meant circling the classroom trying to find a Normal seat. If you were late to class then often you had little choice and were subject to the ridicule of your peers, "HA HA HA! You got a Fantasy Chair!"

By the time we got to our senior years most people were totally over the Fantasy Chair thing, but me and my mates were particularly immature so if we struck gold we'd shout across the room with glee, "HA HA HA! I got a Fantasy Chair!". I remember rushing in for one of my Year 12 exams and there was a particularly large specimen scrawled on my seat. I smiled fondly and gave it a little pat for good luck.

Signs your running event may be in Scotland:

1. It's raining so hard that worms have been washed up from underground.
2. There's a burger van.
3. The chick beside you at the starting line is eating a burger from said van AND smoking a fag at the same time.

So I had returned to the scene of the crime. That is, the crime of Falling On My Arse Repeatedly. Do you recall my disasterous descent from Arthurs Seat last January? Yesterday's race was at Holyrood Park, which winds it way around the bottom of the Seat. And like that fateful day conditions were wet and slippery, so it was a toss up whether I would collapse first from exhaustion or clumsiness.

The Race for Life had a cracking atmosphere. 7000 women jumped around in the rain waiting for the race to start while puzzled dog walkers looked down at us from the hills. It was an interesting crowd of all ages, shapes and sizes. Some folk had little pink signs on their backs with the names of loved ones they'd lost. Some folk were in fancy costume. Some were just content to gulp down their pre-race cigarette and let the irony of smoking at a cancer charity event waft over their head.

I ended up starting with the Walkers, due to an existential crisis in which I didn't think I was Runny enough to be with the Runners. My number 56 was stapled to my t-shirt since there was not a safety pin to be found in our house. Who the hell has safety pins? My mum, my granny, my supremely organised sister; they would have had safety pins. It took Gareth and I around half an hour to attach the stupid number without getting it crooked and/or piercing my boobs but I was happy with the end result. They say safety pins are punk rock but STAPLES are more rock than rock itself, I do declare.

The race began with intense confusion and claustrophobia as I wove my way through the blur of legs and arms and tiny shorts and puddles, only to be confronted with the Hills of Evil. I grumbled and swore my way upward in a slow and painful manner, hating every damn second. Finally the course evened out and soon I'd reached the halfway point. And then something clicked in my brain and I began to run like the wind. Okay, maybe not like the wind. Maybe like a very faint breeze that briefly tickles your nose. But it felt like the wind to me. The second half felt so smooth and calm and dare I say... enjoyable. I tuned out the crowd and heard nothing but the steady thump thump thump of my ill-fitting shoes.

I know this was Only A 5k, I know it was Just A Charity Event but I can't begin to tell you what a big deal this was for me and how buzzed I still feel. I tried to disguise my anxiety with jokes in the last entry but I had invested a lot of time and emotional shit into this whole running palaver. Some day I will tell you about how different things used to be, how a few years ago I would have told you I'd eat a bucket of gravel before I'd ever run five kilometres.

I must have looked like an idiot, charging for the finish line in a late burst of speed, my red-blotched mascara-streaked (what possessed me to wear mascara?) face suddenly breaking into a huge, dopey grin. I beat my previous personal best time by almost three minutes. I was so elated and overwhelmed that my first immediate reaction was to cry. Except all I couldn't because my second immediate action was to try to catch my breath, so my lungs were confused and all I could do was make these strange strangled chicken noises. Only when I found Gareth in the crowd did I finally have a wee sob and he was kind enough to just give me a hug and look slightly bewildered. I guess all I can say is that there is no greater thrill than doing something that you never believed you could be capable of doing.

Thank you to everyone who sponsored me. You not only helped me reached my fundraising target but actually doubled it. This will make the folks at Cancer Research UK very happy. You guys rule the school!

For as long as I can remember there was always something to dread. Something to angst about while staring at the ceiling late at night, something that made me wake up with fear and loathing piled in my gut like bricks. Something that I had to deal with that I really didn't want to deal with. Like swimming lessons, family dramas, piano recitals, exams or unemployment. I grew so accustomed to having something to freak out about that I'd freak out if the freakiness ever subsided.

The last thing that gave me that dreadful feeling was my weekend job at Geriatric Rescue, where I'd fret about upcoming shifts for days in advance. But I quit that job and with all that cheery getting married palaver, I was sleeping like a baby! The lack of dread and about-to-shit-my-pants feeling was deeply unsettling. I kept waiting for a bus to mow me down. I don't know if it's Catholic guilt, inherited martyrdom or some masochistic streak, but if you're not suffering on some level, how are you supposed to know that you're alive?

So that's why I took up running.

Ooh I hate running.

It doesn't help when your earliest memories of running are being chased around a field by giant birds with spurs on their feet while your mother watched and laughed. And then there's the bitter sting of high school PE classes, where I was unable to trot more than fifty metres without coughing up a lung and my face going violently beetroot. By far the slowest in my class, I was always picked last for teams. One by one my chosen classmates would line up behind their Captains, til only I remained in all my red-haired red-cheeked crapness.

CAPTAIN A:  Ummmm. I pick that tree.
CAPTAIN B:  I pick that stray cat over there.
CAPTAIN A:  I pick that abandoned chip packet.
CAPTAIN B:  Dammit! ALRIGHT then, I pick Shauna!

I have an Internet Friend named Julia, a lovely American who has lived in Italy for over twenty years. She is not only a keen runner but holds running clinics all over the country to encourage women into the sport. Sensing I needed a challenge, she offered her training expertise in a virtual capacity. I told her that I can't run, not even the birds with the spurs could get me moving. But she insisted anyone could learn to run. Well that is fair enough for her to say; she who did a marathon in Thailand in stinking summer humidity... Just For Fun. But she was persistent, and I recognised the familiar I don't wanna! terror in my stomach, so I knew it was something I had to do!

Firstly we had to pick a goal. Apparently it's not enough to potter around the park; you need to train for a specific race otherwise you'll be tempted to skip sessions and sit on your arse watching the Men And Motors channel. So I picked the Race for Life 5k. This wildly popular charity event is for women only, so I figured I could lose myself in the crowd and hopefully not come last. Plus I could be motivated by guilt! If people sponsored me, I'd be forced to stick with it.

Gareth volunteered to train with me. He said he wanted to be supportive, but I secretly sulked. Not only was he already humiliatingly fitter than me, his presence meant I would actually have to do some running. I couldn't just sit under a tree for half an hour, splash my face with water then go home and announce, "Dude! Tough workout!". So by the time we finally started I felt ready to throw up from fear.

Ooh how I hated it. Every single step. Within thirty seconds I knew the vacancy of Dreadworthy Thing In My Life had been filled. I thought I'd built up a reasonable level of fitness with all my halfassed classes and weight training, but running was something else altogether. There was no instructor to tell me what to do. There was no machine to slump on when I got tired. There was no stack of Reebok steps to hide behind if it all became too much. It was just me, my body and the open road. This was tough!

When you've avoided running your whole life, it feels quite bizarre to rearrange your body in a running-type configuration. Julia's instructions were customised for the absolute beginner, so I alternated walking with one-minute bursts of running. Or rather, one-minute bursts of slightly swifter shuffling. My lungs! My poor lungs! Where had all the air gone? Why was my face on fire? I had never felt so utterly inept in my life. I was so embarrassed that I looked at the ground the whole time, hopefully rendering me invisible to Real Runners who'd scream, "Begone, amateur!". How was I ever going to last five kilometres?

Gareth on the other hand loped along effortlessly, throwing punches in the air a la Rocky while singing, Shauna's training! Getting strong now! Won't be long now!. When we finally finished my face was so red it melded seamlessly with my hair and eyebrows and I became one great shiny blob of unfitness. Gareth hadn't even broken a sweat. The bastard.

That was ten weeks ago. What we need here is a Rocky-esque montage of my amazing progress since. We wouldn't even need to make it in slow motion, because my motion is slow enough already. Cue soft focus and stirring orchestration!

Imagine if you will:

—  Pathetic pre-run arguments that all go:
SHAUNA:  I can't believe you're making me do this AGAIN!
GARETH:  I'm making you do it?
S:  Yes you!
G:  You'll be fine!
S:  But we only did this two days ago! Shouldn't that be enough? Until the end of time?

—  A dramatic collapse on grass at the end of Week Three Session Two followed by dramatic declaration, I will never walk again!

—  Shauna's attempts to hurl abuse continually thwarted by lack of fitness: "I puff puff hate THIS and I puff puff hate YOU!

—  The ongoing saga of The Reddest Face in the World:
CONCERNED FATHER-IN-LAW: So you got a wee bit sunburned today?
TOP ATHLETE SHAUNA: Nooo, I am still recovering from my run three hours ago.

—  The Hill Sprints of Week Five: Gareth racing up stairs and jumping around pumping triumphant fist in air a la Rocky; Shauna arriving some two minutes later.

—  Great moments of fatigue and delirium, when Shauna is so slow that Gareth must literally run on the spot to match her pace:
S:  My body won't work! I can't run anymore!
G:  But running means you need to lift your feet off the ground!"

—  Revenge of The Vegetable Chilli: In which Shauna farts uncontrollably when running up hills.

—  Tears and icepacks as our athlete is sidelined by injury. Experts recommend increasing your mileage by no more than 10% per week, but some bright spark wrote down Julia's instructions incorrectly and accidentally increased it by 25%! OWW OWW OWW. I was never good with numbers.

—  The touching finale. Once again collapsed on the grass after a gruelling run, the athlete experiences her first endorphin rush:
G:  You look as though you enjoyed that.
S:  No I didn't.
G:  You did so.
S:  Perhaps, briefly. On some level.

After ten weeks, running is still serving me well as That Thing What I Hate To Do. I commence bitching and moaning before each session and do not let up until we're finished. Then I feel all smug and virtuous for about 24 hours, before starting to fret about the next run. Each step I take is still a constant battle between my increasingly adventurous body and my lazy, sabotaging brain. There's those brief, thrilling moments when my legs and arms move like liquid and my mind just floats above. Mostly there's sweat and crankiness and small yappy dogs getting under my feet. But it's actually bloody brilliant to feel The Dread again. I feel so alive!

Sunday is the big day. I am trying to remember to breathe. I know I have improved out of sight, but I still think all those leathery old grandmas will breeze past me, so much fitter despite the fact they live on tins of cat food. But it's all for a good cause, and I've not yet reached my sponsorship target! If you'd like to make a donation please visit my Race for Life page! All proceeds go to Cancer Research UK. The more money you give the guiltier I'll feel. At least go check it out for the mildly comical sight of my big head poorly Photoshopped onto Paula Radcliffe's body!

And if you're in Edinburgh on Sunday and happen to be near Holyrood Park, just look for the ultra slow chick with the tortured expression. My red face will probably be visible from space.